Definiteness of bare NPs as a function of clausal position: A corpus study of Czech

Result code in IS VaVaI
<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216208%3A11210%2F20%3A10420611" target="_blank" >RIV/00216208:11210/20:10420611 - isvavai.cz</a>
Result on the web
—
DOI - Digital Object Identifier
—

Result language
angličtina
Original language name
Definiteness of bare NPs as a function of clausal position: A corpus study of Czech
Original language description
We provide novel corpus evidence that the definiteness of a bare (nondetermined) noun phrase (NP) depends on the position of the NP in the clause, thus corroborating an intuition common among Slavic linguists since the 1970s. The most significant finding is that indefinite bare NPs are very unlikely to occur in clause-initial position. A further notable result is that definiteness of a bare NP is affected by its absolute position in the clause (clause-initial vs. clause-final), but not its position relative to the verb (preverbal vs. postverbal). This has worrisome implications for theories according to which the verb partitions the clause into a presupposed and nonpresupposed area. Finally, we are able to tease apart the effect of clausal position from the effect of syntactic function, to the effect that being a subject or object (properties that strongly correlate with being clause-initial and clause-final, respectively) does not increase the likelihood of bare NPs to be interpreted as definite or indefinite, respectively.
Czech name
—
Czech description
—

Project
—
Continuities
I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Publication year
2020
Confidentiality
S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Article name in the collection
Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics 26: The Urbana-Champaign Meeting 2017
ISBN
978-0-930042-90-5
ISSN
—
e-ISSN
—
Number of pages
19
Pages from-to
343-361
Publisher name
Michigan Slavic Publications
Place of publication
Ann Arbor, MI
Event location
Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA
Event date
May 19, 2017
Type of event by nationality
WRD - Celosvětová akce
UT code for WoS article
—

Similar results(10)