Chapter published in:
Brazilian Portuguese, Syntax and Semantics: 20 years of Núcleo de Estudos Gramaticais
Edited by Roberta Pires De Oliveira, Ina Emmel and Sandra Quarezemin
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 260] 2020
► pp. 191–212

Chapter 8
Brazilian bare nouns in quantity judgments

Kinds and atomicity

| Universidade Federal do Paraná | CNPq | Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina
| Universidade Federal do Paraná | Instituto Federal de Santa Catarina
The chapter reports the results of applying quantity judgment tests to bare nouns in Brazilian Portuguese. The results show that the bare singular and sentences with no nouns (no cues to atomicity, as argued in Scontras et al. 2017) behave alike, in contrast with plural nouns. Brazilian bare singulars allow for cardinal and volume readings. We show that this is explained by the fact that they carry no linguistic cues to atomicity. Finally, we argue that the difference between English and Brazilian Portuguese may be explained by Chierchia’s (2010, 2014) nominal parameter: English is a predicate language, whereas Brazilian Portuguese is a kind language. The conclusion explores some consequences of this semantic parameter.
Keywords: atomicity, bare singulars, Brazilian Portuguese, kinds, quantity judgments
Article outline
  • 1.The state of the art on mass and count
  • 2.The bare singular in Brazilian Portuguese
  • 3.Two outliers in Scontras et al. (2017)
  • 4.The bare singular in BrP, another outlier?
    • 4.1Participants
    • 4.2Design and methods
    • 4.3Description of the results
  • 5.Bare nouns in BrP and the absence of linguistic cues to atomicity
  • 6.Semantic parameters?
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 08 May 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.260.08oli
References
Bale, Alan C. & Barner, David
2009 The interpretation of functional heads: Using comparatives to explore the mass/count distinction. Journal of Semantics 26(3): 217–252. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Barner, David & Snedeker, Jesse
2005 Quantity judgments and individuation: Evidence that mass nouns count. Cognition 97: 41–66. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Beviláqua, Kayron, Lima, Suzi & Pires de Oliveira, Roberta
2016 Bare Nouns in Brazilian Portuguese: An experimental study on grinding. The Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication, Vol. 11: Cognitive, Semantic and Crosslinguistic Approaches. Kansas KS: New Prairie Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Beviláqua, Kayron & Pires de Oliveira, Roberta
2014 Brazilian bare phrases and referentiality: Evidences from an experiment. Revista Letras 90: 253–275. Curitiba.Google Scholar
2017 Brazilian bare nouns in comparatives: Experimental evidence for non-contextual dependency. Revista Letras 96: 354–376. Curitiba, UFPR.Google Scholar
2018 What do bare nouns mean cross-linguistically? Preliminary results. The count-mass distinction – A linguistic misunderstanding? May 7–9, Bochum, Germany.Google Scholar
Carey, Susan, Xu, Fei
2001 Infant’s knowledge of objects: Beyond object files and object tracking. Cognition 80: 179–213. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Carlson, Gregory Norman
1977 Reference to Kinds in English. PhD dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.Google Scholar
Cheng, Lisa L.-S. & Sybesma, Rint
1998 Yi-wan tang, yi-ge tang: Classifiers and massifiers. Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese studies 28(3): 385–412.Google Scholar
Chierchia, Gennaro
1998 Reference to kinds across languages. Natural Language Semantics 6(4): 339–405. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2010 Mass nouns, vagueness and semantic variation. Synthese 174: 99–149. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2014 How universal is the mass/count distinction? Three grammars of counting. In Chinese Syntax in a Cross-Linguistic Perspective, Audrey Li, Andrew Simpson & Wei-Tien Dylan Tsai (Eds.). Oxford Scholarship Online, November. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Deal, Amy Rose
