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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: Ithaca 1967) and has been much used in linguistics. For present purposes, the important point to note is that activity verbs collocate well with duration phrases (durante X minutos/horas/meses etc.) but poorly with time span phrases (en X minutos etc.):

 

(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.

 

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