be implemented: suffixation may take place before or after prefixation. The second option will be addressed in §4.3. According to the first option, where *yv(a)* attaches low, suffixation serves to form an iterative stem from a simple root, i.e. *pisyv(at')* from *pis(at')* (see Padučeva 2015). When a lexical/internal prefix (here: *za-*) applies to such an iterative base (here: *pisyva-*), it will modify the event kind that is claimed to be realized repeatedly. In the given case this will lead from denoting multiple realizations of writing events to denoting multiple realizations of recording events. As for the external prefix *do-*, we assume, for the sake of the argument, that when stacking on top, it induces an upper closed "temporal macro event scale", as indicated in Figure 1 (more on that below). The natural numbers indicate the number of events (in our case: recording events) that have occurred up to the respective point of time on the scale. The scale is upper-closed in that there is one point that demarcates the maximal number of events. In Figure 1 the maximal number of events is arbitrarily chosen as ten. Note further that the ten recording events symbolized in Figure 1 are ten maximal/completed recording events (the prefix *za-* introduces the respective maximality condition; see §5.1).

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Figure 1: Upper closed macro event scale

Let us assume further that, unlike *do-*completive, the prefixes *pere-*repetitive and *pod-*attenuative do not have the capacity of ordering the plurality of events in its input on a macro scale like Figure 1.

According to the story just sketched, the suffix *yv(a)* in perfective *dozapisyvat'* applies prior to the internal prefix *za-*, i.e. itself VP-internally. It is thus a different creature than the secondary imperfective *yv(a)* that figures in the constraint that Tatevosov identifies for PR-prefixes, which I repeat from above, this time in a direct quote from Tatevosov (2013b: 4):

(33) [\*PR > *yva*]

Pozicionno-ograničennye prefiksy prisoedinjajutsja ne vyše, čem pokazatel' vtoričnogo imperfektiva *-yva-*.

[Positionally restricted prefixes do not attach higher than the marker of secondary imperfectives *yva*.]

Since Tatevosov's restriction [\*PR > *yva*] is explicitly connected to the marking of secondary imperfectives, it would not be violated if the story just told was correct. But can it be correct?

### Olav Mueller-Reichau

If *yv(a)* was a marker of iterativity in perfective *dozapisyvat'*, *dovyšivat'*, etc., the macroevent relative to which the prefix *do-* "picks out" the terminative interval should be made of a plurality of completed recording events, embroidering events, etc. More generally put: For a form instantiating *do* + pref + root + *yva* + *t'* to be acceptable as perfective, the events denoted by pref + root + *yva* should be conceivable as consisting of a plurality of completed pref + root-events, realizing one after the other. Provisionally I call this condition "seriality requirement".

The seriality requirement might point to an answer to the question of why some instances of *do* + pref + root + *yva* + *t'*, such as *dovyšivat'*, are widely accepted as perfectives in the tested sentences, while others such as *dozapisyvat'* are not (recall §3). Note that the event denoted by *vyšivat' kartinu* is easily conceivable as a series of by themselves completed embroidering events. Imagine I want to embroider the picture of a farm. First I embroider the sheep shelter, then I embroider the cock standing on dunghill, etc. Similar with the event denoted by *ustanavlivat' Windows*, because installing a computer program typically consists of installing different subprograms (files) one by one. Our world knowledge about these kinds of events is thus in harmony with the requirement of a series of completed events. Not so for the event denoted by *zapisyvat' pesnju*. This event is typically realized in one go. Otherwise the song would be interrupted and, so to speak, destroyed, undermining the very goal of the action. That we expect a song to be recorded in one go is at odds with the seriality requirement, which calls for a plurality of completed recordings, and this might be the reason why many informants reject (26), but not (25) and (24). An interesting observation in that regard is that judgements improve once (26) is framed in a music studio context. This fits into the picture because when a song is recorded in a music studio, different sound files will be recorded in a serial manner, one by one, each a completed recording, to make up the whole song in the end: first the trumpets get recorded, then the drums, etc.

And so, we hypothesized that it might be an obstacle for accepting a perfective verb instantiating the schema *do* + pref + root + *yva* if the pref + root + *yva*event cannot easily be conceived of as a series of completed subevents. So far, so good. Unfortunately, however, the idea of internal iterative *yv(a)* faces severe problems.

First, it should be noted that this story involves a violation of the otherwise valid rule that the output of prefixation is perfective (recall §3.3). The violation concerns the second step in the assumed derivational history:

(34) *pisat'*ipfv 'write' → *pisyvat'*ipfv 'write again and again' → *zapisyvat'*ipfv 'record again and again' → *dozapisyvat'*pfv 'finish recording'

### 11 Perfective dozapisyvat' – real or fake?

A further concern is that the derivational history in (34) gives rise to a bracketing paradox. The syntactic derivation is not in line with the subsequent steps of semantic composition as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Bracketing paradox arising from (34)

The internal prefix *za-*, which enters the syntactic derivation only after application of iterative *yv(a)*, should have semantic access to the event description supplied by the initial predicate *pisat'*ipfv. This technical problem is perhaps not insurmountable; however, it is difficult to come up with an easy solution.

A further point relates to the particular case of perfective *doustanavlivat'*. The problem is that there is no verb *stanavlivat'* in Russian. The proposed derivational history would thus involve a gap – which must not occur according to the rules stated for felicitous derivational histories by Zinova & Filip (2015: 601–602):

(35) *stanovit'*ipfv 'put up' → \**stanavlivat'*ipfv 'put up again and again' → *ustanavlivat'*ipfv 'install again and again' → *doustanavlivat'*pfv 'finish installing'

To sum up: The idea that perfective *dozapisyvat'* and its correspondents involve "internal iterative *yv(a)*" might seem promising at first glance. On closer inspection, however, it turns out that it produces more problems than it solves. How to get the semantic composition right (bracketing paradox)? Should gaps in a verb's derivational history be tolerated? Should we really accept prefixation with imperfective output?

### **4.3 External iterative** *yva*

Letting *yv(a)* attach low is not the only way to derive the seriality requirement observed in connection with perfective *dozapisyvat'* and similar verbs. An alternative would be to assume that *yv(a)* applying after prefixation does not always function as a secondary imperfective morpheme. Maybe, besides the imperfectivizing *yv(a) sensu stricto*, there is a homonymous iterativizing *yv(a)*. Let us call the former *-yv(a)*1 and the latter *yv(a)*2 . If [\*PR > *yva*] could be restricted to *yv(a)* in its imperfectivizing function, i.e. to *yv(a)*1 , it would not be violated:

### Olav Mueller-Reichau

(36) a. [[zapis]-yva1 ]-t' 'to be performing a recording' ⇒ \**dozapisyvat'*pfv b. [[zapis]-yva2 ]-t' 'to perform multiple recordings' ⇒ ✓*dozapisyvat'*pfv

This story is superior to the one told in Section 4.2 in that it derives perfective *doustanavlivat'* without gap:

(37) *stanovit'*ipfv → *ustanovit'*pfv → *ustanavlivat'*ipfv → *doustanavlivat'*pfv

A problem for the assumption of two homonymous *yv(a)*-morphemes is that, contrary to fact, one would expect [[do-[[zapis]-yva2 ]]-va1 ]-t'ipfv to be a possible structure. Some extra constraint would be necessary to rule this out (see Tatevosov 2013a: 64–65 for discussion).

Another problem: if an iterative *yv(a)* was responsible for the existence of an otherwise impossible perfective *dozapisyvat'*, why should this option not also hold for *dopisyvat'*? That is to say, why does *dopisyvat'* not work as a perfective? Or does it?

(38) Ja I diplom diploma MBA MBA načinala begin.pst.ipfv pisat' write zaranee, earlier za within neskol'ko some mesjacev, months s with naučnym scientific rukovoditelem supervisor vstrečalas', meet.pst.ipfv obsuždala, discuss.pst.ipfv […] napisala write.pst.pfv tak so pervye first 10 10 stranic. pages Do until trebuemogo demanded ob"ema volume ostavalos' remain.pst.ipfv ešče still 80. 80 Dopisyvala finish.write.pst.pfv za within dve 2 noči. nights V in itoge end vyšel na 120 stranic.

out.go.pst.pfv on 120 pages

'I started to write my MBA earlier on, some months ago, I met with my supervisor, discussed … This way I wrote the first 10 pages. 80 pages remained to be written. Two nights before deadline, I was about to finish writing it. In the end my thesis came out with 120 pages.'

(www.babyblog.ru)

At first glance, the adverbial *za dve noči* in the penultimate sentence might invite the conclusion that the verb *dopisyvala* is used in the perfective function in (38). A closer look reveals, however, that the expression *za dve noči* in (38) does not serve as an inclusive temporal adverbial, as it does in (9) and (10) above. Instead it is understood here as referring to a point in time located two nights before the final date of submission (the latter information has been omitted from sentence

11 Perfective dozapisyvat' – real or fake?

surface). This, of course, changes the picture as now the use of an *imperfective* verb is well motivated. What is said here is that the speaker was in the final stages of writing down her MBA two nights before deadline. It is only the final sentence that informs us about the success of the endeavor.

Thus, it remains as a fact that *do-* may serve to perfectivize a base involving *yv(a)* only if the base also contains an internal/lexical prefix (but see below).

	- b. *dopisyvat'* → only imperfective

If *yv(a)*2 was responsible for perfective *dozapisyvat'*, *dovyšivat'*, etc., we would expect perfective *dopisyvat'*, *došivat'*, etc. to be possible too – contrary to fact.

### **5 Proposal**

What did we achieve so far in this paper? First of all, we convinced ourselves that the prefix *do-*completive is indeed capable of perfectivizing bases involving *yv(a)*. For this to be possible, the base is required to contain an internal prefix. I thus basically confirm the position of Zinova & Filip (2015) and Zinova (2016). Perfective *dozapisyvat'* is real, its derivational history being (3), repeated here for convenience:

(40) *pisat'*ipfv → *zapisat'*pfv → *zapisyvat'*ipfv → *dozapisyvat'*pfv

In addition to that, we developed a proposal to clarify issues left open by Zinova & Filip (2015) and Zinova (2016). The proposal boils down to the following generalization:

(41) If *do-* attaches to a base involving *yv(a)* to perfectivize it, the base will denote a plurality of successively realizing completed events.

What I am going to do now is to show that (41) entails answers to, as far as I can see, all of the open questions that we came across in this paper.

### **5.1 The role of the internal prefix**

A prerequisite for a predicate to provide a plurality of events is that it "specifies an individuation criterion for its application which determines what counts as 'one' whole event in its denotation" (Filip 2017: 184). Without a clue as to what counts as one, pluralization is impossible. This individuation criterion (called

### Olav Mueller-Reichau

maximality condition in Filip 2008) is supplied by the internal prefix. This is why (41) implies an explanation for the pattern in (39), i.e. for the obligatory presence of an internal prefix: the internal prefix sanctions the interpretation that the prefix *do-* requires its input to have.

So-called "simple perfectives", i.e. non-prefixed perfective verbs, such as *rešit'* 'solve' or *kupit'* 'buy', can be thought of as having their individuation criterion lexically built into the root meaning. If so, we would, given the reasoning from above, expect that the imperfective forms derived from simple perfectives may also serve as bases for *do-*. This seems to be borne out:

(42) Ksjuška K. dopisala finish.write.pst.pfv referat referat po in istorii, history a whereas Nazarka, N. nakonec, finally dorešal finish.solve.pst.pfv zadačku exercise-dim po in matematike. mathematics 'Ksjushka finished writing her presentation in history, and Nazarka finally finished solving a little exercise in mathematics.' (www.infourok.ru)

Starting from his assumption that *do-* is never able to apply above secondary imperfective morphology, Tatevosov (2009: 135) considers examples like (42) to indicate that the marker *-a* in perfective *dorešat'* is a suffix *sui generis* and therefore excluded from generalization [\*PR > *yva*]. In the light of the present proposal, an alternative hypothesis suggests itself: perfective *dorešat'* may be viewed as a systematic exception to [\*PR > *yva*], on a par with perfective *dozapisyvat'*.