2017 Countability distinctions and semantic variation. Natural Language Semantics 25(2), 125–171. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Dobrovie-Sorin, Carmen & Pires de Oliveira, Roberta
2008 Reference to kinds in Brazilian Portuguese: Definite singulars vs. bare singulars. Proceedings of SuB12. Oslo: ILOS, University of Oslo.Google Scholar
Ferreira, Marcelo
2017 Bare nominals in Brazilian Portuguese: An overview. Conference New Perspectives on the Form and Meaning of (Bare) Nominals. Universidade de São Paulo, 27–28 April, São Paulo, Brazil.
Grimm, Scott & Levin, Beth
2012 Who has more furniture? An exploration of the bases for comparison. Mass/Count in Linguistics, Philosophy and Cognitive Science Conference, Ecole Normale Supérieure, December 20–21, Paris, France.
Huntley-Fenner, Gavin, Carey, Susan & Solimando, Andrea
2002 Objects are individuals but stuff doesn’t count: Perceived rigidity and cohesivenss influence infants’ representations of small groups of discrete entities. Cognition 85: 203–221. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kulkarni, Ritwik, Rothstein, Susan & Treves, Alessandro
2010 Computational constraints on composition interpretation: Refocusing the debate on language universal. Lingua 120(12): 2717–2722. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Landman, Fred
2011 Count nouns, mass nouns, neat nouns, mess nouns. The Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic, and Communication, Vol. 6: Formal Semantics and Pragmatics. Discourse, Context and Models. Kansas KS: New Prairie Press.Google Scholar
Link, Godehard
1983 The logical analysis of plurals and mass terms: A lattice-theoretical approach. In Meaning, Use, and Interpretation of Language, Rainer Bauerle, Christoph Schwartze & Arnim von Stechow (eds), 302–323. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lima, Suzi
2014 The Grammar of Individuation and Counting. PhD dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.Google Scholar
Lima, Suzi & Gomes, Ana Paula Quadros
2016 The interpretation of Brazilian Portuguese bare singulars in neutral contexts. Revista Letras 93: 193–209. Curitiba.Google Scholar
Müller, Ana
2002 Genericity and the denotation of common nouns in Brazilian Portuguese. Probus 1(14): 279–298.Google Scholar
Pelletier, Francis Jeffrey
2012 Lexical nouns are both +mass and +count but they are neither +mass nor +count. https://​pdfs​.semanticscholar​.org​/91ea​/c6a9d1e7c0c70751fa8d1fac8591a80c17ab​.pdf> (11 December 2019) Crossref
Pires de Oliveira, Roberta & Rothstein, Susan
2011 Bare singular noun phrases are mass in Brazilian Portuguese. Lingua 121: 2153–2175. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Pires de Oliveira, Roberta & Carturani, Tiago
2014 The semantics of plural in Brazilian Portuguese. X Workshop on Formal Linguistics, 28–29 August, Porto Alegre, Brazil.
Pires de Oliveira, Roberta & Chierchia, Gennaro
In press. Contemporary issues in natural language semantics. To be published in DELTA .
Rothstein, Susan
2010 Counting, measuring and the mass distinction. The Journal of Semantics 27(3): 343–397. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2017 Semantics for Counting and Measuring. Cambridge: CUP. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Schmitt, Cristina & Munn, Alan
1999 Against the nominal mapping parameter: Bare nouns in Brazilian Portuguese. In NELS 29: Proceedings of the North East Linguistic Society, Nancy Hall, Masako Hirotani & Pius Tamanji (eds), 339–353. Amherst MA: GLSA.Google Scholar
Scontras, Gregory, Davidson, Kathryn, Deal, Amy Rose & Murray, Sarah E.
2017 Who has more? The influence of linguistic form on quantity judgments. In Proceedings of Linguistic Society of America, Vol. 2, 41: 1–15. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Soja, Nancy N., Carey, Susan & Spelke, Elizabeth S.
1991 Ontological categories guide young children’s inductions of word meaning: Object terms and substance terms. Cognition 38(2): 179–211. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Wilhelm, A.
(2008) Bare Nouns in Dëne Sułine. Natural Language Semantics, 16, 39–68. CrossrefGoogle Scholar