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I refer to the sentences that are the subject of this paper as Thing sentences (TSs), illustrated by The thing is that it’s not my phone. These are copular specificational sentences with a definite singular subject and a finite complement clause. Prior research claimed that TSs focus attention on their complement clauses, are pragmatic or discourse markers, indicate a shift in subtopic or topic, communicate that the proposition represented by the complement clause is in “disconformity” with, or problematic in, its context, and that it represents a cause, reason, justification, or grounds for other propositions; these interpretations are claimed to be conventionally associated with the construction. I show that these earlier works are descriptively inaccurate and explanatorily incomplete. While the cause, reason, justification, and grounds interpretations have not been explained, some authors have claimed that the problem interpretation is due to the semantic poverty of thing. I demonstrate that the construction presents the complement proposition as both focused and presupposed and consequently as partially discontinuous with the discourse topic as it has developed up to the point at which the TS is uttered, thereby effecting a shift in the development of the current topic, though never a shift to an unrelated topic. I argue against analyzing TSs as discourse or pragmatic markers and I demonstrate that TSs need not communicate that their complements are problematic, that the range of other interpretations is greater than hitherto proposed, that these are due to the operation of general interpretive schemata, and therefore are not conventionally associated with the construction. I show that the presuppositional effects are due to the minimal semantic specification of thing and the fact that it is definite, and that the focusing effects are due to the predicate position of the clause and to the specificationality of the construction which makes the clause an argument of the subject and thus a marked focus. This analysis of Thing sentences demonstrates that speakers are attuned to the expectations of their audiences and exploit the lexical and syntactic resources of the language to create expression types to manage such things as topical development, and in the case of Thing sentences to signal an unexpected development of the current topic, leading to a change in its trajectory. The analysis shows that at this point in its history, TS interpretations are due to its linguistic features interacting in context with general pragmatic principles.

The polemics of political rhetoric encourage the implementation of presupposed referents as though they were assumed and shared. This paper examines the presupposed referents employed by the White House, concerning the urgency of invading Iraq, and countered by the political left. Details indicate that the White House was endeavoring to build an undeniable argument for invasion. Consequently, they had to employ definite noun phrases as first mentions of previously unshared referents in order to achieve the hidden didactic goal of pre-empting counter arguments. The Democrats, the liberals, and the media had to endeavor to overcome such presuppositions and explain that addressees neither shared nor identified the assumed referents. Appeals to fear and epistemological assessment are also examined. Insights from the analysis suggest that, given the conducive political temperament of the country prior to the November 2002 mid-term elections, forestalling argumentation by implementing definite noun phrases as if they were previously shared referents is highly efficacious.

This paper examines the use of definite and indefinite noun phrases in everyday conversations in Finnish and English to establish meaning and to alter and build context in interaction. The paper shows that participants in conversation use the formal contrast between definite and indefinite NPs not only to express identifiability and non-identifiability of the referent to their addressees, but that they also use it dynamically to make claims about socially shared reality, to create referents in discourse and to build a novel identity for existing referents, to actively construct frames and create roles within them, and to reorganize the participant structure of a speech event.

Corresponding to the Ba construction (S Ba-OVC) in Mandarin, Cantonese prefers a strong SVCO word order, and the Shaoxing dialect adopts an SOVC variation. This paper makes a detailed cross-linguistic study on the structure and semantic interpretations of disposal NPs and highlights the role of the disposal NPs in the formation of disposal construction in the above three dialects. It suggests that the word order variations in disposal constructions among the Mandarin, Cantonese, and Shaoxing dialects result from the different options being adopted to make the object NPs conform to the so called definiteness constraint of a disposal NP, namely, definite, specific, or generic.

This paper considers the relevance of various approaches to the study of ‘Given’ and ‘New’ to a number of practical problems: complaints from listeners to UK radio programmes that presenters place emphasis on the wrong words; inaudibility of openings of utterances in radio news bulletins; and ambiguity of pronouns. Approaches to ‘Given’ and ‘New’ to be discussed include those whose concerns are with intonation (e.g., Halliday & Matthiessen 2014), those who pay attention to definiteness/indefiniteness in the nominal group (e.g., Martin 1992), and those who are more concerned with what is in the minds of hearers and readers (e.g., Prince 1981; Lambrecht 1994). The underlying questions that are being investigated are: How free are speakers and writers to assign ‘Given’ or ‘New’ status to entities? Are there constraints on what they can do intonationally, or with definiteness, or with pronouns?

This study investigates the licensing conditions and interpretational variability of indefinite subjects in Mandarin. Against the ‘definiteness’ constraint of subject in Mandarin (Chao 1968; Li and Thompson 1981), three types of indefinite subjects are identified in the subject position, but they exhibit different scope behaviors: (i) you-nominals are ambiguous between a wide scope and a narrow scope, and (ii) thetic subjects are narrow-scope taking, and (iii) ‘cardinal’ subjects are scopeless. Following Cohen and Erteschik-Shir (2002), we propose that the former two types of indefinite subjects are focus elements and they fall into the position of nuclear scope, where they receive an existential interpretation, and cardinal subjects are topics and they serve as restrictor to some generic operator. Moreover, the wide/narrow scope readings of you-nominals are distinguished from each other in terms of whether a topic domain is available or not, which may serve a domain restrictor to the existential quantifier bound to you-nominals (Portner 2002).