(43) a. *rešit'*pfv → *dorešit'*pfv → *dorešat'*pfv b. *rešit'*pfv → *rešat'*ipfv → *dorešat'*pfv

Note that the predicate *rešat' zadaču* is compatible with the seriality requirement, because a mathematical problem often implies a solution path, requiring several self-contained steps (completed solving events) to take.6

### **5.2 The impact of** *do-*

In this subsection I want to point out that my proposal is in line with the semantic analysis of completive *do-* put forward in Kagan (2012) and Kagan (2015). According to that analysis, the prefix *do-* applies to predicates that entail an increase along a gradable property . Doing so, it imposes on interpretation the

6The same with Tatevosov's own example sentence, which contains the predicate *dorešat' vse svoi voprosy* 'finish solving all of his questions'.

11 Perfective dozapisyvat' – real or fake?

condition that, at the final moment of the event, the degree to which a participant comes to be characterized by matches the maximal value. In addition, it splits the whole increase to maximum into two parts, with only the final part being semantically entailed by the new predicate (the initial part is analyzed as presuppositional information).7

What counts as the maximal value of is determined by linguistic expressions accompanying the predicate. If the predicate is an incremental theme verb, the maximal value will be set by the direct object, as in (44), where the event is understood to finish when the final page of the book has been read (see Kagan 2015: 71).

(44) Vasja V. dočital finish.read.pst.pfv knigu. book 'Vasja finished reading a/the book.' (Kagan 2015: 71)

Given generalization (41), the predicate to which *do-* applies in the case of perfective *dozapisyvat'* or *dovyšivat'* fulfills these demands of the prefix. It entails an increase along a gradable property, where corresponds to the increasing number of completed events that are successively realized with time (recall Figure 1). Since *zapisyvat'* or *vyšivat'* are incremental verbs, the maximal value in the respective examples is set by the direct objects (in our examples: *kartinu* or *pesnju*).

### **5.3 Other positionally restricted prefixes**

As discussed in §3, Zinova & Filip (2015) observe that there is no perfective *perezapisyvat'* 'to rerecord' on analogy to perfective *dozapisyvat'*. They conclude that *pere-*repetitive produces an imperfective verb when attaching to a base containing an internal prefix and *yv(a)*, like *zapisyvat'*, and that it therefore violates the golden rule of Russian aspectology which says that the output of prefixation is always perfective.

In the light of (41), a different conclusion suggests itself, one that is not at odds with the "golden rule". According to (41), the attachment of a positionally restricted prefix to a base containing an internal prefix and *yv(a)* is licensed only if the base expresses an iteration of completed events ("seriality requirement"). This is so because otherwise the newly created perfective verb would be blocked by its less complex rival. I propose that a plurality of events is just the wrong semantic input for *pere-*repetitive to successfully apply.

7Zinova (2016: 200ff.) presents evidence which suggests that the first event part is implicated rather than presupposed, but that discussion is irrelevant to our concerns here.

### Olav Mueller-Reichau

Take Kagan's (2015: 144ff.) analysis of *pere-*repetitive. According to that proposal, the impact of *pere-* (in that particular usage) is that it leads to the expression of two events, united under the umbrella of a common goal, which the first event alone fell short of. At least the second event has to satisfy the base predicate. The existence of the first event is presupposed, the existence of the second event is an entailment. The application of the prefix *pere-*repetitive thus outputs a (modified) copy of the event described by the base predicate. This requires that the base supplies a *single* event.

Similarly, the semantics of a verb prefixed by *pod-*attenuative is argued by Kagan (2015: 109) to involve the unification of a presupposed event and an entailed event. With reference to Plungjan (2001), Kagan characterizes the entailed event as a "reduced, 'diminished' realization" of the presupposed event. We can conclude that for *pere-*repetitive and *pod-*attenuative to work, the respective base predicates will have to characterize single events. And this is why they cannot do what *do*can do.

### **5.4 No blocking**

Why is perfective *dozapisyvat'* not blocked by the availability of perfective *dozapisat'*? This was the first open question addressed in §3. The question was motivated by the pragmatic principle "avoid complexity of expression", which says that, all other things being equal, less complex forms are preferred over more complex forms (see 17). Now under the assumption of (41), it turns out that with respect to the two perfective forms *dozapisat'* and *dozapisyvat'*, it is not the case that all other things were equal. Indeed, the two forms do not only differ in complexity of form, but also in their semantic content. In *dozapisat'*, the gradable property whose maximal value the prefix *do-* declares as the finishing point of the event is the evolution of a single recording event, limited by the extent of the thing being recorded (i.e. the referent of the direct object). In *dozapisyvat'*, by contrast, the gradable property relevant for *do-* is the evolution of a series of recording events, realizing until the thing being recorded has finally been fully recorded. As a consequence of these distinct meanings we do not expect any blocking effect from (17), in line with the facts.

### **5.5 Coordination order in sequences of events**

Two perfective clauses that are coordinated by means of *i* 'and' express a sequence of two events of the type described by the two verb forms used. "Sequence" means that the event introduced by the second clause is understood as

11 Perfective dozapisyvat' – real or fake?

immediately following the completion of the event of the first clause. The two events form a chain of events. In §3.2 we saw that coordinating two perfectives is problematic if the predicate of the second sentence is of the *dozapisyvat'*-type. Here I repeat the pattern from above, varying the examples. While (47) is fully acceptable, (46) is clearly degraded compared to (45).8

The proposal developed in this paper offers an explanation of these facts. As we saw, the prefix *do-* splits the relevant upper-closed scale into two parts, letting only the final part be relevant for the asserted content. Moreover, according to (41), the relevant scale is made up of successively realizing completed events describable by the base predicate.

Given this, I propose that (46) is degraded because it involves a conflict. To begin with, the sequence of two completed events expressed by two coordinated perfective sentences is shown in (48a), where each box represents a completed event with the black box standing for the event denoted by the first sentence and the white box standing for the event denoted by the second sentence. Now, according to my analysis, perfective verbs like *doustanavlivat'* by themselves denote sequences of completed events, with only the final event of the sequence being assertoric content. This is depicted in (48b), where events of presuppositional content are indicated by dotted boxes. Now let the chain of completed events in (48b) replace event 2 in (48a), as suggested by (46). There are two possibilities of how this may be done, and both face a problem. The first option, given in (48c), is odd because event 1 and event 2 do not form a true chain of events, as they do not directly succeed each other. The second option in (48d) is likewise odd, but for a different reason. Now the problem is that event 1 is no longer the first completed event in the chain.

8This holds even for those speakers of Russian mentioned in fn. 3.

(47) does not run into the same troubles as (46) because here the presuppositional part preceding event 1 is *part* of event 2 (tentatively indicated by that there are no gaps between the boxes). Therefore event 1 is still the first event to complete in the chain of events. Finally, if the two sentences are flipped, as in (45), event 1 can complete before the immediately succeeding event 2 without complications. This is shown in (48f).

### **5.6 How to explain asymmetrical judgements?**

Certain instances of *do-* attaching to a secondarily imperfectivized predicate are accepted by almost everyone as perfectives (e.g. *dovyšivat'*), while others are often rejected as perfectives (e.g. *dozapisyvat'*). We saw that this asymmetry in judgements has been noted by Zinova & Filip (2015) and Zinova (2016), but not explained. I suggest a new explanation, which derives from (41). It has already been stated above in §4.2. Let me repeat it in a (hopefully) clear and concise manner:

(49) A verb having the stem structure do + pref + root + yva may be felicitously used as a perfective only if the context of its use allows for the verb with the corresponding stem structure pref + root + yva to be interpreted iteratively.

In a context in which one can felicitously say *dozapisyvaju* 'I will finish recording', it should, according to (49), be possible to also felicitously say *zapisyvaju* 'I record again and again'; in a context in which one can felicitously say *dovyšival* 'I finished embroidering', it should be possible to also felicitously say *vyšival* 'I embroidered again and again'; etc.

11 Perfective dozapisyvat' – real or fake?

### **6 Conclusions**

In Tatevosov (2013b), the author holds the view that where [\*PR > *yva*] is violated, this is due to a special property of *do-*. In particular, it is proposed that speakers of Russian belong to different dialects. One dialect strictly adheres to [\*PR > *yva*], another one, called dialect D, is more liberal with respect to *do-*: 9

(50) Dialect D

Unlike other positionally restricted prefixes, the prefix *do-* is not prohibited from attaching above the marker of secondary imperfectivization.

In the present paper, I argue in a similar vein that the prefix *do-* is outstanding in being the only positionally restricted prefix that allows for applying above *yv(a)*. This position implies, contra Zinova & Filip (2015), that there is, for instance, no verb *perezapisyvat'* in Russian which would be derived from prefixing *zapisyvat'* by *pere-*. Instead, *perezapisyvat'* is always imperfective as the result of secondarily imperfectivizing perfective *perezapisat'*. The prefix *pere-*repetitive, in other words, behaves as predicted for a positionally restricted prefix from the point of view of the analysis of Tatevosov (2009, 2013a).

There is, however, one important feature of the present analysis that sets it apart from Tatevosov's position, bringing it closer to Zinova (2016) in spirit. If the present proposal is on the right track, the empirical generalization [\*PR > *yva*] is not a purely formal contraint, as Tatevosov (2013b) emphasizes it to be. Instead it looks as if every positionally restricted prefix was in principle (that is, as far as formal limitations are concerned) free to apply above *yv(a)*, but that there are two obstacles that may hinder them from doing so. The first one is pragmatic in nature. It is the principle "avoid complexity", ultimately saying that the newly created structure (prefix over *yv*(*a*)) will be blocked if a less complex rival of identical meaning is available. The second obstacle is semantic in nature: the semantics of the prefix may not allow for iterative predicates as complements. But operating on an iterative meaning is the only way to create a meaning different from the meaning of the morphologically less complex perfective. Thus, it is the only way to escape being blocked by "avoid complexity". Among the positionally restricted prefixes, it is only *do-* which allows for iterative predicates as complements.

9Thanks to Yulia Zinova for drawing my attention to that paper.

Olav Mueller-Reichau

### **Abbreviations**

### **Acknowledgments**

This paper was first presented at the *Kolloquium Slawistische Linguistik* at Humboldt University Berlin in July 2018, and then later at the conference *Formal Description of Slavic Languages* at Göttingen University in December 2018. On both occasions I received valuable feedback from many colleagues. I am particularly indebted to Petr Biskup, Berit Gehrke, Keren Khrizman, Robert Hammel, Denisa Lenertová, Roland Meyer, Irina Sekerina, Radek Šimík, Yulia Sorokina, Luka Szucsich, Sergei Tatevosov, Daniel Tiskin, Claudia Wichmann and Yulia Zinova. My gratitude also goes to two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and recommendations.

### **References**

11 Perfective dozapisyvat' – real or fake?

## **Chapter 12**

## **Demonstratives and definiteness: Multiple determination in Balkan Slavic**

### Catherine Rudin

Wayne State College

Colloquial Bulgarian and Macedonian possess a nominal construction containing both a demonstrative and a definite article. This multiple determination (MD) structure is a single phrase with demonstrative heading DemP (spelling out features of the Dem head) and the article spelling out features of D, realized as a suffix on the next phrasal head: PossP, QP, AP, or in Macedonian NP. The affective interpretation of MD phrases derives from the interaction of demonstratives and the definite article: since the D head is independently spelled out by the article, the demonstrative spells out only relational features of Dem and has no definiteness features. Independent spell-out of D alongside Dem is made possible by the non-adjacency of the article suffix and the demonstrative. The emotive quality of MD accounts for its preference for colloquial and proximate demonstratives and articles.

**Keywords:** definite article, demonstrative, multiple determination, double definiteness, affective, definiteness agreement

### **1 Introduction to multiple determination**

This paper deals with a specific type of multiple determination (MD) found in the Balkan Slavic languages Bulgarian and Macedonian. Multiple determination is a cover term for various constructions in which a nominal phrase contains more than one marker of definiteness: two definite articles, or a demonstrative and a definite article, or a demonstrative or article plus a definiteness inflection.1

1Other terms are found in the literature for the same phenomena, or a subset of them: polydefiniteness, double definiteness, and definiteness agreement among them. I follow Joseph (2019) in choosing to refer to all constructions of this type as multiple determination.

