Double Definiteness in Scandinavian

Double definiteness in Scandinavian

Spellout and Double Determination in Mainland Scandinavian

This study considers a contrast in Mainland Scandinavian with respect to co-occurrence of a suffixal and a free-standing determiner ("double determination'') in parallel to a series of contrasts in how the suffixal determiner is realized phonologically. On the basis of the phonological evidence I propose that in Norwegian and Swedish the suffixal determiner does not belong to the same phonologi...

Iterating Definiteness

A central concept in the study of vagueness is the concept of a borderline case. This concept has its most basic application when we are faced with a question of the form ‘Is x F?’, but are unwilling to answer ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ for a certain distinctive kind of reason. Wanting to be co-operative, we need to say something; by saying ‘It’s a borderline case’, we excuse our failure to give a straightf...

Definiteness and implicatures in Tagalog∗

The use of an indefinite NP often implies that the NP’s descriptive content is instantiated by more than one individual. But do indefinites conventionally signal this notion of nonuniqueness or does nonuniqueness arise pragmatically, via reasoning about scalar alternatives? In this paper I argue that in Tagalog, indefinite bare NP patients are only able to implicate nonuniqueness if there is a ...

Definiteness and Indefiniteness *

The prototypes of definiteness and indefiniteness in English are the definite article the and the indefinite article a/an, and singular noun phrases (NPs) determined by them. That being the case it is not to be predicted that the concepts, whatever their content, will extend satisfactorily to other determiners or NP types. However it has become standard to extend these notions. Of the two categ...