Book: Conflicts in Interpretation
Chapter: Nominals with and without an article: distribution, interpretation and variation
Blurb:
This chapter focuses on the distribution and interpretation of bare nominal in a range of languages. It is argued that an OT typology is responsible for the differences in distribution. The semantics is directly recoverable from the
syntax, under the assumption of a small set of correspondence rules between form and meaning. Thus, the view, that setting up referents in conversational space and referring to them are universally available cognitive
operations, is maintained.