Detail #410: Degrees of Definiteness and Tension between the Degrees

English has two levels of definiteness. Definite signifies that the referent is (expected by the speaker to be an) established referent in the mind of the listener.

A third degree exists in some languages, viz. specific: an established referent in the mind of the speaker

In English, "specific" sometimes is realized identically to indefinite: "I am looking for a car" (this can be either me looking for a new car, I have not yet decided which), or I may be on the search for a very specific car, I am presenting the information so as to establish a referent in your mind. This could be followed by "The car was last seen on this very island." - the referent has been established in the listener's mind.

Other languages have no definite, only specific - anything that is definite is likely also to be definite.

There are, however, situations where definite forms are used with specific referents despite lack of frame of reference in the listener's mind: "the tea I had this morning was pretty good.", not "a tea I had this morning" or "some tea" or even just "tea". It seems restrictive attributes make specific meaning take on definite marking. The speaker does not even have to assume that the listener knows of his matutinal tea habit.

Could we draw the line elsewhere?

1) Make the marking more consistent
Naturally, we could consider the restrictive attribute by itself to be sufficiently specific that a definite article is superfluous, and have "a tea I drank this morning was pretty good" be used when it is specific. This seems even more likely if the language has a visible distinction between restrictive and descriptive attributes.

2) Have different rules in different syntactic contexts

Some languages have definiteness marked only in some contexts - c.f. the Turkish direct object rule. Here, I see several interesting possibilities:

1. First person subjects license specific marking on objects and other NPs in the VP.
2. Split ergativity, in which either the ergative or accusative side of the system has a case distinction that marks for specific/definite distinction. This might be triggered by person (see previous point), or various environments such as subclauses (maybe specifically narrative such).
3. Maybe specific and definite nouns interact with congruence in different ways. This may restrict the environments in which it is explicitly marked:
1. Maybe only subjects (or only objects, or both but not other constituents) have verb congruence that permit for this distinction?
2. Maybe the marking on the adjective also is two-fold, but splits the difference differently. Thus red.def house.def is definite, but red.indef house.def is specific. (Here, "red.def house.indef" would seem like an attractive solution as well, if we assume Adj N word order.)
   

3) Multiple levels of specific-definite-contraspecific and ways in which the specificness and definitenesses of different speech participants interact in marking.

It is conceivable, that a speaker might want to communicate that he does not have a clear idea yet of the thing the listener has spoken of, and so could mark the lack of understanding as [+definite -specific]. In such a language, clearly, both specificity and definiteness need to be marked independently - but potentially, it could be marked independently in a way that isn't always visible or always clearly distinct. Consider, for instance, a system where adjectives mark for indefinite, specific-or-definite, whereas nouns only mark "specific-or-indefinite" vs. "definite". The normal "specific" combination would thus be "specific-or-definite" adjective but "specific-or-indefinite" noun. However, in that case, an indefinite adjective combined with a definite noun would perchance convey this confusion. The locuses needn't be nouns and adjectives, could as well be verbs and nouns or other carriers of congruence. Any ways, the adjectival congruence solution is nice because adjectives are often optional.

4) Have different rules for nouns of different topical salience

One could imagine a system whereby nouns that are topics have more levels of distinction.

5) Have different rules for nouns of different noun classes or number

Plurals or inanimates or mass nouns might very well differ. The difference may be a thing that has purely cultural origins, or may be the result of sound changes eliminating the distinction for some forms. Maybe in an IE-like gender system, masculines use neuter definite markers as specific forms.

6) In some languages with articles, there are contexts where no article is used. One could consider having articles dropped whenever there is tension or uncertainty regarding [?specific ?definite], or whenever unusual combinations such as [-specific +definite] appear.

Detail #342: Other Quirky Things besides Case

Quirky case is probably familiar to anyone with an interest in case systems. We could, however, considered similar lexically caused quirks for other things than case!

Quirky Voice

Consider some nouns that trigger exceptional voice marking on some, or even all vers? Maybe they cannot be direct objects, so whenever they are objects, they force some detransitivizing voice and some kind of oblique marking.

Quirky TAM

Some adjectives as complements, or maybe some nouns as verbs or objects, might cause unusual behaviours with regards to tense, aspect or mood. Maybe some noun as subject (or as object) always triggers some irrealis mood regardless of the reality of the VP and of the subject.

Quirky Gender

Some Semitic languages have some numbers mark opposite gender agreement. We could consider, though, verbs or adjectives that mismatch gender. Coming up with a historical reason for these might be interesting.

Quirky Adjective/Adverb Things

One could imagine certain nouns or verbs forcing comparatives or superlatives, or vice versa, some nouns or verbs blocking comparatives and superlatives (but making superlative or comparative meanings mandatory).

Quirky Number

Some adjectives or verbs or adpositions could imaginably also require some noun in some relation to it to mark number exceptionally. Alternatively, some verb could break the number congruence if verbs have that in the language.

