Change in Noun Denotation Triggers a Change in Noun Denotation Triggers a Change in Noun Denotation Triggers a Change in Noun Denotation Triggers a New NewDeterminer Determiner System: The Case of Mauritian Creole System: The Case of Mauritian Creole System: The Case of Mauritian Creole System: The Case of Mauritian Creole

in the genesis of Mauritian Creole (MC), the French definite articles le/la incorporated into a large number of the nouns that they modified, resulting in the occurrence of bare nouns in argu- ment positions, yielding (in)definite, singular, plural and generic in- terpretations. These changes triggered a parametric shift in noun de- notation, from predicative in French to argumental in MC, and ac- count for the fact that MC has a very different determiner system from that of French. I argue that MC nouns are Kind denoting terms, which share some of the distributional properties of English bare plu- rals, namely, their ability to function as arguments without a deter- miner. The new MC indefinite singular article enn and the plural marker bann are analyzed as operators that assign existential quanti- fication over Kind denoting nouns. I provide evidence that MC has a null definite determiner equivalent to the French definite articles le/la and English the . The Specificity marker la in MC serves to license the null definite determiner in some syntactic environments.