Des N comme partitif nu

Abstract

Recent synchronic and diachronic studies agree on the fact that ‘article-like’ des in French (henceforth desal) should not receive a partitive analysis. This paper zooms in on this debate and shows that the approaches put forward to circumvent a partitive analysis of desal come with a number of challenges. After having identified these challenges, we broaden our perspective towards bare partitives (i.e. partitive structures without an upstairs determiner) in French, Italian and Dutch. Especially this latter language is particularly interesting as its bare partitives have not undergone a process of fossilisation. On the basis of these comparative data, we present an analysis of desal as a member of the family of bare partitives. We argue that this partitive approach of desal not only adequately accounts for the synchronic and diachronic facts, but is also more elegant from a theoretical point of view and has a larger empirical coverage.