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The aim of this study is to shed light on the learnability regarding usages of three English articles (a, the and zero) among Chinese EFL learners. To this end, three tasks were administered in a pool of 107 participants to examine the extent to which learners can accurately use articles across different semantic contexts as well as the effects of varying proficiency level and discourse mode on learners' article decisions. The results showed that both groups (Group Low and Medium) in this study were likely to commit few errors with respect to article usages that target definiteness and specificity than those in zero-licensing contexts. In addition, inconsistent findings were observed regarding the effect of proficiency level on the variability in learners' article choices. Though significant differences were observed between two discourse modes (exposition and argumentation), it is claimed that NP-licensing contexts rather than shift of discourse mode play a major role in explaining the variances in the accurate use of articles. Furthermore, the findings in the present study will also inspire pedagogical implications.

In his Doppelvortrag (1901), Edmund Husserl introduced two concepts of “definiteness” which have been interpreted as a vindication of his role in the history of completeness. Some commentators defended that the meaning of these notions should be understood as categoricity, while other scholars believed that it is closer to syntactic completeness. A detailed study of the early twentieth-century axiomatics and Husserl’s Doppelvortrag shows, however, that many concepts of completeness were conflated as equivalent. Although “absolute definiteness” was principally an attempt to characterize non-extendible manifolds and axiom systems (different from Hilbert’s axiom of completeness), an absolutely definite theory has a unique model and, thus, it is non-forkable and semantically complete (decidable). Non-forkability and decidability were formally delimited by Fraenkel and Carnap almost three decades later and, in fact, they mentioned Husserl as precursor of the latter. Therefore, this paper contributes to a reassessment of Husserl’s place in the history of logic.

The M-positive definiteness for fourth-order partially symmetric tensors plays important roles in the theory of nonlinear elasticity. Some sufficient conditions of the M-positive definiteness for fourth-order partially symmetric tensors are given based on two new M-eigenvalue inclusion sets for fourth-order partially symmetric tensors. These M-eigenvalue inclusion sets also provide upper bounds for the M-spectral radius of fourth-order partially symmetric tensors.

A recent challenge to Russell’s theory of definite description centers upon the divergent behavior of definites and their Russellian paraphrases in non-extensional contexts. Russellians can meet this challenge, I argue, by incorporating the familiarity theory of definiteness into Russell’s theory. The synthesis of these two seemingly incompatible theories produces a conceptually consistent and empirically powerful framework. As I show, the coalescence of Russellianism and the familiarity theory of definiteness stands as a legitimate alternative to both Traditional Russellianism and alternative semantic frameworks.

The positive definiteness of elasticity tensors plays an important role in the elasticity theory. In this paper, we consider the bi-block symmetric tensors, which contain elasticity tensors as a subclass. First, we define the bi-block M-eigenvalue of a bi-block symmetric tensor, and show that a bi-block symmetric tensor is bi-block positive (semi)definite if and only if its smallest bi-block M-eigenvalue is (nonnegative) positive. Then, we discuss the distribution of bi-block M-eigenvalues, by which we get a sufficient condition for judging bi-block positive (semi)definiteness of the bi-block symmetric tensor involved. Particularly, we show that several classes of bi-block symmetric tensors are bi-block positive definite or bi-block positive semidefinite, including bi-block (strictly) diagonally dominant symmetric tensors and bi-block symmetric (B)B0-tensors. These give easily checkable sufficient conditions for judging bi-block positive (semi)definiteness of a bi-block symmetric tensor. As a byproduct, we also obtain two easily checkable sufficient conditions for the strong ellipticity of elasticity tensors.

When multiple adjectives precede a noun in English, they are often ordered in a way that is implicitly understood by all fluent speakers of the language. Adjective order might be described as a big fat deal, but to describe it as a fat big deal betrays a lack of knowledge of English. Sweet (A New English Grammar: Part II, 1898/1955) proposed two related semantic principles to explain the phenomenon: definiteness of denotation (adjectives that denote a property that is most independent of the modified noun must be placed furthest from that noun) and closeness of adjective/noun in meaning (adjectives that denote properties essential to or inherent in the modified noun are placed closer to the noun). These observational descriptions of the phenomenon have received experimental support (Martin, Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 8(6), 697-704, 1969). However, the issue of why Sweet's rules are true has not yet been solved. I propose, operationalize, test, and find strong support for a simple theory: that prenominal adjective order reflects likely need, the a priori probability that a particular adjective will be needed.

Based on the matrix unfolding technique of a tensor, three easily checkable sufficient conditions for the M-positive definiteness of fourth-order partially symmetric tensors are given. Numerical examples show that the proposed results are efficient.

A Gersgorin-type E-eigenvalue localization set and two Brauer-type E-eigenvalue localization sets for fourth-order tensors are presented. As applications, some sufficient conditions for the positive (semi-)definiteness of fourth-order real symmetric tensors and some upper bounds for the Z-spectral radius of fourth-order weakly symmetric nonnegative tensors are obtained. Finally, numerical examples are given to verify the theoretical results.

