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Definiteness in a Language Without Articles – a Study on Polish

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Definiteness in a Language Without Articles – a Study on Polish Definiteness in a Language without Articles – A Study on Polish Adrian Czardybon Hana Filip, Peter Indefrey, Laura Kallmeyer, Sebastian Löbner, Gerhard Schurz & Robert D. Van Valin, Jr. (eds.) Dissertations in Language and Cognition 3 Adrian Czardybon 2017 Definiteness in a Language without Articles – A Study on Polish BibliograVsche Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen NationalbibliograVe; detaillierte bibliograVsche Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.dnb.de abrufbar. D 61 © düsseldorf university press, Düsseldorf 2017 http://www.dupress.de Einbandgestaltung: Doris Gerland, Christian Horn, Albert Ortmann Satz: Adrian Czardybon, Thomas Gamerschlag Herstellung: docupoint GmbH, Barleben Gesetzt aus der Linux Libertine ISBN 978-3-95758-047-4 Für meine Familie Contents 1 Introduction 1 2 Theoretical basis 9 2.1 The distribution of the definite article in English and German . 9 2.2 Approaches to definiteness . 13 2.2.1 Familiarity . 13 2.2.2 Uniqueness . 16 2.3 Löbner’s approach to definiteness . 18 2.3.1 Inherent uniqueness and inherent relationality . 18 2.3.2 Concept types . 19 2.3.3 Shifts and determination . 20 2.3.4 Semantic vs. pragmatic uniqueness . 22 2.3.5 Scale of uniqueness . 25 2.4 Mass/count distinction . 30 2.5 Definiteness strategies discussed in the Slavistic literature . 35 3 Demonstratives 43 3.1 Criteria for the grammaticalization of definite articles . 44 3.2 Polish determiners and the paradigm of ten . 46 3.3 Previous studies on demonstratives in Polish . 49 3.4 My analysis of ten . 55 3.4.1 The occurrence of ten with pragmatic uniqueness . 55 3.4.1.1 Deictic SNs . 55 3.4.1.2 Anaphoric SNs . 57 3.4.1.3 SNs with complements establishing uniqueness . 63 3.4.2 Definite associative anaphors . 65 3.4.2.1 Part-whole DAAs . 67 3.4.2.2 Relational DAAs . 68 3.4.2.3 Situational DAAs . 71 3.4.3 The occurrence of ten with semantic uniqueness . 72 3.4.3.1 Complex ICs . 72 3.4.3.2 Lexical INs/FNs . 73 3.4.3.3 Proper names and personal pronouns . 75 3.4.4 Factors which enable the presence of ten with [+U] nominal . 75 3.4.5 Summary . 77 3.5 Slavic comparison . 79 3.5.1 Upper Silesian tyn . 80 3.5.2 Paradigms of the determiners in the investigated languages . 83 3.5.3 The occurrence of the determiners with pragmatic uniqueness . 85 3.5.4 The occurrence of the determiners with semantic uniqueness . 92 3.6 Conclusion . 93 4 Aspect 97 4.1 The semantics of aspect . 97 4.2 Morphological realization of grammatical aspect in Polish . 103 4.3 The interaction of aspect and definiteness . 107 4.4 Incrementality . 111 4.4.1 Incremental theme verbs . 111 4.4.2 Aspectual composition . 113 4.4.3 Filip’s approach . 114 4.4.4 Evidence against the equation of definiteness and Perfectivity . 116 4.5 Definiteness conditions - Polish data and analysis . 118 4.5.1 Strictly incremental theme verbs . 118 4.5.2 Incremental and non-incremental theme verbs . 123 4.6 Aspect, definiteness, and concept types . 126 4.7 Conclusion . 127 5 Differential object marking and case alternation 129 5.1 Differential object marking . 129 5.2 Split case alternation . 133 5.2.1 The Polish case system and animacy . 133 5.2.2 Negation . 138 5.2.3 Summary . 141 5.3 Fluid case alternation . 142 5.3.1 Verbs of giving and taking . 143 5.3.2 The incremental theme verbs eat and drink . 150 5.4 Conclusion . 155 6 Information structure 159 6.1 Theoretical background . 159 6.1.1 What is information structure? . 159 6.1.2 Thetic sentences . 160 6.1.3 Mathesius’ (1929) definition of theme and rheme . 161 6.1.4 Lambrecht’s (1994) definition of topic and focus . 162 6.2 Information structure in Polish . 166 6.2.1 The unmarked topic-focus structure and its influence on definiteness . 166 6.2.2 Czardybon et al.’s (2014) study on word order and definiteness . 169 6.2.3 The concept type distinction and information structure . 175 6.2.4 The ranking of concept types, information structure, and determiners . 180 6.3 Slavic comparison . 181 6.4 Conclusion . 187 7 Conclusion 191 7.1 Summary . 191 7.2 Questions for future research . 196 7.3 The decision tree . 198 Appendix: The distribution of the Slavic determiners under investigation 207 References 223 List of Figures 1 Mass/count distinction . 31 2 Subdivision of grammatical aspect . 100 3 The interaction between information structure, word order, concept types, and definiteness in Polish . 188 4 Decision tree for the (in)definiteness of NPs in Polish, part one . 202 5 Decision tree for the (in)definiteness of NPs in Polish, part two . 204 6 Decision tree for the (in)definiteness of NPs in Polish, part three . 205 List of Tables 1 The four noun types with regard to inherent relationality and uniqueness . 