The Romance languages, with the exception of French, admit two ways of expressing indefiniteness in the plural, the bare plural (- N) or the plural introduced by a special determiner (Det N). We show that Det N is selected when reference is made to particulars, as opposed to mere categorization by naming the species, the latter being indicated by means of the bare plural. We are then left with the paradox that Det N is the form normally showing up in metaphorical expressions after the copula, a typically non referential position. We argue that this peculiar behaviour is due to the fact that Det N is basically a form of quantification whereas the property of referentiality is derived and contextually bound.

Laça Brenda, Tasmowski-De Ryck Liliane. Référentialité du pluriel indéfini dans les langues romanes. In: Faits de langues, n°4, Septembre 1994. L'indéfini. pp. 97-104

This chapter examines the different constraints on temporal orientation affecting subjunctive clauses. After establishing that a future or non-anterior temporal orientation characterizes intensional subjunctives, i.e. subjunctives selected by directives, implicatives, and volitionals, the chapter shows that the behavior of volitionals differs from that of directives and implicatives with regard to the possibility of embedding perfect morphology with a past temporal orientation. The chapter also shows that the behavior of volitionals themselves is not uniform. The chapter suggests that differences in temporal orientation are connected to the different types of semantic objects denoted by selected subjunctive argument clauses. An obligatory future or non-anterior orientation signals that the relevant object is not a proposition (a set of possible worlds), but an outcome (a situation or eventuality that ensues from a cause or is targeted by a disposition to bring it about).

On the basis of corpus and experimental evidence, this paper claims that the ongoing process of change affecting the use and interpretation of the [Present under Past] pattern in subjunctive argument clauses in some Spanish varieties is sensitive to the syntactic/semantic type of the clause. The pattern deviates from Sequence-of-Tense grammar in not giving rise to double access effects. In the variety explored in this paper, this only happens in the argument clauses of causative, directive, and volitional predicates, i.e. in a type of clause which is held to be lower in a scale of clausehood than the argument clauses of predicates of belief and assertion.@font-face{font-family:Calibri;panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;mso-font-charset:0;mso-generic-font-family:auto;mso-font-pitch:variable;mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal{mso-style-parent:"";margin:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination:widow-orphan;font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Calibri;mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;mso-bidi-font-family:Calibri;}div.Section1{page:Section1;}

This paper explores the semantics of combinations in which a modal verb is preceded by a progressive, an incremental or a habitual periphrasis. Two distinct readings in context, aspectualized VP and aspectualized modality readings, are found to correlate with the (not-)at- issue status of the modal according to Tonhauser's diagnostics. Implicative readings (a generalization of the more restrictive notion of actuality entailments) emerge obligatorily in aspectualized VP readings, but are also present in some aspectualized modality readings. Aspectualized modality readings provide evidence for the claim that modalized event descriptions are stative.