Semantic Variation and Pleonastic Determiners: The Case of the Plural Definite Generic
نویسنده
چکیده
This paper examines the status of so-called ‘pleonastic’ determiners, focusing on the plural definite generic common in Romance languages. It is noted that every language has generic or kind-denoting terms but such terms vary between bare and definite (rather than indefinite) forms across languages. Canonical and non-canonical uses of definite determiners are distinguished and language variation posited to be a choice about the cut-off points for lexicalization on a universal Scale of Specificity. Studying variation from the perspective of languages without determiners is shown to have interesting consequences for the notion of ‘pleonastic’ determiners.
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