Definiteness across Languages book cover
Language · 2019 · English

Definiteness across Languages

by Ana Aguilar-Guevara, Julia Pozas Loyo and Violeta Vázquez-Rojas Maldonado (editors)

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About this book

This collection investigates how languages express and interpret definiteness: the ways speakers indicate that a person, object or other referent can be identified. Thirteen studies bring formal semantics and syntax into contact with typological comparison, language-specific description and semantic fieldwork.

Chapters examine strong and weak definite articles, the interpretation of noun phrases and the interaction of definiteness with other grammatical distinctions. Detailed examples from different languages allow readers to compare systems that mark these meanings in different ways, including languages whose patterns challenge assumptions drawn from familiar European languages.

The complete edited volume includes its introductory overview, all thirteen studies, linguistic examples, tables and bibliography.

Ana Aguilar-Guevara, Julia Pozas Loyo and Violeta Vázquez-Rojas Maldonado (editors). Definiteness across Languages. Language Science Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3265959. Licensed CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0). Cover and design: Ulrike Harbort. Typesetting: Jordi Martínez Martínez and Felix Kopecky. Original notices and field-data credits retained.