Definiteness

11 Key excerpts on "Definiteness"

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  Definiteness of Identification Clauses in the Gospel and Letters of John

  A Linguistic, Grammatical, Exegetical, and Theological Study of a Few Doubtful Clauses

  • Jackson Johnson(Author)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • EDUSC

    (Publisher)

  I. THE CONCEPT AND THEORIES OF Definiteness

  Introduction

  In this chapter we intend to provide a background study to the concept of linguistics and to introduce the notion of Definiteness in general linguistics. This chapter is organised as follows: in the first part, we introduce the concept of Definiteness, exploring its definitions and meaning. The second part will deal with the definite and the indefinite articles, focusing on the main uses of the definite article. The four main theories of Definiteness, viz., familiarity, uniqueness, identifiability, and presupposition, will be the focus of the third part.

  1 The Concept of Definiteness 1.1 Meaning of Definite and Indefinite

  The Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics highlights that Definiteness is defined in more recent linguistic studies in terms of previous mention. Accordingly, the referent is conveyed to the hearer as something that was previously mentioned in the text or as previous knowledge. It is achieved by using determiners with noun phrases. An exception to this is proper names which do not require any determiners as they are inherently definite.1 According to The Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar, the criterion for Definiteness is an identifiable or exclusive reference.2 On the contrary, indefinite is defined as not having or indicating any particular identifiable reference.3 A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics notes that definite is used in grammar and semantics to refer to a specific, identifiable entity. Definiteness in English is generally conveyed through definite determiners (such as this, my ), and primarily through the definite article, the .4 In contrast, indefinite is a term used in grammar and semantics to refer to an entity that is not capable of specific identification. InDefiniteness in English is usually conveyed by using the indefinite article, a , or an indefinite pronoun such as one, some , etc.5

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  Early Learning and Teaching of English

  New Dynamics of Primary English

  • Jelena Mihaljević Djigunović, Marta Medved Krajnović(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Multilingual Matters

    (Publisher)

  4 Acquisition of Markers of Definiteness and InDefiniteness in Early EFL Lovorka Zergollern-Miletić Introduction Native speakers of Croatian, like speakers of many other languages, are not aware of the existence of Definiteness and inDefiniteness in their language, which becomes especially obvious when they learn foreign languages in which these two categories are grammaticalized in the articles (ZergollernMiletić, 2008). We believe that this view is in line with the notion of the importance of language awareness (Bagarić, 2003, 2005; Hawkins, 1994). Definiteness and inDefiniteness are learned by native speakers of Croatian only as grammatical categories, and are often wrongly linked with adjectives. In his article ‘Izražavanje neodređenosti/određenosti imenica u hrvatskom jeziku’ [Expressing the inDefiniteness/Definiteness of nouns in Croatian], Pranjković (2000) points out that Definiteness and inDefiniteness are semantically linked with nouns, rather than adjectives. Nouns carry the meaning of Definiteness/inDefiniteness, and they determine the choice of the adjectival form. The categories of inDefiniteness and Definiteness are semantic, syntactic and logical categories, connected with pragmatics and text linguistics. In his book Definiteness (1999), Christopher Lyons comes to the conclusion that most theories revolve around the concepts of identifiability/familiarity, inclusiveness/exclusiveness (i.e. whether the referent includes all the members of a set), uniqueness and countability/uncountability. These two categories are not explicitly expressed in all languages, and are grammaticalized in a limited number of languages. In English, Definiteness and inDefiniteness are expressed by, and grammaticalized in articles, personal and indefinite pronouns, demonstratives, quantifiers and possessives

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  The Routledge Handbook of Theoretical and Experimental Sign Language Research

  • Josep Quer, Roland Pfau, Annika Herrmann(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  a may be ambiguous between a specific and a non-specific reading. That is, in the specific reading, only the sender may identify the entity being talked about. 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). Uniqueness means that there is one and no more than one entity that has a particular property, as exemplified in (3).