Fijian displays a crosslinguistically unusual system of differential object marking (DOM) (Alderete 1998; Aranovich 2013). In typical DOM effects, objects higher in animacy and/or definiteness receive additional morphological marking and appear in higher syntactic positions. In Fijian, however, pronoun and proper name objects, although higher on standard DOM hierarchies, must remain verb-adjacent and surface without an article. This paper argues that this pattern arises because pronoun and proper name objects undergo morphological merger with the verb at PF, which allows a nominal to escape the Case Filter (Levin 2015; Branan 2017). I present evidence that, in contrast, common noun objects in Fijian are structurally reduced, and so do not need Case licensing. As a result, Fijian provides support for an approach to DOM in which objects higher in definiteness/animacy have an additional Case licensing need (e.g. Massam 2001; Danon 2006; Ormazabal and Romero 2013; Kalin 2018), and against theories that rely exclusively on differences in syntactic position or overt marking.

The history of the adjective in Russian manifests the convergence of its declensional paradigm with the declension of non-personal pronouns. The present paper focuses on the sg. masc. ending -ogo, the syncretic Gen.-Acc. that replaces the corresponding ending -ago in Old East Slavic, the ending -ago being the result of prehistoric compounding of the short adjective and the anaphoric pronoun jego. While the development of the adjectival paradigm, separate from that originally shared with nouns, took the compounding route at some stage, it may have not been quite linear, at least in the Acc. case. It is hypothesized that the ending -ogo was not a new substitute for the old Gen. -ago, but rather a variant Acc. form used since antiquity to refer to persons. It may have already emerged in short adjectives, by direct analogy to kogo (Gen.-Acc. of the interrogative-indefinite kŭto ‘who’), independently of the compounding, in the same manner in which the Gen.-Acc. of non-personal pronouns arose. It is proposed that the compound form marked definiteness, and was associated with long active participles, with transitivity and subject-object distinction especially, while -ogo marked personhood in pronouns and in certain pronoun-like adjectives while they were still part of the nominal paradigm.

Using Tagalog as a case study, this paper provides an analysis of a cross-linguistically well attested phenomenon, namely, cases in which a bare NP’s syntactic position is linked to its interpretation as definite or indefinite. Previous approaches to this phenomenon, including analyses of Tagalog, appeal to specialized interpretational rules, such as Diesing’s Mapping Hypothesis. I argue that the patterns fall out of general compositional principles so long as type-shifting operators are available to the grammatical system. I begin by weighing in a long-standing issue for the semantic analysis of Tagalog: the interpretational distinction between genitive and nominative transitive patients. I show that bare NP patients are interpreted as definites if marked with nominative case and as narrow scope indefinites if marked with genitive case. Bare NPs are understood as basically predicative; their quantificational force is determined by their syntactic position. If they are syntactically local to the selecting verb, they are existentially quantified by the verb itself. If they occupy a derived position, such as the subject position, they must type-shift in order to avoid a type-mismatch, generating a definite interpretation. Thus the paper develops a theory of how the position of an NP is linked to its interpretation, as well as providing a compositional treatment of NP-interpretation in a language which lacks definite articles but demonstrates other morphosyntactic strategies for signaling (in)definiteness.

The non-possessive uses of possessive morphology in Uralic languages have been a topic of intense debate (Fraurud 2001; Nikolaeva 2003; Gerland 2014; Janda 2015; E. Kiss and Tanczos to appear). In this paper, I focus on a special use of the poss.3sg suffix in Hungarian constructions such as a hulyeje (the stupid-poss.3sg): lit. ‘its stupid’, meaning ‘that total idiot’. My main claim is that this suffix is an affective demonstrative suffix (Lakoff 1974; Liberman 2008; Potts and Schwarz 2010), and that it has developed as a result of grammaticalization from a full-fledged possessive construction of the form a vilag hulyeje (the world stupid-poss.3sg): lit. ‘the world’s stupid’, meaning: ‘the biggest idiot in the world’. I will show that this gradual process can be reconstructed fairly accurately using historical and contemporary corpora. I also claim that this grammaticalization pathway is very natural as it is based on a set-element relationship which is often expressed by possessive constructions cross-linguistically. I also identify two parameters which facilitate this grammaticalization process: the availability of (silent) pro possessors and the lack of gender agreement on the possessive suffix. Since Uralic languages in general have these parameters, I will argue that this grammaticalization pathway should at least be considered as one of the possible sources of the demonstrative (and definiteness marking) uses of poss.3sg suffixes in Uralic languages. Finally, my results are also an important contribution to the debate on whether demonstratives can be derived from other functional elements through grammaticalization (Plank 1979; Traugott 1982; Himmelmann 1997).

This paper analyzes argument formation in Nuosu Yi, a language that is typologically unusual in having classifiers as well as a definite determiner. Also unusual is the fact that demonstratives do not combine directly with nouns in this language but require the mediation of classifiers. Properties such as these are shown to pose a challenge to current accounts of argument formation. The Neocarlsonian approach of Chierchia (Nat Lang Semant 6:339–405, 1998) explains the absence of definite articles in classifier languages as resulting from considerations of economy. If nouns in classifier languages are names of kinds, they can occur directly as arguments of verbs, thereby obviating the need for extra structure to host a determiner. The data from Nuosu Yi alters the empirical generalization and calls for a modification of the explanation. The specific account of Nuosu Yi that is presented bears on current discussions about the nature of argument formation. Must arguments necessarily occur with overt or covert determiners or is it possible for languages to differ in this respect? Must bare nominal arguments necessarily denote kinds or can they denote properties? In this sense, the discovery of a new type of classifier language contributes to a theory of language variation and argument formation in general.

