| Research Abstract |
In this research, we investigated syntactic and semantic properties of bare singular nouns without articles in German and English, especially with respect to bare coordinate NPs, bare predicative nouns, and bare nouns in prepositional phrases. First, we argued that bare coordinate NPs involve the features[+ division,+ plural] so that they are interpreted as definite, indefinite, and generic arguments. Further, we pointed out that bare coordinate NPs, with an optimal representation, can be more economic than NPs with articles. Second, by contrasting with English, bare predicate nouns are used more frequently in German in copular sentences as in“Er ist Komponist.”(=He is a composer.) in contexts in which membership properties(nationalities, jobs etc.) are listed. In addition, we showed that in English and German, prepositions and bare nouns functioning as adjuncts are classified into locations, institutions, goals, manner and instruments. In these cases locative prepositions like at, in, on and to are used while in German an, auf, in and zu occur. When a PP with a bare noun denotes a place/ goal or an institutional place(hospital, jail, etc.) the existence of a nonspecific object(place) is implied and habitual meanings are added.
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