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

From the preceding I conclude that the existing analyses that try to reduce the distinction
between bare and non-bare predication to a temporal one are not on the right track. It was
important to establish this given that most existing analyses are cast in temporal terms
whereas the one I will defend in paragraph 4 is not.
3 Bare predication and the lexicon
In the literature on bare predication one of the following positions is often taken: (i)
nouns that usually appear in non-bare predication are marked in the lexicon (see e.g.
(Matushansky and Spector, 2005)); (ii) nouns that usually appear in bare predication are
marked in the lexicon (see e.g. (de Swart et al., 2005), (de Swart et al., 2007)). In this
section it will be argued that purely lexical standpoints like (i) and (ii) should be amended.
In order to do so it will be shown that :
(a) all nouns that usually appear in bare predication can appear in non-bare predication;
(b) all nouns that usually appear in non-bare predication can appear in bare predication.
It should be noted that (a) and (b) don’t constitute decisive arguments against lexical
analyses. They do however make them less appealing.
31 Bare predication nouns
Proceedings of the 13 th ESSLLI Student Session
As stated in paragraph 1 there is a subclass of nouns that usually appear in bare predication.
They include nouns related to professions, religions, nationalities and titles. It is
however well-known that these nouns appear fairly frequently in non-bare predication too
(see e.g. (de Swart et al., 2005), (de Swart et al., 2005)). When they do they allow for
their normal interpretation and an enriched one. This will be illustrated on the basis of
(13):
(13) (a) Sil is beenhouwer. (Dutch, litt. Sil is butcher)
(b) Sil is een beenhouwer. (Dutch, litt. Sil is a butcher)
The a-variant is the unmarked one and simply states that Sil works as a butcher. The bvariant
has the same interpretation but also allows the interpretation according to which
Sil is not a butcher but has the characteristics we usually associate with butchers. A
typical person the b-variant would apply to is a violent boxer. The enriched interpretation
projects the (stereotypical) characteristics that are associated with a profession on
an individual. From a lexical standpoint one could see the enriched interpretation as an
instance of coercion. Note though that if we store in our world knowledge that butcher is
a profession we can get the same coercion effect to arise.
32 Non-bare predication nouns
The majority of nouns in languages like Dutch usually appears in non-bare predication.
Up to date these nouns have been defined negatively; they are those that are not related to
professions, religions, nationalities and titles.
In the literature there are two claims about nouns appearing in bare predication. The
first is that they are usually [+ human] (cf. (Matushansky and Spector, 2005) and (Roy,
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