When: Tuesday, May 21, 2024, 2:00 PM - 4:00 PMWhere: Arts Two 2.17 and online, Mile End campus
Workshop 2: Demonstratives, Definites, Bare Nouns: What Competes with What
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Many languages, including the most familiar Indo-European languages, have article systems. The division of labor between the definite and the indefinite article has posed a real challenge for formal accounts. Given the complexity of article systems, the fact that as many languages lack either one or both articles poses interesting questions for universal grammar. Do article-less languages have the same expressive power as articled languages? And if they do, why do languages develop articles at all?
Since the influential work of Schwarz (2009), the idea that definite articles come in two forms (a strong familiarity-based version and a weak uniqueness-based version) has been embraced in cross-linguistic studies of nominal systems. Of course, most languages do not show such a split at the lexical level, in fact, only a very few do (Fering and German, most famously). What has been attested robustly across languages is a division of labor between either one definite determiner and a demonstrative (English) or a bare noun and a demonstrative (Mandarin). And once demonstratives are included in the mix, then Fering and German have to be classified as having a three-way split in definiteness, and English and Mandarin once again have to play lexical catch-up. Or do they?
In this workshop, I introduce the neo-Carlsonian account of bare nominals/kind terms in order to ground the discussion of bare nouns in languages that have articles (English, Italian, Akan) as well as those that do not (Russian, Hindi, Xhosa). I also take into account aspects of the semantics of definites and demonstratives to show that the distribution of definite forms can be predicted on the basis of the meanings of demonstratives, bare nouns and definites, in combination with standard theories of competition namely, Blocking and Maximize Presupposition.
There are two conclusions that we come to when the perspective is shifted from looking for the two-way German-like split in every new language we consider, to analyzing each exponent in a new language on its own terms against a theory of competition. The first discovery is that we know very little about how to distinguish German (and Fering) anaphora-based strong definite articles from demonstratives. The second discovery is that German (and Fering) represent the minority when it comes to article systems in having a three-way (not a two-way) split in definiteness – weak article definite, strong article definite, demonstrative. The inescapable conclusion is that although German and Fering have helped spur the study of definitneness, they are not the poster child for article systems, contrary to what we have seen in the recent literature. I will propose tentatively that the strong definite article in German is a grammaticalization/fossilization of what may otherwise be an intermediate stage in the development of a definite from a demonstrative.