Open AccessSpecificity and definiteness in sentence and discourse structure
Author(s) -
Klaus von Heusinger
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
zas papers in linguistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1435-9588
DOI - 10.21248/zaspil.24.2001.131
Subject(s) - definiteness , referent , expression (computer science) , linguistics , sentence , scope (computer science) , computer science , dependency (uml) , psychology , artificial intelligence , philosophy , programming language
In this paper, I argue that this informally given list of characteristics covers only a certain subclass of specific indefinites. […] In particular, I dispute the definition of specific indefinites as "the speaker has the referent in mind" as rather confusing if one is working with a semantic theory. Furthermore, I discuss "relative specificity", it. cases in which the specific indefinite does not exhibit wide, but intermediate or narrow scope behavior. Based on such data, I argue that specificity expresses a referential dependency between introduced discourse items. Informally speaking, the specificity of the indefinite expression something [...] expresses that the reference of the expression depends on the reference of another expression, here, on the expression a monk, not the speaker.