Aspect and syntax of bare nouns = Aspect and syntax of bare nouns

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This paper examines the syntax of bare nouns in the aspectual domain with respect to event telicity by investigating the properties of bare nouns in Mandarin and Korean. These languages are considered as bare noun languages, but the syntax of bare nouns in the aspectual context has not been explained. The paper shows that unlike English in these languages a specified quantity meaning of a bare noun object does not play a major role in determining event telicity. It is further shown that bare nouns in these languages do not share the same aspectual structure despite their similar semantics. The paper proposes that the quantity meaning of a bare noun is grammatically represented in Korean as NumP, but not in Mandarin. The consequence of this paper supports the current view in which bare nouns are not structurally so bare. It also provides a novel account for the aspectual differences of bare nouns in these languages, which has not been previously discussed.