The aim of the present study is to cast new light on the nature of definiteness marking in Moroccan Arabic (MA). Previous work on the dialect group has described its definiteness system as similar to that of other Arabic varieties, where indefinite entities are unmarked and a "definite article" /l-/ modifies nouns to convey a definite meaning. Such descriptions, however, do not fully account for the behavior of MA nouns in spontaneous natural speech, as found in the small self-collected corpus that informs the study: on one hand, /l-/ can and regularly does co-occur with indefinite meanings; on the other, a number of nouns can exhibit definiteness even in the absence of /l-/. In response to these challenges, the study puts forth an alternate synchronic description the system, arguing that the historical definite article */l-/ has in fact lost its association with definiteness and has instead become lexicalized into an unmarked form of the noun that can appear in any number of semantic contexts. Relatedly, the study argues that the historically indefinite form *Ø has come under heavy syntactic constraints and can best be described as derived from the new unmarked form via a process of phonologically conditioned disfixation, represented {- /l/}. At the same time, MA has also apparently retained an older particle ši and developed an article waħəd, both of which can be used to express different types of indefinite meanings. To support the plausibility of this new description, the study turns to the linguistic history of definiteness in MA, describing how a combination of internal and external impetuses for change likely pushed the dialect toward article loss, a development upon which semantic reanalysis and syntactic restructuring of other forms then followed. If the claim that MA no longer overtly marks definiteness is indeed correct, the study could have a significant impact on work that used previous MA descriptions to make grammaticality judgments, as well as be of value to future work on processes of grammaticalization and language contact. / text

Disertacijoje tyrinėjama apibrėžtumo raiška dviejose tipologiniu požiūriu skirtingose kalbose — lietuvių kalboje, kuri yra neartikelinė ir turi mažai sugramatintą apibrėžtumo raišką, ir danų kalboje, turinčioje išplėtotą apibrėžtumo rodiklių sistemą. Disertacijos tikslas yra palyginti lietuvių kalbos apibrėžtumo rodiklius — apibrėžiamuosius būdvardžius ir gramatėjančius demonstratyvus (artroidus) — su artikelinių kalbų (danų, anglų ir kt.) apibrėžtumo rodikliais. Disertacijoje naudojamasi kontrastyvinės analizės metodu, Hjelmslevo komutacijos testu ir semantinio žemėlapio metodu. Šalia kontrastyvinės pasirinkta ir tipologinė perspektyva siekiant nustatyti universalius apibrėžtumo rodiklių vartosenos tipus, taip pat įvertinti lietuvių bei danų kalbų apibrėžtumo raišką tipologiniame kontekste. Sudaryti lietuvių kalbos apibrėžiamųjų būdvardžių ir danų kalbos apibrėžtumo rodiklių semantiniai žemėlapiai padeda išryškinti apibrėžtumo raiškos šiose kalbose panašumus bei skirtumus. Disertacijoje teigiama, kad įvardžiuotinės būdvardžio formos įvardinė morfema –jis, –ji lietuvių kalboje pagrįstai gali būti laikoma formaliu daiktavardinės frazės apibrėžtumo rodikliu, nes ši morfema visais atvejais žymi daiktavardinės frazės apibrėžtumą, kuris gali būti tiek individo referencijos, tiek tipo (taksonominės) referencijos lygmens. Besiformuojančiu apibrėžtumo rodikliu lietuvių kalboje gali būti laikomi gramatėjantys demonstratyvai (artroidai) tas, ta. / The dissertation investigates definiteness marking in two typologically diverse languages — Lithuanian which is an articleless language and has a partially grammaticalized marking of definiteness and Danish which has a fully developed system of definiteness markers. The aim of the thesis is to compare Lithuanian definiteness markers — definite adjectival forms and emergent articles — to definiteness markers of article languages (Danish, English, etc.). The following methods of analysis were applied in the dissertation: contrastive analysis, L. Hjelmslev’s commutation test and semantic map method. Besides the contrastive perspective, the dissertation also has a typological perspective with the aim of determining the universal usage types of definiteness markers and considering definiteness marking in Lithuanian and Danish in a typological context. The Semantic Map of Lithuanian Definite Adjectivals and the Semantic Map of Definiteness Markers in Danish, which were drawn in the thesis, help to highlight the similarities and differences of definiteness marking in Lithuanian and Danish. In the dissertation, it is argued that the pronominal morpheme –jis, –ji contained in the definite adjectival form can be regarded as a formal marker of definiteness in Lithuanian since in all cases this morpheme marks the definiteness of a noun phrase, whether it is definiteness on the level of individual reference or definiteness on the level of type (taxonomic) reference. The demonstrative tas... [to full text]

