Article published in:
Weak Referentiality
Edited by Ana Aguilar-Guevara, Bert Le Bruyn and Joost Zwarts
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 219] 2014
► pp. 183–212

Telic definites and their prepositions

French and Serbian

This papers accounts for the emergence of telic readings of potentially locative sentences in French and Serbian (corresponding to the English to go to the swimming pool ). The paper establishes that although deprived of overt marking of definiteness, the nominal of telic sentences of Serbian is interpreted as definite. It is shown that in both languages, telic definites are relational definites that take the human subject as the argument of the telic qualia associated to the head noun and that this option is restricted to under-specified spatial prepositions and verbs. A discussion of some very rare cases illustrating different telic constructions in both languages is proposed.

Published online: 03 December 2014
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.219.08asi
References
Aguilar-Guevara, A. & Zwarts, J
2010 Weak definites and reference to kinds. In Proceedings of SALT 20, D. Lutz & N. Li (eds), 179–196. Ithaca NY: CLC Publications.Google Scholar
Ašić, T
2008 Espace, Temps, Préposition. Droz: Genève.Google Scholar
In print. Les prépositions dans les constructions téliques et fonctionelles en français, en serbe et en bulgare. In Actes du Colloque DEAF2. University of Kragujevac.
Aurnague, M
2004 À cet endroit vs. dans un tel endroit: Ce que à nous dit d’endroit et vice-versa. Langages 173: 34–53. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2004 Les structures de l’espace linguistique: Regards croisés sur quelques constructions spatiales du Basque et du Français. Leuven: Peeters.Google Scholar
Barker, C
1993 Definite possessives and discourse novelty. In Chicago Linguistic Society, 28: Papers from the Twenty-Eight Regional Meeting, Vol. 1, C. Canakis, G. Chan & J. Denton (eds), 26–41. Chicago IL: CLS.Google Scholar
In press. Possessive weak definites.
Borillo, A
1983 La détermination et la préposition de lieu à en français. In Détermination et Formalization [Linvisticæ Investigationes Supplementa 23], X. Blanco, P.-A. Buvet & Z. Gavriilidou (eds), 85–99. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bosch, P
2010 Weak definites and German preposition-determiner contractions. Paper presented at Workshop Specificity from Theoretical and Empirical Points of View, Institut für Linguistik, Universität Stuttgart.
Carlson, G
1977 A unified analysis of the English bare plural. Linguistics and Philosophy 1: 413–457. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carlson, G. & Sussman, R
2005 Seemingly indefinite definites. In Linguistic Evidence, S. Kepsar & M. Reis (eds), 71–85. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Corblin, F
1987 Indéfini, défini et démonstratif. Construction linguistique de la référence. Paris : Droz.Google Scholar
1995 Les formes de reprise dans le discours. Anaphores et chaînes de référence. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes.Google Scholar
2001 Défini et génitif: Le cas des définis défectifs. In Cahier Jean-Claude Milner, J.-M. Marandin (ed.), 19–54. Lagrasse: Editions Verdier.Google Scholar
2002 Représentation du discours et sémantique formelle. Introduction et applications au français [Collection linguistique nouvelle]. Paris: P.U.F.Google Scholar
2011 Des définis para-intensionnels: être à l’hôpital, aller à l’école . Langue française 171(3): 55–75. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2013 Weak definites as bound relational definites. Revue Linguistique de Vincennes 42: 91–122. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Farkas, D. & de Swart, H
2004 The Semantics of Incorporation: From Argument Structure to Discourse Transparency. Stanford CA: CSLI.Google Scholar
Flaux, Nelly
1992 Les syntagmes nominaux du type le fils d'un paysan: Référence définie ou indéfinie? Le Français Moderne 1: 113–140.Google Scholar
1993 Les syntagmes nominaux du type le fils d'un paysan: Référence définie ou indéfinie? Le Français Moderne 2: 23–45.Google Scholar
Furukawa, Naoyo
1986 L’article et le problème de la référence en français. Tokyo: France Tosho.Google Scholar
Hawkins, J.A
1978 Definiteness and Indefinitenes. A Study in Reference and Grammaticality Prediction. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Kehler, A. & Shieber, S.M
1997 Anaphoric dependencies in ellipsis. Computational Linguistics 23(3): 457–466.Google Scholar
Kleiber, G
2001 Déterminants indéfinis ou Quand les faibles jouent aux forts . In Détermination et Formalisation [Linguisticæ Investigationes Supplementa 23], X. Blanco, P.-A. Buvet & Z. Gavriilidou (eds), 195–217. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Krifka, M
2004 Structural features of language and language use. In Group Interaction in High Risk Environments, R. Dietrich & T. Michell Childress (eds), 141–164. Farnham: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Löbner, S
1985 Definites. Journal of Semantics 4(4): 279–326. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Milner, J.-C
1982 Ordres et raisons de langue. Paris: Seuil.Google Scholar
Poesio, M
1994 Weak definites. In Proceedings of Salt IV, M. Harvey & L. Santelmann (eds), 282–299. Ithaca NY: Cornell DMLL.Google Scholar
Pustejovsky, J
1995 The Generative Lexicon. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Roberts, C
2003 Uniqueness in definite noun phrases. Linguistics and Philosophy 26: 287–350. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stanojević, V
2010 O nekim aspektima referencijalnosti u francuskom i u srpskom jeziku. In Interdisciplinarnost i jedinstvo savremene nauke, Knjiga 4, tom 1, Pale: Univezitet u Istočnom Sarajevu.Google Scholar
2012 De la référence définie en serbe par comparaison avec le français. In Les etudes françaises, aujourd’hui, 271–283. Belgrade: Faculté de Philologie de l’Université de Belgrade, Association de coopération culturelle Serbie-France.Google Scholar
Stevanović, M
1964 Savremeni Srpskohrvatski Jezik I. Beograd: Naučno delo.Google Scholar
Stvan, L.S
1998 The Semantics and Pragmatics of Bare Singular Noun Phrases. PhD dissertation, Northwestern University.
Vandeloise, C
1987 La préposition à et le principe d’anticipation. Langue française 76: 77–111. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vogel, S
2011 Weak Definites and Generics. BA thesis, Universität Osnabrück.
Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Ašić, Tijana
2017. Spatial Deictic Expression in Serbian Ovde, Tamo, Tu; A New Approach. In Formal Models in the Study of Language, ► pp. 123 ff. DOI logo
Corblin, Francis & Tijana Asic
2017. Une nouvelle approche de l’opposition ici/là et ovde/tu. Travaux de linguistique n° 72:1 ► pp. 29 ff. DOI logo
Schumacher, Petra B. & Hanna Weiland
2014. Referential properties of definites and salience spreading. In Weak Referentiality [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 219], ► pp. 365 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 08 january 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.