Brazilian Portuguese, Syntax and Semantics

The chapter reports the results of applying quantity judgment tests to bare nouns in Brazilian Portuguese. The results show that the bare singular and sentences with no nouns (no cues to atomicity, as argued in Scontras et al. 2017) behave alike, in contrast with plural nouns. Brazilian bare singulars allow for cardinal and volume readings. We show that this is explained by the fact that they carry no linguistic cues to atomicity. Finally, we argue that the difference between English and Br