Abstract
This paper puts forth an expanded typology of definiteness marking, which includes not only ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ but also ‘super-weak’. It also proposes a methodology for identifying ‘super-weak’ definites, and applies it to Ṭuroyo, an endangered Semitic language. Data from questionnaires and interviews shows that Ṭuroyo’s definite article has a very wide distribution, including anti-uniqueness effects with exclusives, suggesting ‘super-weak’ status. Syntactic factors also affect their distribution: We find definiteness-spreading uses with demonstratives and possessives, even in non-contrastive environments, and superlative adjectives appear to compete for the article’s syntactic position. On the semantic side, we propose that Ṭuroyo’s definiteness-markers are not ‘weak’ but ‘super-weak’ articles. To explain their anaphoric uses, typical of ‘strong’ articles, we propose that the typology is arranged as a cline ordered by entailment, so that stronger articles entail weaker ones.
Highlights
Recent cross-linguistic work on definiteness has revealed subtle differences across languages with respect to the kinds of contrasts that definiteness-markers may encode
We advocate syntactic explanations for the definiteness spreading uses and the absence of the definite article with fronted superlatives, and we propose that definite articles in Ṭuroyo have an underlyingly super-weak semantics
We argue that anaphoric uses are predicted under a weak or super-weak analysis, and more generally that the typology of definite articles is a cline, where stronger articles carry more specific meanings than weaker articles
Summary
Recent cross-linguistic work on definiteness has revealed subtle differences across languages with respect to the kinds of contrasts that definiteness-markers may encode. A Montague (1973)-style translation of the into the typed lambda calculus capturing Frege’s idea can be written as follows: This says that the meaning of the definite article is a function that combines with any property to denote the unique individual satisfying that property, as long as such as exists. Schwarz (2009; 2013) argues that both the uniqueness theory and the familiarity theory are needed, but for different articles The marriage between these approaches can be seen in Schwarz’s lexical entry for the ‘strong’ definite article, which incorporates both discoursefamiliarity and situation-sensitivity:. As discussed in the final section, this view makes the broader typological prediction that weaker articles should generally have a wider distribution than stronger articles, except in the case of blocking by a competing form
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