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Definite Article Asymmetries and Concept Types: Semantic and Pragmatic Uniqueness

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Frames and Concept Types

Part of the book series: Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy ((SLAP,volume 94))

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to explain the various asymmetries with regard to the (non-)use of definite articles in diverse languages by exploiting the distinction of semantic and pragmatic uniqueness as originally introduced by Löbner (Journal of Semantics 4: 279–326, 1985). I put forward the claim that typologically speaking, there are two kinds of such definite article splits. Both of them follow the scale of uniqueness Löbner (Journal of Semantics 28: 279–333, 2011), a concept hierarchy that is defined by the (in)variance of reference of nominal expressions. The first kind is a split such that the bottom segment of the scale is marked by the definite article, whereas the rest remains unmarked. The second kind of split is characterised by pragmatic and semantic uniqueness being morphosyntactically distinguished by different forms of the definite article, commonly a strong and a reduced form. I propose a few amendments to the scale of uniqueness so that the variation both between and within individual languages is captured in terms of spreading along the scale.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    An example of a split which is not primarily conditioned by conceptual factors is what is known as Definite Article Reduction (DAR) in the dialects of Northern England. Instead, phonological and extra-linguistic factors seem to be more crucial here; see Tagliamonte and Roeder (2009) and the references contained therein.

  2. 2.

    The scale of uniqueness is not to be confused with a hierarchy that is often referred to as the ‘Definiteness Scale’ (cf. Aissen 2003). The latter notion denotes a salience hierarchy that accounts for a variety of grammatical splits concerning (among other things) ergativity and differential object marking.

    As for the labels of the steps on the scale, I stick to the conceptual types themselves, whereas Löbner (2011, p. 320) uses ‘sortal (or functional, rsp.) CNP’ (for ‘common noun phrase’). Löbner furthermore separates “functional CNP with explicit definite possessor” from INs and sets them on a par with SNs with establishing relative clause. In the absence of clear evidence of the significance of possessor phrases for the present study, I conflate individual and functional nouns.

  3. 3.

    As regards the article distribution over grammatical person in Tzutujil Maya, it appears to be the opposite of what would be predicted by the original suggestion. Note however that the form ja(r) is derived from the 3rd person singular of the personal pronoun, jaa’. This may account for its absence with third person pronouns.

  4. 4.

    The view of a deictic opposition as the defining property of demonstratives is, however, explicitly argued against by Lyons (1999: 19f, 55ff), who provides examples both of demonstrative systems without and of article systems with a deictic distinction.

  5. 5.

    Throughout the paper I use the following abbreviations for grammatical categories: acc ‘accusative’, adv ‘adverbial case’, aor ‘aorist’, comp ‘complementizer’, cop ‘copula’, dat ‘dative’, det ‘determiner’, def ‘definite article’, dobj ‘direct object’, erg ‘ergative’, f ‘feminine’,gen ‘genitive’, indef ‘indefinite article’, infl ‘inflectional affix’, loc ‘locative case’, m ‘masculine’, neg ‘negation’, nom ‘nominative’, obl ‘oblique case’, part ‘participle’, past ‘past tense’, pl ‘plural’, pron ‘personal pronoun’, refl ‘reflexive pronoun’, rel ‘relative clause marker’, sg ‘singular’, superl ‘marker of superlative’; 1, 2 and 3 represent first, second and third person.

  6. 6.

    Note that neither of the two Lakota article forms is akin to any of the demonstratives le’ (proximal) and he’ (medial) and ka’ (distal) (Buechel 1939, p. 108). Besides, demonstratives require the presence of an article.

  7. 7.

    See Wespel (2008) for a related, though slightly different generalisation of the split in Lakota, as well as for analyses of definite article splits in two Creole languages.

  8. 8.

    By ‘endophoric’ uniqueness (or autophoric uniqueness, as I will call it) it is meant that the referential anchor is found in the NP itself, typically by means of an establishing relative clause, rather than in terms of an antecedent. On the significance of autophoricity for the split of Alemannic and beyond see Sect. 6.4.

  9. 9.

    Harry Mulisch, De Aanslaag. De Bezige Bij, Amsterdam 1982. Quoted passage on p. 53.

  10. 10.

    Remco Campert, Het leven is verrukkulluk. De Bezige Bij, Amsterdam 1961. Quoted passage on p. 53 of De Bezige Bij Pocket edition, Amsterdam 1994.

  11. 11.

    Arnon Grunberg, Figuranten. Nijgh and Van Ditmar, Amsterdam 1997. Quoted passage on p. 10.

  12. 12.

    What is also syntactically determined is the absence of both free and suffixed articles in case of determination by prenominal possessors, be they possessive pronouns or genitive-marked NPs, irrespective of the conceptual type of the head noun: Swedish (Hän älskar) sin man/sitt barn/sina barn ‘(She loves) her husband/child/children’, familjens bil ‘the family’s car’, Evas bok ‘Eva’s book’, Mammas gula klänning ‘mother’s yellow dress’ (examples taken from Bonner 1985 and Ritte 1986).

  13. 13.

