Acceso usuarios
[1]
Barcelona, España
This paper investigates Numberless Indefinite Definites (NIDs) in Italian, an understudied class of nominal expressions that, despite their morphologically definite and singular form, convey an indefinite and number-neutral interpretation (e.g., L’hotel ha la piscina lit. ‘the hotel has the pool’). The study addresses two main questions: (i) what grammatical factors license NIDs in Italian? And (ii) how can their indefinite and number-neutral readings be compositionally derived? First, I argue that NIDs are exclusively licensed in the object position of have-predicates, provided that the resulting V+NID combination expresses a characterizing property of the subject. Second, I propose a novel compositional analysis of NIDs. To account for number-neutrality, I argue that these constructions lack Number specification and do not project a Number Phrase. As a result, they denote definite kinds, which receive an existential interpretation via Derived Kind Predication when combining with the selecting have-predicate. Besides providing a compositional account of the existential and number-neutral interpretation of NIDs, this analysis also explains their obligatory narrow scope behavior and their restriction to taxonomic modification.
