Taxonomic Nouns and the Indefinite Article: A Corpus Study on Romanian

This article presents a corpus-based investigation of the Romanian taxonomic nouns (Ntax), focusing on fel ‘kind’ and tip ‘type’ in binominal constructions of the form [Det fel/tip of NP]. More precisely, we will test Dobrovie-Sorin’s (2024) hypothesis that fel can only occur in a pseudopartitive configuration (structurally parallel to quantity phrases such as three glasses/kilos of sugar), in contrast to tip, which behaves as the nominal head of a taxonomic DP. Using data from the RoTenTen corpus, we examine the distribution of fel and tip with indefinite articles. The results show a categorical contrast: fel appears in indefinite contexts very frequently but only under the so-called ‘hedge reading’, whereas tip combines with the indefinite article without giving rise to a hedge reading. The behavior of tip is expected for a taxonomic noun functioning as the nominal head of a DP, whereas that of fel is arguably due to a pseudo-partitive configuration.