{"id":11121,"date":"2018-05-14T06:06:16","date_gmt":"2018-05-14T10:06:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whamit.mit.edu\/?p=11121"},"modified":"2018-05-13T20:27:12","modified_gmt":"2018-05-14T00:27:12","slug":"syntax-square-515-suzana-fong-mit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/2018\/05\/14\/syntax-square-515-suzana-fong-mit\/","title":{"rendered":"Syntax Square 5\/15 - Suzana Fong (MIT)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Speaker:<\/strong> Suzana Fong (MIT)<\/a>
\n Title:<\/strong> Bare nominals in Wolof
\n Date and time:<\/strong> Tuesday May 13, 1-2pm
\n Location:<\/strong> 32-D461
\n Abstract:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

Even though Wolof is a language with overt determiners, it also allows for nominals to occur without any determiner at all.<\/p>\n

(1) Awa defar na oto bi\/yi\/\u00d8.<\/i>
\nAwa fix NA.3sg car the.SG\/the.PL\/\u00d8
\n‘Awa fixed the car\/the cars\/a car.’<\/p>\n

In this research in progress, I try to explore the syntax and semantics of these bare nominals. The properties considered so far are the following:<\/p>\n

(2) Syntactic properties<\/p>\n

    \n
  • Bare nominals can the be the subject of transitive and intransitive verbs.<\/li>\n
  • They can also be the object of transitive verbs.<\/li>\n
  • When in subject position, bare nominals are compatible with singular or plural verbal agreement.<\/li>\n
  • They are also compatible with a singular or plural genitive suffix.<\/li>\n
  • They are compatible with singular or plural relative clauses.<\/li>\n
  • They can be referred back to by a singular or plural clitic.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    (3) Semantic properties<\/p>\n

      \n
    • Bare nominals cannot be followed up with the question How many?<\/i> when they are the subject of a singular verb, though this is possible when the verb is plural. Something along these lines holds of bare nominals in object position too.<\/li>\n
    • They can be the antecedent of a singular reflexive, though not of a plural one.<\/li>\n
    • They cannot be the argument (subject or object) of a collective predicate.<\/li>\n
    • They can occur in the existential construction Am na…<\/i> (‘there is…’), which displays definiteness effects.<\/li>\n
    • They can scope above or below intensional predicates and an iterative verbal affix.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

      In order to account for these properties, I tentatively draw a distinction between syntactic and semantic number that is loosely based on Landau (2001)’s analysis of partial control. Specifically, I try to explain the semantic properties in (3) by suggesting that bare nominals in Wolof are semantically singular. However, they would have no syntactic number feature. Coupled with a fallible (Preminger 2014) version of feature checking (Chomsky 1995), this proposal could be consistent with the syntactic properties in (2).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Speaker: Suzana Fong (MIT) Title: Bare nominals in Wolof Date and time: Tuesday May 13, 1-2pm Location: 32-D461 Abstract: Even though Wolof is a language with overt determiners, it also allows for nominals to occur without any determiner at all. (1) Awa defar na oto bi\/yi\/\u00d8. Awa fix NA.3sg car the.SG\/the.PL\/\u00d8 ‘Awa fixed the car\/the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-announcements"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11121"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11136,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11121\/revisions\/11136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}