This book examines argumental "un"-NPs and "du/des"-NPs in French: nominals with the indefinite article and with the so-called partitive article respectively. The main aim is to account for the different interpretations of these indefinites and to determine how interpretation and structure are related. This study thus concerns the syntax-semantics interface, with an emphasis on the composition of the left periphery and the inflectional domain of the indefinites mentioned. It is realized in the framework of generative grammar and in a cartographic approach. A crucial proposal put forward in...

This volume contains a selection of nineteen peer-reviewed papers from the 42nd annual Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL) held at Southern Utah University in Cedar City, Utah, in 2012. The contributions cover a wide range of current topics in the areas of phonetics, phonology, syntax, interfaces, and diachronic Romance linguistics, with an emphasis on experimental approaches, in connection to L1 and L2 acquisition, code-switching and psycholinguistics. Among the languages and varieties of Romance analyzed are French (Old, Modern, and Norman), Portuguese (Brazilian and...

This volume edited by Tabea Ihsane focuses on different aspects of the distribution, semantics, and internal structure of nominal constituents with a “partitive article” in its indefinite interpretation and of potentially corresponding bare nouns. It further deals with diachronic issues, such as grammaticalization and evolution in the use of “partitive articles”. The outcome is a snapshot of current research into “partitive articles” and the way they relate to bare nouns, in a cross-linguistic perspective and on new data: the research covers noteworthy data (fieldwork data and...