The main purpose of this paper is to identify the novel type of Korean definiteness marker. Especially I show that Korean KU which originated from the morphological demonstrative ‘that’, instantiates a solid pattern of distribution of definiteness marker. Mainly focusing on the semantico-pragmatic role of KU, the proposal comprises three main parts: (i) Given that Korean employs distinct devices teased apart into uniqueness (i.e. referential use) and familiarity (i.e. anaphoric use) in its definiteness system, I show that the effect of referential use in argument saturating function is achieved by the covert “determiner” in bare nouns, whereas anaphoric use in argument non-saturating function is achieved by the overt KU; (ii) The semantic contribution of KU is analyzed as a domain restrictor (DDR; Etxeberria & Giannakidou 2010) which supplies an indexical property as an argument (Schwarz 2009, 2013; Jenks 2018); (iii) I further show that the DDR operator is present in the syntax, falling out from the standard D position as an adjunctive modifier in a lower DP layer. The contribution of my work is that the proposed account allows us to widen our view of cross-linguistic variation to cases where the prerequisite of definiteness is based on the dissociation of meaning (i.e. the semantic role of D as encoding familiarity) and form (i.e. the syntactic role of D as an argument-building function).

This paper analyzes Differential Object Marking in P’orhépecha, which involves split case and fluid case alternations. Although this system is sensitive to Animacy and Definiteness, I will show that prominence on these scales does not account for the distribution of flagging. In fact, in P’orhépecha, the expected prominence effects of these scales are overridden by certain grammatical properties of the NPs, which explains the obligatory vs. forbidden flagging. The fluid pattern is of special interest, since even though there is evidence that flagging is used as a device to codify definiteness/specificity, higher and lower ranked objects on the definiteness scale may be (un)flagged. This peculiar behavior is explained by two facts: (a) definite/specific descriptions may, and in some instances must, be unflagged when the context of use guarantees the intended referential interpretation of the NP; and (b) lower ranked objects may be flagged only when their referents exhibit discourse salience.

The authors identify a plural marker -ɕiɛ in Chengdu Chinese that can apply to both count and mass nouns, encoding plurality as well as definiteness. This post-nominal -ɕiɛ differs from the pre-nominal ɕiɛ, as the latter is purely plural but not inherently definite. Our analysis shows that the pre-nominal ɕiɛ functions as a quantifier, which occupies the [Spec, NumP] position, whereas the suffixal -ɕiɛ, by virtue of being a plural marker, is base-generated in the Num0 position and move to D0 to encode both plurality and definiteness. Moreover, the two ɕiɛs can co-occur in one and the same nominal phrase, exhibiting the double definiteness effect. The syntactic analysis of ɕiɛ in Chengdu Chinese, coupled with the study of di in Cantonese, has theoretical impacts on nominal phrase structures, in particular, on “plurality” and “definiteness”. First, plural markers in classifier languages contrast with those in number languages, as the former, but not the latter, defies numerical modification. Second, definiteness can be expressed by a non-D element, which may check its [+def] feature either by undergoing an upward movement to D (or [Spec, DP]) or by agreeing with the [+def] feature of a demonstrative. Third, the DP-NP distinction is strongly supported by our account of Chengdu Chinese.

Quantifier phrases (QP) can co-occur in a single sentence, which may cause ambiguity in terms of scope relation, viz. wide scope and narrow scope interpretations. Aoun & Li (1993) claim that quantifier scope ambiguity also exists in Chinese passive construction, such as yige nűren bei meige ren ma ‘a woman was scolded by everyone’. Following Lee (1986)’s proposal, it is argued in this paper that the scopal relations of Chinese QPs are not purely syntactic as in Aoun & Li’s analysis, but should be determined by the interaction between syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Based on naturalistic data, it is shown that (i) Chinese QPs can be classified into whQP, distributive-universal QP and group-denoting QP, whose semantic properties determine the scope relations between them; (ii) in general, a QP is devoid of referentiality, yet it can acquire referentiality depending on its co-occurrence with other QPs or contextual factors; (iii) the subject definiteness constraint in Chinese, a language-specific constraint, would affect the interpretation of subject QPs in Chinese passive construction.

This paper examines whether adult learners of English whose native languages (Korean and Mandarin Chinese) lack articles are influenced by transfer from demonstratives and numerals in their acquisition of English articles. To this end, the results of two studies are reported. The first study examines native Korean and Mandarin speakers’ preferences for bare vs. non-bare (demonstrative or numeral) forms in different types of definite and indefinite environments. The results of this study give rise to specific predictions for L1-Korean and L1-Mandarin L2-English learners’ sensitivity to article omission errors in different types of definite and indefinite contexts in English. These predictions are tested in the second study, which uses both an offline task (grammaticality judgments) and an online task (self-paced reading) to investigate learners’ sensitivity to errors of article omission. L1-Korean and L1-Mandarin L2-English learners are found to behave very similarly when tested in English, despite different preferences exhibited by native speakers of Korean and Mandarin. It is concluded that learners of these article-less first languages do not transfer the semantics of demonstratives and numerals onto articles in their second language.

