3.1 Definiteness
§3.l Definiteness 91The main semantic contribution of the determiner is to mark the NP as
definite or indefinite. The is known as the definite article and a as the indefinite
article since these are the most basic and elementary markers of definite and indef
inite NPs, but all NPs can be classified as definite or indefinite.
Definite article
What is meant by definite here can best be understood by looking at some examples
containing the definite article. In the following the definite NP is enclosed in brack
ets; the part following the is the head.
[24] i [The President of France] has appointed a new prime minister.
ii Where did you put [the key]?The indicates that the head of the NP is considered SUFFICIENT IN THE CONTEXT TO
IDENTIFY THE REFERENT.
<l; Only one person can be President of France at a given time, so using that descrip
tion in [i] uniquely identifies a person.. '1' Although any number of keys might exist, [ii] will be used only in a context that
makes clear which one I'm talking about (e.g., the key to the car you just told me
to unload).
Use of the can be thought of as pre-empting a which question. It would obviously be
inappropriate for you to respond to [i] with Which President of France? because
there is only one. And in [ii], my use of the reflects my assumption that you won't
need to ask Which key?
The unique identification can be more indirect, and it can depend on the meaning
of the rest of the sentence or other linguistic context, as these examples illustrate:
[25] i [The fa ther of one of my students] emailed me yesterday.
ii [The only language she spoke] was Tzotzil.
<" In the case of [i] you won't know precisely who I am referring to because I don't
identify the student. But a which question consisting of which + the head of the
NP would still make no sense. You can't ask Which fa ther of one of your stu
dents?, because nobody has more than one father. So if you let one of my
students serve to pick out a certain student (you just imagine a certain student X
that so far you don't know much about), then the nominal fa ther of one of my
students can provide a uniquely identifying description: the unique person who
is the father of X.
c You can see this limited kind of identifiability in [25ii] as well. The nominal only
language she spoke must pick out a single language, so the question Which only
language she spoke? would be nonsense. But of course I don't assume that you
can name the language, since the whole point of the rest of the sentence is to tell
you its name. The head nominal describes a unique entity, but at the moment