The dissertation investigates definiteness marking in two typologically diverse languages — Lithuanian which is an articleless language and has a partially grammaticalized marking of definiteness and Danish which has a fully developed system of definiteness markers. The aim of the thesis is to compare Lithuanian definiteness markers — definite adjectival forms and emergent articles — to definiteness markers of article languages (Danish, English, etc.). The following methods of analysis were applied in the dissertation: contrastive analysis, L. Hjelmslev’s commutation test and semantic map method. Besides the contrastive perspective, the dissertation also has a typological perspective with the aim of determining the universal usage types of definiteness markers and considering definiteness marking in Lithuanian and Danish in a typological context. The Semantic Map of Lithuanian Definite Adjectivals and the Semantic Map of Definiteness Markers in Danish, which were drawn in the thesis, help to highlight the similarities and differences of definiteness marking in Lithuanian and Danish. In the dissertation, it is argued that the pronominal morpheme –jis, –ji contained in the definite adjectival form can be regarded as a formal marker of definiteness in Lithuanian since in all cases this morpheme marks the definiteness of a noun phrase, whether it is definiteness on the level of individual reference or definiteness on the level of type (taxonomic) reference. The demonstrative tas... [to full text] / Disertacijoje tyrinėjama apibrėžtumo raiška dviejose tipologiniu požiūriu skirtingose kalbose — lietuvių kalboje, kuri yra neartikelinė ir turi mažai sugramatintą apibrėžtumo raišką, ir danų kalboje, turinčioje išplėtotą apibrėžtumo rodiklių sistemą. Disertacijos tikslas yra palyginti lietuvių kalbos apibrėžtumo rodiklius — apibrėžiamuosius būdvardžius ir gramatėjančius demonstratyvus (artroidus) — su artikelinių kalbų (danų, anglų ir kt.) apibrėžtumo rodikliais. Disertacijoje naudojamasi kontrastyvinės analizės metodu, Hjelmslevo komutacijos testu ir semantinio žemėlapio metodu. Šalia kontrastyvinės pasirinkta ir tipologinė perspektyva siekiant nustatyti universalius apibrėžtumo rodiklių vartosenos tipus, taip pat įvertinti lietuvių bei danų kalbų apibrėžtumo raišką tipologiniame kontekste. Sudaryti lietuvių kalbos apibrėžiamųjų būdvardžių ir danų kalbos apibrėžtumo rodiklių semantiniai žemėlapiai padeda išryškinti apibrėžtumo raiškos šiose kalbose panašumus bei skirtumus. Disertacijoje teigiama, kad įvardžiuotinės būdvardžio formos įvardinė morfema –jis, –ji lietuvių kalboje pagrįstai gali būti laikoma formaliu daiktavardinės frazės apibrėžtumo rodikliu, nes ši morfema visais atvejais žymi daiktavardinės frazės apibrėžtumą, kuris gali būti tiek individo referencijos, tiek tipo (taksonominės) referencijos lygmens. Besiformuojančiu apibrėžtumo rodikliu lietuvių kalboje gali būti laikomi gramatėjantys demonstratyvai (artroidai) tas, ta.