This paper discusses the general distribution and interpretation of bare noun phrases (BNPs) in Reunion Creole (RC). To set the required background for this description, it also discusses the count-mass distinction and offers an insight into the determiner system since elements such as prenominal lo and postnominal -la have received rather divergent designations and analyses in the literature. Observations rely on oral data and felicity judgments. We show that RC BNPs can occupy the same positions as noun phrases (NPs) modified by a determiner and that they can be left-dislocated, clefted and topicalized. We provide evidence that, except for some specific contexts, monosyllabic BNPs are not licensed and that the form lo is mandatory to build a grammatical NP out of nouns formed by a unique light syllable.1 We also demonstrate that, in these cases, lo is actually a semantically empty element. BNPs are number-neutral; we argue that existential BNPs are pseudo-incorporated in some cases but that they always have weak reference. BNPs can receive generic and kind readings, as well as an existential and a certain definite interpretation: they are weak definites, i.e. they are semantically, never pragmatically definite (following Löbner 1985, 1998, 2011, 2015).

This study focuses on a pidgin predominantly used by Asian immigrants in the city of Abha in the southwestern region of Saudi Arabia, examining multifunctionality as it appears in three grammatical categories, definiteness, predication, and pronouns. Whereas previous studies on Gulf Arabic Pidgin have described the variety in terms of multifunctionality (e.g. Avram 2004; Bakir 2014, and Potsdam and Alanazi 2014), the current study focuses on the different pathways that bring it about. Three types of multifunctionality are described in terms of refunctionalization, generalization and neutralization. hada (< *haaða ‘this’) is refunctionalized to mark definiteness and as a deictic marker fills the function of the demonstrative. fī, (< *fi ‘at, exist’) has multiple functions being used as a preposition, an existential marker in the meaning of ‘there is/are’, a generalized predicate marker when occurring before adjectival, nominal and verbal predicates. The pronominal system shows simplification from ten to five pronouns only. The study is based on data collected in interviews with a random sample of twenty-four Asian participants of both sexes. Their ages ranged from 26 to 45 years old and their length of stay in Saudi Arabia ranged from four to nine years. They occupied different jobs. A total of twenty nine hours of audio-visual interview data were analysed.

In addition to plurality, creole plural morphemes impart an additional meaning of definiteness or specificity to the nominal expressions they mark. As of yet, there is no precise characterization either empirical or theoretical of the semantic/pragmatic dimensions they convey. Furthermore, the question of whether this added meaning is largely fixed across distinct creoles and plural morphemes, or subject to variations has never been examined. With the goal of bringing new insights intothese questions, this paper reports the results of a comparativestudy of the properties of two creole plural morphemes in two distinct French-lexifier creoles, Haitian Creole (HC) and Mauritian Creole (MC). Besides relying on native speaker intuitions, a detailed comparative qualitative and quantitative study of the uses of these plural morphemes was conducted in a textual corpus in two adaptations of the story of the Little Prince by Antoine De St Exupery, in Haitian Creole and in Mauritian Creole respectively. The results of this comparative investigation clearly demonstrate that the use of plural morphemes in the two creoles, though similarin a number of respects, also differ quite systematically. We observe that the distinctions noted closely mirror the uses of the singular definite marker ‘la’ bv’ also argued to subtly diverge in these two creoles (Wespel 2008, Déprez 2016, in preparation). The paper analyzes this mirroring effect as a consequence of the positions that the plural morphemes come to occupy in the nominal structure and of the way the structure building operations are constrained in the different creoles. Concretely it is argued that the plural morphemes come to derivationally occupy the position of definite articles in each of the languages, and that this derivational process is obligatory in Haitian Creole due to the pronominal nature of its plural morpheme, but remains optional in Mauritian.

By comparing two generations of speakers in China and the Netherlands, we investigated whether Wenzhounese Chinese as spoken by heritage speakers in the Netherlands might be subject to change due to its contact with the Dutch language. To this end, we considered how nouns referring to already mentioned referents were encoded, hypothesizing an increase in overtly marked already mentioned referents in the speech of second generation speakers in the Netherlands. Also, shifts in the use of classifier and demonstrative constructions were investigated as carriers of definite meanings. The data showed clear generation effects, especially in the use of classifier and demonstrative constructions, but no location effects. Although the interpretation of the data is compromised by the fact that Wenzhounese as spoken China is under threat, the study suggests that innovations found in heritage speakers may not necessarily be related to the heritage scenario, but can also reflect more general contact effects or internally motivated changes.

Theargument DP hypothesis, adopted by many syntactic analyses, claims that nominal arguments are introduced by a determiner (D), which may be covert or overt. While overt D is obligatory in Modern French (consistent with the argument DP hypothesis), it was not obligatory in earlier stages of French. We explore the factors that contributed to this change – includingsemantic class, syntactic function, number, anddefiniteness – focusing on a shift that occurred in the D-paradigm in two Anglo-Norman texts of the 12th century. Quantitative analysis (Goldvarb) yields two major findings. First, the effect ofsyntactic functionremains constant: subject position favours overt D, but object position inhibits it. Second, there is a change in the effect ofsemantic class: count nouns increasingly favour overt D, but non-count (mass and abstract) nouns increasingly inhibit it. More generally, the gradual disappearance of bare Ns in French reflects the emergence of paradigmatically conditioned D.

Studies of unaccusativity and word order in Spanish have yielded conflicting results. This study further investigates unaccusativity by testing the ability of the ‘Auxiliary Selection Hierarchy’ (Sorace 2000) to account for word orders with intransitive predicates in Mexican Spanish. The results of an oral production task show significant word order differences between verb categories and locate an unergative/unaccusative cutoff point midway along the hierarchy, situating unaccusativity in Spanish as being similar to Italian but trending in the direction of Dutch or French. Other variables affecting the word order are identified and ranked, including subject heaviness, definiteness, and the location of adverbial phrases. Greater inter-speaker variation at the syntax-discourse interface when compared with the syntax-lexicon interface shows that the Interface Hypothesis has application to native speakers of Spanish. The results of this study are important for current research on unaccusativity and syntactic interfaces.

The morphemes such as the French au or the Italien nel are designed by different terms in grammars of Romance languages, which shows that it is difficult to identify the lexical category of this type of fusional morpheme. The aim of this paper is to propose a detailed analysis of these contracted forms. I suggest that the fusion occurs during a secondary grammaticalization. This process involves, on the one hand, the definite article, i.e. a grammatical element, and, on the other hand, some prepositions which, semantically, can be functional or lexical but which function syntactically as grammatical elements. The analysis shows that case inflection of nominals has been transferred to the preposition while the other categories appear in the article which merged with prepositions. Therefore, the fusional forms can be considered as prepositions marked by the grammatical categories of gender, number and definiteness.

There are two primary goals for this study – first, to analyse definiteness and article use in spontaneous writing in Swedish by 15-year-old Finnish immersion students (n = 162) and secondly, to compare their performance with that of non-immersion students at the same age (n = 67). Analyses at the group level show that immersion students usually perform significantly better than the control group, but they also reveal similar problems to what L2-Swedish non-immersion students have demonstrated in previous studies, such as omission of indefinite articles and difficulty in choosing the right definite form of the noun. Still, these inaccuracies occurred less often in the data from the immersion students. The studied constructions also show at the group level an acquisition order similar to that reported in previous studies, explainable by different aspects of complexity and cross-linguistic influence. Analyses on the individual level, however, show different acquisition orders depending on the criteria being used.

This article attempts to account for how the static spatial relations of location between objects are encoded in Mandarin Chinese with Levinson’s notions of frames of reference and Talmy’s concept of Figure-Ground relations as theoretical guidance. Space is relational in nature, and spatial relations are embodied concepts that are at the heart of our conceptual system. That’s why they cannot be seen in the way physical objects are observed. Accordingly, I am inclined to propose that spatial relations are not natural entities in the physical world, but abstract ones that are construed and conceptualized subjectively by human beings. In accordance with the relational nature of space, Mandarin Chinese speakers usually encode the abstract spatial relation X Spatially Relates To Y into a linguistic representation as X V Y (P) where P is optional, when a pure static spatial relation of location between objects is construed, or into a linguistic representation as X VP zài Y P where VP stands for verbs of posture, when the object being located is conceived as being spatially related in a certain manner with respect to the reference object. Usually, such linguistic representations as X V Y (P) and X VP zài Y P are usually realized in Mandarin Chinese as two types of locative constructions: spatial relation constructions of containment/enclosure and spatial relation constructions of proximity/adjacency. What’s more, though locative constructions are related in some way to existential constructions in Mandarin Chinese, they are actually distinct from each other in three ways from a cognitive linguistics perspective: (i) they encode different spatial relations, (ii) they reveal different Figure-Ground relations, and (iii) there is a difference in definiteness of the two nominals involved.

This paper discusses the syntax and semantics of-menand four types of phrases containing-menin Mandarin. I defend the view that-menshould be analyzed as a plural morpheme as first argued inLi (1999)but argue against the analysis of positing-menin the D position or treating it as a definite determiner. It will be shown that definiteness is not inherent to-menand that-menis compatible with numerals and classifiers and should be in a position local to nouns. I propose an analysis of-menas an associative plural and explain the properties of the four types of expressions containing-menwithin a Neocarlsonian account of bare nominals. The formal account of the syntax and semantics of phrases containing-menadvanced in this paper shows that it is not necessary to assume a functional category D that is always invisible in the grammar of Mandarin in order to account for the behaviors of its nominal arguments and argues for the lack of DP projections in Mandarin.

Clitic doubling is the phenomenon in which, in a clause, a NP or a stressed pronoun and a clitic pronoun refer to the same entity and have the same syntactic function. Previous studies on this phenomenon in Spanish observe that it takes place when the elements involved have features such as +preposition and +definiteness that make them prone to topicalization, such as with stressed pronouns (Silva-Corvalán, 1984;Melis and Flores, 2009;Vázquez Rozas and García Salido, 2012). However, we have found that in 19th and 20th Century Spanish, doubling often occurs with elements that are not typically topical, such as indefinite NPs. On the basis of a sample of the Argentinian variety from the CORDE and CREA corpora we found that doubling in ditransitive clauses has two functions: it can mark topical indirect objects, but it can also flaginverse distributionswhich have unexpected promotion of the direct object and demotion of the indirect object in the accessibility scale.