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  Semantics - Noun Phrases and Verb Phrases

  • Paul Portner, Klaus Heusinger, Claudia Maienborn, Paul Portner, Klaus Heusinger, Claudia Maienborn(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  Irene Heim 2 Definiteness and inDefiniteness 1 What makes definites definite and indefinites indefinite? 34 2 Scopal properties of definites and indefinites 49 3 References 67 Abstract: Our subject matter are the meanings of the definite and indefinite articles, or of the abstract features that these morphemes realize. The main goal of the article is to elucidate and test the best known approach to the definite-in-definite contrast in contemporary formal semantics: a Fregean semantics for definites and an existential (Russellian) semantics of indefinites. This approach posits differences between definites and indefinites along three dimensions: semantic type, uniqueness, and presuppositionality. We review some success-ful predictions that this familiar picture makes in combination with plausible accounts of various independent semantic and pragmatic mechanisms, such as grammatical number, covert domain restriction, scalar implicature, gener-icity operators, binding of situation variables, and charitable communication. We will also encounter some reasons to entertain departures from the standard semantics, for example, reasons to loosen the connection of presuppositional-ity with Definiteness, and reasons to distinguish indefinites from the existential quantification that accompanies them. The study of Definiteness begins with the working hypothesis that the definite and indefinite articles in English correspond transparently to two primitive building blocks of linguistic structure with fixed and distinct meanings. As the inquiry proceeds, of course, we are prepared to find a less than perfect match between article morphology and the underlying semantic features that it real-izes. But we will start with minimal pairs containing the and a to get off the ground. In the first section of the article, we will mostly examine semantic and pragmatic contrasts between simple sentences with definites and indefinites.

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  Semantics. Volume 2

  • Klaus von Heusinger, Claudia Maienborn, Paul Portner, Klaus von Heusinger, Claudia Maienborn, Paul Portner(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  In section 2, I present different types of encodings and typical linguistic contexts for specificity contrasts. These will later function as tests for specific vs. non-specific read-ings. Section 3 discusses the relation between (referential) specificity in opaque contexts and the relation to de re vs. de dicto readings of definites. Section 4 presents the crucial 42. Specificity 1029 observation about the “exceptional” scope behavior of indefinites and the discussion of choice functions as a more adequate representation for indefinites. Section 5 provides a brief overview of epistemic readings of indefinites and their relation to the referential vs. attributive readings of definites. Section 6 introduces the unifying view of specificity as referential anchoring based on the observations and theoretical discussions made up to this point. Sections 7 and 8 discuss the characterization of specificity in terms of familiarity (d-linking, partitivity, presuppositionality) and topicality, respectively. Section 9 presents intriguing correlations between the sentence semantic properties of specific indefinites and their discourse behavior. Finally, section 10 summarizes the findings and presents some of the many open research questions. 2. Specificity as a grammatical phenomenon This article primarily focuses on specificity distinctions within indefinite noun phrases. It is generally assumed that indefinite noun phrases in argument positions make two semantic contributions: they express an existential assertion and they introduce a dis-course referent (see articles 37 (Kamp & Reyle) Discourse Representation Theory and 41 (Heim) Definiteness and inDefiniteness ). Depending on the theory and the type of indefinite, the one or the other aspect is more prominent. Indefinites in English have the form of an indefinite article with a simple or modified noun as in a book, an interesting book, a book recommended by Professor Schiller , etc.

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  Typical and Atypical Language Development in Cultural and Linguistic Diversity

  • Weifeng Han, Chris Brebner, Weifeng Han, Chris Brebner(Authors)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Definiteness restrictions in L2 French and L3 English

  Abdelkader Hermas

  DOI: 10.4324/9781003251194-6

  Introduction

  The article system has sparked numerous investigations in non-native language acquisition (e.g., Garcia-Mayo & Hawkins, 2009 ). Aspects such as Definiteness, specificity, and genericity have been considered. This chapter deals with the Definiteness effect in existential sentences in the interlanguage of adult Arabic speakers, who are advanced in L2 French or L3 English. An existential sentence refers to a construction that expresses a proposition about the existence or the presence of an entity (McNally, 2011 ), and the Definiteness effect is a semantic and pragmatic constraint that imposes restrictions on the definite aspect of nominal expressions after the verb. In other words, semantics determines the syntactic configuration of the existential sentence and pragmatics sets the necessary (textual) context for the felicity of the utterance. The source (Arabic) and target (French and English) languages of the learners all have an article system, but they show crosslinguistic differences in how the Definiteness restriction plays out.

