Constraints on Quantificational Domains: Generic Plural des-Indefinites in French

Indefinite plural generic in French and quantification over groups. Later criticized in Mari and Martin Going Romance 2008

Comparatives, Superlatives and Definiteness in Romance

Romance languages do not have superlative-dedicated morphemes (see most/-est in English) but instead express superlative meanings by using a comparative combined with a definite article. There are, however, interesting crosslinguistic differences that indicate that the role of “definiteness” for the superlative meaning of comparatives is different across Romance languages. Thus, French superlative adverbs and superlative postnominal adjectives are necessarily formed with (what looks like) a definite article (THE notates items that are morphologically identical to the definite article across languages) preceding the comparative morpheme plus (ER notates the comparative morpheme across languages, regardless of whether it is an affix or a free standing morpheme), whereas in the Italian corresponding examples THE is banned. According to Loccioni (2018) this crosslinguistic difference is not structural: in order to get superlative meanings Italian comparatives would be formed with a covert D(eterminer) corresponding to THE in French. I will propose instead that whereas French has a superlative-dedicated phrase of the form [THE ER], Italian has a “bare”, i.e., a THE-less ER that moreover lacks a than-argument, which gets a superlative meaning via raising to the Spec of [D°THE]

Two types of most

The empirical puzzle to be solved is the contrast between partitive and non-partitive most (which respectively take of-DP and NP restrictors, respectively) wrt their compatibility with a collective predicate (or a collectively interpreted mixed predicate) in the nuclear scope. The proposal will rely on the 'null hypothesis' regarding the correspondence between syntactic categories and semantic type: DPs and NPs respectively denote entities and sets of entities. Our puzzle will be solved by explaining why set-restrictor quantifiers cannot denote relations between sets of plural entities whereas entity-restrictor quantifiers can denote relations between plural entities. It will also be argued that plural bare NPs in the restrictor of most can be kind-denoting (in addition to being set-denoting) in English. Throughout the paper the main generalizations will be strengthened or refined by taking into account the Romanian counterparts of the relevant dat. Keywords: collective quantification, mass quantification, bare mass NPs, bare plurals, kind-referenc

A Syntax-based Analysis of Predication

No abstract

The romanian supine and adjectival complementation. Tough constructions.

This paper provides an analysis of Romanian Tough constructions (i.e., structures like greu de citit "tough to read") as compared to French similar structures ("difficile à lire"). It accounts for agreement contrasts between the two languages: in Romanian there is a partial agreement, i.e. agreement of the copula, whereas in French the copula and the adjective both agree in the Tough construction. It is mainly argued that Romanian has two patterns of complementation, the one used in Tough constructions involves an adverbial predicate as Specifier of a vP "supine" projection.Cet article propose une analyse des structures de type Tough du roumain (à savoir structures comme greu de citit "difficile à lire") comparées aux structures similaires du français. L'analyse proposée rend compte des contrastes d'accord entre les deux langues: en roumain, il y a un accord partiel, seulement de la copule, tandis qu'en français la copule et l'adjectif Tough s'accordent. On propose essentiellement que le roumain dispose de deux modèles de complémentation, celui qui est utilisé dans les constructions Tough implique un prédicat adverbial qui est le Spécifieur d'une projection vP qui correspond à la structure non-finie enchâssée au supin

Plural Predication and Generic Plural Indefinites

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