Does French really have bare singular subject NPs? On semantic reconstruction based on cataphoric ellipsis

This paper examines an apparent counterexample to the claim that French is a language "with no bare nouns" (e.g Longobardi 2001), viz. bare (singular) nouns in the subject position of copular clauses: Agronomiste est Un metier d'equipe. It addresses two central questions: (i) Why bare subjects are possible?: (ii) Why these bare nouns seem to behave like nouns found in predicative position? In the first section, some puzzling observations are made on NP-status and subjecthood. The second section presents the major flaws of two previous accounts. It will then be argued that an account based on the cataphoric elliptical reconstruction of the corresponding appositive construction [Le N1 de N2], e.g. [le m tier d']agronomiste, is the most plausible solution