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Articles in the World's Languages

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Articles in the World's Languages Articles in the world’s languages Laura Becker University of Erlangen-Nuremberg July 22, 2019 DRAFT Contents 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Background and objectives ............................... 1 1.2 Overview ......................................... 3 1.3 Data and methodology ................................. 8 2 Articles as a crosslinguistic category 18 2.1 The problem ....................................... 18 2.2 Defining articles ..................................... 21 2.2.1 Introduction ................................... 21 2.2.2 Articles encode referent types ......................... 23 2.2.3 Articles occur in the nominal domain ..................... 28 2.2.4 Articles are systematically distributed .................... 34 2.3 Summary ......................................... 41 3 Defining different types of articles 43 3.1 Referentiality and referent types ............................ 43 3.1.1 The discourse situation ............................. 43 3.1.2 The link between linguistic expressions and referent types ......... 47 3.1.3 Identifiabilty, definiteness, and indefiniteness ................ 49 3.2 Defining the referent types ............................... 55 3.2.1 DefiniteDRAFT referents ................................ 55 3.2.1.1 Spatial deictic referents ....................... 57 3.2.1.2 Absolutely unique referents .................... 58 3.2.1.3 Recognitional referents ....................... 59 3.2.1.4 Anaphoric referents ......................... 60 3.2.1.5 Bridging referents .......................... 60 3.2.1.6 Contextually unique referents ................... 63 3.2.1.7 Establishing referents ........................ 64 i 3.2.2 Specific referents ................................ 66 3.2.3 Nonspecific referents .............................. 68 3.2.4 Generic referents ................................ 69 3.3 Defining the article types ................................ 69 3.3.1 Articles from the definite domain (definite, anaphoric, recognitional) ... 70 3.3.2 Articles of the indefinite domain (exclusive-specific, nonspecific, indefinite) 71 3.3.3 Domain-crossing articles (inclusive-specific, referential) .......... 72 3.4 The relation between article types and referent types ................ 73 3.5 Summary ......................................... 76 4 Articles in the definite domain 78 4.1 Definite articles ..................................... 78 4.1.1 Kaqchikel .................................... 79 4.1.2 Mokpe ...................................... 82 4.1.3 Definite articles with spatial deictic referents ................ 87 4.1.4 Definite articles with absolutely unique referents .............. 90 4.1.5 Definite articles with proper nouns ...................... 92 4.2 Anaphoric articles .................................... 94 4.2.1 Limbum ..................................... 94 4.2.2 Akan ....................................... 98 4.2.3 Komnzo ..................................... 102 4.3 Recognitional articles .................................. 104 4.4 Summary ......................................... 106 5 Articles in the indefinite domain 108 5.1 Exclusive-specific articles ................................ 108 5.1.1 Q’anjobal .................................... 109 5.1.2 Akan ....................................... 112 5.1.3 Palula ...................................... 113 5.2 Nonspecific DRAFTarticles ................................... 115 5.2.1 Q’anjobal .................................... 115 5.2.2 Tongan ...................................... 117 5.2.3 Lakota ...................................... 120 5.2.4 The source of nonspecific articles ....................... 122 5.3 Indefinite articles .................................... 125 5.3.1 Tz’utujil ..................................... 125 5.3.2 Carib ....................................... 127 5.3.3 Bonan ...................................... 128 5.3.4 Presentational articles ............................. 131 5.4 Summary ......................................... 136 6 Domain-crossing articles 137 6.1 Inclusive-specific articles ................................ 137 6.1.1 Bemba ...................................... 137 6.1.2 Tongan ...................................... 140 6.1.3 Tepehua ..................................... 142 6.2 Referential articles .................................... 144 6.2.1 Rapa Nui ..................................... 145 6.2.2 Halkomelem ................................... 150 6.2.3 Baure ...................................... 154 6.3 Summary ......................................... 162 7 The distinction between articles and similar categories 164 7.1 Demonstratives ..................................... 