links to other features:
- Typically morphosyntactic features:
- Rarely morphosyntactic, typically morphosemantic features:
- Only morphosemantic features:
- Morphological features:
|
|
Definiteness
Anna Kibort
- What is 'definiteness'
- Expressions of 'definiteness'
- The status of 'definiteness' as a feature
- The values of 'definiteness'
- Oddly behaving definiteness markers
- Problem cases
- Key literature
1. What is 'definiteness'
The semantic category corresponding the most closely to the central
function of grammatical 'definiteness' is identifiability
- that is, the expression of whether or not a referent is familiar or already established
in the discourse. C. Lyons (1999:278) observes that "[i]n languages
where identifiability is represented grammatically, this representation
is definiteness; and definiteness is likely to express identifiability
prototypically" (note, however, that there may be instances of identifiability, such
as generics, which are not treated in a given language as definite; Lyons 1999:278).
As with other grammatical categories, it is also
to be expected that there are other uses of definiteness which do not
relate to identifiability - one of such uses is inclusiveness (a term
due to Hawkins 1978), which is particularly appropriate for non-referential
uses of definiteness with plural and mass noun phrases. Inclusiveness expresses the fact that
the reference is made to the totality of the objects or mass in the context
which satisfy the description (C. Lyons 1999:11).
Definiteness as a semantic and/or pragmatic concept has been a subject
of much debate among both linguists and philosophers, within various
theoretical frameworks. Apart from identifiability and
inclusivenes, other concepts which have been considered significant for the
understanding of definiteness include familiarity, uniqueness, and
reference (see C. Lyons 1999 for a thorough overview of the relevant research
traditions). Furthermore, in the discussion of the nature of definiteness, various other
distinctions are drawn in addition to that between definite and indefinite,
among them specific versus non-specific, and deictic versus non-deictic;
specificity and deixis may interact with definiteness affecting its
grammatical realisation.
In sum, it is to be expected that there will be considerable variation
between languages in the use of the grammatical category of definiteness.
C. Lyons (1999:278) gives the following examples of variation that is found:
some languages require generics to be definite while others do not; in
some languages definiteness is optional even in noun phrases clearly
interpreted as identifiable (e.g. in Hausa); in languages
like Maori which show an article combining obviously
'definite' (i.e. identifiable) uses with something akin to specificity, this
article too can be treated as encoding definiteness - in this case certain
types of noun phrase occurrence which in other languages are treated as
indefinite are grammatically definite (see also §5 below).
However, despite all this variation,
there is always a central core of uses of grammatical definiteness which relates
directly to identifiability.
Jump to top of
page/ top of section
2. Expressions of 'definiteness'
Definiteness is a category of the noun phrase.
Following C. Lyons (1999:278), I assume that the semantic/pragmatic
concept of identifiability underlying grammatical definiteness is probably universal
(see also Lambrecht 1994 on identifiability as an information structure element).
It is demonstrable that a 'definite' interpretation plays an important
part even in languages which show no formal marking of definiteness.
For example, in Mandarin, a noun phrase in subject position
must be a topic and therefore 'definite', while a noun phrase in the
existential construction must be understood as 'indefinite'. Therefore,
even though definiteness is not a formal category in Mandarin, it is nevertheless
an element of discourse organisation which
corresponds to the identifiability of the referent.
Thus, not all languages have a grammaticalised concept of
definiteness. Definiteness as a grammatical category is only present
in languages which show some overt marking of definiteness, for example
some kind of a definite article. Since definiteness may be thought of as only one
of a number of categories which serve to guide the hearer in working out how
the discourse is structured and how entities referred to fit into it,
definiteness marking is not essential to communication. Some languages which
do not grammaticalise definiteness may be argued to compensate by marking
other distinctions with a similar function (e.g. topic and focus - as exemplified
above) (C. Lyons 1999:48). Furthermore, many languages have
grammaticalised definiteness only in pronominal, but not full, noun phrases.
C. Lyons (1999:280) offers the following typology of languages with regard
to the grammaticalisation of definiteness:
- Type I: no definiteness.
