D ETER M IN ATION O F TH E IN D ETER M IN ATE B AR E N OUN IN K AR BI

Nouns refer either to objects (i.e. things which are bounded in s pace, e.g. cars ) or mas s es (i.e. things that tend to e xis t in s pace as s omething unbounded, i.e. water). Thus , s emantically nouns constitute two broad groups . In a language like Englis h this s emantic dis tinction is grammat ically encoded s o that a car-type noun and a water-type noun have diffe rent gra mmatica l behaviour. For ins tance, a water-type noun is already an NP; a car-type noun is not (e.g. Water is transparent; *Car is expensive). However, in a language like Ka rbi, a Tibeto -Burman language s poken in diffe rent parts of Ass am (a north eas tern State of India), all nouns are NPs at the s ame time. But depending on the s emantic context involved the bare noun (i.e. the noun as NP) in Ka rbi may des ignate any number of ins tances of the concerned kind (i.e. one or more than one) and als o can have either a generic or non -generic refe rence. The ma in purpos e of this paper is to show how the bare noun in Karbi is grammat ica lly determined. For gra mmat ical determination Karb i emp loys a s et of imprec is e quantifiers which are either inherently indefin ite or de fin ite. Fo r prec is e quantification of the bare noun Karbi e mploys numera ls along with clas s ifie rs and meas ure terms , whic h are , however, reference-independent. Thus it is the word order involved that determines the reference of a prec is ely quantified NP.