Predication over aspects of human individuals

Abstract

Abstract Predicate nouns in German, as well as in other languages, may occur bare or with an indefinite article. This alternation is possible with role nouns, which refer to well-established aspects of individuals such as professions and nationalities. Bare NPs differ from indefinite NPs in that they have restricted meaning, are number neutral and are restricted in modifiability. In the literature, these peculiarities received different explanations. The new account combines previous analyses and is based on the following assumptions: the noun that projects an indefinite NP denotes a kind, while the noun projecting a bare NP denotes a capacity. This difference corresponds to the difference in predication: indefinite NPs predicate about the whole individual assigning it membership in a certain kind, while bare NPs predicate only about one social aspect of the individual, identifying it with a certain capacity. Since bare predication concerns only one aspect of the individual, it is partial. Bare predication can now be considered under a broader view of partial predication, a phenomenon very common in argument alternations, and can be analyzed with the tools that have proved effective in this domain. The approach to bare predication taken here thus has a larger empirical coverage.