- Type II: definiteness available only in pronominal noun phrases.
- Type III: definiteness available in pronominal and full noun phrases.
C. Lyons notes that languages of Type II certainly represent an odd phenomenon,
but it is not unusual for pronouns to differ radically in structure from
full noun phrases (cf. the phenomenon of split ergativity, for example).
Definiteness can be encoded using a wide range of lexical, syntactic
and morphological devices. C. Lyons classifies definiteness encoding broadly
into two categories: 'simple' and 'complex'. 'Simple' definiteness encoding occurs
when the definite and indefinite noun phrases are marked with some type of
article which are either affixes or free-form determiners (see C. Lyons 1999:47-106
for comprehensive discussion, examples and references; see Dryer 2005a-b for
classification and information on geographical distribution of languages
with various types of definite and indefinite articles). 'Complex' definiteness
encoding occurs when the definiteness of the noun phrase is due to something
other than presence or absence of an article; the range of encoding methods includes proper
nouns, personal pronouns, and noun phrases containing a demonstrative or
possessive modifier (C. Lyons 1999:107-156).
Jump to top of
page/ top of section
3. The status of 'definiteness' as a feature
Most commonly, definiteness is not a feature by our definition, but an additional piece
of information selected for the noun phrase that may be expressed through a free-form
determiner, an affixal marker, or a clitic. This information may be
expressed more than once within the noun phrase. See C. Lyons (1999:77-85)
for examples and discussion of the so-called 'double determination' in
Hausa, Ewe, Danish,
written Icelandic, Albanian, and
Romanian, and definite adjectives in Arabic,
Albanian, Romanian and a number of
Slavonic, Baltic, and Germanic languages. Also, see Corbett (2006:135-137)
for discussion of multiple marking of definiteness in Modern Hebrew,
Maltese, and Norwegian.
It has been suggested that in some languages the definiteness of a noun phrase is
expressed by an agreement marker elsewhere in the sentence. Several of the
Uralic languages, for example, have been cited as having object-verb agreement
in definiteness (e.g. C. Lyons 1999:86-87, 207-208). However, Corbett (2006:91-93) argues that
definiteness in Hungarian is a condition on agreement forms, not an agreement
feature. The verbal suffix in Hungarian has a distinct form when it
occurs in the environment of a
definite object, and three contrasting analyses of this phenomenon have been
suggested: (1) that the suffix is a fused subject (person, number) agreement and
object (definiteness) agreement marker; (2) that the verb agrees with its
object under the condition of definiteness, but otherwise it does not;
(3) that Hungarian verbs do not agree with their objects, but rather they take
a special kind of subject agreement in the presence of 'definite' objects and then
only with third person objects (except for the 1.SUBJ-2(familiar)
OBJ marker -lek/-lak); that is, there is subject
agreement which has a realisation conditioned by the presence of a
'definite' object. Corbett favours the analysis of defineteness as a
condition on agreement and points out that a similar analysis may also be
appropriate for another, rather complex, instance of subject agreement
having different realisations according to the presence of a 'definite'
object in Muna (Austronesian), as described by
van den Berg (1989:59-60).
Despite the fact that in most instances definiteness is not a value of a
feature, and perhaps at best it might occur as a morphosemantic feature,
we have come across one instance where we need to posit definiteness
as a morphosyntactic feature. In German, in order to
describe nominal inflection, we need gender, number, and case.
However, in order to describe adjectival inflection, after separating out
gender, number and case, we are still left with three different adjectival paradigms,
referred to as 'strong', 'mixed' and 'weak'. An adjective inflecting
according to the strong paradigm shows full agreement features. The following
is an example listing the strong paradigm for gut 'good' (all examples
from Corbett 2006:95-96, and the discussion follows in part Zwicky 1986):
|
singular |
plural |
masculine |
neuter |
feminine |
nominative |
gut-er |
gut-es |
gut-e |
gut-e |
accusative |
gut-en |
gut-es |
gut-e |
gut-e |
genitive |
gut-en |
gut-en |
gut-er |
gut-er |
dative |
gut-em |
gut-em |
gut-er |
gut-en |
The mixed paradigm, exemplified below, shows partially reduced agreement.
