The aim of this paper is to provide a preliminary investigation into the nominal system of Wapishana, focusing on the count vs. mass distinction, which is grammatically encoded in this language. Evidence for this distinction can be identified in the constraints imposed by the presence of… read more
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… read more
Comparatives in Brazilian Portuguese show that Bale and Barner’s (2009) generalizations do not hold cross-linguistically; this leads to reconsidering the role of cardinality in mass and count syntax. The paper discusses contrasts in the use of naturally atomic, or object, mass nouns in Brazilian… read more
This paper examines the distribution and the interpretation of Brazilian Portuguese bare singular arguments of episodic predicates, in particular as themes. We argue that these bare singulars cannot be interpreted as indefinites as suggested in Schmitt and Munn (1999) and Müller (2002). Instead we… read more
The analysis of the generic readings of Bare Singulars in Brazilian Portuguese is controversial: for Munn & Schmitt (1999, 2005) and Schmitt & Munn (2002) generic Bare Singulars are names of kinds, whereas for Müller (2002) they are indefinites bound by a generic operator. This paper provides two… read more