The bare singular in english and brazilian portuguese experimental approaches on atomicity
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21814/diacritica.5059Keywords:
Comparison, Mass-count distinction, Brazilian Portuguese, Bare SingularAbstract
From the grammatical notion of atomicity, we propose an analysis for the Bare Singular (BS) both in English and Brazilian Portuguese (BrP). Our aim isto verify experimentally the atomic property (or not) of these noun phrases. To do so, we analyse data from a test performed by Scontras et al. (2017), which show that the BS in English mainly raises volume reading in comparatives. According to our analysis, this interpretation is explained as coercion, which corroborates the denotation of the SNU as an atomic predicate in this language. For the case of the BS in BrP, we developed a quantity judgment test, relying on Scontras et al. (2017) methodology, to verify the dimensions of comparison used with the plural, mass and BS nouns, opposed to sentences without the name in the prompt (Who has more?). The results show that sentences with the BS raise the same judgments as the ones without the noun in the prompt. We argue, then, that the BS in BrP does not carry any grammatical feature for atomicity, unlike the plural and the mass nouns, which carry [+ atom] and [-atom] features respectively.
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