It shares some forms with the strong paradigm (these are
marked '(S)'), and some with the weak paradigm (these are marked '(W)'). The
remaining forms (unmarked) are shared across all three paradigms:
|
singular |
plural |
masculine |
neuter |
feminine |
nominative |
gut-er (S) |
gut-es (S) |
gut-e |
gut-en (W) |
accusative |
gut-en |
gut-es (S) |
gut-e |
gut-en (W) |
genitive |
gut-en |
gut-en |
gut-en (W) |
gut-en (W) |
dative |
gut-en (W) |
gut-en (W) |
gut-en (W) |
gut-en |
Finally, the following is the weak paradigm for the same adjective. The
weak paradigm shows reduced agreement:
|
singular |
plural |
masculine |
neuter |
feminine |
nominative |
gut-e |
gut-e |
gut-e |
gut-en |
accusative |
gut-en |
gut-e |
gut-e |
gut-en |
genitive |
gut-en |
gut-en |
gut-en |
gut-en |
dative |
gut-en |
gut-en |
gut-en |
gut-en |
Corbett notes that, as we progress from the strong paradigm to
the weak, in each there are fewer distinct inflections (five in the strong,
four in the mixed, and two in the weak). 'However, the sets of cells which
are distinguished in the strong paradigm are not simply collapsed: the weak
paradigm has different forms for the feminine singular and the plural, which
are identical in the strong paradigm' (2006:96).
Therefore, we have to treat the choice of one of the paradigms
as a choice of one of three
distinct options, perhaps values of a feature. What dictates the choice of
the paradigm for the adjective is the type of element in the determiner
position in the phrase. The choice of the adjectival paradigm correlates with
the choice of the determiner in the following way:
- The absence of an article correlates with the presence of fully inflected
adjectives ('strong' inflection).
- Indefinite articles (and some other elements such as possessive pronouns)
co-occur with adjectives bearing 'mixed' inflection.
- Definite articles co-occur in the noun phrase with adjectives bearing
'weak' inflection.
The correlation can be understood in terms of definiteness, even though
there is no unique marker of definiteness in German on adjectives - instead,
definiteness is expressed through the choice of the determiner and the
selection of inflectional endings on the adjective. One way of analysing
definiteness in German nominal phrases would be to see it as assigned to
the whole phrase together with the (optional) determiner. However, we still have to
account for the selection of the adjectival paradigm, and the observed
correlations suggest strongly that we should recognise a morphosyntactic
feature. It is not completely clear, however, whether we are dealing with
agreement or government.
Zwicky (1986:984-987) analyses it as government: the determiners
govern the feature of definiteness on the adjectives
by requiring the selection of a particular type of adjectival paradigm.
The questions which arise are: if it is definiteness that is the governed
feature, we should not expect to find its values on the governors.
Furthermore, apart from saying that the particular determiners require
the selection of the particular adjectival paradigms, it is difficult
to characterise this feature in terms of its values. The best characterisation
that can be given is: the definite articles govern the 'weak', or 'reduced'
value of the feature of definiteness, and the indefinite articles govern the
'mixed', or 'partially reduced' value of the feature of definiteness.
It appears that the appropriate assessment of this analysis has to be
postponed until we have a theory of syntactic government comparable to the
theory of canonical agreement proposed by Corbett (2006).
The alternative view, which is adopted here tentatively (and is open to
further argumentation), is to analyse the correlations as agreement: there is
systematic covariance between the controllers (the two types of determiners:
definite and indefinite) and the targets (the adjectives). The exponence
of definiteness on the adjectives is non-autonomous, but it is
expressed through the selection of the required adjectival paradigm. In each
case, the result is a particular pattern of distribution of information relevant to
the concept of definiteness throughout the phrase. It seems easy to
accept that definite and indefinite articles themselves express a value of
definiteness (and act as controllers of agreement on adjectives), even though,
on this view, we also have to accept the fact that German adjectives agree in
number and gender with one controller (the noun), but in definiteness with
another (the determiner). Comments on this issue will be very welcome.
