Definiteness

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Definiteness

In grammatical theory

Grammar

Grammar is the field of linguistics that covers the conventions governing the use of any given natural language. It includes morphology and syntax, often complemented by phonetics, phonology, semantics, and pragmatics....
, definiteness is a feature of noun phrase

Noun phrase

In grammar, a noun phrase is a phrase whose Head is a noun or a pronoun, optionally accompanied by a set of modifiers.Noun phrases are very common linguistic typology, but some languages like Tuscarora language and Cayuga language have been argued to lack this category....
s, distinguishing between entities which are specific and identifiable in a given context (definite noun phrases) and entities which are not (indefinite noun phrases).

There is considerable variation in the expression of definiteness across languages: some languages use a definite article

Article (grammar)

An article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the types of reference being made by the noun, and to specify the volume or numerical scope of that reference....
(which can be a free form, a phrasal clitic

Clitic

In linguistics, a clitic is a grammatically independent and phonology dependent word. It is pronounced like an affix, but works at the phrase level....
, or an affix

Affix

An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivation , like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed....
on the noun) to mark a definite noun phrase.

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Encyclopedia

In grammatical theory

Grammar

Noun phrase

Article (grammar)

Clitic

In linguistics, a clitic is a grammatically independent and phonology dependent word. It is pronounced like an affix, but works at the phrase level....
, or an affix

Affix

Free form: English the boy.
Phrasal clitic: as in Basque
Basque language

Basque is the language spoken by the Basque people who inhabit the Pyrenees in North-Central Spain and the adjoining region of South-Western France....
: Cf. ("woman"), (woman-ART: "the woman"), (woman beautiful-ART: "the beautiful woman")
Noun affix: as in Romanian
Romanian language

Romanian or Daco-Romanian ; self-designation: limba rom?na, ) is a Romance languages spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova....
: ("man"), (man-ART: "the man"); (man-ART good: "the good man")
Prefix on both noun and adjective: Arabic
Arabic language

Arabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages languages such as Hebrew language and Aramaic language....
(al-kitab al-kabir) with two instances of al- (DEF-book-DEF-big, literally, "the book the big")
Distinct verbal forms: as in Hungarian
Hungarian language

Hungarian is a Uralic languages unrelated to most other languages in Europe. It is mainly spoken in Hungary and by the Hungarian minorities in the seven neighbouring countries....
: (read-1sg.pres.INDEF a book-ACC.sg: "I read a book") versus (read-1sg.pres.DEF the book-ACC.sg: "I read the book")

Germanic

Germanic languages

The Germanic languages are a group of related languages that constitute a branch of the Indo-European languages language family. The common ancestor of all the languages in this branch is Proto-Germanic, spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Pre-Roman Iron Age....
, Romance

Romance languages

The Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European languages comprising all the languages that descend from Latin language, the language of ancient Rome....
, Celtic

Celtic languages

The Celtic languages are descended from Proto-Celtic, or "Common Celtic", a branch of the greater Indo-European languages language family. The term "Celtic" was used to describe this language group by Edward Lhuyd in 1707, having much earlier been used by Greek and Roman writers to describe tribes in central Gaul....
, Semitic

Semitic languages

File:Amarna Akkadian letter.pngThe Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 467 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa....
, and auxiliary

International auxiliary language

An international auxiliary language or interlanguage is a language meant for communication between people from different nations who do not share a common native language....
languages generally have a definite article, sometimes used as a postposition. Many other languages do not. Some examples are Chinese

Chinese language

Chinese or the Sinitic language is a language family consisting of language mutually unintelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the two branches of Sino-Tibetan languages of languages....
, Japanese

Japanese language

IPA: [n?iho?go] is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is related to the Ryukyuan languages....
, Finnish

Finnish language

Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by Finnish people outside of Finland. It is one of the official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden....
, and the Slavic languages

Slavic languages

File:Slavic europe.svgThe Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia....
except Bulgarian

Bulgarian language

Bulgarian is an Indo-European languages, a member of the Slavic languages linguistic group.Bulgarian demonstrates several linguistic innovations that set it apart from all other Slavic languages except Macedonian language, such as the elimination of grammatical case, the development of a suffixed definite article , the lack of a verb infin...
and Macedonian

Macedonian language

Macedonian is the official language of the Republic of Macedonia and is a part of the Eastern group of South Slavic languages. Macedonian is closely related to and shares a high degree of mutual intelligibility with the Bulgarian language, Serbian language, Bosnian language, and Croatian language languages....
. When necessary, languages of this kind may indicate definiteness by other means such as Demonstrative

Demonstrative

Demonstratives are deictic expression words that indicate which entities a speaker refers to, and distinguishes those entities from others. Demonstratives are employed for spatial deixis and as discourse deictics, referring to propositions mentioned in speech....
s.

It is common for definiteness to interact with the marking of case

Declension

In linguistics, declension is the occurrence of inflection in nouns, pronouns and adjectives, indicating such features as grammatical number , grammatical case , and grammatical gender....
in certain syntactic contexts. In many languages direct object

Object (grammar)

An object in grammar is a sentence element and part of the sentence Predicate . It denotes somebody or something involved in the subject's "performance" of the verb....
s (DOs) receive distinctive marking only if they are definite. For example in Turkish

Turkish language

Turkish is a language spoken by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe....
, the DO in the sentence (meaning "I saw the men") is marked with the suffix (indicating definiteness). The absence of the suffix means that the DO is indefinite ("I saw men").

In Serbo-Croatian

Serbo-Croatian

The Serbo-Croatian language or Croato-Serbian language is a South Slavic language diasystem. The Serbo-Croatian language was used as an umbrella term for dialects spoken in Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina; it was one of the official languages of Yugoslavia from 1918 to 1991 ....
, 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 ( "a new city"), while the long form is definite and/or specific ( "the new city, a certain new city").

In Japanese

Japanese language

IPA: [n?iho?go] is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is related to the Ryukyuan languages....
, a language which indicates noun functions with postpositions, the topic marker (wa) may include definiteness. For example, (uma wa) can mean "the horse", while (uma ga) can mean "a horse".

In some languages, the definiteness of the object

Object (grammar)

An object in grammar is a sentence element and part of the sentence Predicate . It denotes somebody or something involved in the subject's "performance" of the verb....
affects the transitivity

Transitivity (grammatical category)

In linguistics, transitivity is a property of verbs that relates to whether a verb can take direct objects. It is closely related to valency ....
of the verb

Verb

In syntax, a verb is a word that usually denotes an action , an occurrence , or a state of being . Depending on the language, a verb may vary in form according to many factors, possibly including its grammatical tense, grammatical aspect, grammatical mood and grammatical voice....
. In the absence of peculiar specificity marking, it also tends to affect the telicity

Telicity

In linguistics, telicity is the property of a verb or verb phrase that presents an action or event as being complete in some sense. A verb or verb phrase with this property is said to be telic, while a verb or verb phrase that presents an action or event as being incomplete is said to be atelic....
of monooccasional predications.

Definiteness

See also