This paper argues for a particular semantic decomposition of morphological definiteness. I propose that the meaning of ‘the’ comprises two distinct compositional operations. The first builds a set of witnesses that satisfy the restricting noun phrase. The second tests this set for uniqueness. The motivation for decomposing the denotation of the definite determiner in this way comes from split-scope intervention effects. The two components—the selection of witnesses on the one hand and the counting of witnesses on the other—may take effect at different points in the composition of a constituent, and this has non-trivial semantic consequences when other operators inside the DP take action in between them. In particular, I analyze well-known examples of mutually recursive definite descriptions like ‘the rabbit in the hat’ (when there are two rabbits and two hats but only one rabbit in a hat and only one hat with a rabbit in it) as examples of definites whose referent-introducing and referent-testing components are interleaved rather than nested. I further demonstrate that this picture leads to a new theory of relative superlative descriptions like ‘the kid who climbed the highest tree’ (when there is no highest tree per se, only a highest tree-climbing kid), which explains the previously mysterious role of the definite determiner in licensing such readings.

The current study investigated the distinction of L2 (second language) English article choice sensitivity in fifty-three L1-Korean L2-English learners in semantic contexts. In the context of English as a foreign language, the participants were divided into two groups based on grammatical ability as determined by their performance on a cloze test. In addition, a forced-choice elicitation test and a writing production test were administered to assess, respectively, the participants' receptive and productive article choice abilities. Regardless of grammatical ability, the results disclosed the overuse of the indefinite a in the [[Formula: see text]definite, -specific] context and the definite the in the [-definite, [Formula: see text]specific] context on the forced-choice elicitation test. In the [[Formula: see text]definite, [Formula: see text]specific] and [-definite, -specific] contexts, however, the overuse of either the indefinite a or the definite the, respectively, was less likely. Furthermore, it was revealed on the writing test that the participants more accurately used the definite the than the indefinite a, and they were also found to unreasonably omit more articles than to add or substitute articles on the writing production test. The findings across the two tests indicate that L1-Korean L2-English learners are more likely to have intrinsic difficulties transferring their L1 noun phrase (NP) knowledge to L2 NP knowledge owing to structural discrepancies and complex interfaces between L1 NPs and L2 NPs with respect to syntactic, semantic and pragmatic/discourse language subsystems.

Inspired by symmetric Cauchy tensors, we define fourth-order partially symmetric Cauchy tensors with their generating vectors. In this article, we focus on the necessary and sufficient conditions for the M-positive semi-definiteness and M-positive definiteness of fourth-order Cauchy tensors. Moreover, the necessary and sufficient conditions of the strong ellipticity conditions for fourth-order Cauchy tensors are obtained. Furthermore, fourth-order Cauchy tensors are M-positive semi-definite if and only if the homogeneous polynomial for fourth-order Cauchy tensors is monotonically increasing. Several M-eigenvalue inclusion theorems and spectral properties of fourth-order Cauchy tensors are discussed. A power method is proposed to compute the smallest and the largest M-eigenvalues of fourth-order Cauchy tensors. The given numerical experiments show the effectiveness of the proposed method.

This paper analyzes nominal phrases in Swedish with a definite article but no definite suffix on the head noun, which we call quasi-definites (e.g. det storsta intresse ‘the greatest interest’). These diverge from the usual ‘double definiteness’ pattern where the article and the suffix co-occur (e.g. det storsta intresse-t ‘the greatest interest-def’). We give several diagnostics showing that this pattern arises only with superlatives on an elative (‘to a very high degree’) interpretation, and that quasi-definites behave semantically as indefinites, although they have limited scope options and are resistant to polarity reversals. Rather than treating the article and the suffix as marking different aspects of definiteness, we propose that both are markers of uniqueness and that the definite article signals definiteness that is confined to the adjectival phrase and combines with a predicate of degrees rather than individuals in this construction. The reason that quasi-definites do not behave precisely as ordinary indefinites has to do with their pragmatics: Like emphatic negative polarity items, elative superlatives require that the assertion be stronger (≈ more surprising) than alternatives formed by replacing the highest degree with lower degrees, and have a preference for entailment scales.

This paper presents a new analysis of Japanese and Korean topic markers, focusing on their mismatch in written narrative discourse. We argue against the common assumption that the Japanese topic marker wa and the Korean topic marker nun exhibit equivalent structural, semantic, and discourse-pragmatic properties by showing that they in fact involve different types of definiteness. In particular, we argue that the Korean topic marker encodes “episode-old” entities; it can only refer back to an entity that has been mentioned in the current episode, and an old entity is often re-introduced using the nominative marker ka across an episode boundary. On the other hand, the Japanese topic marker marks “hearer-old” entities; it often refers to an entity that is not explicitly mentioned but still inferred or assumed to be in the common ground. We present the evidence obtained from a comparison of Bible translations in Japanese and Korean and picture-elicited written narratives.