The fact that the values of the proposed feature may not
always correspond to (in)definiteness
semantically does not pose a problem to give the feature the label
'definiteness'. In a parallel way, what is labelled as 'gender' often
does not correspond to a semantically assigned gender or class. The feature
of 'gender' does have a semantic core, or basis, but there are few languages
with purely semantically assigned gender values. Similarly, definiteness
in Germanic has some semantic basis, but we do not necessarily expect
it to be semantically assigned throughout.
Jump to top of
page/ top of section
4. The values of 'definiteness'
It would seem that definiteness feature should have two values:
definite and indefinite. However, C. Lyons (1999:49-51) points out that, in languages
which distinguish simple definites and indefinites, the correct analysis
of definiteness marking may be that only definiteness is directly encoded.
In such cases, we regard definiteness as an additional piece
of information selected for the noun phrase, not a feature value
by our definitions (see the 'Feature Inventory' page for clarification).
What complicates the analysis is the phenomenon of quasi-indefinite cardinal
articles, such as the English a and the reduced some
(often conventionally referred to as sm, e.g. C. Lyons 1999:34).
Although it can be argued that a and sm are cardinality
words, not indefinite articles, they "do indirectly signal indefiniteness
while not encoding it: a is obligatory in singular indefinite noun
phrases in the absence of any other determiner, and neither a nor
sm ever appears in definite noun phrases. This 'indirect signalling'
of indefiniteness by a cardinality determiner, leading to a strong intuition
that it contrasts with definite determiners, is widespread" (C. Lyons 199:48-49).
Hence, although potentially there are three ways in which definiteness
distinction can be expressed in languages which distinguish simple definites
and indefinites (C. Lyons 1999:49):
- only definiteness is marked
- only indefiniteness is marked
- both definiteness and indefiniteness are marked
if we exclude quasi-indefinite articles as markers of indefiniteness, then
possibility (a) is by far the most common. In fact, C. Lyons (1999:51) argues that
markers of indefiniteness turn out in nearly all cases to be cardinal articles
rather than true indefinite articles. Therefore, on a strict interpretation of the
terms, pattern (a) is the only one occurring.
For a discussion of value options available for the only possible instance
of morphosyntactic definiteness identified so far, necessary for the
description of the adjectival paradigms in German, see §3 above.
In German, the choice of the definiteness value for a noun phrase
affects the distribution of information relating to
definiteness over the noun phrase.
Jump to top of
page/ top of section
5. Oddly behaving definiteness markers
The inflectional markers which appear on attributive elements in
German, traditionally described as case, gender and
number agreement ('CGN') markers, but arguably also encoding definiteness
in a non-autonomous way (see §3 above for argumentation), are
typically found on attributive adjectives or participles and relative
pronouns. However, they are also capable of attaching to at least some
nouns and prepositions. If the inflectional marker is treated as
a portmanteau for case, gender, and number, it is perhaps surprising that
nouns (as in examples 1a and 1b) inflect for gender, and prepositions (as in examples
2a and 2b, of German found in the Rhein area)
inflect at all (Struckmeier 2007a:2, with his annotation):
(1a) |
klasse-sn |
Auto |
|
(b) |
klasse-rm |
Typ |
|
classN-CGN |
car |
|
|
classN-CGN |
guy |
|
'a snazzy car' |
|
|
'a cool guy' |
(2a) |
zu-e |
Tür |
|
(b) |
bei-e |
Tür |
|
toP-CGN |
door |
|
|
byP-CGN |
door |
|
'to a door' |
|
|
'by a door' |
Modern Hebrew has a definiteness marker -ha which
can occur on most of the elements of the noun phrase. The most interesting
examples of a complex mechanism determining the marking of definiteness
within the noun phrase in Modern Hebrew are found in the so-called
'construct states', which are noun-noun constructs. See Corbett (2006:135-136)
for a brief overview of this phenomenon analysed as multiple marking of
definiteness within the noun phrase, and Danon (2001; 2010) for
comprehensive discussion of the distribution of definiteness marking within the Hebrew construct
state, including an overview and evaluation of theoretical syntactic analyses
which have been proposed to model this phenomenon. Danon also offers
argumentation in support of treating definiteness in Modern Hebrew as
a 'monovalent feature whose presence alternates with a lack of specifi¯cation' -
which corresponds to our analysis of definiteness as an additional piece
of information selected for the noun phrase.