  Few studies have examined the acquisition of the Definiteness effect compared to other aspects of article usage. And even fewer studies have tested Definiteness restrictions in as many as nine noun forms in existentials. Assuming the learners acquired appropriate usage of the article system with respect to the Definiteness contrast (a vs. the) in L2 French and L3 English, how the Definiteness effect unfolds in the two languages is subtle and intricate. For instance, the input shows that definite and indefinite nouns are interchangeable in most contexts, though with changing interpretations, e.g., a man arrived versus the man arrived. However, this is not the case in existential sentences. It involves considerations broader than grammatical Definiteness (Lyons, 1999

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  Definiteness and Indefiniteness

  A Study in Reference and Grammaticality Prediction

  • John Hawkins, John A. Hawkins(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  3 THE REFERENTIAL MEANING OF Definiteness Section 1: On Adequately Describing and Explaining Semantic Facts

  In this chapter I shall develop a theory of the referential meaning of English noun phrases containing the definite article. After a similar analysis of the referential meaning of indefinite noun phrases in chapter 4 , I shall show how the semantic opposition between the two explains a large range of grammaticality facts connected with definite and indefinite noun phrases.

  There are basically two types of semantic judgements which the native speaker can make about the sentences which he judges grammatical. He can supply information on when he would use particular morphemes and constructions, and on what he understands them to mean when he does use them. For example, the native speaker will judge that the following sequence of first-mention indefinite description before second-mention definite description is appropriate:

  3.01 Fred was discussing an interesting book in his class.

  3.02 I went to discuss the book with him afterwards.

  The indefinite and definite articles may therefore be used on occasions like this. In addition, the native speaker can tell us that when they are so used the definite description, the book, is understood as referring to the same object as the preceding indefinite description and that the number of these objects is on each occasion just one.

  The native speaker will also tell us that the definite article can be used under rather different circumstances, as illustrated in the following sequence:

  3.01 Fred was discussing an interesting book in his class.

  3.03 He is friendly with the author.

  On this occasion there is no preceding indefinite reference to an author. Mention of an interesting book is sufficient to permit the immediately following first-mention definite description, the author. When the definite article is used in this way the native speaker will tell us that the person referred to by the author

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  The Nominal Structure in Slavic and Beyond

  • Lilia Schürcks, Anastasia Giannakidou, Urtzi Etxeberria, Lilia Schürcks, Anastasia Giannakidou, Urtzi Etxeberria(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  The elements that are traditionally known as determiners, such as universal quanti-fiers, possessives, demonstratives and the indefinite determiners jedan ‘one’ and neki ‘some’, have the categorial status of an adjective, on par with ordinary adjec-tives. This paper is organized as follows. First, I survey lexical markers of the semantic notion of Definiteness in articleless Slavic languages. In Sections 2 and 3 I examine the syntactic category of elements that precede nouns and analyze their morpho-syntactic behavior within the noun phrase. In Section 4, I propose the structure of the Slavic noun phrase which accounts for its word order pat-terns, without resorting to movement or to the functional-lexical category distinc-tion. My analysis of noun phrase structure is couched in the framework of Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG). In Section 5, I discuss the implications of these facts for the NP/DP parameter. 2 Expressing (In)Definiteness in Slavic Research on (in)Definiteness has tended to focus mainly on definite and indefi-nite articles, as prototypical lexical items used for these purposes. However, not all languages have definite and indefinite articles, including most Slavic lan-guages. How do Slavic languages express (in)Definiteness? The answer is, they use lexical, syntactic, contextual or pragmatic means to express it. In this paper, I will discuss lexical items that express Definiteness and argue that Definiteness is not encoded syntactically in terms of grammatical category. Definiteness and Structure of NPs in Slavic 19 2.1 Demonstratives The most common lexical device is the use of demonstratives, such as ‘ovo’ ‘to’ and ‘ono’. Lyons (1999) considers demonstratives as inherently definite, with the function of identifying the referent for the hearer by pointing to it. Slavic lan-guages make a three-way distinction with respect to this proximity feature, as graphically depicted in (2).

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  Concise Encyclopedia of Semantics

  • Keith Allan(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Elsevier Science

    (Publisher)

