An anankastic account of bare nouns in German
Fuente:
Zenodo
Salvato in:
| Autore principale: | |
|---|---|
| Natura: | Recurso digital |
| Pubblicazione: |
Zenodo
2025
|
| Accesso online: | |
| Tags: |
Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
|
| _version_ | 1866901956248731648 |
|---|---|
| author | Armenante, Giuliano |
| author_facet | Armenante, Giuliano |
| contents | <p>This paper investigates Article Drop (AD) with singular count nouns in spoken<br>Standard German, presenting novel data on tool-denoting nouns. Although such<br>nouns are typically resistant to AD, I show that AD can naturally occur when<br>they appear in topical position and denote the inherently unique means to achieve a<br>backgrounded goal. This constitutes a systematic exception to an otherwise robust<br>ban on AD, explained by the fact that these bare nouns refer to objects that are<br>uniquely identifiable in the stereotypical task-completing situations to which they<br>are relativized. I thus propose an anankastic-like analysis, in which a (silent)<br>teleological modal restricts the evaluation of the tool-denoting noun to situations<br>where a given task is stereotypically completed using that tool. The paper further<br>contributes to the theoretical landscape by exploring cross-linguistic extensions to<br>languages such as Czech and Akan, offering preliminary support for a revised notion<br>of weak definiteness grounded in inherent uniqueness. Finally, I highlight how<br>modal operators and situation variables can restrict the reference of noun phrases<br>even in the absence of overt determiners.</p> |
| format | Recurso digital |
| id | zenodo_https___doi_org_10_5281_zenodo_15525344 |
| institution | Zenodo |
| language | |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| publisher | Zenodo |
| record_format | zenodo |
| spellingShingle | An anankastic account of bare nouns in German Armenante, Giuliano <p>This paper investigates Article Drop (AD) with singular count nouns in spoken<br>Standard German, presenting novel data on tool-denoting nouns. Although such<br>nouns are typically resistant to AD, I show that AD can naturally occur when<br>they appear in topical position and denote the inherently unique means to achieve a<br>backgrounded goal. This constitutes a systematic exception to an otherwise robust<br>ban on AD, explained by the fact that these bare nouns refer to objects that are<br>uniquely identifiable in the stereotypical task-completing situations to which they<br>are relativized. I thus propose an anankastic-like analysis, in which a (silent)<br>teleological modal restricts the evaluation of the tool-denoting noun to situations<br>where a given task is stereotypically completed using that tool. The paper further<br>contributes to the theoretical landscape by exploring cross-linguistic extensions to<br>languages such as Czech and Akan, offering preliminary support for a revised notion<br>of weak definiteness grounded in inherent uniqueness. Finally, I highlight how<br>modal operators and situation variables can restrict the reference of noun phrases<br>even in the absence of overt determiners.</p> |
| title | An anankastic account of bare nouns in German |
| url | https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15525344 |