Catherine Rudin. 2021. Demonstratives and definiteness: Multiple determination in Balkan Slavic. In Andreas Blümel, Jovana Gajić, Ljudmila Geist, Uwe Junghanns & Hagen Pitsch (eds.), *Advances in formal Slavic linguistics 2018*, 305–338. Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.5483114

### Catherine Rudin

Balkan Slavic MD involves a demonstrative and one or more definite article suffixes, see (1) and throughout the paper.2

(1) tija these novite new.def koli cars 'these new cars' (Bulgarian)

Not all languages have MD constructions; English, for example, lacks phrases like \**the big the book* or \**this the book*. In languages which lack definite articles (including all Slavic languages other than Bulgarian and Macedonian) the issue simply does not arise. But MD is quite common and appears in languages worldwide. For instance, multiple definite articles are found in Hebrew and Arabic (Doron & Khan 2015), as well as Greek (Alexiadou & Wilder 1998). Swedish exemplifies cooccurrence of a definite article with a definiteness suffix (Alexiadou 2014). Demonstrative plus article combinations occur in languages ranging from Hungarian to Spanish (Giusti 2002) to Omaha-Ponca (Rudin 1993). The Balkan Slavic constructions which will be our main concern here are also of the demonstrative-plus-article type.

Regardless of their type, all MD constructions raise similar issues for the structure and interpretation of nominal phrases. Are MD constructions single DPs or are they perhaps some kind of appositive or nested construction with more than one DP? If the MD string is a single DP, does each of the definiteness elements (demonstrative, article, and/or inflection) make a separate contribution to the meaning of the phrase, or does one or more of them simply constitute definiteness agreement? What is the syntactic position of each of these elements, and what is the overall structure of the nominal phrase, i.e. what categories are projected and how? The answers to these questions vary; in fact, it is clear that MD constructions are far from homogeneous.3 A case of likely definiteness agreement is Hungarian, where a demonstrative is always accompanied by a single definite article following it, as in (2). The article is obligatory and does not contribute any special semantics; the interpretation is that of a normal deictic demonstrative.

(2) ez this \*(a) the lány girl 'this girl' (Hungarian)

2Balkan Slavic includes Macedonian, Bulgarian, and the transitional Torlak dialects of East Serbia. I unfortunately lack sufficient Torlak data to include it in this paper. The other South Slavic languages, BCMS and Slovenian, do not participate in the Balkan Sprachbund and are not considered Balkan Slavic.

3 For a more extensive overview than I can give here, see Alexiadou (2014).

12 Multiple determination in Balkan Slavic

We will see below that this is quite unlike the Balkan Slavic MD construction, in which an article is optional and does contribute additional meaning.

Flexible order is a diagnostic of likely appositive structure. In Greek, both article + article (3) and demonstrative + article (4) constructions exhibit variable word order, suggesting that the demonstrative *afto* and the various strings beginning with an article each constitute a separate DP.

In some languages, demonstrative + article occurs only with non-canonical word order, again suggesting a different structure than a single normal DP. A familiar example is Spanish, where an article is found only with post-nominal demonstrative. Giusti (2002) argues this final demonstrative is generated low within DP.

My initial interest in MD was in Omaha-Ponca, a Siouan language spoken in Nebraska. In this language, demonstrative and article can combine directly, as in (6a); here the demonstrative is pronominal. Multiple articles are also found, as in (6b–6d), though this is not obligatory. In Rudin (1993) I argued that most if not all MD constructions in Omaha-Ponca are a series of appositive DPs. Word order within the MD constructions is quite free (compare 6b and 6c) and more than one noun can be involved (see 6d), both characteristics which suggest multiple separate DPs.

### Catherine Rudin

(6) a. thé this akh á the 'this guy, this one' b. thé this akh á the níkashin ga person akh á the nón ba two akh á the 'these two people' c. níkashin ga person akh á the nón ba two akh á the thé this akh á the 'these two people' d. níkashin ga person akh á the winégi my.uncle akhá the Marvin Marvin akh á the 'that person, my uncle Marvin' (Omaha-Ponca; Rudin field tapes4

Although in Greek, Spanish, and Omaha-Ponca a demonstrative with an articled noun or adjective arguably has some special status, as a separate (pronominal) DP and/or located outside the left periphery of DP, none of the indications leading to such conclusions are present in Balkan Slavic. Bulgarian and Macedonian MD constructions are not appositive.5 Nor is the Balkan Slavic construction a simple case of definiteness agreement. I argue below that MD phrases in Bulgarian and Macedonian are single DPs, with demonstrative and article in their normal syntactic positions, and with special semantics produced by the combination of demonstrative + definite article.

)

### **2 Balkan Slavic MD: The data**

Before proposing an analysis, in this section I present an overview of the Balkan Slavic MD construction of interest for this paper, including its basic form, meaning, and usage (§2.1), the article and demonstrative morphemes involved (§2.2), its syntactic characteristics (§2.3), and the role of intonation (§2.4).

4The Omaha-Ponca examples are from my own fieldwork on this language in the 1980s–1990s, partially supported by National Science Foundation grant #BNS-890283.

5One exception to this generalization should be mentioned, a separate construction involving demonstratives with articled forms of a small group of quantificational or identity adjectives with meanings like 'all' or 'same', in both Bulgarian and Macedonian. This construction behaves quite differently from the one discussed here, both syntactically and semantically, and probably is an appositive structure. See Rudin (2018) for details.

12 Multiple determination in Balkan Slavic

### **2.1 The object of study, its usage, and its semantic characteristics**

In standard, literary Macedonian and Bulgarian, demonstratives and articles do not cooccur; a nominal phrase can contain either a demonstrative or a definite article (the suffix glossed def) but not both, regardless of word order.

However, in colloquial usage, both languages do combine a demonstrative with a definite article. MD constructions are quite common in speech and in informal written contexts such as social media. Their association with more personal registers is no accident, as they tend to express "emotivity" or "subjective affect" (Friedman 2019), either positive or negative. To give a sense of typical MD usage, (9–10) present attested examples with a bit of context; the MD phrase is bracketed for ease of reading:

	- wow those our.def friends straight us left.3pl without words 'Wow, those friends of ours simply left us speechless.' (they served such great food) (social media)

### Catherine Rudin

	- super are these new.def mastikas from Spain 'These new mastikas (liquors) from Spain are great.' (with photo of a pack of chewing gum called "mastiki") (social media)

These are taken from Facebook, blogs, and transcribed conversation.6 The (a) examples are deprecating: (9a) expresses dislike of a particular habit, and (10a) sneers at a group of people, calling them "cattle". The (b) examples project positive affect: (9b) gushes about what good cooks "our" friends are, and (10b) shows enthusiasm for a new chewing gum whose name sounds like a traditional Balkan alcoholic drink. This characteristic affectivity will be the focus of §3.2 and §3.4 below. The MD phrases in this example set all consist of a demonstrative, an adjective (which carries the definite article suffix), and a noun, but this is not necessary; other types of DPs including a definite article can also occur with a demonstrative, as we will see.

MD phrases with demonstrative + definite article are fully acceptable in colloquial usage, sometimes even preferred by speakers as being more natural than a DP with a demonstrative alone. They have been noted in the linguistic literature; see for example Ugrinova-Skalovska (1960/61), Arnaudova (1998), Tasseva-Kurktchieva (2006), Hauge (1999), Mladenova (2007), Dimitrova-Vulchanova & Mišeska Tomić (2009), Friedman (2019). 7 However, no consensus about a formal analysis emerges from these sources. Some are purely descriptive or historical, some merely mention MD constructions in making a point about some other topic, and some confuse the issue by conflating the MD construction addressed here with superficially similar data involving demonstratives and articles, including the quantifier construction described in Footnote 5 and various appositive constructions.

The most detailed formal treatment is Laskova (2006), which proposes a reduced relative clause analysis of some Bulgarian "double definiteness" constructions. These however are rather different from those of interest here. Much of her

6The extensive set of recorded and transcribed Macedonian phone conversations known as the "Bombi" for their explosive political content are available as Prizma (2015) and described in Friedman (2016), Friedman (2019).

7Earlier versions of my own work on this topic are also available: Rudin (2018), Rudin (to appear). These are partially though not completely superseded by the present paper.

### 12 Multiple determination in Balkan Slavic

data does not involve a demonstrative, instead consisting of two-word phrases of which the second is always an adjective, and which always have comma intonation.8 As I show in §2.4, comma intonation indicates a different structure, not the MD construction of interest here. Laskova's main claim, that the second element of the construction is always a predicative adjective with restrictive semantics, does not hold for the true MD construction, whose second element is often not an adjective at all, but a quantifier, possessive, or (in Macedonian) a noun. In short, the Balkan Slavic MD construction I am interested in has not previously received a full analysis. This, of course, is the goal of the present paper.

### **2.2 Morpho-lexical characteristics: The articles and the demonstratives**

As already noted, the MD construction in Bulgarian and Macedonian contains two components usually considered indicators of definiteness: a demonstrative and a suffixal definite article. Before delving into their syntax, it will be useful to take a look at these components. Bulgarian and Macedonian each possess a number of lexical items in the relevant categories, but their inventories of demonstratives and articles are rather different. Bulgarian has the inventory in Table 1, with four sets of demonstratives, differing in stylistic level (neutral vs. informal/ colloquial) and perceived distance. There is only one set of articles.9

Macedonian, as shown in Table 2, lacks the stylistic difference between colloquial and more formal demonstratives, but makes another distinction: a threeway deictic split between proximal, neutral, and distal series with roots *-v-, -t-*, and *-n*-, respectively, not only in the demonstratives but also in the articles.

8Laskova examines three "double definiteness" structures: [demonstrative adjective + def], [possessive + def adjective + def], and [numeral + def adjective + def]. Only the first of these is our MD construction. The cases without demonstrative have obligatory comma intonation indicating appositive structure. Laskova does not recognize MD constructions with anything other than a single adjective, for example those with a demonstrative plus more than one definite adjective, a demonstrative plus a definite numeral or possessive (or both), possibly also followed by one or more adjectives, or in Macedonian, a demonstrative followed by a definite noun. All of these not only exist, but have the same semantic and other characteristics as her [demonstrative adjective + def] type and should be treated under a single analysis.

9The gloss of the articles as masculine, feminine, neuter, and plural forms is oversimplified. In fact, choice of article depends in part on the phonological shape of the host word. For instance, neuter plural nouns ending in *a* take the *-ta* article, not *-te*: *teletata* 'the calves', and masculine singulars ending in *o* take the *-to* article instead of *-ă(t)*: *djadoto* 'the grandfather'. Similar facts obtain in Macedonian, so the glosses in Table 2 are equally oversimplified. This will be relevant in discussion of the articles' status, below. The Bulgarian masculine article has several different forms depending on phonological environment and (in normative usage) also case: *-(j)ăt* is nominative, while *-(j)a* is objective.

### Catherine Rudin

Table 1: Bulgarian demonstratives and articles

Table 2: Macedonian demonstratives and articles

MD occurs with all demonstratives and all articles, in both languages, but is more natural for some speakers and probably more common with the less formal demonstrative series in Bulgarian, and far more frequent with the proximate demonstrative and article series in Macedonian. This relates to their colloquial nature and their function of expressing emotional reaction or personal involvement. Demonstrative and article in MD agree in all features: gender, number, and also deixis in Macedonian.

The Macedonian *-v-, -t-*, and *-n*- series, both articles and demonstratives, can denote physical distance, but can also indicate metaphorical or psychological distance, i.e. speaker's attitude. The articles are worth noting in particular, given that deixis is not usually marked on articles. Victor Friedman (p.c.) gives the following example of affective use of the articles: A native of Ohrid is likely to refer to Lake Ohrid, on whose shores she has grown up, with the proximal *-v*article as in (11a), in speaking to another Ohrid native, but more apt to use the neutral *-t-* article as in (11b) in speaking to someone from a different area.

