Specificity Distinctions

Abstract

The notion of specificity in linguistics is notoriously non‐specific. We consider here various distinctions within the realm of noun phrase semantics that are relevant to specificity. The common thread uniting these distinctions is the notion of variation in value assignments for the variable introduced by the noun phrase. The distinctions concern the nature of the variation involved. The first part of the paper (section 2) is devoted to the definite/indefinite divide and proposes a dynamic parameter of ‘determinacy of reference’ which attempts to capture what is common to uniqueness and familiarity approaches to definiteness. Section 3 is devoted to a typology of indefinites in terms of constraints imposed on evaluation properties of the variable they introduce. Based on properties of special indefinites discussed in the literature on Hungarian, Lillooet Salish and English, I argue that a constraint based account of special indefinites is to be preferred over ambiguity‐based approaches.