Bare and Not-So-Bare Nouns and the Structure of NP

1999/10/01 by Lisa Lai-Shen Cheng, Lisa Lai‐Shen Cheng, Rint Sybesma · 5 citations
Arts and Humanities · Computer Science · #Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies #Natural Language Processing Techniques #Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation

paper · doi:10.1162/002438999554192

crossref issued 1999/10/01 · crossref published 1999/10/01 · crossref published-print 1999/10/01 · openalex publication_date 1999/10/01 · crossref created 2002/07/27 · crossref deposited 2021/03/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · crossref indexed 2026/07/28 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01

Abstract

This article examines the distribution and interpretational variability of bare nouns and [classifier+noun] phrases in Cantonese and Mandarin. We argue that bare nouns are never bare in structure and that [classifier+noun] phrases may have more structure than just Classifier Phrase. We show that the lack of articles and number morphology in Cantonese/Mandarin leads to many interesting differences between Chinese-type languages and English-/Italian-type languages.

Citations

• Reference to Kinds across Language
• Quantification in Mandarin Chinese: two markers of plurality

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• The Puzzle of Anaphoric Bare Nouns in Mandarin: A Counterpoint toIndex!
• On the Methodology of Semantic Fieldwork
• On Mass Denotations of Bare Nouns in Japanese and Korean
• The Syntax of Chinese