164 7.2 The numeral ‘one’ .................................... 173 7.3 Negative polarity items ................................. 179 7.4 Summary ......................................... 183 8 Crosslinguistic trends and variation 185 8.1 Article inflection ..................................... 185 8.1.1 Selected patterns of article inflection ..................... 186 8.1.2 Crosslinguistic trends ............................. 197 8.1.3 Factors that condition the article inflection .................. 208 8.1.3.1 Inflection of the noun ........................ 208 8.1.3.2 Inflection of the article’s source element ............. 212 8.2 Article paradigms .................................... 217 8.2.1 One articleDRAFT or many? .............................. 217 8.2.2 A complex article paradigm in Mokpe .................... 220 8.3 Article types ....................................... 225 8.3.1 Areal trends ................................... 225 8.3.2 Distribution across the referential space ................... 235 8.3.3 Unattested article types ............................ 239 8.3.3.1 Generic articles ........................... 239 8.3.3.2 Non-anaphoric definite articles .................. 241 8.4 Article systems ..................................... 246 8.4.1 A typology of article systems ......................... 246 8.4.1.1 Article systems that cover the referential space minimally ... 246 8.4.1.2 Article systems that cover most of the referential space ..... 248 8.4.1.3 Article systems that cover the entire referential space ...... 252 8.4.1.4 The crosslinguistic distribution of article systems ........ 255 8.4.2 Systems with functionally overlapping articles ............... 264 8.5 Summary ......................................... 272 9 Conclusions 275 Appendix A Article properties (113-languages sample) 282 Appendix B Examples 290 B.1 Africa ........................................... 290 B.2 Eurasia .......................................... 303 B.3 Papunesia ........................................ 315 B.4 Australia ......................................... 330 B.5 North America ...................................... 334 B.6 South America ...................................... 346 DRAFT iv List of Figures 1.1 Areal coverage of the sample .............................. 8 1.2 Areal distribution of definite and indefinite articles (Dryer 2013a) ......... 9 3.1 Discourse situation and discourse universe ...................... 44 3.2 Structure of a referring expression ........................... 48 3.3 Link between the referents of the kinds ‘book’ and ‘author’ ............. 62 3.4 Link between the referents of the kinds ‘village’ and ‘church’ ............ 64 3.5 Anchoring of a specific referent ............................ 67 3.6 Nonspecific referent with its concept ......................... 68 3.7 Overview of referent types and article types ..................... 73 3.8 Hierarchy of the major referent types ......................... 74 7.1 Grammaticalization path from demonstrative to general noun marker ....... 165 7.2 Cut-off point between demonstratives and articles .................. 166 7.3 Demonstrative with anaphoric article ......................... 168 7.4 Demonstrative with deictic and anaphoric functions ................. 169 7.5 Demonstrative with uniqueness-based definite article ................ 170 7.6 Demonstrative with definite article .......................... 171 7.7 Grammaticalization path from the numeral ‘one’ to a nominal marker ....... 174 7.8 Cut-off point between the numeral ‘one’ and indefinite articles ........... 176 8.1 Article inflection in the six macro areas ........................ 198 8.2 Posterior distributionsDRAFT for article inflection across the six macro areas ....... 199 8.3 Categories of article inflection ............................. 200 8.4 Categories of article inflection in the six macro areas ................ 201 8.5 Inflectional behaviour of following and preceding articles .............. 202 8.6 Posterior distributions for article inflection depending on the position ....... 203 8.7 Inflectional behaviour of different article types .................... 203 8.8 Posterior distributions for article inflection depending on the article type ..... 204 v 8.9 Inflectional categories of different article types .................... 206 8.10 Inflectional behavior of articles within languages .................. 207 8.11 Posterior distribution for articles within languages with the same inflectional be- havior ........................................... 208 8.12 Number, case, and gender marking on the article and the noun ........... 209 8.13 Posterior distributions for noun and article inflection ................ 211 8.14 Article types ....................................... 226 8.15 Posterior distributions for the frequencies of article types .............. 227
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