Articles marking specificity, or something close to specificity, rather
than definiteness are fairly widespread (C. Lyons 1999:59). However, sometimes
the meaning and use of articles in a language may be based on still other distinctions.
For example, Maori nominals introduced by the article he are
usually interpreted as indefinite or nonspecific, but it is doubtful whether either
definiteness or specificity offers a consistent enough basis for the distinctions
observed in the use of this article (Bauer 1993; C. Lyons 1999:58-59).
Syntactically, the he nominal cannot occur as subject of a
transitive clause or as direct object; it is only allowed as subject of an
active intransitive clause or subject of a passive clause. The interpretation
of the article includes generic,
indefinite, semidefinite (as in the English a friend of mine), and even
definite. Polinsky (1992) suggests that the description of he should be maintained
in terms of the opposition referential/nonreferential, rather than
definite/indefinite. Thus, she suggests that the major distinction is between
indication of an individuated entity (referential) and indication of a
class of entities or any entity in this class or property of the class (nonreferential).
The nouns introduced by he are not specified for referentiality;
this is consistent with their typical use in the predicative function.
Being unspecified for referentiality, nouns marked by he are primarily
nonreferential; however, if the noun is conceptually related to some
referential nominal in the clause, it can acquire the referential interpretation,
due to and contingent upon the referential interpretation of the
other noun. To explain the syntactic distribution of he nouns, Polinsky
introduces the category
of localisation. This category implies that individuated
events involve individuated participants; the primary individuation
is associated with the active participant in a situation. Thus, if the agent
in a transitive clause is individuated, the patient or undergoer in the same
clause also has to be individuated. This explains the inability of a he
nominal to occur as direct object, in the presence of a referential transitive
subject.
Jump to top of
page/ top of section
6. Problem cases
Definiteness in German: a feature of agreement or government?
The descriptive generalisation regarding German noun phrases appears to be
that in the sequence determiner-adjective-noun, the inflectional material appears
on the leftmost modifying element, whether it is a determiner or an
adjective, except that the cardinal article ein, kein 'no/ not a',
or a possessive cannot accept certain inflections. In such cases, the inflections
appear further to the right. C. Lyons concludes (1999:219) that "[t]his means that
articles have no special status in the realization of inflectional features".
However, the identification of the 'mixed' paradigm of adjectival inflection
(discussed in §3 above) suggests that the picture is more complex:
the 'indefinite' articles and possessive pronouns do not just reject
inflections, but they also induce adjectives to appear with or without
inflection depending on the case the phrase is in. The question remains,
however, about exactly how the inflectional paradigm for the adjective is
selected: through government by the determiner (as suggested by Zwicky 1986
and Corbett 2006), or through agreement with the determiner (as tentatively
suggested in this entry). An additional complication that has to be considered
is that the distribution of strong versus mixed paradigm adjectives
is not completely clear, especially when there are two adjectives in the phrase.
For a recent discussion of attributive agreement in German, see Struckmeier
(2007b).
