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Definiteness has been a central topic in theoretical semantics since its modern foundation. However, despite its significance, there has been surprisingly scarce research on its cross-linguistic expression. With the purpose of contributing to filling this gap, the present volume gathers thirteen studies exploiting insights from formal semantics and syntax, typological and language specific studies, and, crucially, semantic fieldwork and cross-linguistic semantics, in order to address the expression and interpretation of definiteness in a diverse group of languages, most of them understudied. The papers presented in this volume aim to establish a dialogue between theory and data in order to answer the following questions: What formal strategies do natural languages employ to encode definiteness? What are the possible meanings associated to this notion across languages? Are there different types of definite reference? Which other functions (besides marking definite reference) are associated with definite descriptions? Each of the papers contained in this volume addresses at least one of these questions and, in doing so, they aim to enrich our understanding of definiteness.
Definiteness has been a central topic in theoretical semantics since its modern foundation. However, despite its significance, there has been surprisingly scarce research on its cross-linguistic expression. With the purpose of contributing to filling this gap, the present volume gathers thirteen studies exploiting insights from formal semantics and syntax, typological and language specific studies, and, crucially, semantic fieldwork and cross-linguistic semantics, in order to address the expression and interpretation of definiteness in a diverse group of languages, most of them understudied. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.
Definiteness is a semantic feature of noun phrases that distinguishes between entities that are specific and identifiable in a given context, and others which are not. The typical noun phrase picks out a unique, familiar, specific referent. The expression of definiteness varies considerably across languages. Definiteness is usually marked in the English language by the selection of determiners, such as articles. Certain determiners like 'a', 'an', 'many', and 'some', along with numbers mark indefinite noun phrases, while others like 'the', 'that', etc., mark definite noun phrases. Definiteness is also marked morphologically in a few languages. Some languages like Japanese do not express definiteness at all. This book is a compilation of chapters that discuss the most vital concepts and emerging trends in the study of definiteness. Different approaches, evaluations, methodologies and advanced studies on this topic have been included herein. A number of latest researches have been included to keep the readers up-to-date with the global concepts in this area of linguistics.
Definiteness is a semantic feature of noun phrases that distinguishes between entities that are specific and identifiable in a given context, and those which are not. The typical noun phrase picks out a unique, familiar, specific referent. The expression of definiteness varies considerably across languages. Definiteness is usually marked in the English language by the selection of determiners, such as articles. Certain determiners like 'a', 'an', 'many', and 'some', along with numbers mark indefinite noun phrases, while others like 'the', 'that', etc., mark definite noun phrases. Definiteness is also marked morphologically in a few languages. Some languages like Japanese do not express definiteness at all. This book is a compilation of chapters that discuss the most vital concepts and emerging trends in the study of definiteness. Different approaches, evaluations, methodologies and advanced studies on this topic have been included herein. A number of latest researches have been included to keep the readers up-to-date with the global concepts in this area of linguistics.
This collection of studies by leading scholars in the field focuses on the semantics of non-definite (bare and indefinite) plural NPs. The contributions in the first part concentrate on bare plurals and their cross-linguistic counterparts. They discuss applicability of the notion of ‘semantic incorporation’ to bare plurals by contrasting them to bare singulars, with the aim of accounting for the interaction between the semantics of number and the degree of (in)dependency of the NP with respect to the verb. The articles in the second part examine the relationship between the semantics of number and the semantics of aspect. The contributions in the third part concentrate on non-definite numerical noun phrases by addressing a range of fundamental questions such as: the semantics of indefinite time-phrases, numericals in classifier- and non-classifier languages, scope interactions, the at least- and exactly-readings, referential properties of numericals. The volume will be welcomed by linguists interested in the semantics of number in non-definite NPs.
First published in 1988, this book is concerned with the definite and indefinite articles in English. It provides an integrated pragmatic-semantic theory of definite and indefinite reference, on the basis of which, many co-occurance restrictions between articles and non-modifiers are explained. At the general theoretical level, this book looks at the role of semantics in the prediction of all and only the grammatical sentences of a language. A generalisation is proposed uniting semantic oppositions underlying ungrammaticality with syntactic oppositions between conditions of application on transformational generative rules. A procedure is suggested for distinguishing semantic from syntactic causes of ungrammaticality. At a more particular level, the book explores the nature of reference. It examines an important selection of subjects such as the contrast between definiteness and indefiniteness, the relationship between definite and demonstrative reference, and the relationship between pragmatic and logical aspects of determining meaning.
This 1999 textbook investigates definiteness both from a comparative and a theoretical point of view, showing how languages express definiteness and what definiteness is. It surveys a large number of languages to discover the range of variation in relation to definiteness and related grammatical phenomena, such as demonstratives, possessives and personal pronouns. It outlines work done on the nature of definiteness in semantics, pragmatics and syntax, and develops an account on which definiteness is a grammatical category represented in syntax as a functional head (the widely discussed D). Consideration is also given to the origins and evolution of definite articles in the light of the comparative and theoretical findings. Among the claims advanced are that definiteness does not occur in all languages, though the pragmatic concept which it grammaticalizes probably does.
The papers in this volume address to different degrees issues on the relationship of articles systems and the pragmatic notions of definiteness and specificity in typologically diverse languages: Vietnamese, Siwi (Berber), Russian, Mopan (Mayan), Persian, Danish and Swedish. The main questions that motivate this volume are: How do languages with and without an article system go about helping the hearer to recognize whether a given noun phrase should be interpreted as definite, specific or non-specific? Is there clear-cut semantic definiteness without articles or do we find systematic ambiguity regarding the interpretation of bare noun phrases? If there is ambiguity, can we still posit one reading as the default? What exactly do articles in languages encode that are not analyzed as straightforwardly coding (in)definiteness? Do we find linguistic tools in these languages that are similar to those found in languages without articles? Most contributions report on research on different corpora and elicited data or present the outcome of various experimental studies. One paper presents a diachronic study of the emergence of article systems. On the issue of how languages with and without articles guide the hearer to the conclusion that a given noun phrase should be interpreted as definite, specific or non-specific, the studies in this paper argue for similar strategies. The languages investigated in this volume use constructions and linguistic tools that receive a final interpretation based on discourse prominence considerations and various aspects of the syntax-semantics interface. In case of ambiguity between these readings, the default interpretation is given by factors (e. g., familiarity, uniqueness) that are known to contribute to the salience of phrases, but may be overridden by discourse prominence. Articles that do not straightforwardly mark (in)definiteness encode different kinds of specificity. In the languages studied in this volume, whether they have articles or do not have an article system, we find similar factors and linguistic tools in the calculation process of interpretations. The volume contains revised selected papers from the workshop entitled Specificity, definiteness and article systems across languages held at the 40th Annual Conference of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS), 7-9 March, 2018 at the University of Stuttgart.