Definiteness in Discourse | Zendy

Robert Grieve | Zendy

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Definiteness in Discourse

Author(s) -

Robert Grieve

Publication year - 1973

Publication title -

language and speech

Language(s) - English

Resource type - Journals

SCImago Journal Rank - 0.713

H-Index - 52

eISSN - 1756-6053

pISSN - 0023-8309

DOI - 10.1177/002383097301600407

Subject(s) - definiteness , topicalization , linguistics , utterance , noun phrase , noun , psychology , referent , ignorance , epistemology , philosophy

A recent study has attempted to relate definiteness to topicalization. In an utterance with two nominals, there is a tendency to distinguish the nominals in the topic from the nominal in the comment by marking the former with the and the latter with a, for in discourse the speaker must presuppose of his listener knowledge of topic (the + noun), and ignorance of comment (a + noun). However, since this clearly assumes that use of the is related to knowledge, and a to lack of knowledge, the present study attempts to test these assumptions. The results of two experiments support the hypotheses.

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