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In:Weak Referentiality
Edited by Ana Aguilar-Guevara, Bert Le Bruyn and Joost Zwarts
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 219] 2014
► pp. 311–334

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Inalienable possession

the status of the definite article

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Published online: 3 December 2014
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https://doi.org/10.1075/la.219.13bru
We argue that the use of the definite article in French inalienable possession constructions does not lead us to abandon a unified analysis of definite articles. We face two challenges. First, the definite article in French inalienable possession constructions does not seem to convey uniqueness: Jean l�ve la main �John raises the hand� is felicitous independently of whether Jean has one or two hands. Second, if the definite article in these constructions is a run-of-the-mill definite article we seem to be left without an explanation for the variation between French and English that led both Gu�ron (1983, 1985) and Vergnaud and Zubizarreta (1992) to assume that the definite article in French is structurally different from the one in English.
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