Weak definites refer to kinds

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of weak deinites (e.g. to answer the phone) as introduced by Carlson and Sussman (2005). The proposal is that these deinites refer to kinds, which are instantiated by ordinary individuals when they combine with object-level predicates. This combination is made possible by a lexical rule that lifts object-level predicates to kind-level predicates, and incorporates into their denotation a predicate that represents the stereotypical usages of the kinds. This analysis accounts for most of the peculiar properties of weak deinites.

Weak definite nominals

“…Weak definites have a rich history in the semantics literature and have received various accounts (e.g., Abbott, 1999; Aguilar‐Guevara & Zwarts, 2011, 2014; Baldwin, et al., 2006; Beyssade, 2014; Birner & Ward, 1994; Bosch, 2010; Bosch & Cieschinger, 2010; Carlson, 2006; Carlson, et al., 2006, 2013; Corblin, 2014; de Swart, 2015; Donazzan, 2014; Epstein, 2000; Espinal to appear; Klein, 2011; Klein, et al., 2013; Le Bruyn, et al., 2017; Leonetti, 2019; Löbner, 1985; Löbner, 2011, 2012; Oggiani, 2020a; Saǧ, 2022; Schwarz, 2014; Stvan, 1998, 2007, 2009; Vogel, 2011; Williams, 2019; Zribi‐Hertz & Jean‐Louis, 2013; Zwarts, 2014). Some of these ideas have given birth to fine‐grained theories aiming to explain the properties of WDNs characterized in Section 2.…”

Why “Partitive Articles” Do Not Exist in (Old) Spanish

“…Short weak definites are also subject to strong lexical restrictions (Carlson et al 2006;Aguilar-Guevara and Zwarts 2013;Schwarz 2014). This holds true with regard to the noun itself, even for near synonyms (15a-b), the governing verb (15c-d), and the governing preposition (15e-f): The 197 discourse-new Old Spanish del-constituents in the data contain 37 different governing verbs and 42 different nouns.…”

“…The Old Spanish Data Are Not Short Weak Definites31 Another class of weak referentials besides roi-definites are so-called short weak definites (Carlson and Sussman 2005;Carlson et al 2006;Aguilar-Guevara and Zwarts 2013).32 Short weak definites are definites that share a number of properties with roi-definites, among others semantic number neutrality, non-…”

The syntax of silent directional prepositions in Jordanian Arabic

“…Other nonreferential DPs can also support pronominal anaphora (e.g., weak definites in English; see Scholten and Guevara 2010). 15 Modification of the goal noun by intersective modifiers and restrictive relative relatives clauses excludes the possibility of analyzing the noun as a "weak definite" (Carlson et al 2006, Aguilar Guevara andZwarts 2013). Typically, proper names are assumed to be full referential DPs (Longobardi 1994).…”

“… 15 Modification of the goal noun by intersective modifiers and restrictive relative relatives clauses excludes the possibility of analyzing the noun as a “weak definite” (Carlson et al 2006, Aguilar Guevara and Zwarts 2013). …”