This paper proposes an analysis of unagreement, a phenomenon involving an apparent mismatch between a definite third person plural subject and first or second person plural subject agreement observed in various null subject languages (e.g. Spanish, Modern Greek and Bulgarian), but notoriously absent in others (e.g. Italian, European Portuguese). A cross-linguistic correlation between unagreement and the structure of adnominal pronoun constructions suggests that the availability of unagreement depends on whether person and definiteness are hosted by separate heads (in languages like Greek) or bundled on a single head (i.e. pronominal determiners in languages like Italian). Null spell-out of the head hosting person features high in the extended nominal projection of the subject leads to unagreement. The lack of unagreement in languages with pronominal determiners results from the interaction of their syntactic structure with the properties of the vocabulary items realising the head encoding both person and definiteness. The analysis provides a principled explanation for the cross-linguistic distribution of unagreement and suggests a unified framework for deriving unagreement, adnominal pronoun constructions, personal pronouns and pro.

In a range of Indo-European languages (Romance, Albanian, Iranian, Indo-Aryan), the same oblique case (‘dative’) is associated with indirect objects and with animate/definite direct objects, independently of the particular morphology employed to spell out the oblique (inflectional or pre/postpositional). We argue that there is a syntactic category dative coinciding with the morphological one and encompassing both goal dative and definiteness/animacy dative. We provide a characterization of goal dative as an elementary predicate introducing a part-whole (i.e. possession) relation, arguing that the definiteness/animacy dative is an instance of this elementary predicate. Evidence sometimes used against the unification proposed (e.g. passives, agreement) admits of, or requires, other explanations.

Made available in DSpace on 2022-04-28T19:01:24Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2016-06-01 In the first year of the twentieth century, in Gottingen, Husserl delivered two talks dealing with a problem that proved central in his philosophical development, that of imaginary elements in mathematics. In order to solve this problem Husserl introduced a logical notion, called “definiteness”, and variants of it, that are somehow related, he claimed, to Hilbert’s notions of completeness. Many different interpretations of what precisely Husserl meant by this notion, and its relations with Hilbert’s ones, have been proposed, but no consensus has been reached. In this paper I approach this question afresh and thoroughly, taking into consideration not only the relevant texts and context, as others have also done before, but, more importantly, Husserl’s philosophy, his intuition-based epistemology in particular. Based on a system of clearly defined concepts that I here present, I reinforce an interpretation—definiteness as a form of syntactic completeness—that has, I believe, some advantages vis-à-vis alternative interpretations. It is in conformity with the available texts; it makes clear that Husserl’s notion of definiteness is indeed close to Hilbert’s notions of completeness; it solves the important problem of imaginaries for which it was created; and last, but not least, it fits naturally into Husserl’s system of concepts and ideas. Department of Mathematics University of the State of São Paulo, Av. Quatro, 436, apt. 52

The paper traces the development and the role of syntactic reduction in Edmund Husserl’s (1856–1938) early writings on mathematics and logic, especially on arithmetic. The notion has its origin in Hermann Hankel’s (1839–1873) principle of permanence that Husserl set out to clarify. In Husserl’s early texts the emphasis of the reductions was meant to guarantee the consistency of the extended algorithm. Around the turn of the century Husserl uses the same idea in his conception of definiteness of what he calls “mathematical manifolds.” The paper argues that the notion anticipates the notion of reduction in term rewrite theory in computer science. The role of the reduction for Husserl is, however, primarily epistemological: its purpose is to impart clarity to (at least parts of) formal mathematics.

This article explores the synchronic variation between the nominative-accusative (NA) and genitive-accusative (GA) in the oldest layer of canonical Old Church Slavonic (OCS), using parallel Greek and OCS data with principled information status annotation. Firstly, the data are used to clarify the claims made about the pragmatic properties of the alternation in the previous literature. There is a good case for claiming that OCS GA marking functions as a limited type of definiteness marking, i.e. that GA objects will nearly always be previously mentioned or contextually accessible. Secondly, the data are used to examine whether the GA–NA variation correlates with any other discourse properties known to be important in differential object marking systems. The NA is found to be a marker of referential persistence: a new referent will typically be NA-marked if it is an important participant in the further narrative. Third, the focus is shifted to the relationship between subject and object properties. There are indications that the GA is preferred even with new object referents if the subject has low prominence. Thus, the variation is best understood as a situation of differential object marking conditioned by several discourse properties: definiteness, referential persistence and perhaps subject-object asymmetry.

The article discusses the relation between two intuitive properties of time, namely its flow and branching. Both properties are introduced first in an informal way and compared. The conclusion of this informal analysis is that the two properties do not entail each other nor are they in contradiction. In order to verify this, we briefly introduced the branching temporal structures called branching space-time, branching continuation and their versions Minkowski branching structure and branching time with Instants. Two possible ways how to formalize flow of time are given, one based on the definition of flow of time from temporal logics and the other based on relativistic physics. The latter is used to define flow of time with the use of linearly ordered points on worldines while respecting the ontological definiteness given by the difference of the past and the future. This is formalized in each of the branching models and it is concluded by comparing the resulting properties that branching and flow, even in the formal sense, do not entail each other. However, notions connected with flow of time represent a useful basis for semantics of the branching models.

In this paper we claim that Bare Nominals in Brazilian Portuguese come in two shapes. Real BNs, by which we mean bare count nouns not specified for number and definiteness, correspond to NPs that can only occur as objects of a reduced class of predicates (namely, those that express a have-relation) and are interpreted as property-type expressions. Other BNs can be definite and, although not morphophonologically specified for number, they are DPs with null Determiners morphosyntactically specified for Number features and are interpreted as entity-type expressions. We base our analysis on the distribution and meaning of BNs, by comparing BrP with other Romance languages, mainly (Old and Modern) French on the one hand, and Spanish and Catalan on the other.

