Investigating D in Languages With and Without Articles
Carrie Gillon · Oxford University Press eBooks · 2015
This chapter discusses the semantics of articles cross-linguistically, as well as the semantics of bare nouns in languages without overt articles. The chapter shows how to uncover the semantics of new articles as well as the semantics of bare nouns in articleless languages. Four major types of tests are used to uncover the semantics of both overt articles and bare nouns (and their putative covert articles): definiteness tests (which involve both familiarity and uniqueness tests), scope tests, law of contradiction tests, and domain restriction tests. These tests reveal that articles vary cross-linguistically, and that bare nouns in articleless languages vary in similar ways. Five languages are investigated to show how to test for the semantics of articles as well as the semantics of bare nouns: English, Skwxwú7mesh (Salish), Lithuanian (Baltic), Innu-aimun (Algonquian), and Inuttut (Labrador Inuktitut; Eskimo-Aleut).