Definiteness and determinacy

Abstract

This paper distinguishes between definiteness and determinacy. Definiteness is seen as a morphological category which, in English, marks a (weak) uniqueness presupposition, while determinacy consists in denoting an individual. Definite descriptions are argued to be fundamentally predicative, presupposing uniqueness but not existence, and to acquire existential import through general type-shifting operations that apply not only to definites, but also indefinites and possessives. Through these shifts, argumental definite descriptions may become either determinate (and thus denote an individual) or indeterminate (functioning as an existential quantifier). The latter option is observed in examples like 'Anna didn't give the only invited talk at the conference', which, on its indeterminate reading, implies that there is nothing in the extension of 'only invited talk at the conference'. The paper also offers a resolution of the issue of whether possessives are inherently indefinite or definite, suggesting that, like indefinites, they do not mark definiteness lexically, but like definites, they typically yield determinate readings due to a general preference for the shifting operation that produces them.

(Morpho)syntactic Variation in Agreement: Specificational Copular Clauses Across Germanic

“…The hallmark of predicational copular clauses like (10a) is that the pre-copular noun phrase, Sarah in (10a), is assigned the property described by the post-copular noun phrase, a genius/the winner in (10a). The post-copular noun phrase does not introduce a referent, even when it is definite (see Coppock and Beaver, 2015 for a recent discussion of the use of definite nominals as predicates). A syntactic diagnostic for predicative copular clauses in English that is often appealed to is that the same predication is felicitous in a small clause, without any instance of the copula: The ungrammaticality of examples like (12a), while frequently cited as following from the status of the small clause as an equative, is however already predicted by the fact that consider is a verb that requires its argument proposition to be open to subjective assessment (Saebø, 2009), and presumably being identical to another entity is not even coercible into a subjective predicate.…”

That’s not quite it: An experimental investigation of (non‑)exhaustivity in clefts

“…In particular, we claim that for definite pseudoclefts in German, deriving exhaustivity with an anaphoric familiarity analysis à la Heim 1982 better captures the results reported here. Following a long list of scholars ranging from Frege (1892) to Coppock & Beaver (2015), definite descriptions in general are commonly treated as triggering a uniqueness presupposition as in (24). (24) 'The NP sg ': Presupposes that the extension of NP has the cardinality smaller or equal to 1.…”

“…As with clefts, these inferences have been hotly debated for definite descriptions too. In particular, the presuppositional status of both the uniqueness inference (e.g., Szabo 2000, Ludlow & Segal 2004) and the existential inference (Coppock & Beaver 2015) has been challenged. Still, the mainstream view seems to be that definite descriptions presuppose both existence and uniqueness.…”

Superlatives in Syrian Arabic

“…This means that the phrase the highest mountain in Kenya does not presuppose the existence of a unique referent, in contrast to a garden variety definite like the 3000m mountain in (3b), which induces a presupposition failure if two mountains meet the description. Further, Coppock and Beaver (2015) point out that superlatives have a predicative use that fails to presuppose existence, as demonstrated by the fact that (3c) is true even if there is no largest prime number. I conclude from these facts that the definite article is in fact interpreted as an indefinite article in absolute superlatives.…”