This paper presents a cross-linguistic survey of case systems with several non-phonologically distributed markers of ergative case, based on a convenience sample of more than 70 languages from all over the world. It is shown that in most languages the distribution of different ergative markers splits along the lines predicted by the referential hierarchy (local pronouns > non-local pronouns > proper names > kinship terms > humans > nonhumans > inanimates), thus complementing the much better known ergativity splits. Other types of conditioning of “multiple ergatives” include gender, such nominal morphosyntactic features as number and (in)definiteness, as well as clausal morphosyntactic features like tense/aspect, polarity and person of co-arguments. “Fluid” systems where the choice of ergative marker is based on semantic or pragmatic factors are attested as well. The article also discusses the implications of ergative allomorphy and ergative alternations for the typology of ergativity and case marking in general.

Many acquisition studies indicate that across languages, children overgenerate definite articles in indefinite contexts. However, proportions and ages at which children make this error vary, and so do theoretical accounts. Attempting to resolve some of the mixed results, we combined the methods of two different studies (Schaeffer & Matthewson 2005 (SM) and van Hout, Harrigan & de Villiers 2010 (HHV)) and administered them to one group of 82 Dutch-acquiring children aged 2–9 and adult controls (N = 23).1 The results show that definite article overuse takes place in (a) only the youngest age group (2;1–3;7) in the relevant SM indefinite condition, (b) only the two oldest child groups (6;0–9;4) in the HHV indefinite condition, and (c) adults score at ceiling in the SM conditions, while only around 70% correct in the HHV conditions. We argue that (a) the indefinite conditions of the two article choice experiments test different types of knowledge, and therefore their results cannot be compared, (b) the HHV task has more methodological drawbacks than the SM task, rendering its results difficult to interpret, and (c) the results provide less evidence for HHV’s unranked-constraint hypothesis than for SM’s lack-of-Concept-of-Non-Shared-Assumptions hypothesis.

Discourse analysis has drawn people’s attention to micro levels in the discourse. This means that some subtle issues that were ignored in the past may carry with them some implicit meanings when looked at in the context. In this regard, topicality in Chinese usually indicates definiteness, whereas this definiteness is signaled by articles, pronouns in English texts. The difference between the two systems can result in problems in translation if not handled properly. Therefore it should be stressed that the management of theme-rheme structures should be dealt with much care from micro text levels, along with an interpretation of the macro intention of the text, so that the translation process should be highlighted. By incorporating the model of discourse analysis, the interaction between the original and translation can be realized.

Bringing together the areas of sign language semantics-pragmatics interface and discourse reference, this article offers a description of how indefiniteness and (non‑)specificity is encoded in Catalan Sign Language (LSC). By using a combined methodology of corpus data and grammatical tests, the present study shows that the encoding of indefiniteness and specificity in LSC is achieved by three main means, namely lexical signs, the use of nonmanuals, and the use of signing space. The basic primitives required to analyze specificity in LSC comprise wide scope, epistemicity, and partitivity. This article proposes an analysis of the use of signing space in contributing meaning and provides insights into the characterization of the abstract import of signing space.

This paper adopts the Integrated Contrastive Model (Granger 1996) to an examination of the use of articles in the L2 English written production of L1 speakers of three article-less languages (Mandarin Chinese, Korean and Thai) across four L2 proficiency levels. Data is sourced from the International Corpus Network of Asian Learners of English (ICNALE; Ishikawa 2011, 2013), comprising 575 written essays totalling 125,588 words across two writing prompts. Accuracy of zero, indefinite and definite articles is measured using Pica’s (1983) Target Language Use across Bickerton’s (1981) semantic/pragmatic article contexts (generic, specific definite, specific indefinite and non-specific indefinite). The results show two different orders of article accuracy depending on L1 background, as well as effects of writing prompt on the accuracy of certain article forms, and evidence of pseudo-longitudinal development for particular article usages as L2 proficiency increases, although not in all cases. Massive overproduction of indefinite/definite articles in generic contexts is problematic for all three L2 groups regardless of L1 background and L2 proficiency. However, Mandarin L2 English users appear to enjoy a significant advantage in L2 article accuracy over Korean or Thai L2 English users in almost all contexts of use and L2 proficiency levels, providing further potential evidence that the often reported grammaticalisation of definiteness/specificity markers in L1 Mandarin is aiding Mandarin L2 English users’ acquisition of the English article system.

This paper aims to present a syntactic description for two cognate proclitics ab and ghab in Hmub, a Hmong-Mien (Miao-Yao) language spoken in Southeast Guizhou of China. These two proclitics exhibit striking syntactic behaviors and semantic properties. Ab precedes an animate (human) nominal such as a personal name, a kinship term, an adjective or an adjective phrase, and encodes definiteness; ghab, on the other hand, exhibits a variety of functions—from spatial definiteness to relative positioning, subcategory marking to numeral partitive expression. Some host-clitic-combined groups have undergone a process of lexicalization. Hmub shows a distinction between a ghab-nominal and a common nominal. The former refers to an entity which is a part of a whole, but the latter does not. A ghab-noun is referential while a bare noun is non-referential.