    Special thanks go to Eirik Welo, to whom I owe the Norwegian data used in this section and in 6.3.

  14. 14.

    For completeness, let me briefly touch on two other Scandinavian languages. In Danish, the occurrence of the free article is solely governed by the syntactic condition that is also operative in Swedish and Norwegian, namely the presence of prenominal modifiers. However, the suffixed article is in complementary distribution to the free one rather than co-occuring with it: mand-en ‘the man’ – den gamle mand ‘the old man’. As a consequence, there are no semantically driven contrasts of the sort discussed here. Icelandic differs from Mainland Scandinavian in that free articles are restricted to formal written style. Suffixed articles are obligatory, though; thus gamli maður-inn old man-def ‘the old man’.

  15. 15.

    Crucially, a further kind of article Split II comes into play here which must not go unmentioned: the so-called preproprial articles, that is, articles that are used especially with proper names. For example, Northern Norwegian dialects employ 3rd person pronouns as preproprial articles (Matushansky 2008, p. 581):

    • (i) a. Ho   Marit så   han  Øystein.  b.  Han   Øystein så  ho    Marit.

    •    3sg.f Marit saw 3sg.m Øystein     3sg.m Øystein   saw 3sg.f Marit

    •    ‘Marit saw Øystein.’            ‘Øystein saw Marit.’

    Typologically, preproprial articles are not unusual. They also occur, for example, in Catalan and in many Austronesian languages. Strahan (2008) points out that in Scandinavian adnominal third person pronouns not only serve as genuine preproprial articles but also occur in demonstrative function: han mannen ‘that bloke’. The question arises as to the motivation of a special form for preproprial articles, and why this is the personal pronoun, instead of extending the domain of an already existing article. The rationale seems to lie in the fact that personal pronouns can exclusively be used as ICs with semantically unique reference, hence are located on the lower end of the scale, as are proper names too. Preproprial articles thus go beyond the typology in terms of Split I and Split II in that they give rise to a split originating from the lower end of the scale.

    They can, moreover, give rise to overt three-way splits, as in, e.g., Maori and the Balearic Islands variety of Catalan. According to Hualde (1992) Balearic has the following system: (i) es, sa, ses (< Latin ipse), (ii) (e)l, la, els, les (< Latin ille), restricted to “nouns that have a unique referent” (l.c.: 281); thus: l’Església ‘the (Catholic) Church’ vs. s’església ‘the church (building)’, and (iii) en, na used with proper names (en Joan).

  16. 16.

    In the examples bold type highlights articles, while underscoring the noun signals the absence of an article.

  17. 17.

    Löbner (1985) speaks of ‘endophoric’ rather than autophoric uses. The latter notion seems more adequate since the referential anchor is found in the complex meaning of the NP itself rather than in terms of a following NP. Autophoricity can also be established by other syntactic means such as adnominal PPs (e.g., the man at the door), which I do not consider here.

  18. 18.

    Remco Campert, Het leven is verrukkulluk. De Bezige Bij, Amsterdam 1961. Quoted passages on p102 and p148 of De Bezige Bij Pocket edition, Amsterdam 1994.

  19. 19.

    This section essentially draws on joint work with Tinatin Kiguradze. For a more comprehensive treatment that also highlights the role of the text genre see Ortmann and Kiguradze (2008).

  20. 20.

    The data used in this section are taken from the following sources, to which I refer in the examples by the short titles in square brackets:

  21. 21.

    As in the previous, bold type highlights articles, while their absence is signalled by underscoring the noun.

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Acknowledgements

The work reported here was carried out in the Research Unit FOR 600 “Functional concepts and frames”, sponsored by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Oral versions were presented at the University of Constance, as well as ‘Concept Types and Frames 2009’, Düsseldorf, and ‘A definiteness workshop’, Oslo. I would like to thank the audiences of these occasions, in particular Walter Breu, Chris Lucas, Kjell Johan Sæbø, Arnim von Stechow, Rebekka Studler, and Eirik Welo for their valuable feedback, as well as Winfried Boeder, Maria Cieschinger, Adrian Czardybon, Philipp Elsbrock, Jens Fleischhauer, Thomas Gamerschlag, Doris Gerland, Magdalena Kaufmann, Tinatin Kiguradze, and Sebastian Löbner for helpful discussion. Lastly, thanks are due to two anonymous reviewers for valuable comments and suggestions.

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  1. Department of Linguistics and Information Science, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Universitätsstraße 1, Düsseldorf, 40225, Germany

    Albert Ortmann

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  1. Department of Linguistics and Information Science, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany

    Thomas Gamerschlag

  2. Department of Linguistics and Information Science, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany

    Doris Gerland

  3. Department of Linguistics and Information Science, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany

    Rainer Osswald

  4. Department of Linguistics and Information Science, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany

    Wiebke Petersen

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Ortmann, A. (2014). Definite Article Asymmetries and Concept Types: Semantic and Pragmatic Uniqueness. In: Gamerschlag, T., Gerland, D., Osswald, R., Petersen, W. (eds) Frames and Concept Types. Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, vol 94. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01541-5_13

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