This paper offers a semantically-based solution to the problem of predicting whether a verb will display the subjective conjugation or the objective conjugation in Hungarian. This alternation correlates with the definiteness of the object, but definiteness is not a completely reliable indicator of the subjective/objective alternation, nor is specificity. A prominent view is that the subjective/objective alternation is conditioned by the syntactic category of the object, but this view has also been shown to be untenable. This paper offers a semantic solution: If the referential argument of a phrase is lexically specified as familiar/new, then the phrase bears the feature [+DEF]/[−DEF], and this feature governs the conjugations. The notions of novelty and familiarity are made precise using a compositional version of DRT in the context of a suitably large fragment of Hungarian, including local and non-local personal pronouns, demonstratives, definite and indefinite articles, quantifiers, wh-words, numerals, and possessives.

The paper starts from a phenomenology of violence that reconsiders the phenomenal contours of the seemingly opposed concepts of violence, on the one hand physical violence and on the other hand structural violence. We argue that the implied definiteness of their reciprocal separableness is not given. Instead, violence should be understood as the negation of sociality. As such, it is closely related to a basic form of trust in relation to people’s self-awareness, and their relation to others and to the world. It operates as a background assumption that can only be grasped ex negativo. Shattered trust is induced by interpersonal violence. That is why we focus on traumatizing and traumatic experiences and its social implications. We argue that such an analysis is only rarely done within the discipline of sociology and we therefore suggest a systematic heuristic to study the social implications of traumata. Researching those implications in turn helps us to understand the phenomenon of violence and (basic) trust alike.

The Germanic languages display a remarkable range of variation with respect to the interaction of the definite article and adjectival modification. In Swedish, Norwegian, and Faroese, adjectival modification causes, for instance, a doubling of the definite article. In languages like English, Dutch, and German, however, the definite article does not double. In addition to these two patterns, two other patterns can be distinguished (instantiated by Icelandic and Danish respectively). Despite this wide range of variation, I claim that that the syntactic derivation of definite DPs with an adjective is uniform across all Germanic languages. I argue that the presence of an adjective triggers movement of D over the adjective in order to meet the licensing requirement of the adjective. I argue that the cross-linguistic variation should be attributed to two non-syntactic factors. The first factor is whether the definite article is an affix or a free morpheme. The second one is the ordering of operations in a post-syntactic morphological component of the grammar. As far as the latter factor is concerned, I propose that two operations in this component, Chain Reduction and Local Dislocation, are not inherently ordered with respect to each other. Instead, languages display parametric variation with regard to which of these two operations is applied first. In combination with differences with respect to the first factor mentioned above, this accounts for the attested variation in definiteness marking. It also offers interesting new insights into the cross-linguistic distribution of possessor doubling.

Verbal agreement is normally in person, number and gender, but Hungarian verbs agree with their objects in definiteness instead: a Hungarian verb appears in the objective conjugation when it governs a definite object. The sensitivity of the objective conjugation suffixes to the definiteness of the object has been attributed to the supposition that they function as incorporated object pronouns (Szamosi 1974; den Dikken 2006), but we argue instead that they are agreement markers registering the object’s formal, not semantic, definiteness. Evidence comes from anaphoric binding, null anaphora (pro-drop), extraction islands, and the insensitivity of the objective conjugation to any of the factors known to condition the use of affixal and clitic pronominals. We propose that the objective conjugation is triggered by a formal definiteness feature and offer a grammar that determines, for a given complement of a verb, whether it triggers the objective conjugation on the verb. Although the objective conjugation suffixes are not pronominal, they are thought to derive historically from incorporated pronouns (Hajdu 1972), and we suggest that while referentiality and ϕ-features were largely lost, an association with topicality led to a formal condition of object definiteness. The result is an agreement marker that lacks ϕ-features.

We offer a formal account of the English past tenses. We see the perfect as having reference time at speech time and the preterite as having reference time at event time. We formalize four constraints on reference time, which we bundle together under the term ‘perspective’. Once these constraints are satisfied at the different reference times of the perfect and preterite, the contrasting functions of these tenses are explained. Thus we can account formally for the ‘definiteness effect’ and the ‘lifetime effect’ of the perfect, for the fact that the perfect seems to ‘explain’ something about the present, and that the perfect cannot presuppose a past time point. We explain why perfect and preterite can sometimes be interchangeable, and we offer a solution to the ’present perfect puzzle’. We explain the unacceptability of notorious examples of the perfect such as *Gutenberg has discovered the art of printing. We give greater definition to the familiar notions of ‘current relevance’ and ‘extended now’

This paper addresses the question of the definite article in 17th century Russian from the perspective of grammaticalization theory. Using two different chains of grammaticalization, I analyze the anaphoric and exophoric functions of demonstrative pronouns in the works of Avvakum, in the autobiography of Epiphany, in Opisanie tureckoj imperii and—for heuristic reasons—in Žitie i xoždenie igumena Daniila iz Russkoj zemli. My analysis shows that Epiphany’s autobiography, Opisanie tureckoj imperii and Xoždenie igumena Daniila do not have anaphoric or exophoric articles. Avvakum’s language, however, is different. While there is no evidence for anaphoric articles, there are indeed traces of exophoric articles (‘article of definiteness’) in some of his works.

