BARE NOUNS IN SPANISH
Bare (i.e. determinerless)
NPs are severely constrained in subject position; in particular such NPs almost
never occur preverbally: Ladraron perros
‘Dogs barked’ – though even this would sound odd in ordinary conversation – but ??Perros ladraron.
Determinerless singular count nouns are common only in attribute-denoting PPs,
such as de niño in ropa de niño ‘children’s clothes’ and
certain very familiar collocations, such as tener
coche ‘to have a car’, buscar casa
‘to look for a house’, fumar en pipa
‘to smoke a pipe’. Outside of subject position, bare plural count nouns and bare
singular mass nouns are routine:
(1) Pedro está
escribiendo [NP cartas].
‘Pedro is writing letters.’
(2) Pedro está comiendo [NP helado].
‘Pedro eating ice-cream.’
From the semantic point of
view, a verb plus a determinerless or ‘bare’ NP is often called an activity predicate (‘predicate’, in this
sense, is an alternative word for ‘verb phrase’). This is because such
sequences share properties with intransitive activity verbs like correr ‘to run’ and jugar ‘to play’. The term ‘activity’ is
part of a four way classification of verbs and verb phrases that originates
ultimately in the work of the American philosopher Zeno Vendler (see Linguistics
in Philosophy, pp. 97–121, Cornell University Press:
(3) Pedro
corrió durante media hora.
‘Pedro ran for half an
hour.’
(4) ?Pedro corrió en media hora.
?‘Pedro ran in half an
hour.’
Likewise for the verb +
bare NP sequences:
(5) Pedro escribió
cartas/comió helado durante media hora.
‘Pedro wrote letters/ate
ice cream for half an hour.’
(6) ?Pedro escribió cartas/comió helado en media hora.
‘Pedro wrote letters/ate
ice cream in half an hour.’
Note that insertion of some form of the quantifier uno into a verb + determinerless NP sequence usually converts an
activity predicate into some other type of predicate:
(7) Pedro
escribió cartas durante media hora.
Pedro escribió
unas cartas en media hora.
In terms of Vendler’s taxonomy
of verb phrases, sequences like escribir
una carta or escribir unas cartas would
be described as accomplishment
predicates. An accomplishment is an action that has a ‘built-in’ terminus.