Definiteness
Definiteness refers to the grammatical category that indicates whether a noun phrase refers to a specific or identifiable entity or to something more general or non-specific. Languages use various means, such as articles, demonstratives, or word order, to mark definiteness. Understanding definiteness is crucial for interpreting and producing language accurately.
4 Key excerpts on "Definiteness"
eBook - ePub- Alireza Korangy, Behrooz Mahmoodi-Bakhtiari, Alireza Korangy, Behrooz Mahmoodi-Bakhtiari(Authors)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
...A typological study of (in)Definiteness in the Iranian languages Ketevani Gadilia 1 Introduction In this chapter 1 I use the technical term “(in)Definiteness”, which is a formal combination of “Definiteness” and “inDefiniteness”. The category of Definiteness and inDefiniteness is one of the functional (semantic and syntactic) categories of languages with a general function of noun determination and actualization, which may be conveyed not only by a special grammatical unit article, but also by various language means (like demonstratives, definite or indefinite pronouns, and the numeral one). A fundamental monograph by Christopher Lyons (1999) is based on modern achievements of linguistics and abundant cross-linguistic data. The initial point of Lyon’s work is the concept of Definiteness itself, which is investigated in much depth in the book. Lyons differentiates two major groups of Definiteness and inDefiniteness, which are the simple and complex types. Simple Definiteness and inDefiniteness consist of lexical items like an English article (“a, the”), or the affix like Arabic (prefix al- and suffix -n), which indicates the Definiteness or inDefiniteness of the noun phrase. Much of Lyons’s book is devoted to the “noun phrases whose Definiteness or inDefiniteness is due to something other than presence or absence of an article” (Lyons 1999 : 107), a group of complex definites that includes proper nouns, personal pronouns, and noun phrases containing a demonstrative or possessive modifier. Definiteness by Christopher Lyons is especially noteworthy for specialists of the Iranian languages because of the work’s Persian language data, particularly the article of inDefiniteness - i and postposition - ra. Lyons’s most important concept is the areal character of (in)Definiteness: “Marking of Definiteness is often an ‘areal feature’”. “The languages which are geographically contiguous … may develop common characteristics” (Lyons 1999 : 48)...
- Josep Quer, Roland Pfau, Annika Herrmann, Josep Quer, Roland Pfau, Annika Herrmann(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...In the non-specific reading, none of the participants in the context may identify it. Although specificity is not overtly marked in the English determiner system, it has observable effects on co-reference. In English, the kind of co-referential pronoun disambiguates the two possible readings (Partee 1970). Under the specific reading, the indefinite NP ‘a book’ refers to an identifiable book (2a). Under the non-specific reading, Joana is looking for an element of the kind ‘syntax book’, but there is not any particular book that the sender has in mind when uttering (2b). (1) a. The book that we read last month was about Definiteness. b. Next month, we will read a book about Definiteness. (2) Joana wants to read a book about syntax … a. but she cannot find it. b. but she cannot find one. The range of NP types that have Definiteness as part of their meaning include determiners (the English definite article the), demonstratives (this, that, those), proper nouns (Joana, Martí), possessives (my, your, her), and personal pronouns (you, she, they). InDefiniteness is encoded with the indefinite determiner in languages that have one (for instance, English a), generic ontological-category nouns (such as someone, something, somewhere in English), interrogative pronouns (such as neaq-naa ‘somebody/who’ and qway ‘something/what’ in Khmer (Haspelmath 1997: 27)), one-based definite particles (English one, French on, German man), cardinals, and quantifiers (such as most, many). From a theoretical point of view, Definiteness is usually associated with uniqueness and familiarity. On the one hand, uniqueness approaches are built on the insight that a definite description is used to refer to entities that have a role or a property which is unique (Kadmon 1990; Abbott 1999)...
eBook - ePub- Johan Van Der Auwera, Johan Van Der Auwera(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Hence, we will in this paper merely use semantic form (or semantic representation, SR). 2 The Semantics of Definiteness and InDefiniteness It is commonly assumed that inDefiniteness can be rendered by the existential quantifier. The function of this quantifier in semantic form is not to quantify over objects, but merely to introduce them into the universe of discourse, the speech situation, or, as it is called by Seuren (1975), the domain of interpretation. Now, in the case of Definiteness, this introduction has already taken place, either in the preceding linguistic context, or in the situation, or in the larger context of our image of the world. Thus one speaks of a semantic (and/or pragmatic) presupposition of existence in the domain of interpretation, shared by speaker and hearer. Following Hawkins (1977; 1978) it seems better to drop the Russellian concept of uniqueness, mainly because, strictly speaking, there is no uniqueness in plural definite NPs. To replace uniqueness Hawkins introduces the concept of inclusiveness, which in the end seems no more efficient (see Van Langendonck, 1979). In any case, the presupposition of existence will do to define Definiteness. Since definites do not introduce referents into the speech situation, precisely because they have already been introduced, the existential operator should not show up in the semantic form of Definiteness (though it will occur in logical form, as this does not take presuppositions into account). We can say with Seuren (1975, p. 266) that the variable in question is bound in the domain of interpretation, in the preceding context, or in cognition. The representation of Definiteness by a free variable finds independent support in the link that certain linguists have laid between the definite article and the third person pronoun (see Sommerstein, 1972). For the definition of inDefiniteness as such, two elements are of interest...
eBook - ePub- Betty J. Birner(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Wiley-Blackwell(Publisher)
...We discussed the phenomenon of deixis – the use of a sort of linguistic “pointer” that cannot be interpreted without reference to features of the context of utterance – and four types of deixis were described and exemplified. An extensive discussion of Definiteness and inDefiniteness compared the primary accounts that have been proposed to distinguish between these two categories of NP, but ultimately it was shown that although each of the approaches provides insight into a large class of linguistic data, no single account proposed thus far can account for the data in a unified way. The discussion of Definiteness led into an examination of anaphora, and in particular the issue of reference resolution, which was briefly considered from syntactic and semantic perspectives, although it was ultimately concluded that no account of anaphora resolution can be complete without a reliance on pragmatic factors. Finally, the chapter closed with a discussion of the widely held view that definite descriptions have two distinct uses – referential and attributive – with distinct ramifications for the truth conditions of the utterance containing them; however, it was argued that in fact all such expressions are in fact referential in the sense of having discourse-model referents. The chapter ended, therefore, having come full circle – that is, having both begun and ended with the question of what it means for something to be the referent of a linguistic expression. 4.7 Exercises and Discussion Questions 1. With respect to example (105), it was noted that both our family and my life are deictic expressions, since their reference cannot be established without knowing who the author is...