This study examines cross-linguistic influence of L1 on L2 and L2 on L1 and the extent to which age of L2 onset (L2 AoO) is linked to the acquisition of morpho-syntactic properties in both languages of bilingual children who acquire L1-Russian as a heritage language and L2-Hebrew as a majority language. Our investigation of L1-L2 influence focuses on morpho-syntactic features, whose configurations vary in Russian and Hebrew. Definiteness is realized in Hebrew (but not in Russian), aspect is selected in Russian (but not in Hebrew), and [ACC] case is realized in both languages (but the mapping is different across the two languages); finally, the features of [Person], [Number] and [Gender] are mapped onto verbal inflections in both languages. A total of 110 Russian-Hebrew bilingual children aged 5;5–6;5 with varying ages of L2-Hebrew onset (0–60 months), 20 Hebrew-speaking monolinguals and 20 Russian-speaking monolinguals participated. Results demonstrate cross-linguistic influence, showing that it is bi-directional (L1 on L2 and L2 on L1). The patterns of cross-linguistic influence were similar: bilinguals performed similarly to monolinguals on features, with similar configurations in L1 and L2 (i.e., subject-verb agreement) but performed lower for properties realized differently in L1 and L2 (i.e., [DEF] articles in L2-Hebrew; [PERF] aspect and [ACC] case inflections in L1-Russian). The results also showed an effect of L2 AoO on the acquisition of both L1 and L2. Children with earlier AoO to L2-Hebrew (before 24 months) achieve better mastery in L2-Hebrew and performed lower in L1-Russian. Conversely, later AoOs to L2, led to better mastery of L1 and weaknesses in the acquisition of L2. Findings are discussed in light of the Feature Re-assembly Hypothesis.

In this paper, we present syntactic and semantic arguments that, in at least one articleless language (Lithuanian), bare nouns are able to project either NP or DP structures (cf. Franks & Pereltsvaig 2004; Ajíbóyè 2006; Pereltsveig 2006). We show that, in some syntactic contexts, Lithuanian bare nouns are only able to receive definite interpretations; in one context, they are only interpreted indefinitely. We then tie these interpretations to the presence or absence of D. Further, we highlight problems with the view that there is a categorical difference between articleless (NP) and articleful (DP) languages (Bošković 2010; Despić 2011), by testing Bošković’s and Despić’s generalizations about NP vs. DP languages on Lithuanian. In both cases, Lithuanian ends up behaving somewhat like an NP language, and somewhat like a DP language. Lithuanian is therefore a counterexample to the NP/DP split posited by Bošković, and must receive a different analysis.

The paper proposes that the three main ditransitive alignment patterns result from the competition between the Event Construal Constraint (ECC) motivated from event semantics and the Animacy(/Definiteness) Hierarchy Constraint (AHC) motivated from inherent role properties. The ECC and the AHC lead, respectively, to the Theme (T) and the Recipient (R) of a ditransitive verb being coded in the same way as the Patient (P) of a monotransitive verb. The competition model also correctly predicts the difference in the frequency of the indirective and secundative alignments. The indirective preference in flagging results from flagging’s being more sensitive to event role properties (cf. ECC) and the secundative preference in indexing results from indexing’s being more sensitive to animacy and definiteness (cf. AHC). Moreover, the paper argues that both the ordering of R and T nominal arguments in flagging and the ordering of R and T bound forms in indexing can be successfully accounted for through the interaction of the following constraints: the Animacy (/Definiteness) Effect on Ordering, the Weight Effect on Ordering, and the Coding Effect on Ordering (i.e. which ditransitive role is coded in the same way as the P).

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This study investigated the use of demonstratives in encoding already mentioned referents in two generations of Mandarin Chinese speakers in the Netherlands. Data from twelve families was compared to baseline data from eight native controls in China. Previous literature suggests that languages without dedicated morphology to encode definiteness might develop such morphemes in contact with a language with articles (cf. Backus, Doğruöz, & Heine, 2011). Demonstrative pronouns may be reinterpreted as articles and this process could result in an increase in demonstrative use. We accordingly expected to find such an increase in Mandarin Chinese spoken in the Netherlands and found confirmation for this in both generations of speakers. A preference for the distal demonstrative was observed only in the second generation.

English articles represent one of the most challenging areas of second language acquisition for learners whose L1 lacks articles. The two studies presented here examine the developmental sequence of acquisition, the first through a cross-sectional analysis of Thai learners at different levels of overall English proficiency, the second through a longitudinal experiment in which learners were exposed to semantically-tailored tokens of article use, but without any explicit or meta-linguistic instruction. It is argued that the data do not show evidence of abrupt parameter resetting. Instead, the developmental patterns fit well with Yang’s variational model of acquisition. Keywords: L2 acquisition; article systems; determiners; definiteness; specificity

In this article, we examine locational constructions (including existentials, locatives, and possessives) in a number of languages. Morpho-syntactically, locationals resemble or are related to one another in word order, in case marking, and in the choice of verbs. In semantics, the relatedness lies in the definiteness effect, in the locative feature, and in the mutually defining relationship between the semantic elements within each construction. As is recognized by Heine (1997), Stassen (2001) and others, the existential is one of the major sources from which possessives are derived. Basically, possessive constructions are existentials whose locative elements are prototypically human. We argue that locational constructions are relational processes and that they can be integrated into a systemic network with respect to two semantic features, i.e., the definiteness of the existent element and the humanness of the locative element. This systemic relationship between locationals has implications for the description and comparison of languages within the Systemic Functional Grammar framework, particularly where locationals are concerned.