Definiteness in tense-aspect distinctions? While discussing parallels
between tense and (definite) pronouns, Partee (1984) observes that just as pronouns
can relate to a referent introduced in the previous discourse or to a referent
understood on the basis of the context, so tense can relate to an antecedent time
or to an understood time. C. Lyons picks up on this observation and suggests
that it may be possible to attribute some tense-aspect distinctions to
definiteness (1999:45-46). Traditional grammars sometimes describe the
distinction between the past (historic/preterite) tense, as in I read that book,
and the corresponding perfect tense, as in I have read that book, in terms of a
distinction between 'definite' and 'indefinite' past. C. Lyons argues that the
preterite indeed makes a definite time reference: "[i]n the absence of a
time adverbial which identifies the time of the event (I read that book
yesterday), the hearer is assumed to be able to locate the event
temporally on the basis of contextual knowledge. The perfect also presents
the event as past, but, while the speaker may know when she read the book, there
is no implication that the hearer knows or can work out (or needs to) when
the event occurred" (1999:45-46). Hence, this disctinction is parallel to
that between the car and a car, except that referent
identification is substituted with event identification, or, more precisely,
with the identification of the temporal location of the event. Note that
this observation is consistent with the analysis of the semantics of tense
offered in this Inventory (see the entry on 'Tense'), captured with
Reichenbachian primitives. On the view offered in this Inventory,
all simple tense meanings have a semantic component
that can be expressed as the simultaneity of the event time and reference
time (E=R), while the perfect meanings have a semantic component that
can be expressed as the dissociation of the event time and reference time
(E ≠ R) (Kibort 1997). See the entry on 'Tense' (§4) for more
details.
'Degree modifiers' as 'determiners'? Since the structural
position of determiners in the noun phrase is paralleled in the adjective
phrase and in adverb and quantifier phrases by 'degree modifiers'
(as/so/that/too [big]), C. Lyons (1999:46) hypothesises
that these words can also be treated as being of category 'determiner'
(analysed as either a specifier of the relevant phrase, or a head of a functional
phrase containing the adjective/quantifier phrase). He points out that both
that and this operate both as definite determiners in noun
phrases and as degree modifiers in adjective phrases, e.g. Tom is stupid but
not that stupid, The fish I almost caught was this big!. As
degree modifiers, they are colloquial, though they have a more formal
counterpart: so. C. Lyons argues that "there is little reason
to doubt that this and that have demonstrative meaning in
this use; the degree they convey of the property expressed by the adjective
is accessed anaphorically [in Tom is stupid but
not that stupid] or communicated by means of an ostensive gesture
[in The fish I almost caught was this big!], exactly parallel
to what happens with noun phrase demonstratives" (1999:46). So
must also be a demonstrative degree modifier, though it lacks the deictic
distinction. As a candidate for a simple definite degree modifier C. Lyons
offers as, as in: (a) Joe is as bright, (b) Joe is as bright
as Ann, and (c) Joe is not as bright as you think. In such
contexts, as is phonologically weak, with a normally reduced vowel,
and its use is close to that of the: in (a) the degree of brightness
referred to is accessed by the hearer from the context or the preceding
discourse, and in (b) and (c) it is provided in a relative-like modifier
(C. Lyons 1999:46).
Are demonstratives universally definite in meaning? This
question is taken up by C. Lyons in several places in his (1999) monograph on
definiteness. Demonstratives are generally considered to be definite, but it
is clear that their definiteness is not a matter of inclusiveness. Identifiability
is only part of their semantic content, another part being deixis. In (1999:17-21),
C. Lyons argues that "a demonstrative signals that the identity of the referent
is immediately accessible to the hearer, without the inferencing often involved
in interpreting simple definites", because "the work of referent identification
is being done for the hearer by the speaker". This suggests that demonstratives
are necessarily definite. C. Lyons (1999:151-152) then considers a possible counterexample in
the form of such, arguably an indefinite variant of the demonstrative, but rejects this
analysis in favour of treating such as a non-demonstrative containing
a demonstrative element as part of its meaning ('of this/that kind', or 'like
this/that'). This means that the assumption that demonstratives are inherently
definite is maintained, which implies that definiteness exists in some form in all
languages (1999:107).
Definiteness is not inherent in possessives. Although, as
argued briefly above, demonstrativeness seems to be semantically incompatible
with indefiniteness, C. Lyons argues that definiteness is not inherent in possessives
(1999:22-26; 124-133). This runs counter to the traditional assumption that
possessives are definite determiners, found in many descriptive grammars
and in much theoretical work. However, it is demonstrable that,
while in some languages a possessive imposes a definiteness interpretation
in the matrix noun phrase, in other languages it does not.
