Definiteness in a Language without Articles – A Study on Polish

The aim of this book is to investigate how definiteness is expressed in Polish, a language which is claimed to have no definite and in-definite articles. The central question is how the difference in definiteness is indicated between ‘a woman’ and ‘the woman’ in Polish. In English, the definite article ‘the’ and the indefinite article ‘a’ express the category of definiteness explicitly. Since definiteness is also relevant in articleless languages, there are other means to indicate that a nominal phrase is definite or indefinite. This study is delimited to four means for expressing definiteness in Polish, which are demonstratives, aspect, case alternation, and information structure. Each strategy is investigated independently from the others, although they interact in a complex way, which is shown at the end of this book resulting in a decision tree. Polish is not investigated in isolation, however, the study is complemented by comparisons with other Slavic languages and also with a Polish dialect called ‘Upper Silesian’, which differs from Polish. The analysis in this book is based on Löbner’s theory of ‘Concept Types and Determination’ (CTD). Löbner’s distinction of the four concept types (sortal, relational, functional, individual) is crucial since definiteness phenomena under discussion can be explained. Therefore, the interaction of the four concept types with the four definiteness strategies plays a central role in this book. Title Contents List of Figures List of Tables List of Abbreviations 1 Introduction 2 Theoretical basis 2.1 The distribution of the definite article in English and German 2.2 Approaches to definiteness 2.2.1 Familiarity 2.2.2 Uniqueness 2.3 Löbner’s approach to definiteness 2.3.1 Inherent uniqueness and inherent relationality 2.3.2 Concept types 2.3.3 Shifts and determination 2.3.4 Semantic vs. pragmatic uniqueness 2.3.5 Scale of uniqueness 2.4 Mass/count distinction 2.5 Definiteness strategies discussed in the Slavistic literature 3 Demonstratives 3.1 Criteria for the grammaticalization of definite articles 3.2 Polish determiners and the paradigm of ten 3.3 Previous studies on demonstratives in Polish 3.4 My analysis of ten 3.4.1 The occurrence of ten with pragmatic uniqueness 3.4.1.1 Deictic SNs 3.4.1.2 Anaphoric SNs 3.4.1.3 SNs with complements establishing uniqueness 3.4.2 Definite associative anaphors 3.4.2.1 Part-whole DAAs 3.4.2.2 Relational DAAs 3.4.2.3 Situational DAAs 3.4.3 The occurrence of ten with semantic uniqueness 3.4.3.1 Complex ICs 3.4.3.2 Lexical INs/FNs 3.4.3.3 Proper names and personal pronouns 3.4.4 Factors which enable the presence of ten with [+U] nominal 3.4.5 Summary 3.5 Slavic comparison 3.5.1 Upper Silesian tyn 3.5.2 Paradigms of the determiners in the investigated languages 3.5.3 The occurrence of the determiners with pragmatic uniqueness 3.5.4 The occurrence of the determiners with semantic uniqueness 3.6 Conclusion 4 Aspect 4.1 The semantics of aspect 4.2 Morphological realization of grammatical aspect in Polish 4.3 The interaction of aspect and definiteness 4.4 Incrementality 4.4.1 Incremental theme verbs 4.4.2 Aspectual composition 4.4.3 Filip’s approach 4.4.4 Evidence against the equation of definiteness and Perfectivity 4.5 Definiteness conditions - Polish data and analysis 4.5.1 Strictly incremental theme verbs 4.5.2 Incremental and non-incremental theme verbs 4.6 Aspect, definiteness, and concept types 4.7 Conclusion 5 Differential object marking and case alternation 5.1 Differential object marking 5.2 Split case alternation 5.2.1 The Polish case system and animacy 5.2.2 Negation 5.2.3 Summary 5.3 Fluid case alternation 5.3.1 Verbs of giving and taking 5.3.2 The incremental theme verbs eat and drink 5.4 Conclusion 6 Information structure 6.1 Theoretical background 6.1.1 What is information structure? 6.1.2 Thetic sentences 6.1.3 Mathesius’ (1929) definition of theme and rheme 6.1.4 Lambrecht’s (1994) definition of topic and focus 6.2 Information structure in Polish 6.2.1 The unmarked topic-focus structure and its influence on definiteness 6.2.2 Czardybon et al.’s (2014) study on word order and definiteness 6.2.3 The concept type distinction and information structure 6.2.4 The ranking of concept types, information structure, and determiners 6.3 Slavic comparison 6.4 Conclusion 7 Conclusion 7.1 Summary 7.2 Questions for future research 7.3 The decision tree Appendix: The distribution of the Slavic determiners under investigation References The aim of this book is to investigate how definiteness is expressed in Polish, a language which is claimed to have no definite and in-definite articles. The central question is how the difference in definiteness is indicated between 'a woman' and 'the woman' in Polish. In English, the definite article 'the' and the indefinite article 