Studies on the acquisition of indefinite articles by sequential bilingual (L2) children have provided mixed results regarding whether L2 children omit or substitute indefinite articles. In the present paper, we examined whether Turkish-speaking child L2 learners of English omitted or substituted indefinite articles by using a production task that comprised two different semantic contexts, the referential specific and the non-referential predicational context. We also examined the source of children’s errors by using a self-paced listening task where children heard grammatical sentence where indefinite articles were present and ungrammatical sentences with omitted indefinite articles. L2 children’s performance was compared with that of two monolingual (L1) groups: an age-matched L1 group and a younger L1 group. Results showed that all groups of children distinguished between the two semantic contexts in both the production and the on-line processing task. At the same time, both groups of older L1 and L2 children’s errors consisted in omission of indefinite articles whereas the predominant error for the younger L1 children was substitutions. In the on-line processing task, all groups of children detected the ungrammaticality related to article omission. We interpret these results within the Feature Reassembly and the Full Transfer/Full Access Hypotheses.

This paper explores the claim that definite expressions involve universal and existential quantification from the point of view of Word Grammar, in order to establish whether the quantificational view of definiteness is compatible with a particular cognitive theory of language, and to see how it compares with the familiarity treatment of definiteness. It is argued that the quantificational approach is superior to the familiarity approach in the analysis of a number of linguistic phenomena, and a number of Word Grammar analyses are presented. The paper concludes with an investigation into the grammaticalization of the English definite article, in order to compare the merits of the two approaches, and argues that the quantificational approach delivers a simpler and preferable account.

The nominal inflection system of Albanian includes specifications of case, definiteness, number and nominal class (gender). Our analysis recognizes three types of properties as theoretically relevant, namely N(ominal class), Q(quantification), D(efiniteness). Q inflections are responsible for the so-called oblique case - effectively a dyadic operator yielding a ‘zonal inclusion’ (possession) relation between the element to which it attaches and the internal argument of the verb (dative) or the head of a noun phrase (genitive). Q inflections are further responsible for plurality, while N inflections satisfy argument-of contexts (accusative)and D characterizes EPP contexts(nominative). Syncretisms (e.g. of dative and genitive, nominative and accusative) are not the result of morphological rules requiring Late Insertion of exponents (Distributed Morphology). Rather they are instances of ambiguity, resolved in the syntax (different embeddings) or at the interpretive interface. As such they are compatible with projection of the morphosyntax from lexical entries. Keywords: Case, nominative, accusative, oblique, syncretism, nominal class, plural, definiteness, possessor, locative.

In this paper I argue that there is no true number morphology in Jamaican Creole (JC). Instead, I show that dem, traditionally taken to be a plural marker, is more properly analyzed as a marker of inclusiveness, a defining characteristic of definiteness. These are expected outcomes of JC being in the class of languages which are claimed to have set nouns, i.e. nouns which, when combined with a numeral X, refer to an X-numbered set of individuals rather than to X number of individuals (Rijkhoff 2004). Since JC does not mark plurality in the same way as its lexifier English, individuation and number in JC cannot be analysed in the same way as is done for English. The proposal for a syntactic analysis of number in JC, given the above, is that functional structure above the NP provides for optional individuation via Cl(assifier)Phrase, and additionally for optional number specification, via Num(ber)Phrase.

In some (numeral) classifier languages, a classifier may occur “bare” (i.e. with a noun but without a numeral) and the nominal expression receives a definite interpretation. On the basis of evidence from Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese, Cheng and Sybesma (1999) hypothesize that classifier languages exhibit either the bare classifier or the bare noun pattern for definite reference, but not both. To evaluate this hypothesis against more typologically diverse languages, a parallel elicitation study of three non-Sinitic languages was conducted — Vietnamese, Hmong and Bangla — as well as two geographical varieties of Cantonese, focusing on the definite interpretation of bare classifier and bare noun patterns. The results show that although the use of bare classifier patterns for definite reference is a cross-linguistically connected phenomenon, there is more variation than previously described in the alternation between definite bare classifier and bare noun patterns, and that the preference for one pattern over another may receive functional/ pragmatic explanations.