(11) a. ezerovo

lake.def.prox

'the lake (which you and I both feel connected to)'

12 Multiple determination in Balkan Slavic

b. ezeroto lake.def.neut 'the lake (no special connotations)' (Macedonian)

Although contrastive spatial deixis is more commonly expressed by means of demonstratives (Karapejovski 2017), the articles can also be used in this way. If two people are standing in a parking lot deciding who will drive which car, they can say (12), distinguishing two cars just by choice of article.10

(12) Ti you vozi drive ja it kolava, car.def.prox a and jas I ḱe will ja it vozam drive kolana. car.def.dist 'You drive the (closer) car, and I'll drive the (farther) car.' (Macedonian)

It is worth asking whether the Macedonian articles are actually definite articles at all, or instead some type of demonstrative. This is less an issue for Bulgarian, with its single set of articles. However, even in Bulgarian there are hints of deictic function in the definite article system (Mladenova 2007). The Rhodope mountain dialects have a similar phenomenon to that in Macedonian, with three sets of articles differing in their consonantal root, in this case with *-s-* said to mean 'near the speaker' and *-t-* 'near the hearer'. The Torlak dialects of East Serbia, on the Bulgarian border, also have suffixal definite articles with deictic features. In fact, there appears to be a tendency across the Balkan Slavic dialect continuum for deictic articles to crop up, in separate areas: the Western Macedonian dialects which are the source of the standard Macedonian article system are not contiguous to the Bulgarian dialects with similar distinctions. The Balkan Slavic definite articles, like articles in many languages, derive diachronically from demonstratives (see Mladenova 2007 for a detailed history), so it is not surprising that they retain some demonstrative-like functions while transitioning to article status.11

Nonetheless, the Balkan Slavic definite articles do differ semantically as well as syntactically from demonstratives. In standard Bulgarian they are simply definiteness inflections, with no deictic or affective meaning. Even in Macedonian

10I owe this example to Marjan Markoviḱ (p.c.), who adds that in this case "there is no emotivity or sense of affiliation, here there is only closer and farther" (my translation). That is, just like the demonstratives (see §3.2), the different article series can express either deictic or affective meaning.

11In various languages items classified as articles can have a range of features beyond pure definiteness, often connected to their historical origin. For instance, in Omaha-Ponca (Siouan) the definite articles, some of which derive from positional verbs, distinguish animacy, position for inanimates (vertical/horizontal/round), and discourse centrality or agency for animates. *Akh á* in (6) is the proximate (agentive, center-stage) animate article (Eschenberg 2005).

### Catherine Rudin

their primary function is marking definiteness. Karapejovski (2017) shows that the Macedonian articles diverge significantly from demonstratives in usage, particularly in the case of the neutral *-t-* article, which occurs in several situations which do not admit canonical deictic demonstratives: with generics (13), situationally definite nouns (14), possessives (15), nominalized adjectives (16), and occupations (17). Examples (13) through (17) are all from Karapejovski's article.

The grammaticality judgment of "?" instead of "\*" given by Karapejovski presumably reflects the fact that the (b) versions of these sentences (and a generic reading in 13b) are possible with a different reading of the demonstrative: affective

### 12 Multiple determination in Balkan Slavic

rather than canonical deictic. Thus (14b) might mean something like 'That sun rises at 7:00! It's so early!' conveying an evaluative attitude toward the sun rather than (implausibly) specifying which of a set of suns. See §3.2 for further discussion of noncanonical demonstratives. The affective reading is often expressed by the MD construction but is also possible with a demonstrative alone.

Arnaudova (1998) provides somewhat similar facts for Bulgarian, pointing out that there are situations in which demonstrative and article are not equally acceptable. These include occurrence with non-predicative and "modal" adjectives (18), possible for article but not demonstrative, and in existential constructions (19), possible for demonstrative but not article. The examples are Arnaudova's.

The Macedonian *-v-* and *-n-* articles, as might be expected given their deictic meaning, are more likely to occur in situations where a demonstrative could also be found, though unlike demonstratives they usually lack focusing or contrastive function. Karapejovski suggests that the *-t-* suffixes are true definite articles, while the *-v-* and *-n-* ones are semantically closer to demonstratives.

All of the articles, regardless of deictic features, behave alike syntactically (and are equally unlike the demonstratives in this regard). I consider all of the articles to have the same syntactic status, namely that of inflectional definiteness markers spelling out features of D, as will be fleshed out in §3.1. First, however, an overview of the behavior of both articles and demonstratives within the MD construction will be useful.

### Catherine Rudin

### **2.3 Syntactic characteristics**

In the Balkan Slavic MD construction the demonstrative must be initial. Word order is identical to that of a "normal" DP, with demonstrative followed by modifiers (quantifiers, possessives, adjectives) and eventually a noun. No other order is possible, in either Bulgarian or Macedonian, strongly indicating that this type of MD is a single DP. Note the ungrammatical (b) and (c) examples in (20) and (21).

It is possible for more than one definite article suffix to appear in the MD construction. The additional article(s) are in parentheses in (22).

The slight failure of parallelism between the Bulgarian and Macedonian examples (lack of an article on *rokli* 'dresses' in (22a)) will be addressed below. There is some speaker variation in acceptability of multiple articles; in particular some

### 12 Multiple determination in Balkan Slavic

Bulgarian speakers find (22a) marginal.12 However, they are clearly better than repeated articles outside of the demonstrative + article MD construction. When no demonstrative is present, only one article can occur, when the string of words is spoken as a single phrase, i.e. without comma intonation.

The normal position for the definite article suffix in Balkan Slavic languages is roughly speaking on the first word of the DP; see below for a more detailed formulation. In an MD phrase, a single article occurs suffixed to the first word after the demonstrative. When there is more than one article, the suffix must attach to a series of adjacent items following the demonstrative. It is not possible to skip a link in the "chain" of articles. In (24–25) if the first modifier, *tvoi* 'your' is not articled, no later element can have an article.

Macedonian and Bulgarian MD constructions are almost identical syntactically, but they do differ in one important respect, namely in the behavior of nouns. We

12It is not clear whether this variation is purely idiolectal or has a broader geographical or other dialectal basis. Macedonian speakers, to the best of my knowledge, uniformly accept examples like (22b), though repeating articles are rather uncommon.

### Catherine Rudin

have already seen a definite article on a noun rather than (or in addition to) an adjective or other modifier in some of the Macedonian examples above, but not in the Bulgarian ones. In Macedonian, lexical nouns freely participate in the MD construction, occurring with a preceding demonstrative and an article suffix:

In Bulgarian, however, the equivalent phrases are ungrammatical when pronounced as a single phrase.

(27) \*taja this tetradkata notebook.def / \*onija those decata children.def / \*tozi that čoveka person.def (Bulgarian)

Some apparent nouns do take articles in Bulgarian MD phrases (as well as in Macedonian); however, these are not true nouns but other categories: the articled words in (28) and (29) presumably modify a null N head. So for example *bogative/ bogatite* 'the rich' is equivalent to *bogative luǵe/bogatite xora* 'the rich people').

(28) ovie these bogative rich.def / ovoj this mojov my.def / ovie these našive our.def polupismenive semiliterates.def 'these rich folks / this guy of mine / those semiliterates of ours'

(Macedonian)

(29) tija these bogatite rich.def / tija these četirimata four.def / onija those našite our.def polugramotnite semiliterates.def 'these rich folks / those four (people) / those semiliterates of ours' (Bulgarian)

Summing up, the syntactic characteristics of Balkan Slavic MD are as follows:

12 Multiple determination in Balkan Slavic

### **2.4 Intonational characteristics**

It has already been noted several times that the construction under consideration here is pronounced as a single intonational phrase, without a heavy pause or comma intonation. This turns out to be crucial. Many of the characteristics noted in the preceding section do not apply to similar-looking strings with an intonation break.

For instance, the judgment in Bulgarian that nouns do not participate in MD holds only with smooth intonation. We have seen that single phrases like (30), with demonstrative followed by an articled noun, are ungrammatical, but with comma intonation indicating appositive structure it becomes perfectly possible to say (31a). This has the same structure as (31b), with a clearly separate, nonagreeing demonstrative (neuter instead of feminine).

Sequences including two definite articles without a demonstrative are also acceptable with comma intonation, in both Macedonian and Bulgarian. Speakers of both languages reject examples like (32) but often add that they would be possible if pronounced with a pause, as in (33). This, like (31a), is clearly an appositive construction, not the same structure as MD spoken with smooth intonation.

'Give me that (thing), the notebook!' (Bulgarian)

Furthermore, word order, which is invariable in the MD construction, becomes quite free with comma intonation (appositive structure), as can be seen in (35) as opposed to (34). Once again, Macedonian examples would look similar.

### Catherine Rudin

Angelova (1994) gives attested spoken examples with articled nouns and N-Adj order, both impossible in true MD; for instance (36). Though she does not always spell such examples with a comma, pause intonation is required.

Failure to take intonation into account has been a source of confusion in earlier works, as disagreements on data acceptability may often trace back to imagining printed words with different intonations. Arnaudova (1998), to give just one example, presents *tazi ženata* 'this woman.def' as grammatical in Bulgarian, while speakers I consulted reject phrases like this, with demonstrative + articled noun, unless pronounced with comma intonation (see (30) and (31a) above). She also states that some speakers accept MD only with a pause. Presumably what this means is that some prescriptively-inclined speakers reject the colloquial MD construction altogether and only allow multiple definiteness marking when there is more than one DP, that is, in appositives. In this paper I deal only with the singlephrase, no-comma MD construction.

12 Multiple determination in Balkan Slavic

### **3 Analysis**

Up to this point, we have simply surveyed the facts of the Balkan Slavic MD construction. Namely, it is a single phrase (pronounced as an unbroken prosodic unit), which begins with a demonstrative, has at least one definite article suffix, on the following constituent, with the possibility of repeating article(s) on subsequent elements, and is affective in its meaning. These facts hold for both Bulgarian and Macedonian. The two languages differ in their lexical repertoire of articles and demonstratives, and in the participation of nouns in the MD construction. To account for the syntactic and semantic/pragmatic characteristics of MD phrases we need to specify the location and behavior of two elements, the demonstrative and the definite article, and explain how these two items together produce the appropriate meaning. The following subsections present an analysis of articles first (§3.1), then demonstratives (§3.2, §3.3), and finally their interaction (§3.4).

### **3.1 Balkan Slavic "articles" are definiteness inflection**

Let us start with the article. I propose the structure in Figure 1 for a Balkan Slavic definite DP with article only (no demonstrative). The D head itself is phonologically null, but its [+def] feature is spelled out as the definite article suffix, on the head of the next phrase after D. The article is thus essentially an agreement affix, agreeing with a definite D. The phrase whose head hosts the article/definiteness agreement can be NP or a modifier phrase such as AP or QP.

Figure 1: DP with def article

Treating the definite article as an inflection is not a novel proposal. Figure 1 follows Franks's (2001) analysis, in which an Abney-type DP structure with AP over NP ensures that the first head to the right of D is also the highest head. For

### Catherine Rudin

simplicity I assume this type of DP structure here: roughly [DP [PossP [QP [AP [NP]]]]]. However, the analysis can easily be adapted to a structure with AP as an adjunct within NP rather than dominating NP. Under one such scenario, definiteness agreement within NP would extend not only to the head N but also to any adjoined modifiers, including AP, and their heads, and would be overtly realized on the highest (leftmost) of these. Regardless of the structure assumed, a rich literature exists showing that the suffixed elements traditionally called definite articles in Balkan Slavic (the items glossed def in this paper) are an inflectional manifestation of definiteness, marked on the head of the first phrasal projection after D. In simple cases this means def appears on the first word of the DP:

(37) a. kolite

This looks like a second-position clitic phenomenon and in fact numerous accounts have treated it as such, deriving the article's position by movement – either raising the host to D (e.g. Arnaudova 1998, Mišeska Tomić 1996) or lowering the article (e.g. Embick & Noyer 2001). But any movement account runs into difficulty with more complex examples like (38), where def follows neither the first prosodic word nor the first phrase but instead marks the head of AP with both pre- and post-modifiers. An inflectional account in which definiteness is manifested on the head of the projection immediately below DP accounts for the position of the article in all cases.