19 2 Congruent and incongruent determination . 21 3 Distribution of the definite articles in English, colloquial German, Fering, and Maori . 30 4 The four types of nouns and the mass/count distinction . 35 5 Paradigm of the standard Polish determiner ten . 47 6 The frequency of the determiners with anaphoric NPs in written Polish . 59 7 The frequency of determiners with anaphoric NPs in spo- ken Polish . 62 8 The frequency of ten with NPs combined with comple- ments establishing uniqueness in Polish . 65 9 Determiners in the investigated Slavic languages . 84 10 Distribution of the investigated West Slavic determiners with DAAs and complex ICs . 95 11 Verb classes and their distinguishing properties . 98 12 Summary of the tests to determine the (im)perfectivity of verbs . 104 13 Classification of nouns based on Löbner (2015) . 126 14 Case endings of feminine nouns like kobieta ‘woman’ in Polish . 133 15 Case endings of neuter nouns like okno ‘window’ and dziecko ‘child’ in Polish . 134 16 Case endings of masculine nouns like dom/ptak/student in Polish . 135 17 Split case alternations in Polish and their interaction with the definiteness of direct objects . 142 18 The distribution of the partitive genitive with eat and drink in the investigated Slavic languages . 155 19 Summary of the fluid case alternations in Polish and their interaction with definiteness . 156 20 Summary of the distribution of the genitive of negation and partitive genitive . 157 21 Correlation between syntactic position and definiteness of NPs . 170 22 Interaction between word order, sentence stress, and definiteness of the Polish bare NP . 173 23 Interaction of concept types, information structure, and definiteness . 177 24 Correlation between syntactic position, definiteness of NPs, and underlying concept type . 178 25 Summary of the interaction between information structure and definiteness in Polish, Czech, Slovene, and Russian with [–U] nouns . 185 List of Abbreviations 1 First person N Neuter 2 Second person NEG Negation 3 Third person NOM Nominative A Anaphoric OBJ Object ACC Accusative P Personal ACM Accumulative PAR Partitive ADJ Adjective PART Particle AUX Auxiliary PASS Passive CLS Classifying particle PF Perfective COP Copular PL Plural COPM Comparative POSS Possession COMPL Complementizer PREP Preposition DAT Dative PROG Progressive DEF Definiteness PRON Pronoun DEL Delimitative PROX Proximal DEM Demonstrative PRS Present DET Determiner PST Past DIM Diminutive Q Question particle DIST Distal REFL Reflexive pronoun DISTR Distributive REL Relative pronoun DUP Reduplication SG Singular EXCL Exclusive SUB Subject F Feminine T/A Tense/aspect FOC Focus TOP Topic GEN Genitive VOC Vocative IMP Imperative IMPF Imperfective INDEF Indefiniteness INESS Inessive INS Instrumental LOC Locative M Masculine 1 Introduction The aim of this thesis is to investigate how definiteness is expressed in Polish, a language which is claimed to have no definite and indefinite articles (cf. Pisarkowa 1969: 47, Szwedek 1974: 203, Kryk 1987: 45, Błaszczak 2001: 2, Mendoza 2004: 166, 292, Tęcza 2007: 337). The central question is how the difference in definiteness is indicated between a woman in (1) and the woman in (2) in Polish: (1) A woman entered the room. (2) The woman entered the room. In English, the definite article the and the indefinite article a express the category of definiteness explicitly. It has to be emphasized that definite- ness is a “linguistic universal” (Cummins 1999: 171) and thus is relevant “in all languages, but in many languages it is not grammaticalized” (Ly- ons 1999: 278). For Polish, Szwedek (1974: 203) states that “[a]lthough there is no article in Polish we seldom have doubts whether a noun in a text is definite or indefinite”. According to Szwedek, Polish is articleless, but from a typological perspective, Polish is hardly an exception. Most Slavic languages are articleless and Dryer (2015a, WALS) showed that, from a sample consisting of 620 languages, 243 (thus about 39 %) have no definite article.1 With regard to indefiniteness, the majority (55 %) of the languages in his sample (296 out of 534) have no indefinite article (Dryer 2015b, WALS).2 If the category of definiteness is universal and also rele- vant in articleless languages, there must be some means to indicate that a nominal phrase is definite or indefinite in Polish, which will be dis- 1 The remaining 377 languages either have a definite word distinct from the demon- strative (216), a demonstrative word used as a definite article (69), or a definite affix (92) (Dryer 2015a, WALS). 2 The remaining 238 languages either have an indefinite word distinct from the word for ‘one’ (102), an indefinite word the same as the word for ‘one’ (112), or an indefi- nite affix (24) (Dryer 2015b, WALS). 1 1 Introduction cussed in the following chapters.
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