This paper examines multiple-classifier constructions in Chinese, in which two classifiers are stacked in one nominal position. The following three properties are found in these constructions: (i) strict linear ordering between different types of classifiers, (ii) definiteness/specificity of the lower DP, and (iii) obligatory non-distributive readings. The properties of multiple-classifier constructions allow us to study the syntax and semantics of nominal expressions in Chinese from a novel point of view. We argue that, syntactically, and against the bare NP analysis in Chierchia (in: Rothstein S (ed) Events and grammar, Kluwer, Dordrecht, pp 53–103, 1998a, Nat Lang Semant 6:339–405, 1998b) and the Classifier Phrase analysis in Cheng and Sybesma (Linguist Inq 30:509–542, 1999; in: Cinque G, Kayne R (ed) The Oxford handbook of comparative syntax, Oxford University Press, pp 259–292, 2005), from the properties of multiple-classifier constructions, a universal DP analysis is favored (as in Li, Linguist Inq 29: 693–702, 1998). Incorporating the theories in Zamparelli (in: Alexiadou A, Wilder C (eds) Linguistics today: possessors, predicates and movement in the determiner phrase, vol 22, John Benjamins, Amsterdam, pp 259–301, 1998) and Dayal (Linguist Philos 27:393–450, 2004), we demonstrate that a generalized Chierchian approach (without his semantic parameter) best captures the syntax–semantics mappings within nominal expressions in Chinese. From a compositional semantic point of view, we argue that multiple-classifier constructions should be treated as an instance of partitive construction with an empty partitive head. The hypothesis of an empty partitive head not only accounts for the properties of the multiple-classifier constructions, but it also offers explanations for the asymmetry of partitive readings in Chinese relative clauses.

The naturalness with which case ellipsis occurs in certain environments in Korean has been attributed to the information status and markedness of arguments. In recent accounts of case ellipsis in colloquial Korean proposed by Lee (Lang Res 42:323–355, 2006a; J Pragmat 39:1465–1481, 2007) and Kim (PhD dissertation, 2008), the effects of these factors on case ellipsis have been subsumed under iconicity of complexity. In this paper we argue that iconicity plays no role in stating and explaining patterns of variation in case ellipsis and propose an alternative usage-based explanation in terms of economy. This proposal subsumes and clarifies previous findings about the influence of the factors of contrastiveness, animacy, and definiteness and connects these findings to asymmetries in frequency and predictability. In addition, the economy account leads to a number of other predictions that the iconicity account does not make, including differences in the direction of the effects of contrastiveness and animacy/definiteness and differences between subject and object marking. Using evidence from two rating experiments, this paper also demonstrates that preference for case ellipsis on three subtypes of focused objects (selecting, replacing, and informational focus) increases relative to the degree of predictability whereas average ratings between sentences with these subtypes of focus subjects do not show a statistically significant difference. This finding is not consistent with the prediction of the iconicity-of-the-complexity principle and cannot be accounted for in terms of the dichotomous distinction between contrastive vs. non-contrastive focus. This paper is the first demonstration that the gradient pattern of case ellipsis shown by subtypes of focus can be explained in terms of asymmetries in frequency and predictability, i.e., the economy principle, and suggests that it may be possible to explain the effects of information structural factors and animacy/definiteness on the ellipsis of case markers for both focused and non-focus arguments entirely through the economy principle.

This paper investigates the syntax of existential sentences in Tagalog. It argues that existential sentences in Tagalog are formed on the basis of an unaccusative predicate that selects a noun phrase as its sole internal argument. The positive arguments for this analysis also argue against a small clause analysis of existential sentences in Tagalog (as proposed, for other languages, in work by Stowell 1978, 1981; Chomsky 1981, 1986; Safir 1985; Hoekstra and Mulder 1990; Lasnik 1992; Moro 1997; among others). Additionally, this paper argues for an analysis of the definiteness effect in which the restriction follows from the requirement that the noun phrase that occurs in existential sentences (i.e., the “pivot”) be a property denoting object. This proposal not only accounts for the class of noun phrases that are acceptable in Tagalog existential sentences, but also helps to shed light on various morphosyntactic aspects of existential sentences in the language, relating—in particular—to their impersonal clause structure, morphological case, as well as other properties.

This article compares aspectual usage in contexts of negation in Russian and Czech narratives. It examines the four possible aspectual correspondences: Russian imperfective : Czech imperfective (common), Russian perfective : Czech perfective (common), Russian imperfective : Czech perfective (frequent), and Russian perfective : Czech imperfective (infrequent). The data is argued to support the hypothesis that aspect in Czech primarily expresses a distinction in totality, whereas aspect in Russian expresses a distinction in temporal definiteness. Aspectual usage in contexts of negated repetition is also examined. The question of grounding is considered in light of the comparative data, and it is found that previous views of grounding with regard to aspect and negation can be replaced by a more nuanced sense of grounding that accommodates variation across languages. Finally, data from other Slavic languages are adduced, which indicate that the differences discussed between Czech and Russian are symptomatic of the overall east-west division in Slavic aspect established by Dickey (2000).