### 12 Multiple determination in Balkan Slavic

Furthermore the definite article behaves like an inflectional suffix, not like the numerous, mostly Wackernagel-type clitics of Bulgarian and Macedonian, in several ways:

Some nouns, including *majka* 'mother' and certain other relationship terms, essentially have a zero definite form; they are interpreted as definite but take no overt article. Bulgarian proper name diminutives similarly differ in whether they allow a definite article or not (Nicolova 2017). Examples of these clitic vs. article differences can be found in Rudin (to appear), as well as earlier sources including Elson (1976), Halpern (1995), Franks (2001), and Koev (2011). These works all focus on Bulgarian, but the arguments are valid for Macedonian as well. The inflectional status of Balkan Slavic articles seems indisputable. The MD construction adds yet another argument for this well-established conclusion, namely the possibility of more than one definite article suffix, as in examples (22) through (25). A textual example of multiple articles is (39).

(39) ovie these našive our.def polupismenive semiliterates.def što who gledaat watch.3sg denes today 'those semiliterates of ours who are watching today'

(Macedonian; Prizma 2015)

Multiple articles would be extremely problematic for any movement account of the definiteness suffix. If the article was a D head to which a host raised and adjoined, presumably multiple articles would require multiple D heads and thus multiple DPs. Similar problems arise for an account of D lowering or prosodic inversion. Under an inflectional account we simply allow definiteness agreement optionally to spread to subsequent (lower) heads as well as the one immediately below D; Figure 2 represents the relevant portion of (39).

### **3.2 Balkan Slavic demonstratives spell out DemP head**

Demonstratives are a surprisingly slippery and variable category crosslinguistically. Coniglio et al. (2018) point out that demonstratives as a class are difficult

Catherine Rudin

Figure 2: DP with multiple definiteness agreement

to define morphologically or syntactically; in various languages lexical items described as demonstratives can be instantiated as different categories, including pronouns, determiners, and adjectives among others, and exhibit a range of morphosyntactic behavior. Canonical demonstratives share the semantic property of expressing some type of deixis, but even here there is variability: demonstratives in many – perhaps all – languages can also convey a range of pragmatic meanings, particularly affective, discourse relational, or focusing; I return to the semantics of demonstratives below.

In Macedonian and to an extent also in Bulgarian dialects, as we have seen, the articles share both deictic and pragmatic/affective properties normally associated with demonstratives (but with some distinctions as shown in §3.1). However, syntactically there can be no doubt that the Balkan Slavic demonstratives and articles are distinct from each other. They occupy different positions, and of course they also differ in their morphological status as full words vs. affixes. In this section I consider the syntax of the full-word demonstratives.

Demonstratives like those we are concerned with in this paper, which modify nouns, are surely located somewhere high up within the nominal projection. In early transformational grammar demonstratives were treated as determiners, that is, they occupied the same position as articles, the D head in modern parlance. This is no longer a common assumption even for English, and is clearly wrong for Bulgarian and Macedonian, whose demonstratives are visibly located above D. As early as Arnaudova (1998) it was pointed out that demonstratives

12 Multiple determination in Balkan Slavic

not only cooccur with definite article in the MD construction, they must appear above the word to which definiteness inflection attaches (40), and cannot follow a definite article (41a), (41b) or host one themselves (41c):

(40) tija these knigite books.def 'these books' (Bulgarian)

(41) a. \* te def tija these knigi books

> b. \* knigite books.def tija these

c. \* tijate these.def knigi books

(Bulgarian)

In short, Bulgarian and Macedonian demonstratives occupy a left-peripheral position higher than the definite article within the nominal phrase. The exact identity of this position is not settled, however. It has been claimed to be SpecDP (Franks 2001, Arnaudova 1998); either SpecDP or the specifier of some higher projection, clitic phrase or a focus projection (Dimitrova-Vulchanova & Giusti 1998); the head of a demonstrative phrase above DP (Tasseva-Kurktchieva 2006); or a topic position within DP (Dimitrova-Vulchanova & Mišeska Tomić 2009), with arguments for each location at least partially dependent upon each author's theoretical assumptions. Arnaudova (1998) argues that demonstratives in Bulgarian must raise to SpecDP from a lower position, to check referential and deictic features of D by Spec-Head agreement. A more recent treatment of demonstratives crosslinguistically, Šimík (2016), proposes that the features instantiated by demonstratives are instead split between two separate heads, Dem and D. Demonstratives always spell out the head of the DemP projection, which comprises features of relation to the context; deixis or discourse relevance. In addition, the demonstrative can also optionally spell out the D-head definiteness feature (uniqueness presupposition). I adopt the basic outlines of this proposal here;13 that is, I assume that in Balkan Slavic as in the languages Šimík investigates, a non-MD phrase with a demonstrative (demonstrative alone, with no article) has the structure in Figure 3. The demonstrative's basic location and function is spelling out the Dem head, as indicated by the solid line; the dotted line indicates optionality of the demonstrative's link to D, spelling out D features.

13Šimík's proposal is framed within the theory of nanosyntax, which I do not necessarily adopt, and his focus is on the semantics of a certain pragmatic demonstrative usage in Czech.

Catherine Rudin

Figure 3: DP with demonstrative

This structure allows us to account for the semantics of different uses of demonstratives crosslinguistically, as Šimík demonstrates. I believe it can also capture crucial aspects of the usage of Balkan Slavic MD constructions. Before considering how MD fits into this model, a brief introduction to types of demonstratives is in order.

### **3.3 Canonical and pragmatic demonstratives**

A canonical demonstrative includes definiteness in its meaning; it essentially has the semantics of a definite article plus some deictic, attention-focusing, or discourse-relational features. The article in (42b) makes a generic bicycle into a specific, known one. The demonstrative in (42c) does the same, but adds some additional meaning too, what Šimík defines as "establishing a relation between the denotation of the demonstrative description and an entity being pointed at (in a literal or metaphorical sense)."

	- b. the bicycle = individuated, definite
	- c. that bicycle (vs. this one) = individuated/definite but also deictic

This is captured in our analysis by the demonstrative spelling out two sets of features, those of D and those of Dem (see Šimík 2016 for fully worked-out semantics).

However, as has long been noted, many uses of demonstratives do not have the individuating function. Unlike canonical demonstratives, they can be used with proper names and other types of nouns without changing their degree of definiteness or uniqueness. They have various pragmatic functions, most commonly an affective sense, as in the following examples. Unlike (42c), (43a) does not pick out a certain bicycle but instead highlights one's attitude toward an already-known

### 12 Multiple determination in Balkan Slavic

bicycle. In (43b) *that* does not specify 'which' Denise, but emphasizes some quality of this intrinsically-definite proper noun. (43c) does not identify a subset of 'your' kids, but rather compliments all members of a situationally-definite, known group of children. The politicians in (43d) remain a generic class.

	- b. That Denise really knows her stuff.
	- c. Those kids of yours are so talented!
	- d. These politicians are all liars.

In the analysis adopted here, non-canonical (pragmatic) demonstratives are those which spell out only the Dem head and not D. As Šimík (2016) states, the two semantic components which the demonstrative can spell out, the uniqueness presupposition associated with D and the relational features associated with Dem "are in principle independent of one another, making it possible for the demonstrative to spell-out either both at once (canonical use) or the relational component only (pragmatic use)."

In Bulgarian and Macedonian, as in other languages, demonstratives can be canonical or noncanonical (often affective). Unlike other languages, however, Balkan Slavic boasts a morphosyntactic correlate of affectivity, namely the MD construction. In (44a) *tozi* in a contrastive context is interpreted as a canonical demonstrative. In (44b) the meaning can be that of a canonical demonstrative (this phone as opposed to other new iPhones) but can also be affective, commenting on a generic type of phone without further individuating it. But in (44c), with article suffix as well as demonstrative, the interpretation is necessarily affective. I suggest that this is because the demonstrative is unable to spell out the definiteness features of D, which are independently spelled out by the definite article.

### Catherine Rudin

To summarize, the analysis I adopt for Balkan Slavic demonstratives comprises the following main points: the demonstrative heads DemP (spells out features of Dem head), and can optionally also spell out features of the D head. When a demonstrative simultaneously spells out both Dem and D heads this gives the canonical demonstrative reading in which the demonstrative expresses features of definiteness. When only the Dem head is spelled out, the resulting reading is one of a non-canonical demonstrative, specifically affective. The latter reading is obligatory when the D head is spelled out separately as the definite article suffix.

### **3.4 Putting it together: Interaction of demonstrative and article**

If the conclusions of the previous section are correct, demonstratives in Balkan Slavic interact with the D head in several different ways. These interactions are shown in the following three trees, which correspond to the examples in (44).

Figure 4 represents the phrase *tozi nov ajfon* 'this new iPhone' in (44a), with canonical demonstrative spelling out features of both Dem and D heads.

Figure 4: Canonical demonstrative

Figure 5 represents the phrase *tozi nov ajfon* 'this new iPhone' in (44b), where the demonstrative spells out only Dem features, not D, resulting in affective interpretation. The D head here is represented as null, but could also simply be absent; i.e. DP might not be projected.

Figure 6 represents the phrase *tozi novija ajfon* 'this new.def iPhone' in (44c), the MD construction. As in Figure 5, the demonstrative spells out only Dem features, not D and is affective. The difference is that the D head in Figure 6 is not null but spelled out as the article (definiteness inflection).

### 12 Multiple determination in Balkan Slavic

Figure 5: Affective demonstrative

Figure 6: (Affective) demonstrative in MD phrase

The structure of the Balkan Slavic MD construction in general is then Figure 7. Both demonstrative and article appear as overt lexical material. The demonstrative spells out only the relational features located in the Dem head, not any features related to D. The D features are spelled out separately, as the definite article suffix on the following head, and definiteness agreement can spread optionally to the following head(s).

Šimík (2016) suggests that demonstrative and article should not both be able to be spelled out, clearly counter to the Balkan Slavic facts. In footnote 9 of his article he speculates that something like *that the* could be blocked by general principles which require the fewest possible spellouts: since *that* can spell out features of both heads, *the* cannot be spelled out. Deeper investigation is required,

Catherine Rudin

Figure 7: MD construction: DP with demonstrative and def

obviously, to make any sweeping claims about what makes MD constructions with demonstrative + article possible crosslinguistically. But it is at least a plausible conjecture that the reason Balkan Slavic languages are able to spell out both demonstrative and article is precisely that the article is realized as a suffix on a later word, that is, that the demonstrative and article are nonadjacent and thus cannot be spelled out as a single lexical item.

Within the system of Šimík (2016), nominals with affective (and other noncanonical) demonstratives have no D and thus none of the definiteness or uniqueness features associated with D. This does not seem to be the case in the Balkan Slavic MD construction, however. In fact, I suggest the characteristic meaning of the MD construction derives from a combination of the semantics of demonstratives with that of definiteness (or perhaps specificity or uniqueness).14 In Bulgarian and Macedonian a phrase with only a demonstrative, as in (45a), usually has the canonical, deictic demonstrative sense, including of course a presumption of uniqueness (definiteness): this particular cake as opposed to others. In the MD construction (45b), with demonstrative and definite article, the demonstrative is affective, contributing subjective, evaluative focus on some qualities of the cake. However, there is still a presumption of uniqueness; the "awesome" cake is a particular, situationally definite cake, a meaning underlined by the definite article.

14This may in fact be true of affectives in general. Definiteness is not morphologically overt in the English examples in (43) but is nonetheless present: the bicycle, the kids, and Denise are situationally definite, known, and specific in the discourse context. We might speculate that this type of definiteness in English inheres in the NP itself or is pragmatically inferred, rather than being marked by D features, whereas in Bulgarian and Macedonian it is overtly marked.

12 Multiple determination in Balkan Slavic

'That cake of hers is awesome!' (Bulgarian)

In attested MD examples the nominals are similarly individuated: (46) comments on specific known "morons", with *ovie* adding evaluative nuance; (47) pokes fun at four known, definite robbers. *Onija četirima*, with no article, could mean 'those four' as opposed to other people, but the MD construction *onija četirimata* means four already identified people, with the demonstrative adding affectivity rather than specifying which four.

