Catalan Journal of Linguistics· 2026Q1
A Note on Taxonomic Nouns and their Reference
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- 2026year
Short summary
Romanian taxonomic noun 'tip' (type) refers to abstract entities via a pseudo-partitive syntax, distinguishing it from 'fel' (kind) which cannot.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Key points
- The Romanian noun 'tip' (type) refers to abstract entities in its taxonomic use.
- Agreement patterns in Romanian support distinct syntactic structures for taxonomic and existential readings of such nouns.
- A pseudo-partitive syntax with an intransitive-predicate denotation is proposed for existential readings of 'tip'.
- 'Fel' (kind) is identified as a Romanian noun that cannot refer to abstract entities taxonomically.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
Taxonomic nouns like kind, type, and sort appear to refer to abstract entities, rather than particular objects. Focusing on the Romanian tip ‘type’, we provide evidence based on agreement patterns in favor of Wilkinson’s (1995) hypothesis that the two interpretations—taxonomic and existential— of taxonomic nouns correspond to distinct syntactic structures. We propose a formal analysis of existential readings employing a pseudo-partitive syntax with an intransitive-predicate denotation for the taxonomic noun. Our analysis clarifies the distinction between genuine taxonomic Ns, including tip ‘type’, which refer to abstract entities, and the Romanian noun fel ‘kind’, which seems unable to do so. We show that despite lexical variety, a unified treatment of taxonomic expressions remains viable without multiplying abstract entity sorts beyond Carlsonian kinds. Our proposal accommodates the syntactic diagnostics while avoiding unnecessary ontological commitments.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Catalan Journal of Linguistics, 2026 · DOI ↗
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Field: Language and Linguistics
Language and LinguisticsArts and Humanities