Proceedings of the 13 ESSLLI Student Session - Multiple Choices ...

Proceedings of the 13 th ESSLLI Student Session
In this paper I will defend three claims concerning bare predication. The first is that analyses
that reduce the distinction between bare and non-bare predication to a temporal one
are not on the right track (see paragraph 2). The second is that a purely lexical approach to
bare predication is not tenable (see paragraph 3). The third and final one is that non-bare
predication should be analyzed as kind-membership predication (see paragraph 4).
2 Bare predication and time
When comparing sentences (3a) and (3b) most informants tend to say that the a-variant is
more ’eventive’ than the b-variant (Roy, 2006):
(3) (a) Paul est acteur. (French, litt. Paul is actor)
(b) Paul est un acteur. (French, litt. Paul is an actor)
This intuition has led linguists to explore a temporal analysis of bare predication. In its
simplest form it would state that bare predication is concerned with transient properties
whereas non-bare predication is concerned with permanent ones. The most convincing
argument in favour of this analysis comes from ’lifetime effects’:
(4) (a) Paul était médecin. (French, litt. Paul was doctor)
(b) Paul était un médecin. (French, litt. Paul was a doctor)
Sentence (4a) can be understood as stating that Paul used to be a doctor and that he’s
retired now. Sentence (4b) can only mean that Paul is dead. Under the assumption that
non-bare predication is concerned with permanent properties the interpretation of sentence
(4b) follows: to cancel a permanent property one has to cancel the existence of the
entity the property applies to. The problem this analysis faces is that it predicts that inherently
transient properties should always occur bare in predicate position. This prediction
is not borne out (cf. (de Swart et al., 2007)):
(5) ?? Marie est fille. (French, litt. Mary is girl)
Another temporal approach to bare predication is the one presented in (Roy, 2006) (variants
are (Munn and Schmitt, 2005) and (Déprez, 2005)). Roy assumes all nouns come
with an event argument that has to be bound. When bound by the indefinite article it is
signalled that the predication holds for the maximal event around the ’time of utterance’
(given by the Tense on the copula) and that this event cannot be split up into smaller intervals.
When bound by Tense it is signalled that the maximal event can be split up. The
facts that led to this analysis are presented in (6) and (7):
(6) (a) Jean est professeur le jour, danseur la nuit.
(French, litt. John is teacher by day, dancer by night)
(b) ?? Jean est un professeur le jour, un danseur la nuit.
(French, litt. John is a teacher by day, a dancer by night)
(7) (a) Paul est devenu chanteur.
(French, litt. Paul has become singer)
(b) ?? Paul est devenu un chanteur.
(French, litt. Paul has become a singer)
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