Bare Nouns and Beyond

This dissertation investigates how Mandarin Chinese encodes definiteness and indefiniteness in the absence of a dedicated article system. It addresses the ‘Alternation Challenge’: a tension between functionalist observations that Mandarin bare nouns alternate with overt markers (numeral-yi and demonstrative) and formal semantic predictions that Mandarin bare nouns are self-sufficient in (in)definite contexts. Adopting a data-driven translation corpus methodology based on Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, this study uses English articles (the and a/an) as the semantic proxies for ‘regular’ definite and indefinite contexts. We triangulate Mandarin patterns with crosslinguistic comparison with Russian and Hindi, and conduct a series of targeted corpus studies to assess theoretical explanations of the division of labor among forms. The results reveal a hybrid system in Mandarin encoding of (in)definiteness. In the indefinite domain, numeral-yi functions as a grammaticalized indefinite article, blocking bare nouns in regular argument position. Indefinite bare nouns are restricted to pseudo-incorporation governed by typicality relations in verb-noun combinations. In the definite domain, the study demonstrates that demonstratives function as canonical anaphoric markers rather than definite articles, while bare nouns are the default strategy for expressing definiteness. These empirical findings support an adapted Properties Approach and resolve the Alternation Challenge. This study validates translation corpus methodology as a useful tool for cross-linguistic semantic research in the referential domain.