Bare predicate nominals in Romance languages

This paper offers an analysis for the possible absence of determiners in singular predicate nominals that refer to professions, roles and certain relations (e.g.dottore, capo-mafia, figlio di Luigi in Italian). Building on the theory of noun phrases in Heycock and Zamparelli (2005), it argues that while singular count nouns are normally licensed by the presence of a determiner, nouns that form bare predicates have an impoverished set of features (in particular, no set value for gender), and can be licensed by entering in an agreement relation with the subject of the predication. Semantically, the article distinguishes three subclasses of bare predicates, and argues that role / profession nouns ambiguously refer either to sets of individuals or to the activities which can identify these individuals.

Published online: 09 July 2008
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.99.08zam