Toward a Unified Grammar of Reference

Abstract

The unification of traditionally distinct and apparently unrelated objects of inquiry under common more abstract principles is one of the most welcome results of empirical science. This article proposes to draw together some insights of Longobardi (1994Longobardi ( , 1996Longobardi ( , 2001 into a unified theory of objectand kind-reference viewed as a single grammatical phenomenon, though crosslinguistically parametrized. The present account aims to improve both in accuracy and explanatory force over those outlined in the articles just cited. 1 To do so, the combined leading intuitions of such works are first spelt out, in section 6, into a deeper generalization about the form/meaning relation in nominals and later deduced from a more principled mapping theory, proposing that a syntactically specified position, traditionally labeled D, is responsible in many languages for one of human fundamental linguistic abilities, reference to individuals (Topological Mapping Theory). After the unification of the syntactic mechanisms available for reference to individuals, virtually all other distinctions simply follow precisely from that between the two varieties of such entities (kinds and objects) previewed in Carlson's (1977a) ontology, indirectly confirming its continuing heuristic power, and from widely accepted economy conditions of recent syntactic theory.

Bare Nominals in Brazilian Portuguese: more on the DP/NP analysis

“…the 'well-established' kind restriction, Carlson 1977; but see Dayal 2004 for a criticism). For English, this neocarlsonian approach seems to account appropriately for the meaning of bare plurals in generic sentences and, in fact, it has deeply influenced most of the literature on kind reference in other languages (e.g., Chierchia 1998;Longobardi 2001Longobardi , 2005Zamparelli 2002, for Italian;and Schmitt 1996; Dobrovie-Sorin and Pires de Oliveira 2008, for Brazilian Portuguese, among others).…”

Bare nominals in Catalan and Spanish. Their structure and meaning

“…(ii) Does an apparent morphologically singular noun necessarily project a syntactic Num projection, assuming there is one? (iii) Do all nominal expressions occupying argument positions in Romance also project a DP (Longobardi, 2001(Longobardi, , 2005? (iv) Are BNs in object position DPs without Number (as postulated by Schmitt and Munn, 1999 for BNs in subject position in Brazilian Portuguese)?…”

The morphological structure of complex place names: the case of Dutch

“…The commonness of names is also reflected in many introductions to linguistics, where sentences in the style of John loves Mary or Sally kisses Frank are prototypical textbook examples to illustrate some of the most basic syntactic relations. In linguistic theory, however, names have been largely neglected so far, despite the fact that they are such obvious language material (with notable exceptions, see, e.g., Longobardi 1994Longobardi , 2005Van Langendonck 1998Anderson 2004Anderson , 2007. One strikingly underinvestigated issue concerns the internal synchronic structure of names: while onomastics has significantly contributed to our understanding of the structural complexity that many names display etymologically, their synchronic morphological structure has not yet received detailed attention.…”