Cross-linguistic quantification: Definite articles vs demonstratives

Abstract

For any language, deciding if or when a set of demonstrative markers has turned into a definite article system is not an easy task. Taking the case of Montagnais, an Eastern Algonquian language, as an empirical grounding, the purpose of this paper is to investigate its ‘demonstrative system’ and to argue that in terms of cross-linguistic quantification the so-called demonstratives should be classified as definite articles. As for many other languages, the descriptive tradition in Algonquian languages has so far been to classify demonstrative noun-determiners as ‘demonstratives that can occasionally function as definite articles’. The result of such an approach is to present Montagnais and its Algonquian cognates as languages not having a definite article system. When adding to that functional approach a cross-linguistic quantificational approach, however, we find that the behaviour of the so-called ‘demonstrative’ category of Montagnais is much more similar to that of definite articles in other languages than to that of demonstrative markers. The cross-linguistic quantificational method is based on the principles of diachrony and textual frequency: if a form X in language A has the same ‘evolutionary genes’ as a form Y in other languages, if it has the same semantic range of application, and if it is used as frequently as a cross-linguistic Y, then we can no longer say that this X ‘functions’ as a Y, but that this X is a Y. In those terms, Montagnais is described as a language having a very long evoluted definite article system, which put this language in between Stage II and Stage III of the Greenberg scale of evolution of definite articles.