Identifiability and definiteness in Chinese

TLDR

Chinese differs from English in that bare noun phrases and cardinality expressions are indeterminate lexical encodings that are neutral with respect to identifiability. This article explores how the pragmatic notion of identifiability is encoded in Chinese. It presents a detailed analysis of the distinctive linguistic devices, including lexical, morphological, and positional features, used in Chinese to indicate the interpretation of referents in respect of identifiability. The study finds that Chinese demonstratives and the yi‑classifier construction are developing definite and indefinite article uses, yet identifiability correlates only weakly with word order and definiteness cannot be obligatorily specified, leading to the conclusion that definiteness as a grammatical category is not fully developed in Chinese.

Abstract

This article explores how the pragmatic notion of identifiability is encoded in Chinese. It presents a detailed analysis of the distinctive linguistic devices, including lexical, morphological, and position in sentence, which are employed in Chinese to indicate the interpretation of referents in respect of identifiability. Of the major determiners in Chinese, demonstratives are developing uses of a definite article, and yi ‘one’ + classifier has developed uses of an indefinite article, although morphologically and in some cases also functionally they have not yet been fully grammaticalized. What makes Chinese further different from languages like English is the interpretation in this regard of what are called indeterminate lexical encodings, which include bare NPs and cardinality expressions. They by themselves are neutral in respect of the interpretation of identifiability. For indeterminate expressions, there is a strong but seldom absolute correlation between the interpretation of identifiability or nonidentifiability and their occurrence in different positions in a sentence. Unlike the cases with several other languages without articles like Czech, Hindi, and Indonesian, the features of definiteness and indefiniteness cannot be obligatorily and uniquely specified for nominal expressions in Chinese. The findings in this article lead to the conclusion that definiteness as a grammatical category defined in the narrow sense has not been fully developed in Chinese.