Less form – more meaning: Why bare singular nouns are special

Why Form-Meaning Mappings are not Entirely Arbitrary in Language

We discuss two tasks that the child must solve in learning their language: identifying the particular meaning of the word being spoken, and determining the general category to which the word belongs. We present a series of simple language learning models solving these two tasks. We show that learning the precise meaning of the word is more easily accomplished if there are arbitrary mappings bet...

Bare Nouns in Brazilian Portuguese

Children’s Associational Rights? Why Less Is More

Chinese Bare Nouns as Kind - Denoting Terms

This paper addresses an interesting array of facts about Chinese common nouns in some detail. For example, Chinese common nouns, in their bare forms, often stand alone at argument positions, display a variety of context-sensitive interpretations, never combine with numerals without an intervening classifier, and combine with a plurality marker in a highly selective way. It is argued that this w...

Bare nouns and number in Dëne Sųłiné

This paper documents the number-related properties of Dëne Sųłiné (Athapaskan). Dëne Sųłiné has neither number inflection nor numeral classifiers. Nouns are bare, occur as such in argument positions, and combine directly with numerals. With these traits, Dëne Sųłiné represents a type of language that is little considered in formal typologies of number and countability. The paper critiques one i...