This difference is now discussed in terms of a typological distinction between
'DG languages' (e.g. English, Irish), and 'AG languages' (e.g. Italian, Greek) (where
'DG' and 'AG' stand for 'determiner-genitive' and 'adjectival-genitive',
even though it is not claimed that possessives are necessarily determiners
in the first type and adjectives in the second type of language; C. Lyons 1999:24).
Definiteness and animacy. See
C. Lyons (1999:213-215) for an interesting discussion of definiteness and animacy
with respect to the widely used 'animacy hierarchy' which helps express cross-linguistic
generalisations.
Jump to top of
page/ top of section
7. Key literature
- Corbett, Greville G. 2006. Agreement. Cambridge: CUP. (§3.6.2.3 German weak and strong adjectives - pp. 95-96)
- Dryer, Matthew S. 2005a. Definite articles. In: Haspelmath, Martin, Matthew S. Dryer, David Gil & Bernard Comrie (eds) The World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS). Oxford: Oxford University Press. 154-157.
- Dryer, Matthew S. 2005b. Indefinite articles. In: Haspelmath, Martin, Matthew S. Dryer, David Gil & Bernard Comrie (eds) The World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS). Oxford: Oxford University Press. 158-161.
- Lyons, Christopher. 1999. Definiteness. Cambridge: CUP.
REFERENCES
- Berg, René van den. 1989. A Grammar of the Muna Language. (Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Institut voor Taal-, Land- and Volkenkunde 139). Dordrecht: Foris.
- Corbett, Greville G. 2006. Agreement. Cambridge: CUP.
- Danon, Gabi. 2001. Syntactic definiteness in the grammar of Modern Hebrew. Linguistics 39(6):1071-1116.
- Danon, Gabi. 2010. The definiteness feature at the syntax-semantics interface. In: Kibort, Anna & Greville G. Corbett (eds) Features: Perspectives on a Key Notion in Linguistics. Oxford: OUP. 143-165.
- Dryer, Matthew S. 2005a. Definite articles. In: Haspelmath, Martin, Matthew S. Dryer, David Gil & Bernard Comrie (eds) The World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS). Oxford: Oxford University Press. 154-157.
- Dryer, Matthew S. 2005b. Indefinite articles. In: Haspelmath, Martin, Matthew S. Dryer, David Gil & Bernard Comrie (eds) The World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS). Oxford: Oxford University Press. 158-161.
- Hawkins, John A. 1978. Definiteness and Indefiniteness: a Study in Reference and Grammaticality Prediction. London: Croom Helm.
- Kibort, Anna. 1997. The Past and the Perfect in English and Polish: a new look at Reichenbach's theory of tense, Working Papers in Linguistics 4:63-89. University of Cambridge.
- Lambrecht, Knud. 1994. Information Structure and Sentence Form. Topic, Focus and the Mental Representations of Discourse Referents. Cambridge: CUP.
- Lyons, Christopher. 1999. Definiteness. Cambridge: CUP.
- Partee, Barbara H. 1984. Nominal and temporal anaphora. Linguistics and Philosophy 7:243-286.
- Polinsky, Maria. 1992. Maori he revisited. Oceanic Linguistics 31(2):229-250.
- Struckmeier, Volker. 2007a. Relative clauses and closely related structures in German: Attributive Agreement as a unified head. Paper given at the Interdisciplinary Approaches to Relative Clauses conference, Cambridge, 13-15 September 2007.
- Struckmeier, Volker. 2007b. Attribute im Deutschen: Zu ihren Eigenschaften und ihrer Position im grammatischen System. [Studia Grammatica 65]. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.
- Zwicky, Arnold M. 1986. German adjective agreement in GPSG. Linguistics 24:957-990.
Jump to top of
page/ top of section
How to cite this entry:
Kibort, Anna. "Definiteness." Grammatical Features.
25 January 2008. http://www.grammaticalfeatures.net/features/definiteness.html. |
|