  11: Presupposition. New York: Academic Press. 371–388. Milsark G (1977). ‘Toward an explanation of certain peculiarities of the existential construction in English.’ Linguistic Analysis 3, 1–29. Neale S (1990). Descriptions. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Ostertag G (ed.) (1998). Definite descriptions: a reader. Cambridge: MIT Press. Prince E F (1981). ‘On the inferencing of indefinite this NPs.’ In Joshi A K, Webber B L & Sag I A (eds.) Elements of discourse understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 231–250. Prince E F (1992). ‘The ZPG letter: subjects, Definiteness, and information status.’ In Mann W C & Thompson S A (eds.) Discourse description: diverse linguistic analyses of a fund-raising text. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 295–326. Reimer M & Bezuidenhout A (eds.) (2004). Descriptions and beyond. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reuland E J & ter Meulen A G B (eds.) (1987). The representation of (in)Definiteness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Roberts C (2003). ‘Uniqueness in definite noun phrases.’ Linguistics and Philosophy 26, 287–350. Russell B (1905). ‘On denoting.’ Mind 14, 479–493. Strawson P F (1950). ‘On referring.’ Mind 59, 320–344. Woisetschlaeger E (1983). ‘On the question of definite-ness in ‘‘an old man’s book’’.’ Linguistic Inquiry 14, 137–154. Definite and Indefinite Articles P Juvonen , Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden ß 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. In a narrow sense, articles can be said to be gram-matical elements that in many, but by no means even most, languages encode as their core meaning the identifiability of a referent in a noun phrase. Hence, by using the English definite article the , the speaker implies that the recipient should be able to identify the intended referent, and by using the indefinite article a / $ / an, the speaker implies that this is not necessarily the case. In English, a noun phrase cannot simultaneously take the INDEF a and the DEF the .

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  Aspects of Linguistic Variation

  • Daniël Olmen, Tanja Mortelmans, Frank Brisard(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  Its goal is to establish more solid semantic foundations for a comparative study of definite articles and to reconstruct the development of these expressions on the basis of available data and plausible processes of semantic change and grammaticalization. The implementation of these goals will be a first step toward a more fine-grained typology of definite articles and ultimately provide a better basis for extending the scope of such a typology to the specific articles of Polynesian languages (cf. Mosel and Hovdhaugen 1992; Moyse-Faurie 1997) and other systems discussed in Dryer (2014). Moreover, it will also be pointed out that, even in the restricted area of Europe, we find a remarkable diversity in the use of definite articles. The concept “Definiteness” that is used in the label for the relevant class of functional expressions is by no means a basic or primitive concept and therefore in need of explication. Using this label in the analysis of articles does not say much more than that an expression of a specific language is translated by the definite article the in English. Various attempts to explicate this notion in terms of more elementary ones can be found in philosophical studies (Russell 1905; Frege 1984; Neale 1990), in linguistic studies such as Hawkins (1978) and Abbott (2004) and, more recently, in formal semantic studies such as Elbourne (2010; 2012), Gisborne (2012) and Coppock and Beaver (2015). This is not the place for a detailed discussion of the relevant formalisms. So let me just point out that the more elementary notions used in the relevant explications are the following: “uniqueness”, “salience”, “existence”, “identifiability” and “inclusiveness”. Of these elementary notions, “uniqueness” is the most important one

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  Definiteness in Bulgarian

  Modelling the Processes of Language Change

  • Olga M. Mladenova(Author)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  town.THE and on noon him.CL.ACC brought.3SG back ‘Every morning the carriage took the colonel to the town and at noon brought him back.’ (Stanev) (173) Toj prebroi monetite v dzˇoba si. he counted.3SG coins.THE in pocket.THE REFL.DAT ‘He counted the coins in his pocket.’ 60 Definiteness: expression and content Sets are definite because they are identifiable in the context of communi-cation, due to knowledge of the world or by association with the topic of dis-course. The simplest kind of Definiteness is that relying on immediate percep-titibility in the communicative situation. This is what will further be referred to as deictic Definiteness. Given the written nature of the available sources however, our knowledge of this type of Definiteness in the previous stages of Bulgarian is not extensive. Here is one illustration from contemporary fiction, which will clarify the point I would like to make. In his short story Napast bozˇija ‘God’s Scourge’, Elin Pelin describes the social conflict provoked by a breakout of an epidemic. There were two local theories explaining it: accord-ing to the priest it was God’s punishment triggered by the villagers’ sins and according to the teacher it was caused by the polluted water of the village well. When the teacher barred access to the well, the priest took an axe and tried to remove the lid of the well. Then Mladen, a village lad, said: The axe was not mentioned in the previous exchange between characters but was part of the setting described by Elin Pelin. For obvious reasons, what would have been deictic Definiteness in the process of communication comes through as anaphoric Definiteness in written text. Deictic Definiteness can be expressed by personal and demonstrative pronouns and by the defi-nite article. Of special interest for my purposes are the so-called bridging inferences that rely on background knowledge. This background knowledge may be situ-ational or cultural (Clark 1977; Lyons 1999: 4).

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