(The) polar bears are pink. How (the) Germans interpret (the) definite articles in plural subject DPs

Abstract

According to the literature, German optionally allows a definite article with generic nominals, whereas other Germanic languages require a bare nominal (e.g., English Polar bears are white). This optionality makes German different from other Germanic languages and more similar to Romance languages, in which definite articles are obligatory with generic nominals in subject positions. Since article use with generic nominals is seen as indicative of an advanced stage of grammaticalization, the question arises whether German has moved towards a more Romance-like stage of definite article use. We present judgment and reaction time data on generic statements. We ran two experiments monitoring the preferred reading of German definites in a nonlinguistic context, i.e., pictures of items showing either prototypical characteristics (e.g., white polar bears) or nonprototypical characteristics (e.g., pink polar bears). Given this nonlinguistic context, participants judged the truth value of auditorily presented sentences with different articles (i.e., These/Ø/The polar bears are white/pink). Our results show that demonstratives are interpreted as definite and bare nominals as generic. Contrary to claims in the literature, the definite article is largely interpreted as specific, following the pattern described for other Germanic languages. However, reaction times for definite articles are significantly slower than for demonstratives and bare nominals. We interpret these findings as pointing toward an ongoing change in the semantics of definite articles.

Experimental evidence for the interpretation of definite plural articles as markers of genericity – How Italian can help

“…This suggests that Italian definites are truly ambiguous between both readings. In contrast, German definites showed a clear preference for specific interpretation in a similar experiment (Czypionka & Kupisch 2019). One point of concern is the extent to which the Italian and German experiments are directly comparable.…”

“…In a recent paper, Czypionka & Kupisch (2019) have provided fresh experimental evidence to tap into the semantics of definite articles in German and specifically the question whether definite article use has spread to generic contexts. To exclude the possibility that ratings Redolfi et al…”

“…Following Czypionka & Kupisch (2019), the goal of the present study is to establish to what extent native Italians interpret ambiguous definite plural DPs as generic or specific in the presence of a nonlinguistic picture context, in order to establish whether the "polar bear" paradigm is an appropriate test of article semantics. To this end, we compared the interpretation of plural subject DPs with different determiner types: definite articles (potentially ambiguous), demonstratives (unambiguously specific), plural DPs with a definite article preceded by the adverb di solito ('in general', unambiguously generic), and partitive articles (fillers).…”

“…To this end, we compared the interpretation of plural subject DPs with different determiner types: definite articles (potentially ambiguous), demonstratives (unambiguously specific), plural DPs with a definite article preceded by the adverb di solito ('in general', unambiguously generic), and partitive articles (fillers). We measured acceptance rates and reaction times for the acceptability judgments in two experiments, closely following the task used by Czypionka & Kupisch (2019). The experiments were designed to answer the following research questions:…”

“…There were three different color-visual conditions: canonical (prototypical colors, e.g., green frogs), noncanonical (unlikely colors, e.g., yellow frogs), and mixed (fillers). Most of the stimuli were the same as in Czypionka & Kupisch (2019), but some had to be adapted to fit Italian as target language.…”