It has been suggested that child L1 learners overuse the definite article in indefinite contexts due to maturational/pragmatic factors such as egocentricity and an inability to differentiate common ground contexts from speaker beliefs-only contexts (Maratsos 1976; Schaeffer & Matthewson 2005). Knowledge of semantic features such as specificity and definiteness is also implicated in L1 learners’ (in)correct article use (Ionin et al. 2004; 2009). In the context of child bilingualism, on the other hand, difficulties in acquisition of articles are expected to be doubled when one of the languages of the child does not have a corresponding article system. To address these issues and to identify parallels between monolingual and bilingual language acquisition, we examine the use of English articles by a Serbo-Croatian-English simultaneous bilingual child and two monolingual English-speaking children. The results reveal qualitative and quantitative differences between monolingual and bilingual children’s use of English articles, possibly due to the influence of Serbo-Croatian (an article-less language). The findings suggest that in simultaneous child bilingualism, cross-linguistic transfer overrides maturational/pragmatic or semantic factors that are tied to incorrect article use (cf. Zdorenko & Paradis 2008).

The existence of a connection between the loss of case inflection and the emergence of overt definiteness in Bulgarian can be supported with arguments of various weight. Among them are: (i) The comparison with parallel developments in Germanic and Romance, (ii) the ability of articles to perpetuate case distinctions after case marking on nouns and adjectives has been obliterated, (iii) their capacity to take over functions formerly performed by case, (iv) the participation of both processes in the analyticity-syntheticity cycle, (v) their involvement in the pendulum between hypo- and hyper-determination, and (vi) the parallel sequence of their implementation among noun classes defined by animacy, gender and number. I argue that the similarities of implementation between the two diachronic processes should be explained in terms of three interrelated variables: markedness, perceptual salience and frequency. The conclusions reached fit in with the predictions of the Usage-Based Model of Change espoused by Bybee and Phillips and those of Andersen’s Markedness Theory of Linguistic Change and show the potential of these models for the analysis of the core issues of the Balkan Sprachbund.

The aim of this paper is to examine Differential Object Marking (DOM) in Balearic Catalan. While definiteness and animacy can explain the distribution of DOM in other varieties of Catalan, in Balearic, the split between marked and non-marked objects is not dependent on inherent or referential properties of the object noun phrases, but determined by topicality. A preposition is consistently used to mark a subset of topical objects, namely those occurring in clitic left- and right-dislocation structures, which correspond to two kinds of hearer-known topics: shifting topics and continuing topics. The preposition does not occur, however, with hanging topics, which introduce discourse-new topical entities. In this way, a correlation can be found between formal properties and well-motivated discourse functions that explains the distribution of DOM in Balearic. Similar patterns can be found in other Romance varieties as well, thus suggesting that topicality is relevant to account for both intra- and interlinguistic variation in DOM.

Recent work by Tania Ionin and colleagues (Ionin et al. 2004a; Ionin et al. 2008) has suggested that native speakers of article-less languages may fluctuate between selecting articles based on definiteness and selecting them based on specificity. This was termed the Fluctuation Hypothesis (Ionin et al. 2004a). The Fluctuation Hypothesis assumes learners to have full access to Universal Grammar (UG) properties, including those which are not instantiated in their L1 grammars. This contrasts with the Failed Functional Features Hypothesis (Hawkins and Chan 1997), now termed the Representational Deficit Hypothesis (Hawkins and Franceschina 2004; Hawkins et al. 2006). This proposes that learners will fail to acquire uninterpretable features, if these are not present in their L1. The current study tests the Fluctuation Hypothesis with two new groups of speakers acquiring languages with definite and indefinite articles which are marked for definiteness, whilst still allowing a semantic distinction between [+specific] and [–specific]. The languages acquired are German, by native speakers of Japanese, a language without articles; and English, by native speakers of Syrian Arabic, a language with an overt marker for definiteness, but not for indefiniteness. Although the initial results seem to indicate that fluctuation may be responsible for optionality amongst these learners, further analysis shows that this variation may be due to other factors.

Indefinite subjects of so-called pivot verbs in Malay can appear on either side of the verb. This paper discusses the following two tendencies concerning their behaviour: (i) the longer the subject is, the more likely it is to occur after the verb; (ii) in adverbial clauses the preferred word order is VS rather than SV. Both of these points are supported by quantitative evidence from a corpus of front-page articles of the daily newspaper Utusan Malaysia. The paper also proposes an explanation for these tendencies by using the functional notion of ‘topic’ and the mechanism of competition. Specifically, tendencies (i) and (ii) above are claimed to result from the competition between the topicality and heaviness of the subject NP, and from the Constraint on ‘Topic-over-Topic’ Configuration (COTC) respectively. The proposed model with competition and COTC is applicable to other phenomena in Malay (apparent violations of the Definiteness Restriction) and other languages (restricted occurrence of the topic marker in some subordinate clauses in Japanese) as well.

In this paper we present the results of a comparison analysis (quantitative and qualitative) of the rates of occurrence of the null article Ø2 against the definite article the referring specifically to the five names of the seasons. Instances of Ø2 in authentic contexts have previously only been minimally described; Chesterman (1991) places Ø2 at a higher level of definiteness than the while Master (1997) describes the choice between Ø2 and the as different degrees of familiarity. A revision of the latter, this paper’s findings — derived from corpus-linguistic analysis using MICASE (spoken) and the Brown corpus (written) — demonstrate that, very generally, when preceding the name of a season, Ø2 indicates a specific point in time or the start of a season while the indicates a period of time. The findings also reaffirm the strength of postmodification in determining the need for the definite article. One implication for English language teaching is discussed.