ABSTRACT

This book is a collection of linguistic and philosophical papers dealing with the semantic problems of determiners. The language under investigation is mostly English, although a few papers deal with French and German, and, to a lesser extent, with Dutch, Polish, Russian and Hebrew. The majority of the contributions focus on the semantics of the definite and indefinite articles, leading into discussions of anaphoricness, specificness, opacity and transparency, referentiality and attributiveness and genericness. The relation of the determiners to other parts of grammar, in particular relativisation and predication, is also investigated. Some attention is also given to quantifiers. In the spirit of pluralism, there is no single paradigm unifying all the papers, rather, the volume reflects elements of the Extended Standard Theory, Generative Semantics, Montague Grammar, (Gricean) Pragmatics and Speech Act Theory.

chapter 1|30 pages

Any As Universal or Existential?*

chapter 2|26 pages

On Surface Definite Articles in English

‘Proving Underlying Indefiniteness and Explaining the Conversion to Definiteness'

chapter 5|16 pages

Demonstratives and the I-Sayer

chapter 6|12 pages

Definite and Indefinite Generics

chapter 13|18 pages

Quantifier Floating in German