This study presents a pragmatic viewpoint toward the analysis of definiteness, regarding the universal, primitive notions of topic, theme, focus, emphasis, specificity, reference, and restrictivity as the controlling features of discourse which are coded in derivative syntactic structures such as the Finnish case selection and word order and the English determiner system in irregular ways. The explanation of the English article as a mere marker of definiteness which is to be translated into Finnish as case, word order, and stress variations does not reveal how each language deals with nounrelated discourse functions. But if the pragmatic motivation controlling the expression of definiteness is first analyzed as an organizing principle in the syntax of an utterance, then the language-specific, superficial manifestations can be identified in a more exhaustive manner.The basic hypothesis in the study was that definiteness is a grammatical concept which is derived from the universal pragmatic functions but may not always be established in each language separately as a syntactic category. It was shown how the pragmatic notions of topicality, thematicity, focality, emphasis, specificity, reference, restrictivity,.and presuppositionality interact with the derived features of case, word order, stress, and function words in Finnish. It was observed that due to their biassed typological nature, languages combine the primitives in different ways so that a language which lacks a morphological or lexical system of marking definiteness (Finnish) must allow for more extensive pragmatic control of word order than a language which has an overt article system (English) in order to reflect the pragmatic conditions of an utterance.It was suggested in the study that the primary function of case markings (specifically, the nominative/accusative vs. partitive contrast) in Finnish is not the expression of definiteness through the totality/ partiality contrast and that the order of sentence elements is not always a direct indicator of definiteness or indefiniteness. Instead, the Finnish case selection is a result of pragmatic functions such as topicality, focality, completeness of action, specificity, referentiality, and emphasis, whereas word order in its marked/unmarked forms is related to givenness/newness and thus, topicality/focality. Seven Subject Rules and four Object Rules were formulated to account for the typological limits within which the pragmatic control of sentence elements in Finnish must operate.The study concluded that definiteness is a pragmatic consequence of a number of different things which are not coded in Finnish as they are in English. Whereas English has syntacticized definiteness and Finnish has not, the discourse functions which correspond to Finnish case and word order and the English article system are interpreted pragmatically in ways that are not equivalent between the two languages. Because definiteness is subject to syntactic limitations which themselves are contingent on pragmatic factors,: it is appropriate to speak of definiteness as a derivative function which can be attributed only to languages with an overt article system.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BSU/oai:cardinalscholar.bsu.edu:handle/176871 |
| Date | January 1984 |
| Creators | Hoover, Aija Riitta |
| Contributors | Stahlke, Herbert F. |
| Source Sets | Ball State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Format | 3, v, 262 leaves ; 28 cm. |
| Source | Virtual Press |
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