(47) onija those četirimata four.def šašavi foolish razbojnici robbers 'those four foolish robbers' (Bulgarian; Roman Dimitrov *Decata na Perun*)

Demonstratives always have an attention-focusing function, pointing or marking as discourse-relevant. With an otherwise non-definite nominal, this attention-focusing takes the form of specifying: picking out a specific item or subset. When paired with an already-specific, definite nominal, this specifying focus would make no sense; when the demonstrative occurs with a proper name or other intrinsically definite noun, or with a definite article, it must spell out only relational features (features of Dem), not definiteness. In this situation, the demonstrative focuses attention on something like unique qualities of the individual or group. Thus the MD construction in Balkan Slavic is not mere definiteness agreement. The demonstrative and the definite article each make a separate semantic contribution. The demonstrative spells out relational features, and the +definite feature of D is manifested as overt definiteness agreement; the combination gives the characteristic affective reading of MD. The association is not limited to Balkan Slavic: affective or otherwise pragmatic interpretation of demonstrative with a (situationally or morphologically) definite or specific nominal, including proper names, is extremely robust crosslinguistically.

### Catherine Rudin

### **3.5 How is Bulgarian different from Macedonian?**

One remaining loose end is the fact, noted in §2.3, that the two Balkan Slavic languages' MD constructions differ in whether nouns can carry the definite article, with or without a preceding adjective or other modifier. 'Book' can have definite inflection in Macedonian (48) but not Bulgarian (49).

Given the analysis of the definite article suffix as agreement, the difference is how far down into the nominal phrase definiteness agreement is able to penetrate: in both Bulgarian and Macedonian the heads of QP, PossP, and one or more AP can take the definite article suffix in MD constructions, but only in Macedonian can agreement reach into NP and mark the head N. One possible explanation could involve a difference in nominal structure posited by Franks (2015) for independent reasons; an additional Agr15 layer in Bulgarian but not Macedonian:

This additional projection allows for a possessive (dative) clitic within the nominal phrase. Both Bulgarian and Macedonian allow possessive adjectives with the definite article suffix, including in the MD construction with a demonstrative (51). In Bulgarian the possessive can be a clitic (Agr head), including in MD (52). In Macedonian, which lacks AgrP, a possessive clitic is impossible (53).

15In some versions of his work on this topic Franks calls this projection KP, in others AgrP. Agr seems like a better label, given that the items which head it are pronominal clitics with person and number features.

### 12 Multiple determination in Balkan Slavic

It is tempting to suggest that the AgrP layer also insulates NP from agreementspreading in MD, as the head of Agr constitutes a non-agreeing, intervening head between N and the preceding definite-marked element. The correlation of possessive clitic and ability for nouns to be articled in MD construction is supported by facts of another Balkan language, Albanian, whose MD constructions share nearly all the properties of MD in Balkan Slavic. Like Macedonian, Albanian allows a definite article suffix on nouns in MD phrases, as in (54), and lacks DP-internal possessive clitic, suggesting that it, like Macedonian, has no AgrP projection above NP.

(54) ky this djali boy.def 'this boy' (Albanian)

However, there is one major problem with idea of AgrP blocking definiteness agreement into NP in Bulgarian. Outside of the MD construction, Bulgarian nouns do of course allow the definite article suffix; simple nouns like *knigite* 'the book' are found in many examples in this paper. Blocking definite inflection on simple nouns is clearly not a desirable result. It remains to be seen whether a more nuanced treatment of the structure of NP and Agr in Bulgarian vs. Macedonian (and Albanian) can account for the difference in definiteness marking in nouns inside and outside MD constructions.

### Catherine Rudin

### **4 Conclusions and remaining problems**

This paper investigates the colloquial Bulgarian and Macedonian multiple determination construction containing both a demonstrative and a definite article. The construction is a single nominal phrase with demonstrative heading DemP (spelling out features of the Dem head) and the article spelling out features of D, realized as a suffix on the next phrasal head: PossP, QP, AP, or in Macedonian NP. Semantically, the Balkan Slavic MD construction has an affective interpretation. This meaning is derived from the interaction of demonstratives and the definite article in these languages: since the D head is independently spelled out by the article, the demonstrative spells out only the relational features associated with Dem and has no definiteness features. Independent spell-out of D in addition to Dem is, I suggest, made possible by the non-adjacency of the article suffix and the demonstrative. The emotive quality of MD accounts for its preference for colloquial and proximate demonstratives and articles.

Problems remain, obviously. One mystery already discussed is how to account for the failure of nouns to take a definite article in Bulgarian MD, unlike in normal DPs. In fact, definiteness inflection in MD differs in two ways from that in definite DP with no demonstrative: in addition to the inability to reach N in Bulgarian, there is also the phenomenon of multiple agreement. It is not very clear why agreement spreading (multiple articles) occurs only in the MD construction and not in other DPs. There are several possible lines of attack on this problem. One is conditioned agreement: it could be the demonstrative's feature that probes and the definiteness feature is valued as a free-rider. Another is conditioned realization of overt agreement by the presence of an additional feature, perhaps formalized through an agree-link account following Arregi & Nevins (2012, 2013). A third is an association with focus; agreement spreading only to focused items could account for the multiple agreement facts if more projections can be focused in MD. Finally, it is possible that the multiple-article cases actually contain multiple DPs. I leave sorting out the solution for future research.

Balkan Slavic MD constructions provide insight into several aspects of the structure of DP in these languages. They provide support for treating demonstratives as specifiers of DemP, for the inflectional status of the Balkan definite articles, and for a more elaborated DP structure in Bulgarian than Macedonian, perhaps involving an extra projection above NP. The semantic effect of combining a demonstrative with a definite DP, namely an affective focus on qualities of an already-specified individual or group, may hold across languages, even universally. Overt realization of the article along with the demonstrative is likely to depend on their being non-adjacent, preventing the demonstrative from simply

12 Multiple determination in Balkan Slavic

spelling out the features of both Dem and D. All of these results (and questions) provide a basis for further cross-linguistic investigation of MD constructions.

### **Abbreviations**

### **Acknowledgements**

I am indebted to Brian Joseph for piquing my interest in Balkan MD constructions. Portions of this material were presented at FASL 27 in Stanford, the 21st Biennial Conference on Balkan and South Slavic Linguistics, Literature and Folklore in Billings, Montana, and a 2018 Indiana University Linguistics Department colloquium, as well as at FDSL; comments and questions from all of these audiences have contributed to the present paper. For useful discussion at various stages of the project I would especially like to thank Victor Friedman, Steven Franks, Radek Šimík, and Boris Harizanov. Finally, heartfelt thanks to all of the Bulgarian and Macedonian speakers who shared their intuitions.

### **References**

### Catherine Rudin

12 Multiple determination in Balkan Slavic

### Catherine Rudin

## **Chapter 13**

## **Definiteness in the absence of uniqueness: The case of Russian**

### Daria Seresa & Olga Borikb

aUniversitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) bUniversidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED)

This paper is devoted to the study of the interpretation of bare nominals in Russian, revisiting the issues related to their perceived definiteness or indefiniteness. We review the linguistic means of expressing definiteness in Russian, showing that none of them is sufficient to encode this meaning. Taking the uniqueness approach to definiteness as a point of departure, we explore the differences in the interpretation of definite NPs in English and in Russian, arguing that Russian bare nominals do not give rise to the presupposition of uniqueness. The perceived definiteness in Russian is analysed as a pragmatic effect (not as a result of a covert type-shift), which has the following sources: ontological uniqueness, topicality, and familiarity/anaphoricity.

**Keywords:** definiteness, uniqueness, articleless languages, Russian

### **1 Introduction**

The category of definiteness is mostly discussed in the literature in relation to languages with articles. Russian, however, does not possess an article system, like most Slavic languages, except for Bulgarian and Macedonian that have a postpositive affix to mark definiteness. Cross-linguistically, it is not uncommon for languages to lack articles (Lyons 1999; Dryer 2013; i.a.), and yet, the semantic properties of nominal phrases in such languages have not been clearly determined yet. This article makes a contribution to the discussion of referential properties of bare nominals in Russian as a representative of languages without articles, as well as the concepts that are associated with definiteness cross-linguistically.

Daria Seres & Olga Borik. 2021. Definiteness in the absence of uniqueness: The case of Russian. In Andreas Blümel, Jovana Gajić, Ljudmila Geist, Uwe Junghanns & Hagen Pitsch (eds.), *Advances in formal Slavic linguistics 2018*, 339–363. Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.5483116

### Daria Seres & Olga Borik

In order to achieve a better understanding of the category of definiteness and the concepts related to it in articleless languages, we look at lexical, grammatical, syntactic, and prosodic means that contribute to a perceived definite interpretation of bare nominals in Russian (§2). Then, we compare the interpretation of definite NPs in languages with articles and in languages without articles. We show that, unlike English NPs with a definite article, Russian NPs, perceived as definite, lack the presupposition of uniqueness (§3). On the basis of the empirical discussion in §3, we propose that bare nominals in Russian are semantically indefinite (see Heim 2011) and definiteness in Russian is a pragmatic effect, thus, it is not derived by a covert type-shift (contra a long-standing assumption in the formal linguistic literature, e.g. Chierchia 1998), but is a result of pragmatic strengthening. We suggest that there are at least three sources of the perceived definiteness in Russian: ontological (or situational) uniqueness, topicality, and familiarity/anaphoricity (§4).

Our discussion in this paper is limited to Russian and we do not make any claims about the interpretation of bare nominals in other articleless languages. However, in the future this proposal can be tested against the data and possibly extended to other languages, which will contribute to our understanding of definiteness as a universal phenomenon.

### **2 Definiteness without articles**

The distinction between definite and indefinite reference is often assumed to be an important element of human communication, therefore, it is natural to expect it to be universally present in natural languages, regardless of whether they have lexical articles (Brun 2001; Zlatić 2014; i.a.).

Looking at Russian one can see that, even though this language does not express definiteness as a binary grammatical category [±definite] in a strict sense, the values of definiteness and indefiniteness appear to be perceptible to its speakers. The English translation of the Russian examples in (1) reveals the difference in the interpretation of the bare nominal, whose morphological form (the nominative case) and syntactic function (the subject) stay the same, even though the linear word order is altered.1

(1) a. V in uglu corner.loc spit sleeps koška. cat.nom 'A cat is sleeping in the corner.' / 'There is a cat sleeping in the corner.'

1All examples in the paper are from Russian or English, unless indicated otherwise.

13 Definiteness in the absence of uniqueness: The case of Russian

b. Koška cat.nom spit sleeps v in uglu. corner.loc 'The cat is sleeping in the corner.'

In (1a) the interpretation of the subject nominal *koška* seems to be equivalent to the English expression *a cat*, which has an indefinite interpretation, while in (1b) it is rather comparable to the definite description *the cat*, thus, the contrast between a definite and an indefinite interpretation seems to be expressible in Russian. An important question that immediately arises in this respect is how these readings are encoded in the absence of articles.

In the linguistic literature it has been generally assumed that, even though languages like Russian do not have a straightforward way of expressing (in)definiteness, this semantic category would still be present in the language and there would be certain means to express it (Galkina-Fedoruk 1963, Pospelov 1970; i.a). In particular, it has been claimed that in order to encode the values of (in)definiteness, Russian speakers use a number of strategies, which include lexical, morphological, syntactic, and prosodic means, as well as their combination. In the following subsections we show how these strategies are implemented in Russian.

### **2.1 Lexical means**

Russian has a number of lexical elements that determine the referential status of a nominal in the most straightforward way; these include demonstrative pronouns, determiners, quantifiers. Padučeva (1985) calls such elements "actualizers" as they mark or indicate the referential status of a bare noun, as illustrated in (2b). While unmodified bare nominals may have various interpretations, as indicated in the English translation of (2a), NPs modified by an adjective of order (a superlative, an ordinal, *poslednij* 'last', *sledujuščij* 'next', etc.) or by a complement establishing uniqueness (PP, relative clause, genitive attribute) will be construed as definite, as illustrated in (2c).

