Mandarin bare indefinites

Abstract

The recent literature on bare nouns in articleless languages suggests that they are subject to cross-linguistic variation. In this paper, we add Mandarin bare nouns to the debate. We identify a hitherto unnoticed restriction on their indefinite readings in object position and argue that it is related to the notion of stereotypicality. We develop a formal analysis of stereotypical verb-noun combinations, and show how it allows us – in combination with the independently motivated assumption that Mandarin yī ‘one’ is developing into an indefinite article – to derive the relevant restriction. We conclude that Mandarin bare nouns cannot freely take on indefinite readings and that Mandarin can no longer be considered a run-of-the-mill articleless language.