Indefiniteness in Romance: A Comparative Look at Italian Di+art, Bare Nouns, and French Des-phrases

This paper investigates the distributional and interpretive differences among Italian di+art nominals, Romance bare plurals, and French des-phrases. Adopting a unified morphosyntactic analysis, I argue that di+art indefinites are referentially stronger than bare plurals because they can introduce stable discourse referents. I formalize this contrast by proposing that di+art nominals contribute discourse referents bound to a semantic choice function at logical form. This accounts for their strong indefiniteness, specificity, and scope interactions, including apparent scope-island violations. I further argue that these properties arise from the competition with an alternative indefinite form, namely bare plurals. By contrast, the absence of a comparable competitor in French explains why des-phrases favor weak, non-specific interpretations and pattern more closely with bare plurals. Crucially, this competition operates in the mapping from syntax to morphophonological exponence. Finally, telic and ‘small quantity’ readings of di+art are argued to emerge pragmatically through competition with alternative indefinite expressions.