Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Syntax and Semantics of Noun Phrases in Tarascan

New York University, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

This project investigates how the mass/count distinction determines the structure and interpretation of noun phrases in Tarascan (isolate, Mexico). It focuses on four topics: the distribution and interpretation of plural marking, the semantics of classifiers, the interpretation of the indefinite article, and a description of quantifier structure and meaning. Several languages distinguish mass nouns (e.g. English 'honey') from count nouns (e.g. English 'dog'). Mass nouns do not combine directly with numerals while count nouns do. A cross-linguistic tendency is that nouns that refer to substances are mass nouns, while nouns that refer to delimited objects are count nouns. However, some nouns behave like mass nouns despite the fact that they refer to delimited objects (e.g. English 'furniture'). The grammatical distinction between mass and count nouns is thus not entirely determined by extra-linguistic factors, and to some extent it is arbitrary and subject to linguistic variation. Tarascan is particularly revealing in the empirical investigation of the mass-count distinction since it distinguishes not two but three classes of nouns: count nouns, like 'wichu' (dog), mass nouns like 'tékwa' (honey), and a third class, which we call "count-mass" nouns (Doetjes 1997). This third class includes items like 'purhú' (pumpkin) and 'thatsïni' (bean). They share some grammatical properties with mass nouns, some with count nouns and in other respects they constitute a class of their own. The tripartite distinction in the mass/count domain calls for a revision of the semantics of some functional categories within the Tarascan noun phrase. For instance, while mass nouns reject plural morphology and count nouns referring to more than one entity need it obligatorily, the precise contribution of plural marking with count-mass nouns cannot be accounted for by canonical theories of plurality. Moreover, classifiers and plural marking in Tarascan can co-occur in a noun phrase, a fact unexpected under well-known typological generalizations. This investigation elucidates the role of classifiers in individuating the denotation of count-mass nouns. This research is based on semantic and syntactic judgments collected on site by Co-PI Vázquez-Rojas under the supervision of Dr. Chris Collins. The data will be obtained by elicitation and in natural occurring discourse from four consultants in Michoacán, México. Co-PI Vázquez-Rojas will also be involved in training young researchers in Mexico to undertake similar investigations in several indigenous languages spoken around the country.