The definiteness tag has no wiki summary.
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1answer
48 views
Could any one give an example of bare “kind”-denoting relative clause?
There are two kinds of NPs existential and definite. Sometimes NP that we would expect to be existential behave as they are actually definite. One example of such NPs are those that are kind-denoting.
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4
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0answers
102 views
Usage of definite articles in Germanic and Romance languages
In the Germanic languages, a generic construction using the definite article with mass nouns is unacceptable. In contrast, Romance languages require the definite article to make the generic ...
3
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1answer
314 views
Distinction between definiteness and specificity
May I have an example of a language which separately marks definiteness and specificity (or indefiniteness and non-specificity), and also a principled way for deciding which of the two sets of terms ...
3
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1answer
62 views
References on Definiteness
Does anybody happen to know of any good and fairly readily-available surveys of the language-specific semantics of definiteness cross-linguistically? Specifically, I'm interested in all the various ...
13
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5answers
481 views
How is definiteness expressed in languages with no definite article, clitic or affix?
According to WALS Feature 37A: Definite Articles, 198 languages have no definite or indefinite article, and 45 have no definite article but have indefinite articles. These number excludes languages ...
6
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1answer
198 views
What diagnostics distinguish demonstratives from definite articles?
Historically, definite articles are often related to demonstratives.
How might one characterize whether a word in a language is a definite article or a demonstrative?
4
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4answers
228 views
Why is the definite article in Balkan languages always called a suffix when it really seems to be part of the inflection?
The Scandinavian languages have a suffix definite article which is pretty straightforwardly tacked on to to the ends of nouns: -en, -et.
But in languages of the Balkan Sprachbund, Romanian, ...
