Definiteness in articleless Slavic languages
Individual Linguistics, Historical Linguistics
Final Report Abstract
The overarching question of the project was how articleless languages, such as Russian, Polish, or Czech, manage reference even without the grammatical category of articles (as in the English the dog)? In addressing the question, we mainly concentrated on two types of linguistic devices – demonstrative nominals (such as this dog) and bare nominals (such as dog) – and their interaction with various grammatical factors such as word order, prosody, or grammatical number. In addition, we investigated so called free relatives (John ate [what Mary cooked]), which are considered subtypes of definite descriptions (compare with John ate [the thing(s) that Mary cooked]). The premise of the project, as well as of most of current research, was that articleless languages possess essentially the same expressive capacity as languages with articles. In order to express “definiteness”, they just use different formal devices than articles. The claim has been, for instance, that subject–predicate orders (dog barks) convey the subject’s definiteness, while predicate–subject orders (barks dog) its indefiniteness. In addressing this particular issue, the project yielded partly conflicting results. On the one hand, we have confirmed in a corpus study on Czech that, indeed, word order correlates with bare nominals’ definiteness. On the other hand, in experiments on Czech, Russian, and Polish, we found no indication that word order or prosodic manipulations of bare nominals affect uniqueness inferences; while phrases such as the dog are known to presuppose the existence of a single dog (in a relevant situation), no such presupposition is found for clause-initial bare nominals in languages without articles. The conflicting results can be reconciled if one admits that word order and related factors are indeed correlated with bare nominals’ referential properties in articleless languages, but at the same time – and contrary to expectations – it is not the case that referentiality of bare nominals would be approached via the concept of uniqueness. Demonstrative nominals (such as that dog) are known to share some properties with definite ones (such as the dog). For instance, both can be used to refer to an entity introduced in previous discourse (There was a dog. The/That dog barked.) There also are important differences. Only definite nominals are productively used to refer to situationally unique entities and only demonstrative nominals afford so called affective uses (this Donald Trump). The meaning and use of demonstrative nominals in articleless languages has not been sufficiently studied or compared to those in languages with articles. The project contributed a number of studies to this end. We found, for instance, that demonstrative nominals in Czech can in fact be used for cases of situational uniqueness, but these uses are conditioned by a stronger uniqueness inference, what we call accidental uniqueness. We also showed, using Czech evidence, how non-canonical uses of demonstratives (this Donald Trump) can be brought in line with the canonical ones. Finally, we asked whether so called ever free relatives (John ate [whatever Mary cooked]) in languages like Czech correspond to definites despite the non-existence of definite-like ever free relatives (e.g. [Whoever wrote this] is a genius ‘The/*Every person who wrote this is a genius’). The research showed that Czech ever free relatives are, after all, definite-like and that the pertinent non-existence is due to the unavailability of certain modal inferences (‘we do not know who wrote this’). This finding raises further questions concerning the availability and form of the grammatical category definiteness in articleless languages.
Publications
- On pragmatic demonstratives: The case of pragmatic discourse anaphora in Czech. Nadine Bade, Polina Berezovskaya, and Anthea Schöller (eds.), Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 20, 640–657
Simík, Radek
- Definiteness of bare NPs as a function of clausal position: A corpus study of Czech. Tania Ionin and Jonathan E. MacDonald (eds.),
Annual Workshop on Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics : the Urbana-Champaign Meeting 2017. Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan Slav
Simík, Radek and Markéta Burianová
- Ever free relatives crosslinguistically. Uli Sauerland and Stephanie Solt (eds.), Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 22, vol. 2, 375–392. Berlin: Leibniz-Center General Linguistics
Simík, Radek
(See online at https://doi.org/10.21248/zaspil.61.2018.502) - Inherent vs. accidental uniqueness in bare and demonstrative nominals. Andreas Blümel, Jovana Gajic, Uwe Junghanns, and Hagen Pitsch (eds.), Advances in formal Slavic linguistics 2018. Berlin: Language Science Press
Simík, Radek
- Definiteness, Uniqueness, and Maximality in Languages With and Without Articles. Journal of Semantics 37 (3) 311–366.
Šimík, Radek; Demian, Christoph
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffaa002) - Free relatives. Daniel Gutzmann, Lisa Matthewson, Cécile Meier, Hotze Rullmann, and Thomas E. Zimmermann (eds.), The Wiley Blackwell companion to semantics. Wiley Blackwell
Simík, Radek
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118788516.sem093) - Uniqueness and maximality in German and Polish: A production experiment. In: Mojmír Dočekal and Marcin Wągiel (eds.), Formal approaches to number in Slavic and beyond, Berlin: Language Science Press, 2021, pp. 149-171.
Šimík, Radek, Demian, Christoph
(See online at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5082006)