	- b. Tot that rebënok child.nom pel sang kakuju-to some pesnju. song.acc 'That child sang some song.'

### Daria Seres & Olga Borik

c. Samyj most mladšij young rebënok child.nom sestry sister.gen pel sang pesnju, song.acc kotoruju that ona she sama herself sočinila. composed 'My sister's youngest child sang the song that she had composed.'

Nevertheless, the use of actualizers is optional in Russian, so the speakers cannot truly rely on their presence and therefore have to use other strategies to encode and decode the referential status of a nominal expression.

### **2.2 Morphological means**

Apart from lexical means, Russian and other Slavic languages use morphological tools to encode the reference of a nominal phrase. The two grammatical categories that may affect the definiteness status of a bare nominal in direct object position are the aspect of the verbal predicate and the case of the nominal itself.

Aspect (perfective or imperfective) in Russian is a grammatical category, obligatorily present on the verb, and generally expressed by verbal morphology. Any given verb belongs to one of the two aspects, however, there is no uniform morphological marker of aspect in Russian (Klein 1995, Borik 2006).2 The relation between perfectivity of the verbal predicate and the interpretation of its direct object in Slavic languages has been widely discussed in the literature (Wierzbicka 1967, Krifka 1992, Schoorlemmer 1995, Verkuyl 1999, Filip 1993, i.a.).

Let us look at some examples. In (3) the direct object of a perfective verb is interpreted definitely, while the direct object of an imperfective verb in (4) may be interpreted definitely or indefinitely, depending on the context.3

3The correlation between the verbal aspect and the interpretation of the direct object is clearly present in other Slavic languages, e.g. in Bulgarian, which has an overt definite article. The following example shows that at least in some cases, the definite article cannot be omitted if the verb is perfective.

2There is a relatively small class of biaspectual verbs whose aspectual value can only be established in context.

13 Definiteness in the absence of uniqueness: The case of Russian

(3) Vasja Vasja s"el ate.pfv jabloki. apples.acc 'Vasja ate the apples.'

(4) Vasja Vasja el ate.ipfv jabloki. apples.acc 'Vasja ate / was eating (the) apples.'

It is possible to get an indefinite interpretation of the object in combination with a perfective verb, like in (3); in order to do so, the case of the nominal has to be changed from the accusative into the genitive and, thus, the object gets interpreted as partitive (5).

(5) Vasja Vasja s"el ate.pfv jablok. apples.gen 'Vasja ate some apples.'

This kind of case alternation can be considered a morphological means of encoding indefiniteness. It should be noted, however, that case alternations are restricted to inanimate plural and mass objects, and due to this restriction, the effects of the case alternation cannot be considered strong enough to postulate a strict correspondence between the case of the direct object and its interpretation.4

Moreover, as claimed in Czardybon (2017), only a certain lexical class of perfective verbs, i.e., incremental theme verbs, such as *eat, drink, mow*, etc. trigger a definite reading of a bare plural or a mass term in Slavic languages.5 The phenomenon is explained in Filip (2005: 134–136), where she posits that arguments of perfective incremental theme verbs "must refer to totalities of objects" falling under their descriptions and that "such maximal objects are unique", thus, have a definite referential interpretation.

### **2.3 Syntactic means**

Another strategy of (in)definiteness-encoding in Russian extensively described in the literature (Pospelov 1970, Fursenko 1970, Chvany 1973; i.a.) is the linear word

4Other languages, such as Turkish, Persian (Comrie 1981) or Sakha (Baker 2015), seem to exhibit a really strong correlation between case marking and interpretation of the nominal, especially in direct object position.

5The term "incremental theme verb" was introduced by Dowty (1991), following Krifka's (1989) distinction of a "gradual patient" (of verbs, like *eat*) and a "simultaneous patient" (of verbs, like *see*). There are three types of incremental theme verbs: (i) verbs of consumption (*eat, drink, smoke*), (ii) verbs of creation/destruction (*build, write, burn, destroy*), and (iii) verbs of performance (*sing, read*).

### Daria Seres & Olga Borik

order alternation: preverbal subjects are interpreted definitely and postverbal ones, indefinitely. This kind of observation is made over sentences containing intransitive verbal predicates. Examples (6a) and (6b) are modelled on Krámský's (1972: 42) examples from Czech.

	- b. Na on stole table.loc ležit lies kniga. book.nom 'There is a book on the table.'

Such a pattern, observed in Russian, where the preverbal subject is interpreted as definite and the postverbal subject as indefinite, has been claimed to be universal (Leiss 2007).6 A similar correlation between distribution and interpretation has been reported for other articleless languages, such as Mandarin Chinese, where preverbal bare nominals are interpreted only as generic or definite, while postverbal bare nominals can be interpreted as either indefinite or definite or generic (Cheng & Sybesma 2014).

However, perceived definiteness of the preverbal subject may depend on the information structure of the sentence, i.e., topicality of the subject. As the change in the linear constituent order is not conditioned by the change of the corresponding syntactic function (subject vs. object) in Russian, many researchers suggest that word order alternations are determined by information structure (Mathesius 1964, Sgall 1972, Hajičová 1974, Isačenko 1976, Yokoyama 1986, Comrie 1981, i.a.). The subject in (6a) is in topic position, expressing given (discourse old) information, while the subject in (6b) is the focus, containing discourse new information.7 Apparently, topicality strongly increases the probability of a definite reading of a bare NP. Many researchers have claimed that elements appearing in topic position can only be referential, i.e., definite or specific indefinite (see Reinhart 1981, Erteschik-Shir 1998, Portner & Yabushita 2001, Endriss 2009).8

6 It has been also argued (Šimík & Burianová 2020) that definiteness of bare nominals in Slavic is affected not by the relative (i.e., preverbal vs. postverbal) position of this nominal in a clause, but by the absolute (i.e., clause initial vs. clause final) position.

7We assume that the leftmost/preverbal position is reserved for topics in Russian (Geist 2010, Jasinskaja 2016).

8However, this is not always the case. As suggested by Leonetti (2010), non-specific or weak indefinites may also appear in topic position under certain conditions, i.e., when they are licensed by certain kinds of contrast or when they are licensed in the sentential context with which the topic is linked.

### 13 Definiteness in the absence of uniqueness: The case of Russian

Experimental studies which explore the phenomenon of linear position alternation for bare subjects of intransitive verbs in Slavic languages have also shown that topicality is not always sufficient for definiteness. The studies by Šimík (2014) on Czech, Czardybon et al. (2014) on Polish, and Borik et al. (2020) and Seres et al. (2019) on Russian have shown that there is no clear one-to-one correspondence between the syntactic position of the nominal and its interpretation, there is only a preference.

Thus, the linear position of a bare subject cannot be considered sufficient for determining its type of reference, moreover, this condition may be overridden by the use of prosody, as we show below.

### **2.4 Prosodic means**

Another means of encoding reference that should not be underestimated is prosody. Correlating with information structure, prosody may influence the interpretation, e.g. the constituent carrying the nuclear accent may indicate a contrastive topic. The examples below show how the change in the sentential stress pattern may override the effect of the word order alternation. In (7) and (9) the intonation is neutral, i.e., the stress is on the last phonological word).9

It can be seen that the nominal in (8), although preverbal, may be interpreted indefinitely as novel information if it receives prosodic prominence (a nuclear accent), while the constituent that lacks this prominence is interpreted as given information.10

9Capital letters represent sentence stress. The examples are taken from Pospelov (1970: 185, examples 1–4).

10See Jasinskaja (2016) for more details on deaccentuation of given information.

### Daria Seres & Olga Borik

As has been shown in this section, Russian bare nominals may acquire a definite interpretation through several lexical, grammatical, syntactic, and prosodic means or a combination thereof. None of these means is strong enough, though, to encode definiteness in all possible cases.

### **3 The meaning of definiteness in languages with and without articles**

In the previous sections, we have seen that under certain conditions Russian bare nominals can be interpreted as definite, or, at least, perceived as equivalent to English nominals with a definite article. But how feasible is it to assume that what we perceive as a definite bare nominal in Russian is semantically equivalent to a definite nominal in English or other languages with articles? This is the question we address below.

In this section we are going to argue that what is understood by "definiteness" in languages with an article system might be rather different from what is found in Russian. In particular, we adopt a so-called uniqueness theory of definiteness as a point of departure and argue that, unlike in English or other languages with articles, there is no uniqueness/maximality presupposition in Russian bare nominals that are perceived as definites. This claim is in accordance with the classical view (Partee 1987) that uniqueness/maximality is something that is actually associated with or contributed by the definite article itself, and not by an iota operator, as proposed by Chierchia (1998), Dayal (2004), or Coppock & Beaver (2015).

In order to sustain our hypothesis about the lack of uniqueness/maximality in nominals perceived as definites in Russian, we are going to first review the uniqueness theory of definiteness and then provide empirical support for the claim that Russian bare nominals do not bear any uniqueness presupposition.

### **3.1 What is definiteness?**

To begin with, let us look at English, where definiteness is expressed by means of articles. Definite NPs have various uses, the most typical of which are the following: situational definites (11), anaphoric definites (12), cases of bridging (Clark 1975) (13), and weak definites (14).11

11In the case of weak definites, there is no requirement for the definite DP to have a single referent. Aguilar-Guevara & Zwarts (2011) treat weak definites as kind nominals.

### 13 Definiteness in the absence of uniqueness: The case of Russian

There have been many approaches to definiteness in linguistics starting from Frege (1892). A widely accepted view on definiteness in the formal semantic literature is based on the so-called theory of uniqueness. Singular definite descriptions show the property of uniqueness (Russell 1905), which is considered to be part of the presupposition associated with definite nominals (Frege 1879, Strawson 1950). For instance, if we compare an indefinite NP in (15a) with a definite one in (15b), it is clear that (15b) is about a contextually unique mouse, while (15a) may have more than one possible referent.

	- b. I've just heard the mouse squeak.

Uniqueness presupposes the existence of exactly one entity in the extension of the NP that satisfies the descriptive content of this NP in a given context, therefore, uniqueness entails existence.12 Thus, Russell's (1905) famous example *The king of France is bald* can be interpreted as neither true nor false, as there is no such entity that would (in our world and relative to the present) satisfy the description of being the king of France, but the existence and the uniqueness of the king of France are still presupposed in this example.

The semantic definiteness in argument position is standardly associated with the semantic contribution of the definite article itself, formally represented by the (iota) operator. The iota operator shifts the denotation of a common noun from type ⟨, ⟩ to type , i.e., from a predicate type to an argument type (see Heim 2011: 998), and thus, denotes a function from predicates to individuals (Frege 1879, Elbourne 2005, 2013, Heim 2011).13 The meaning of the definite article can be represented as in (16).

(16) JtheK = ∶ ∃.∀ [ ( ) ↔ = ].. (), where abbreviates 'the unique such that'.

12With the notable exception of Coppock & Beaver's (2015) proposal.

13Predicative uses of definites also exist. They can either be derived from argumental ones (Partee 1987, Winter 2001) or taken as basic ones (Graff Fara 2001, Coppock & Beaver 2015).

### Daria Seres & Olga Borik

Plural definite NPs naturally violate the presupposition of uniqueness. In this case uniqueness is reformulated as maximality (Sharvy 1980, Link 1983), i.e., reference to a maximal individual in the domain, which is picked out by the definite article.

The above-mentioned concepts related to definiteness (i.e., uniqueness, existence, maximality) have all been postulated in relation to languages with articles and therefore are associated with the presence of the definite article on the nominal. The relevant question that arises when one analyses languages without articles is whether the expressions perceived as definite in such languages would give rise to the same effects as the ones found in languages with articles.

