Abstract
[full article and abstract in English]
 Definiteness as a grammatical or pragmatic category is usually explained via the act of reference. In this spirit, a definite noun phrase is said to ensure that the hearer can identify the entity to which the NP refers, thus establishing a successful act of communication. The well-known typology of definiteness types developed by Hawkins (1978) relies on this assumption. However, such an explanation fails to clarify all the definite noun phrases in discourse.This paper argues that the information provided in the complex nominal constituent can yield a definite interpretation of the nominal regardless of the hearer’s ability to identify the real-life referent to which the noun refers. Such types of definite noun phrases are subsumed in this article under the term “endophoric definiteness”. I will discuss two subtypes of endophoric definiteness. First, the relational definiteness, based on the notion of reference-point constructions will be discussed. Then I will turn to modificational definiteness where the use of modifiers contribute to the definite interpretation of the nominal. The article focuses on how the endophoric definiteness types function and what strategies can be used to mark them formally. To illustrate this point, I use the qualitative analysis of Romanian data. It shows that a language may have different grammatical patterns for the two subtypes of endophoric definiteness. This formal distinction in linguistic expression shows that relational and modificational definiteness types must be taken into account as contributing, in distinct ways, to the category of definiteness.
Highlights
Definiteness as a grammatical or pragmatic category is usually explained via the act of reference
Many different grammatical frameworks assume that a successful act of reference yields a referential phrase, which represents an unambiguous relationship between the speech units and an extra-linguistic (“real-world”) entity (Hawkins 1978; Haspelmath 1999)
While relational definiteness uses reference-point constructions as the landmark for the trajector profiled by the head nominal, in the case of modificational definiteness, a possible set of referents is limited in such way that the resulting subset can be related to a cognitive ground
Summary
Definiteness as a grammatical or pragmatic category is usually explained via the act of reference. I argue that the information provided in the nominal constituent can yield a definite interpretation of the nominal regardless of the hearer’s ability to identify the reallife referent to which the noun refers. Such types of definite noun phrases are subsumed here under the term “endophoric definiteness”. I will argue that alongside exophoric definiteness, proper to situations where the noun phrase is definite due to some external information, different strategies within the complex nominal constituent can yield a definite noun phrase as well To explain these strategies, I will introduce the terms “relational definiteness” and “modificational definiteness”. I will use Romanian data since Romanian (unlike English) has different grammatical strategies to express instances of relational and modificational definiteness and is useful to prove that the above-mentioned endophoric types of definiteness reflect, from a typological perspective, an important distinction between two different strategies of endophoric definiteness
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
