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Weak Referentiality
This volume brings together studies in the domain of weak referentiality, the phenomenon that a definite or indefinite noun phrase lacks its usual referential force. Several papers investigate syntactic or semantic properties of indefinite noun phrases, such as modality, number neutrality, narrow scope, incorporation, predication, and case marking, and that in a range of languages (Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, Catalan, German, Papiamentu, Russian). Other papers deal with weakly referential definite noun phrases in various languages (Basque, Dutch, English, French) involving scrambling, modification, possession, and accessibility. The papers demonstrate a range of empirical methods and theoretical models. This volume will not only be of interest to researchers and students in syntax and semantics, but also in psycholinguistics and language typology.
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 219] 2014. xii, 390 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Published online on 14 November 2014
Published online on 14 November 2014
© John Benjamins
Table of Contents
- List of contributors | pp. vii–viii
- List of abbreviations | pp. ix–xii
- Advances in weak referentialityAna Aguilar-Guevara, Bert Le Bruyn and Joost Zwarts | pp. 1–16
- Modal inferences in marked indefinites: the case of German irgend-indefinitesMaria Aloni and Angelika Port | pp. 17–44
- Epistemic and scopal properties of some indefinitesTania Ionin | pp. 45–72
- Antonymic prepositions and weak referentialityTibor Kiss and Claudia Roch | pp. 73–100
- Weak referentiality and Russian instrumental nominalsLidia Bogatyreva and M. Teresa Espinal | pp. 101–128
- Predicate nominals in Papiamentu: a comparison with Brazilian Portuguese and other languagesCristina Schmitt and Ellen-Petra Kester | pp. 129–156
- Many a pluralEric Mathieu | pp. 157–182
- Telic definites and their prepositions: French and SerbianTijana Asic and Francis Corblin | pp. 183–212
- How weak and how definite are Weak Definites?Florian Schwarz | pp. 213–235
- Modified weak definitesAna Aguilar-Guevara and Maartje Schulpen | pp. 237–264
- Functional frames in the interpretation of weak nominalsJoost Zwarts | pp. 265–286
- Unscrambling the lexical nature of weak definitesPeter de Swart and Geertje van Bergen | pp. 287–310
- Inalienable possession: the status of the definite articleBert Le Bruyn | pp. 311–334
- Basque nominals: from a system with bare nouns to a system withoutUrtzi Etxeberria | pp. 335–364
- Referential properties of definites and salience spreadingPetra B. Schumacher and Hanna Weiland-Breckle | pp. 365–388
- Index | pp. 389–390
Cited by (14)
Cited by 14 other publications
Giusti, Giuliana
Wągiel, Marcin
Agulló, Jorge
Gardelle, Laure, Laurence Vincent-Durroux & Hélène Vinckel-Roisin
2023. Speakers, addressees and the referential process. In Reference [Studies in Language Companion Series, 228], ► pp. 1 ff.
Modarresi, Fereshteh & Manfred Krifka
2023. Anaphoric potential of pseudo-incorporated bare objects in Persian. In Advances in Iranian Linguistics II [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 361], ► pp. 12 ff.
Zheng, Zhang, Laurence Newbery-Payton & Sho Fukuda
Fisher, Rose, David Natvig, Erin Pretorius, Michael T. Putnam & Katharina S. Schuhmann
Wiesinger, Evelyn
Arkadiev, Peter M. & Yakov G. Testelets
Corblin, Francis & Tijana Asic
Espinal, M.Teresa & Sonia Cyrino
2017. On weak definites and their contribution to event kinds. In Boundaries, phases, and interfaces [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 239], ► pp. 129 ff.
Le Bruyn, Bert & Xiaoli Dong
2017. Specificity and validity in the SLA literature. In Cross-linguistic Influence in Bilingualism [Studies in Bilingualism, 52], ► pp. 75 ff.
Le Bruyn, Bert
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