'a' express the category of definiteness explicitly. Since definiteness is also relevant in articleless languages, there are other means to indicate that a nominal phrase is definite or indefinite. This study is delimited to four means for expressing definiteness in Polish, which are demonstratives, aspect, case alternation, and information structure. Each strategy is investigated independently from the others, although they interact in a complex way, which is shown at the end of this book resulting in a decision tree. Polish is not investigated in isolation, however, the study is complemented by comparisons with other Slavic languages and also with a Polish dialect called 'Upper Silesian', which differs from Polish. The analysis in this book is based on LeÌ#x80;obner's theory of 'Concept Types and Determination' (CTD). LeÌ#x80;obner's distinction of the four concept types (sortal, relational, functional, individual) is crucial since definiteness phenomena under discussion can be explained. Therefore, the interaction of the four concept types with the four definiteness strategies plays a central role in this book. This series explores issues of mental representation, linguistic structure and representation, and their interplay. The research presented in this series is grounded in the idea explored in the Collaborative Research Center 'The structure of representations in language, cognition and science' (SFB 991) that there is a universal format for the representation of linguistic and cognitive concepts The aim of this book is to investigate how definiteness is expressed in Polish, a language which is claimed to have no definite and in-definite articles. The central question is how the difference in definiteness is indicated between 'a woman' and 'the woman' in Polish. In English, the definite article 'the' and the indefinite article 'a' express the category of definiteness explicitly. Since definiteness is also relevant in articleless languages, there are other means to indicate that a nominal phrase is definite or indefinite. This study is delimited to four means for expressing definiteness in Polish, which are demonstratives, aspect, case alternation, and information structure. Each strategy is investigated independently from the others, although they interact in a complex way, which is shown at the end of this book resulting in a decision tree. Polish is not investigated in isolation, however, the study is complemented by comparisons with other Slavic languages and also with a Polish dialect called 'Upper Silesian', which differs from Polish. The analysis in this book is based on Löbner's theory of 'Concept Types and Determination' (CTD). Löbner's distinction of the four concept types (sortal, relational, functional, individual) is crucial since definiteness phenomena under discussion can be explained. Therefore, the interaction of the four concept types with the four definiteness strategies plays a central role in this book. This series explores issues of mental representation, linguistic structure and representation, and their interplay. The research presented in this series is grounded in the idea explored in the Collaborative Research Center 'The structure of representations in language, cognition and science' (SFB 991) that there is a universal format for the representation of linguistic and cognitive concepts The aim of this book is to investigate how definiteness is expressed in Polish, a language which is claimed to have no definite and in-definite articles. The central question is how the difference in definiteness is indicated between 'a woman' and 'the woman' in Polish. In English, the definite article 'the' and the indefinite article 'a' express the category of definiteness explicitly. Since definiteness is also relevant in articleless languages, there are other means to indicate that a nominal phrase is definite or indefinite.0This study is delimited to four means for expressing definiteness in Polish, which are demonstratives, aspect, case alternation, and information structure. Each strategy is investigated independently from the others, although they interact in a complex way, which is shown at the end of this book resulting in a decision tree. Polish is not investigated in isolation, however, the study is complemented by comparisons with other Slavic languages and also with a Polish dialect called 'Upper Silesian', which differs from Polish.0The analysis in this book is based on Löbner?s theory of 'Concept Types and Determination' (CTD). Löbner?s distinction of the four concept types (sortal, relational, functional, individual) is crucial since definiteness phenomena under discussion can be explained. Therefore, the interaction of the four concept types with the four definiteness strategies plays a central role in this book

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