The semantics of (not so) bare nominals in Rioplatense Spanish

• Autor(a) principal: Oggiani, Carolina
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Caderno de Squibs
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.unb.br/index.php/cs/article/view/45507
• topic: Bare Singulars; Rioplatense Spanish; Weak Definites; Weak Indefinites; Strong Definites; Bare Singulars; Rioplatense Spanish; Weak Definites; Weak Indefinites; Strong Definites

In this article we examine a group of bare singular count nominals (BNs) in Rioplatense Spanish (RPS) that appear in argument position, thus far not deeply addressed in the literature (MASULLO, 1996; LACA, 1999). Despite BNs in RPS are considered to be part of a lexically restricted phenomenon, we argue for their productivity and systematic behaviour. Considering that general Spanish has a rich determiner system, we build a semantic model to explain why these nouns appear bare in argument positions. To this end, we present semantic and syntactic evidence that aims to show that BNs in RPS have different behaviours. Specifically, we account for their three possible interpretations: a weak definite reading, a weak indefinite reading and a strong definite reading. We associate these three readings to different functional projections above the NP. Even though BNs are superficially bare, we argue that their differences lie in different types of bareness.