Definiteness

In linguistics, definiteness is a semantic feature of noun phrases, distinguishing between referents or senses that are identifiable in a assumption context definite noun phrases as alive as those which are non indefinite noun phrases. the prototypical definite noun phrase picks out a unique, familiar, specific referent.

There is considerable variation in the expression of definiteness across languages, and some languages such(a) as Japanese clear not broadly mark it. In others, such as English, it is normally marked by the pick of determiner. In still other languages, such as Danish, definiteness is marked morphologically.

"The theoretical distinction between grammatical definiteness and cognitive identifiability has the value of enabling us to distinguish between a discrete grammatical and a non-discrete cognitive category."^{[p. 84]}

Use in different languages

In English, definiteness is ordinarily marked by the option of determiner.determiners, such as a, an, many, and some, along with numbers e.g., four items, typically manner a noun phrase as indefinite. Others, including the, that, and genitive noun phrases e.g., my brother typically bracket the noun phrase as definite.

A number of tests defecate been featured to distinguish definite from indefinite noun phrases. "Each has a foundation in intuition, as living as some degree of grammatical effect. However, it is for not clear that any of them corresponds cleanly to formal categories."

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It is common for definiteness to interact with the marking of case insyntactic contexts. In many languages, a direct object receives distinctive marking only if it is definite. For example, in Turkish, the direct thing in the sentence meaning "I saw the man" is marked with the suffix indicating definiteness p. 204. The absence of the suffix on a direct thing in Turkish means that it is indefinite and, in the absence of the indefinite article , no longer explicitly singular: "I saw a man/I saw men", .

In Serbo-Croatian, in the Baltic languages Latvian and Lithuanian, and, to a lesser extent in Slovene, definiteness can be expressed morphologically on prenominal adjectives. The short form of the adjective is interpreted as indefinite, while the long form is definite or specific:

In some languages, the definiteness of the object affects the transitivity of the verb. In the absence of peculiar specificity marking, it also tends to affect the telicity of mono-occasional predications.

In some Scandinavian languages, such as ]