Japanese Bare Nouns as Weak Indefinites

Proceedings of PACLIC19, the 19th Asia-Pacific Conference on Language, Information and Computation. Japanese Bare Nouns as Weak Indefinites Keiko Yoshida Department of English Language and Literature, School of Education, Waseda University 1-6-1 Nishi-waseda Shinjuku, Tokyo 182-0011 JAPAN yoshidak@waseda.jp Abstract Japanese Bare Nouns (JBNs) appear to behave like indefinites in some contexts, and mass nouns in some other contexts. For example, when accomplishment verbs have JBNs as their theme, they are modified by both in-adverbs and for-adverbs. This paper first claims that JBNs are weak indefinites and introduce a variable to be bound by Existential Closure. Second, it shows how telic predicates are derived when accomplishment verbs take JBNs as their theme. Third, we observe that verbs of creation do not appear with for-adverbs when coupled with JBNs, and that an event is considered repeated when accomplishments appear with for-adverbs. Two possible explanations for the facts follow; (i) JBNs are not inherently kinds; (ii) sum-formation is restricted in Japanese. 1. Introduction This paper discusses the behavior of Japanese Bare Nouns (JBNs)1. In particular, we focus on their interpretation when they appear as a theme of accomplishment verbs. It is well known that in English, VPs headed by an accomplishment verb can be telic or atelic, depending on the nominal expression the verb takes (Verkyul (1972), Dowty (1979), Krifka (1998), Rothstein (2004) among others). (1) a. Bill ate an apple in one minute/*for one minute. b. Bill ate bread *in one minute/for one minute. c. Bill ate apples *in one minute/for one minute. Adverbs of duration, which modify unbounded events, apply to VPs in which a mass noun or a bare plural is in the object position of accomplishments. Adverbs like ‘in one minute’ target bounded events and apply to VPs with indefinites. Chierchia (1998) points out that JBNs are like English mass nouns. Both appear in the argument position without any determiner nor quantifier; both denote kinds; and both require 1 Japanese does not have a plural marker corresponding to ‘s’ in English. Thus JBNs are different from bare plurals in English. classifiers or measure phrases to count. However, they do not always behave like mass nouns. Fromkin (ed.) (2000) shows that JBNs can be used with both in- and for- adverbs. Consider (2)2. (2) a. Bill-wa ip-pun-de pan/ringo-o tabe-ta. -Top one-minute-in bread/apple-Acc eat-Past ‘Bill ate bread/apple in one minute.’ b. Bill-wa ip-pun-kan pan/ringo-o tabe-ta. -Top one-minute-for bread/apple-Acc eat-Past ‘Bill ate bread/apple for one minute.’ In (2a), Bill consumed in one minute a certain amount of bread/apples recognized as a unit or a group. (2b) implies that apple/bread-eating activity by Bill took place for one minute. Thus, JBNs seem to have dual roles; they sometimes behave like indefinites and sometimes behave like mass nouns3. The question to be concerned here is what is semantics of JBNs and how they can appear with two types of adverbs. 2. JBNs as indefinites In section 2, we will first see Chierchia (1998)’s analysis of bare nouns. We will also examine how similar JBNs are …

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