Quirky Definiteness

I guess by now the reader should be able to come up with some ideas for this as well, analogously to the ideas given above.

Short Sketch #5: Definiteness marking and definiteness types

Definiteness is a thing some languages do not grammaticalize to the extent English does, and on the other hand, some languages have it even more grammaticalized - see, e.g. how it influences both adjective and noun inflection in Swedish, how it affects verbs in Hungarian, and so on.

Let us try out a slightly more complex thing. Some languages have three levels of definiteness, e.g. known to listener, known to speaker, and indefinite. 

Example, based on sample sentences from some pidgin, I don't recall the source where I saw these:

1. I am looking for a car → any car will do.
2. I am looking for one car → there is a specific car, but the listener is not expected to know which.
3. I am looking for the car → the listener too knows which car you are looking for.

(Also notice how "this" is acquiring a similar usage in colloquial English, c.f. any google result for "so this girl|dude|chick|guy|... walks|says|..." This is clearly not a deictic use of this, but rather a pragmatic use where it marks 'there is a specific girl that did it, but you probably don't know who she is, but I might refer to her in the future so she's significant enough for the narrative.)

Now, it seems rather natural to me that different constituents of a sentence will be differently likely to be marked for different types of definiteness, and this could easily lead to different kinds of arguments having very different marking strategies as well as a different number of distinctions.

An obvious example are languages where the object can be marked for definiteness by differential object marking, but other constituents have nothing of the sort. Usually, there is good likelihood that the subject is definite - even more so for the topic, but as topics and subjects often coincide, well, there you go.

A draft of this kind of a system would be something like:

• definite non-subject (2 or 3) topics trigger extra auxiliary verb that only carries congruence and has no semantic content

• definite subjects (2 or 3) trigger congruence in the verb (alternatively, see short sketch #1 for another strategy that could be used here)

• definite objects (3) trigger congruence in the verb and accusative case
• definite objects (2) trigger accusative case
• indefinite objects (1) take neither

• other definite (3) non-topic nouns trigger congruence on adpositions
• other non-topic nouns (that is, (2 or 1) functioning by virtue of case marking as an argument of the verb) do not trigger any congruence strategies
• different definiteness correlates with different case systems, something along these lines:
• 3:     nom - acc - dat - lat - abl - part - gen - instr
• 2:     nom - acc - dat        - abl          - gen
• 1:     nom                  - lat -         abl
• All topics, however, no matter definiteness, use the full (3) case system
• The lative for indefinitive nouns is identical in form to the dative for definite (2/3) nouns.

Other parameters could affect different systems: maybe animates have a different number of levels of definiteness from inanimates or whatever, ... however, something along these lines seems fairly intricate and interesting imho.

Further possession-related things

A thing monoglot conlangers tend not to realize is that possession often is used somewhat differently in different languages.

Consider sentences like

I talked to my mom earlier today. 

I need to wash my hands.

My legs hurt.I have it in my pocket. 

Put it in your wallet. 

My brother is an engineer. 

His brother is an engineer.

Oftentimes, which wallet, whose head, whose pockets, whose mother or brother etc is obvious from the context, and in say Swedish, you'd usually say these along the lines of

I talked to (the) mom earlier today (mamma, morsan; the latter being a diminutive form of moder) 

I need to wash the hands 

The legs hurt 

I have it in the pocket 

Put it in the wallet 

My brother is an engineer (or even the brother, but in that case generally in the diminutive form brorsan) 

The brother is an engineer (generally not using the diminutive, but rather along the lines of brodern; hans bror is also an option, and can be used as well.)

In Finnish, it's not even unusual that definiteness would be ignored in contexts like these, given that Finnish does not usually mark definiteness at all. It does, of course, have possessive suffixes and can thereby mark things like "my brother" as veljeni, but in contexts where whose brother is being spoken of is relatively obvious, it is not unusual to omit this.

There is a lot of possibilities here:

• lexical distinctions along the lines of the use of diminutives or non-diminutives to distinguish owner
• derivative suffixes developing towards being possessive suffixes? (Is that possible?)
• reflexively possessed object marking developing through some odd grammaticalization of the situation described in Swedish?
• extending how often things will be marked for first or second (or even third person) possession - you do not usually say "it's in my street" when something's in the street by which you live, "this time of my day, I usually take my nap", "I am heading out to get my bottle of milk"... this could be very common in another language.

Short Sketch #4: Definite and indefinite verbs

Verbs come in two main forms, sometimes differentiated by suppletion, mostly by some simple but not entirely predictable morphology. (Probably such that dialects differ greatly in which affix which verb takes).

Indefinite verbs are more coarse-grained as well dividing semantic space generally into fewer slices, and may be less permissive in whether they accept direct objects at all.

Definite verbs, however, do not permit topicalization of objects, except through passivization. Passivization of a definite verb does not demote the subject to oblique, but both the subject and object of the finite active verb behave as independent subjects of the finite passive verb. Passives do not have congruence.


Other unrelated idea:
Have a few verbs require the object to be the topic.