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One overlooked and highly polysemous English noun phrase form is the bare singular, i.e. a null determiner with a singular count noun complement. Occurring in all grammatical positions, this constituent shape is used in English for multiple functions. Examination of naturally occurring English data shows the conditions under which bare singulars are used as generics (with a meaning like bare plurals), as components of a predicate conveying a stereotypical activity (with an indefi nite meaning), and as markers of an identifiable referent (like nouns with definite articles, demonstratives, and possessive determiners). While generic and indefinite meanings are well documented for bare forms, the reading that picks out an identifi able referent is unexpected for a bare nominal. This range of meaning-based distinctions suggests additional theoretical consequences for cross-linguistic noun interpretation and DP-internal syntactic structure.

The -ex string found in English product and company names (e.g., Kleenex, Timex and Virex), is investigated to discover whether this ending has consistent meaning across coined words and to observe any constraints on its attachment and interpretation. Seven hundred and ninety-three -ex brand name types were collected and examined, derived from American English texts in the Brown and Frown corpora as well as over 600 submissions to the US Patent and Trademark Office's Trademark Electronic Search System database (TESS); American native English speakers were also surveyed to assess interpretations of -ex meaning in brands. Analysis of these coined terms reveals that -ex meaning is contingent, reflecting assumptions by a given speaker of a referent's domain in a given time, region and culture. Yet, despite ambiguities in its interpretation, the -ex form shows increasing use.

Examination of the term stress in naturally occurring vernacular prose provides evidence of three separate senses being conflated. A corpus analysis of 818 instances of stress from non-academic texts in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and the Corpus of American Discourses on Health (CADOH) shows a negative prosody for stress, which is portrayed variously as a source outside the body, a physical symptom within the body and an emotional state. The data show that contemporary speakers intermingle the three senses, making more difficult a discussion between doctors and patients of ways to ‘reduce stress’, when stress might be interpreted as a stressor, a symptom, or state of anxiety. This conflation of senses reinforces the impression that stress is pervasive and increasing. In addition, a semantic shift is also refining a new sense for stress, as post-traumatic stress develops as a specific subtype of emotional stress whose use has increased in circulation in the past 20 years.

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