This thesis offers a contrastive analysis of the notion of definiteness as conveyed by the system of the article in English and Standard Arabic. Definiteness and other notions associated with it are investigated semantically and syntactically in an attempt to discover how these two languages approach such notions and when the two languages converge and diverge in this respect. To this end, corpus analysis is chosen as a means to inspect these ideas. The corpus, The Brook Kerith, by the Irish writer, George Moore, is chosen for geo-historical and literary reasons: the story takes place in the Holy Land at the dawn of this Christian era. A contrastive analysis of the first chapter along with its translation is analyzed from a pragmatic and semantic perspective. The analysis is followed by statistical and computational analyses. It is found that the article "the" and the Arabic article "al' are used for seemingly the same purpose in the proportion of 76%. The occurrence of the article "a/an" is 96% consistent with indefiniteness in Arabic. However, the use of the "zero article" shows discrepancy as whether to use the article "al" or no article in Arabic. In the last analysis, the cognitive operations underlying usage in both languages are similar. The differences are on the level of the semiotic transformation of these deep operations.

This study presents a pragmatic approach to the analysis of definiteness. The expression of definiteness in Korean is analyzed as controlled by the pragmatic motivation to differentiate nouns with respect to their topical relevance and importance.The primary claim of this study is that grammar utilizes formal marking systems not only for making semantic contrasts but also for producing pragmatic distinctions. As an illustration of this claim, the marking vs. lack of marking that determine pragmatic status in Korean is examined, and it is argued that the lack of marking indicates the relative lack of special significance of a given referent as a specific individual, while overt marking indicates the relatively higher significance of an intended referent as a specific individual.Definiteness is shown to be non-distinctive and non-categorical in nature, with five expressions of definiteness coding six degrees of definiteness in a definiteness continuum. This is illustrated in the following diagram:Definiteness ContinuumBare NP ---- com ---- etten ---- han ---- ku ---- Bare NPleastmostThe bare NP to the left comprises nonunique common nouns and the one to the right unique common nouns and proper nouns. In each case, the bare form is viewed as representing the referent in its most general use.It is also shown that definiteness and indefiniteness can coincide in the sense that semantically indefinite NPs can be marked formally as definite in certain contexts. This is explained motivated by the pragmatic need for upgrading the degree of definiteness in order to present it as a more prominent or salient entity. With cases in which both semantically definite referents and semantically indefinite referents are formally presented in the same bare NP form as crucial evidence, it is suggested that the realization and expression of definiteness is motivated only when pragmatic significance requires such a distinction. The study concludes that marking and lack of marking of definiteness in Korean does in fact signal the relative pragmatic importance of the referent in the development of the discourse. / Department of English

This thesis examines the influence of definiteness and movement on Mohawk free word order from the perspective of Government and Binding Theory. On the one hand, Mohawk data show that the relative order of NP's with respect to the verb does not determine definiteness and that the particle ne is not a definite determiner, the language lacking this type of "pure" marker for this feature, all of which contradicts previous claims. It is argued that pragmatic considerations will determine the interpretation of nominals. On the other hand, the evidence shows that there is no movement operation in the production of free word order in Mohawk, unlike in other scrambling languages. The evidence is accounted for by the fact that NP's are base generated in adjunct position (Baker 1991a) and coindexed with pro's in argument position which are licensed by the rich agreement morphology on the verb.

Teilw. zugl.: Diss., 2006. / Includes bibliographical references and index.

This dissertation proposes a uniqueness-based theory of definiteness that accounts for the semantics and the pragmatics of German (non-) contracted forms of a preposition and the definite determiner (e.g. ‘zum / zu dem’, ‘am / an dem’), but the analysis also carries over to definite descriptions in general. I propose that the definite determiner is ambiguous between a referential and a quantificational reading. Crucially, referential DDs exploit information provided in the surrounding linguistic context, while the interpretation of quantificational DDs heavily relies on extra-linguistic world knowledge that can be represented by an implicit free individual variable and an implicit free relation variable. Non-contracted forms are always interpreted referentially, whereas contracted forms receive quantificational interpretations. This proposal has a wide range of applications: It deals with anaphoric and demonstrative DDs, as well as with typical ‘uniqueness uses’ (such as ‘the moon’ or ‘the sun’), covarying DDs involving explicit and implicit antecedents, bridging definites, and, last but not least, so-called Weak Definites.

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