This paper is about the difficulties involved in establishing criteria for definiteness. A number of possibilities are considered – traditional ones such as strength, uniqueness, and familiarity, as well as several which have been suggested in the wake of Montague’s analysis of NPs as generalized quantifiers. My tentative conclusion is that Russell’s uniqueness characteristic (suitably modified...

In this paper, we study the 3D Lamé system and establish its weighted positive definiteness for a certain range of elastic constants. By modifying the general theory developed in [4], we then show, under the assumption of weighted positive definiteness, that the divergence of the classical Wiener integral for a boundary point guarantees the continuity of solutions to the Lamé system at this point.

This paper discusses the interpretation of complex noun phrases. More specifically, it investigates the type of object that a noun phrase 1 denotes. It has been recognized for some time that noun phrases must be able to denote individuals in some circumstances, events in other cases, propositions in still others (Zucchi 1993, Peterson 1997). I will show that, on the one hand, there are various ...