Gradual Uniqueness Effect: A Pragmatic Explanation

Gradual Uniqueness Effect: A Pragmatic Explanation The uniqueness effects in definite noun phrases have been the subject of much debate (Heim 1982, Kadmon 1990, Lyons 1999, Szabó 2000, Roberts 2003). Some claim uniqueness is part of the semantics of the definite article, while others derive it pragmatically. Both sides assume that the uniqueness condition is categorical, and so the only thing that matters is whether the number of equally salient candidates is one or more. In this paper I present two cases showing a gradual effect of the cardinality of the group of candidates on the choice of the article. Then I propose a pragmatic analysis explaining the effect. The first case is the use of the articles with body part terms. It has been noticed that non-unique body part terms are frequently used with the definite article. For example, when no previous information identifies the body part, the Spanish sentences (1) and (2) demonstrate a use of the definite article with a non-unique description, since a person usually has two hands and arms. (1) Me duele la mano. ‘My hand hurts.’ (2) Se rompió el brazo. ‘He broke his arm’ or ‘She broke her arm’ I examined the distribution of articles in sentences like (1) and (2), with different body part terms, performing the search on the World Wide Web, using Google search engine. For sentences with 'duele' ('hurts'), percentage of the indefinite article use was 8% for the dual body part terms, 18% for 'dedo' ('finger'), and 61% for 'diente' ('tooth'). Comparable results were obtained for the possessive/indefinite alternation in English; in sentence of the like (3) the percentage of the indefinite article use was 3% for the dual body parts, 29% for 'finger' and 73% for 'tooth'. The conclusion is that the indefinite article is more frequent with higher cardinality body part terms than with the dual body parts. The effect was statistically significant for all the examined languages. Another case is the use of articles with the word co-author. I checked the article used and the actual number of co-authors in a number of sentences with the word 'co-author' taken from book reviews on Amazon.com site. The results showed dependence between the two factors. When there are two coauthors, the indefinite article is rare (2 cases out of 17). The trend is the opposite for the cases with more than two co-authors: the indefinite article is more frequent in such cases (18 out of 23).