Two notes on the theory of definiteness

The terms definite and indefinite, when used in relation to NPs, can be handled in two different ways. One can treat definiteness as a formal (syntactico-morphological) category and make use of the syntactic features [±definite], as in Chomsky (1965). One can also go into the question of how definite and indefinite NPs are used, i.e. the question of when and why a (formally) definite NP is preferred to an indefinite one, or vice versa. If we take the latter approach, we are investigating definiteness as a semantico-pragmatic category.