This paper considers the meaning and use of the English particle man. It is shown that the particle does quite different things when it appears in sentence-initial and sentence-final position; the first use involves expression of an emotional attitude as well as, on a particular intonation, intensification; this use is analyzed using a semantics for degree predicates along with a separate dimension for the expressive aspect. Further restrictions on modification with the sentence-initial particle involving monotonicity and evidence are introduced and analyzed. The sentence-final use can be viewed as strengthening the action performed by the sentence. A formal semantics is given by making use of dynamic techniques and, in a sense, dynamically simulating the modification of certain speech acts. Some empirical and theoretical extensions of the analyses are proposed and some consequences discussed.

This paper addresses one of the least studied, although very important, problems of machine translation--the problem of morphological mismatches between languages and their handling during transfer. The level at which we assume transfer to be carried out is the Deep-Syntactic Structure (DSyntS) as proposed in the Meaning-Text Theory. DSyntS is abstract enough to avoid all types of surface morphological divergences. For the remaining `genuine' divergences between grammatical significations, we propose a morphological transfer model. To illustrate this model, we apply it to the transfer of grammemes of definiteness and aspect for the language pair Russian---German and German---Russian, respectively.

This paper investigates relative constructions as in The gifted mathematician that you claim to be should be able to solve this equation, in which the head noun (gifted mathematician) is semantically dependent on an intensional operator in the relative clause (claim), even though it is not c-commanded by it. This is the kind of situation that has led, within models of linguistic description that assume a syntactic level of Logical Form, to analyses in which the head noun is interpreted within the CP-internal gap by reconstruction or interpretation of a lower element of a chain. We offer a solution that views surface representation as the input to semantics. The apparent inverted scope effects are traced back to the interpretation of the head nominal gifted mathematician as applying to individual concepts, and of the relative clause that you claim to be as including an equational statement. According to this view, the complex DP in question refers to the individual concept that exists just in the worlds that are compatible with what is generally supposed to be the case, is a gifted mathematician in those worlds, and is identical to you in those worlds. Our solution is related to the nonreconstructionist analysis of binding of pronouns that do not stand in a c-command relationship to their binder, as in The woman that every man hugged was his mother in Jacobson (in: Harvey, Santelmann (eds.) Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory IV:161–178, 1994) and Sharvit (in: Galloway, Spence (eds.) Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory VI:227–244, 1996), and allows us to capture both similarities with and differences from the latter type of construction. We point out and offer explanations for a number of properties of such relative clauses—in particular their need for an internal intensional operator, their incompatibility with any determiner other than the definite article, and the fact that some of their properties are shared by demonstrably distinct kinds of relative clauses.

Husserl’s notion of definiteness, i.e., completeness is crucial to understanding Husserl’s view of logic, and consequently several related philosophical views, such as his argument against psychologism, his notion of ideality, and his view of formal ontology. Initially Husserl developed the notion of definiteness to clarify Hermann Hankel’s ‘principle of permanence’. One of the first attempts at formulating definiteness can be found in the Philosophy of Arithmetic, where definiteness serves the purpose of the modern notion of ‘soundness’ and leads Husserl to a ‘computational’ view of logic. Inspired by Gauss and Grassmann Husserl then undertakes a further investigation of theories of manifolds. When Husserl subsequently renounces psychologism and changes his view of logic, his idea of definiteness also develops. The notion of definiteness is discussed most extensively in the pair of lectures Husserl gave in front of the mathematical society in Gottingen (1901). A detailed analysis of the lectures, together with an elaboration of Husserl’s lectures on logic beginning in 1895, shows that Husserl meant by definiteness what is today called ‘categoricity’. In so doing Husserl was not doing anything particularly original; since Dedekind’s ‘Was sind und sollen die Zahlen’ (1888) the notion was ‘in the air’. It also characterizes Hilbert’s (1900) notion of completeness. In the end, Husserl’s view of definiteness is discussed in light of Godel’s (1931) incompleteness results.

This paper argues for the reality of specificity as noteworthiness, a concept built upon Fodor and Sag’s (1982) view of referentiality. Support for this view of specificity comes from the behavior of indefinite this in spoken English, as well as from specificity markers in Samoan, Hebrew, and Sissala. It is shown that the conditions on the use of this-indefinites cannot be accounted for by previous analyses of specificity. The relationship between definiteness and specificity in article systems crosslinguistically is examined, and a distinction between presuppositions and felicity conditions is argued for. Additional evidence for the reality of specificity comes from a study of article choice in the English of adult second language learners (whose L1s, Russian and Korean, lack articles). It is shown that the learners’ errors are tied to specificity: they consist largely of overuse of the in specific indefinite contexts, and overuse of a in non-specific definite contexts. It is concluded that specificity is a universal semantic distinction, which receives morphological expression crosslinguistically and is available to second language learners.

This study develops a method for determining optimal design embodiments under the following assumptions: (1) the design approach involves the axiomatic design theory and (2) the design-relevant information refers to a designer’s intuition, expressible as f-granular information. The optimal design embodiments are then obtained by determining such optimal set of crisp points having definiteness positions close to each other. Here, a crisp point means a value of one of the parameters needed to specify the design. The definiteness position of a crisp point depends on two factors: (1) how much a designer knows about this point, and (2) how desirable it is to design the actual product. The usefulness of the proposed method is demonstrated by an example that involves both weight and dimension measures. As axiomatic-design-theoretic practices move further into the age of design automation, various machine intelligence techniques capable of computing qualitative information (f-granular information) rather than numbers (numerical or semi-numerical information) will be needed. This study is intended to further such investigations.

