A Typology of Word Categoriesabout. The second sentence is, however, ambiguous. It could either mean that the
speaker was looking for a specific cat, but assumed that the addressee does not know
which cat is referred to, or it could mean that the speaker is looking for some non-
specified cat and that any cat would satisfy the conditions of his search.
In English there are a number of syntactic phenomena that seem to be determined
by the notion of definiteness. For example, only indefinite nominals can go in the post-
verbal position in sentences which start with there:
(151) a there once lived an old woodcutter
b *there once lived the old woodcutter
Determiners are often marked for number. So, a, this and that are singular whilst
these and those are plural, only introducing nouns with the relevant number:
(152) a a boy/boys
b these girls/girl
With mass nouns, for which number is not applicable, we can have neither singular nor
plural determiners (unless we treat the mass noun as a count noun, referring to types or
groups of the material that the noun refers to – see the discussion in section 2.1.3.):
(153) a a sand
b these sand
The definite determiner the can be used in either singular or plural contexts and
even those unmarked for number, when used with mass nouns:
(154) a the boy
b the boys
c the water
A related concept to number is quantity and determiners often act as quantifiers
for the nouns they introduce:
(155) a some people
b all newspapers
c both parties
d every student
These quantificational determiners are also often marked for number, introducing only
certain types of noun:
(156) singular plural mass
a both house houses bread
b every book books water
c all *cat cats sand
d some man men oil
They are also marked for definiteness and so may or may not introduce nouns sitting in
the post-verbal position in there sentences: