Bare singular and plural kinds

Abstract

Languages with a singular-plural and mass-count distinction as well as overt definite and indefinite determiners are predicted not to allow bare singular kinds (Chierchia 1998; Dayal 2004). Ga (Kwa) is such a language (Campbell 2017; Renans 2016a,b, 2018, 2021) and yet both bare singular and plural count nouns can obtain a kind reading: while bare plural form is preferred for entities that are frequently encountered by Ga speakers, bare singular form is preferred for rarely encountered entities. Moreover, definite NPs can never obtain the kind reading. We propose that the Ga data point to a new mechanism of kind formation and to a previously unattested variation in kind formation across languages: while in languages like English the kind-forming operator makes use of the supremum (Chierchia 1998), in languages like Ga the kind-forming operator encodes a sum.