Reanalyzing Definiteness in Bangla

Bare nominals, classifiers and the representation of definiteness in Bangla

Much attention has been given to the encoding of definiteness in Bangla by means of structures in which the neutral order of classifier preceding noun shown in (1) is inverted to produce a sequence of noun before classifier, as in (2). Such N>CL forms in which no numeral occurs are often referred to as ‘bare classifier’ patterns. See, for example Bhattacharya (1999), Chacon (2012), Jiang (2014)...

Reanalyzing German Correlative Es

Several Germanic languages use correlatives to mark subordination. German is considered to be a prime example of a language realizing correlative constructions to embed finite argument clauses. This paper discusses complex clausal constructions in German that can be identified by a so-called correlative nominal element es (‘it’) and a right-peripheral full clausal argument that is linked to es....

Double definiteness in Scandinavian

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 ...