The symmetry of singular Hamiltonian differential operators is proved under the standard "definiteness condition", which is strictly weaker than the densely definite condition used by A. M. Krall. Meanwhile, some properties of deficiency indices are given.

In Counterfactuals David Lewis noticed that definite descriptions and conditionals display the same kind of non-monotonic behavior. We take his observation literally and suggest that if-clauses are, quite simply, definite descriptions of possible worlds [related ideas are developed in M. Bittner (2001) Proceedings from SALT XI, CLC, Cornell University, Ithaca, pp. 36–55]. We depart from Lewis,s analysis, however, in claiming that if-clauses, like Strawsonian definite descriptions, refer. We develop our analysis by drawing both on Stalnaker,s Selection Function theory of conditionals and on von Heusinger,s Choice Function theory of definiteness, and by generalizing their analyses to plural Choice/Selection Functions. Finally, we explore some consequences of this referential approach: being definites, if-clauses can be topicalized; the word then can be analyzed as a pronoun that doubles the referential term; the syntactician,s Binding Theory constrains possible anaphoric relations between the if-clause and the word then; and general systems of referential classification can be applied to situate the denotation of the descriptive term, yielding a distinction between indicative, subjunctive and ‘double subjunctive’ conditionals.

This paper explores the link between number marking and(in)definiteness in nominals and their interpretation. Differencesbetween bare singulars and plurals in languages without determinersare explained by treating bare nominals as kind terms. Differencesarise, it is argued, because singular and plural kinds relatedifferently to their instantiations. In languages with determiners,singular kinds typically occur with the definite determiner, butplural/mass kinds can be bare in some languages and definite inothers. An account of singular kinds in terms of taxonomic readingsis proposed, with number marking playing a crucial role inexplaining the obligatory presence of the determiner. The variationbetween languages with respect to plural/mass kinds is explained bypositing a universal scale of definiteness, with individual languageschoosing different cut-off points for lexicalization of the definitedeterminer. The possibility of further cross-linguistic variation isalso considered.

This paper provides a semantic analysis of morphological plurals with the suffix -tati in Japanese. Although many of the previous analyses treat a -tati plural on a par with a -men plural in Mandarin Chinese, which is inherently definite, we present ample evidence that a -tati plural is unmarked for definiteness. Instead, we analyze a -tati plural as a non-uniform plural whose extension can include entities that are not in the extension of the common noun to which -tati is attached. This proposal proves extremely successful in accounting for a variety of otherwise puzzling properties of a -tati plural, including the lack of generic/kind readings and the tendency to take wide scope.

We study the question of which optimization problems can be optimally or approximately solved by “greedy” or “greedy-like” algorithms. For definiteness, we limit the present discussion to some well-studied scheduling problems although the underlying issues apply in a much more general setting. Of course, the main benefit of greedy algorithms lies in both their conceptual simplicity and their computational efficiency. Based on the experience from online competitive analysis, it seems plausible that we should be able to derive approximation bounds for “greedy-like” algorithms exploiting only the conceptual simplicity of these algorithms. To this end, we need (and will provide) a precise definition of what we mean by greedy and greedy-like.

In this paper I propose and defend a semantically based account of the distribution of DPs in existential there-sentences in English in opposition to the pragmatic account proposed in Zucchi (1995). The two analyses share many features, making it possible to study variation along the semantics/pragmatics dimension while holding the rest constant.

A formal approach to the typology of differential object marking (DOM) is developed within the framework of Optimality Theory. The functional/typological literature has established that variation in DOM is structured by the dimensions of animacy and definiteness, with degree of prominence on these dimensions directly correlated with the likelihood of overt case-marking. In the present analysis, the degree to which DOM penetrates the class of objects reflects the tension between two types of principles. One involves iconicity: the more marked a direct object qua object, the more likely it is to be overtly case-marked. The other is a principle of economy: avoid case-marking. The tension between the two principles is resolved differently in different languages, as determined by language-particular ranking of the corresponding constraints. Constraints expressing object markedness are derived throughharmonic alignment of prominence scales. Harmonic alignment predicts a corresponding phenomenon ofdifferential subject marking. This too exists, though in a less articulated form.

This article investigates genitive compounds, a special type of NN compound found in West Frisian and some other languages/dialects on the North Sea littoral. Genitive compounds show a number of properties distinguishing them from normal NN compounds, the most striking of which is the obligatory definiteness/specificity of their first element and, as a consequence, of the compound as a whole. These properties can be accounted for if genitive compounds are analyzed as phrases moving towards word status. Historically they derive from the Old Frisian prenominal genitive construction, and it is shown that they still are a kind of prenominal genitive construction today, albeit heavily lexicalized, i.e., subject to lexical principles and containing specifically lexical elements. Since some of the phrasal elements in genitive compounds do not occur in syntax proper and since their definiteness produces a blocking effect on normal NN compounds, they seem to provide evidence for the concept of lexical phrases, potentially productive phrasal patterns in the lexicon.

The concept of a quasi-homogeneous polynomial is introduced. Tests of the sign definiteness of quasi-homogeneous polynomials in space Rn and in any octant of this space are formulated. Applications to the stability analysis of certain nonlinear systems are discussed.