Kinds, Presuppositions, and the Black-White Case in French and Brazilian Portuguese

This paper examines the colour terms black and white, which refer to either colour or humans. It is based on data from Brazilian Portuguese and French (languages with vs. without bare nouns) and shows that three systems of opposition contribute to the interpretation of DPs with black and white nouns. 1) An opposition within colour terms: black and white vs. other colours. The former, via the metonymy of skin colour, allows for a transfer from the domain of colours to the domain of humans. 2) An opposition between number-marked or unmarked DPs, which distinguishes between kindreference and object-reference (instances which realize the kind). 3) An opposition between singular or plural definite DPs, the former presupposing existence of a kind, while the latter presupposes only existence of ordinary objects.