Definiteness across domains

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Agata Renans
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 493949122

This network addresses the topic of definite determiners in the nominal and clausal domain. In some languages, determiners used to mark definiteness are also found in clause-final position, e.g., in the backgrounded part of clefts, compare (1a) to (1b), from Akan.(1) a. Pàpá nó sá-àyɛ́‎. b. Kofi nà ɔ̀‎-sá-àyɛ́‎ nó. man def dance-pst Kofi prt 3sg-dance-pst def `The man danced.‘ ‘It was Kofi who danced.’The main focus of the network is on the compositional semantics of definite determiners, crosslinguistically, especially in under-researched languages. The main research questions are:-How is definiteness expressed across languages?- What is the meaning and use of definite descriptions in the nominal and clausal domain in a crosslinguistic perspective?- Is a unified analysis of definite descriptions in the nominal and clausal domain possible?In order to address these questions, the network focuses on three work packages:WP1 focuses on languages where different kinds of definiteness (e.g. anaphoricity/strong familiarity vs. reference to inherently unique individuals) are expressed differently (e.g.,Schwarz 2019): with two different determiners or a determiner vs. a bare noun. The main question is what kinds of definiteness are there and how can they be characterized and analyzed?WP2 investigates the meaning contribution of bare singular count nouns in languages where they (appear to) express definiteness. Is this true definiteness, and if yes, how is this reading achieved (relating this, in particular, to typeshifting accounts, e.g., Chierchia 1998, Dayal 2004)?WP3: concentrates on the distribution, meaning and use of clause-final definite determiners such as nó in (1b) (Duah, Renans & Grubic 2020). In which way can these environments be classified as definite, and how is the clause-final determiner related to its counterpart in the nominal domain?For each of these WPs, some of the network members have expressed opposing views on the compositional semantics/syntax of these constructions, their exact meaning contribution, or their interaction with other (e.g. indefinite or demonstrative) expressions. We, therefore, aim to find testable differences between their accounts and to collaboratively explore them in experiments and/or fieldwork. This in turn will lead to collaborative output such as conference and journal publications, field/experimental manuals and and possibly further collaborative grant applications.Most members of our network are younger researchers (mostly Post-Docs). They are researchers doing theoretical semantic and syntactic work, fieldworkers, and typologists working on definiteness. WP3 is comparatively under-researched and for this reason we have taken care to include network members working on languages with clausal determiners (e.g., Akan, Ga, Ewe (Kwa), Kusaal, Dagaare, Dagbani, Buli (Gur)).

• DFG Programme: Scientific Networks
• Co-Investigator: Dr. Reginald Duah