We have reviewed the various structures which contain BNPs in OC and OS, and tried to establish the Functional Properties of the extended nominal domain active in each case.
Our previous view, suggesting that GenP and NumP might be able to license these nominals in OR, has been maintained in two cases: abstract mass nouns and indefinite nonspecific plurals.
Abstract mass singulars have been explained by taking the Old Romance determiner not to have expletive value, only a discourse-linked or anaphorical one.
As for indefinite BNPs, it is not clear to us that the absence of a null article can be dispensed with.
In (59) we list the main conclusions we have reached.
(59) (a) The contrasts between BNPs and full DPs in Old Spanish and Old Catalan do not show an unstable grammar or a situation with two alternate
competing grammars.
(b) Rather, these differences are due to the licensing conditions of the BNPs, stemming from their lexical properties together with the formal features encoded in the Functional nominal projections.
(c) The distribution of BNPs in OR is not very different from that which exists in MR, which is what one would expect if Determiners were
grammaticalized already at that time.
(d) Nevertheless, minor differences between OR and MR do appear in this respect. These are related with other grammaticalization processes, such as the processes that affected the indefinite determiner, complex verb phrases or passive constructions.
(e) In spite of being grammaticalized, the D in Old Romance had only logical content and did not have expletive value.
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