From a theoretical perspective, there are two possible answers to this question. The first one is to attribute definiteness effects to the presence of the article itself. In this case, the uniqueness of definite descriptions will follow directly from the semantics of the definite article, as in classical uniqueness/type-shifting theories (e.g., Frege 1892, Partee 1987). We expect that languages without articles do not show the same type of definiteness effects as languages with overt articles, simply because the former do not have any lexical element that would make the same semantic contribution as a definite article.14

Another option is to follow Chierchia (1998) and Dayal (2004) and claim that articleless languages use the same inventory of type shifting operators with the only difference that these operators are not lexicalized. Should the iota operator be responsible for deriving a definite interpretation of nominal arguments in Russian, the predictions are clear: the uniqueness effects associated with definite descriptions in English should also exist in Russian. However, the empirical facts that we discuss in the next section seem to indicate that the perceived definiteness in Russian does not give rise to the same semantic effects as in English, which, in principle, argues against the Chierchia/Dayal type of analysis.

As a side note, we would like to emphasize that we do not associate the iota operator with any particular syntactic projection or any particular syntactic head. Thus, the question about a possible syntactic structure of referential bare nominals in Russian and, in particular, the presence or absence of the D-layer, is not straightforwardly connected to whether or not a language employs a certain semantic operator to derive its arguments. An iota operator, should it exist, does not entail any syntactic projection, because the function of this operator (namely, to derive expressions of type ) is semantically defined and whether or not all expressions of this type should have the same syntactic structure associated with them across languages or within a language is an independent question.

14This approach is fully compatible with the indefiniteness hypothesis that we present in §4.

### 13 Definiteness in the absence of uniqueness: The case of Russian

### **3.2 Uniqueness in English vs. Russian**

Let us now compare two sets of matching empirical data from English and Russian and see whether the same semantic definiteness effects emerge in both languages in the case of nominals which are either marked (English) or perceived (Russian) as definite.

Let us first look at (17). The subject of the first sentence is definite: it is marked by a definite article, semantically derived by the operator and has a strong uniqueness presupposition that cannot be cancelled, as witnessed by the unacceptability of the suggested continuations. The only possible interpretation of the second sentence in (17) would be 'the other director of the other school', which would not violate the presupposition of uniqueness of the definite description 'the director of our school' in the first sentence. However, any continuation with 'our school' in the second part of (17) is impossible.

In (18), on the other hand, the first subject is indefinite and does not give rise to any uniqueness effects. In this case, as the example illustrates, it is possible to conceive the interpretation 'another director of the same school', even though it might sound pragmatically unusual. The two examples thus clearly illustrate the effects created by the uniqueness presupposition of a definite description.

Now let us have a look at similar data from Russian. To narrow down our empirical coverage, we only look at singular bare preverbal subjects in this paper, considering them strong candidates for definite nominals, due to their position and a default definite-like interpretation that they receive in native speakers' judgements.

	- b. Drugoj other direktor director.nom (našej our školy) school.gen vystupil spoke na on radio. radio.loc 'The other director (of our school) spoke on the radio.'

The Russian example (19a) taken in isolation seems to be equivalent to the first part of the English example in (17), in the sense that the nominal phrase '(the) director of our school' in both cases is interpreted as definite and, thus, the default

### Daria Seres & Olga Borik

interpretation is 'the unique director' in both languages. However, is this interpretation semantically encoded in both languages? Given the theory of uniqueness, if what appears to be a definite nominal in Russian is also associated with the uniqueness presupposition, just like a definite description in English, the effects of violating this presupposition should be comparable to those observed in the English example (17). Should we find the same type of uniqueness effects both in English and in Russian, we can conclude that the same semantic operator, namely, an iota operator, is responsible for deriving definiteness in both languages. In search of an answer, we turn to (19b).

Crucially, we observe a substantial difference in the interpretation of example (17) on the one hand, and example (19), on the other hand. In particular, the subject in (19b) can be interpreted as 'another director of the same school', as opposed to the English example in (17). This means that there seems to be no uniqueness presupposition associated with the subject 'director of our school' in (19a).15 Examples (20) and (21) show the same effect, i.e., there seems to be no uniqueness presupposition associated with bare nominals that are perceived as definite. In the examples below, the judgments are given for 'another doctor of the same patient' and 'another author of the same essay', respectively.

(20) a. Vrač doctor.nom prišel came tol'ko only k to večeru. evening Drugoj other vrač doctor.nom prosto simply pozvonil. called

'Doctor came only towards the evening. Other doctor simply called.'

	- b. The author of this essay got a Pulitzer prize. #The other author was not even mentioned.

Taking into consideration the English and Russian data discussed in this section, we can conclude that the mechanism that yields a definite interpretation for bare

15In this paper we rely on our own judgements. A reviewer points out that the data we discuss should be tested experimentally and we completely agree with this remark. In fact, this is the next step on our research agenda.

### 13 Definiteness in the absence of uniqueness: The case of Russian

nominals in Russian is crucially different from the mechanism that derives definiteness in English. If both definite descriptions in English and bare singulars in Russian perceived as definites were derived by the same semantic operation, we would expect the same semantic effects associated with definite expressions in both languages. The data, however, show that uniqueness effects are, indeed, very prominent with definite nominals in English, but seem to be absent in Russian.16 This means that what we call a "definite interpretation" in Russian is of a different nature. Unlike in (17), there is no violation of the presupposition of uniqueness in the Russian examples discussed in this section. Rather, the effect found in (19–21) is comparable to cancelling an implicature.

A real presupposition violation can be illustrated by the following examples with factive predicates (*know, be glad*, etc.). The continuations in (22) and (23) are clearly unacceptable, whereas in the examples (19–21) above only some pragmatic adjustment is required.

(22) Tolja Tolja.nom znaet, knows čto that Anja Anja.nom zavalila failed ėkzamen. exam.acc #Ona she polučila got otlično. excellent.

'Tolja knows that Anja failed her exam. She got an 'excellent'.'

(23) Tolja Tolja.nom ne not znaet, knows čto that Anja Anja.nom zavalila failed ėkzamen. exam.acc #Ona she polučila got otlično. excellent.

'Tolja doesn't know that Anja failed her exam. She got an "excellent".'

The absence of uniqueness/maximality in Russian bare nominals has also received empirical evidence in a recent experimental study by Šimík & Demian (2020), who have found that there is no uniqueness/maximality for bare nominals in sentence-initial position, which is generally associated with topicality (Geist 2010 i.a.). Bare singulars behave rather as indefinites, which is in line with Heim's (2011) hypothesis about the default interpretation of bare nominals in articleless languages, the proposal we discuss right below. Bare plurals show some maximality effects, which, however, are rather weak and are probably related to pragmatic exhaustivity, construed as a conversational implicature.

16An anonymous reviewer suggests that if presupposition is considered a pragmatic phenomenon, it should be possible to (easily) cancel it. This, according to the reviewer, would mean that *director* in (19a) does have a presupposition of uniqueness, unless (19b) is added. We still think that our argument stands: whether presupposition is a semantic or a pragmatic phenomenon, it should behave in a uniform way, independently of the language. The fact that it cannot be cancelled in English but can in Russian means (to us) that, if we are dealing with uniqueness presupposition in the case of English, Russian should be treated differently.

Daria Seres & Olga Borik

### **4 "Definiteness effects" in languages with and without articles**

### **4.1 An indefiniteness hypothesis: Heim (2011)**

In this section we briefly present an indefiniteness hypothesis based on Heim (2011) and discuss its repercussions for languages without articles. We suggest that this hypothesis can straightforwardly account for the data discussed in the previous section and that it makes the right predictions for the interpretative possibilities of bare nominals in languages without articles. We will keep the discussion at a rather informal level for the purposes of this paper, acknowledging the need to develop a formal analysis in the future.

Let us first have a look at the English data. A crucial observation for the indefiniteness hypothesis is that a sentence with a definite argument in English would always entail a corresponding sentence with an indefinite argument: whenever (24a) is true, (24b) is also true, but not the other way around.

	- b. A director joined our discussion.

According to Heim (2011), the articles *the* and *a* could be construed as alternatives on a Horn scale (see also Hawkins 1978), which generates a conversational implicature: *the* > *a*. Thus, if the speaker uses (24b), the hearer concludes that this is the strongest statement to which the speaker can commit under given circumstances (following Grice's maxim of quantity). The hearer, in her turn, infers that the stronger statement is false, or its presuppositions are not satisfied. Heim (2011) postulates that the choice of the logically weaker indefinite will trigger an inference that the conditions for the definiteness (existence and uniqueness) are not met.

The crucial difference between a definite and an indefinite description in English is that the definite nominal is construed with the narrowest possible domain restriction, which accounts for the uniqueness effects. However, in languages without articles, by hypothesis, a bare nominal is compatible with the whole range of domain restrictions simply because there is no element that would signal that the speaker is committed to the strongest possible statement, as in the case with the definite article in English. It follows, then, that no implicature about a "stronger statement" is triggered and a definite reading is not ruled out for an "indefinite" bare nominal in a language like Russian. Since there is no competing expression for the narrower domain restriction, semantically indefinite

### 13 Definiteness in the absence of uniqueness: The case of Russian

nominal phrases are compatible with a (contextually triggered) definite interpretation. Nothing prevents them from being used in situations where a definite description is used in a language with articles, e.g. in English, as they lack both uniqueness and non-uniqueness implicatures. This would mean that the domain restriction attributed to each particular bare nominal is pragmatically derived and is, in principle, a matter of (a strong) preference.

Thus, according to Heim (2011: 1006), bare nominals in languages without articles are "simply indefinites", i.e., they get a default indefinite (existential) interpretation. There is plenty of empirical evidence that Russian bare nominals can have an indefinite interpretation. For instance, they can be used in distributive contexts (25) and in existential sentences (26). Moreover, two identical (except for case) bare singular nominals can be used in the same sentence (27).

Following Heim (2011), we propose that for any bare nominal phrase in Russian, an indefinite interpretation is the only one derived semantically. Although a formal semantic analysis for Russian bare nominals remains to be developed, we can make a first step by assuming that there are two semantic mechanisms involved in the semantic derivation of indefinites in Russian, just like in other languages (Reinhart 1997): existential quantification and choice functions; see (28).

$$\begin{aligned} \text{(28)} \quad & \text{a. } \exists \mathsf{x}. P(\mathsf{x}) \land Q(\mathsf{x})\\ & \text{b. } f\_{\mathsf{C} \mathsf{H}} \{\mathsf{x} : P(\mathsf{x})\} \end{aligned}$$

Quantificational indefinites are considered to be non-referential, whereas a choice function analysis could account for those cases where an indefinite refers to a (specific) individual. A full formal analysis of bare nominals in Russian will need to determine how precisely the labor is divided between the two mechanisms (or, perhaps, just one mechanism suffices, as proposed by Winter 1997), whereas we can conclude this section by stating that under the indefiniteness

### Daria Seres & Olga Borik

hypothesis presented here, the perceived definiteness of Russian bare nominals must be of a pragmatic nature. In the next section, we will describe some of the pragmatic factors responsible for definiteness effects in Russian.

### **4.2 Deriving definiteness in Russian**

Definiteness under the hypothesis presented above is achieved by pragmatic strengthening, and is not derived by a covert iota type-shift. The definite interpretation of bare nominals will only be felicitous in contexts where there is exactly one individual that satisfies the common noun predicate. Such contexts, which facilitate pragmatic definiteness, may be of different types. The ones that are discussed below include ontological uniqueness, topicality, and anaphoricity.

We use ontological uniqueness to refer to those cases when uniqueness is conveyed not so much by the definite article, but by the descriptive content of a nominal phrase itself, e.g., *the earth, the sun, the moon*, etc., in English. For instance, when we want to use an expression with the noun *sun*, a usual case is that we want to refer to the sun of our solar system, which is a unique object. We could also use *sun* with an indefinite article, but then we would overrule the assumption that we are talking about the sun of our solar system. This is the case of ontological uniqueness, i.e., the case when a definite article does not necessarily impose but rather reflects the uniqueness of the object in the actual world.

In Russian, those unique objects are usually referred to by bare singular nominals, as illustrated in (29):

(29) Solnce sun.nom svetit. shines 'The sun is shining.'

The interpretation of *solnce* (sun.nom) in (29) seems to certainly be definite, although it can be argued that definiteness effects in this case are simply due to the fact that the reference is made to a unique object in the real world (i.e., there are no other objects like this). Thus, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, the subject of (29) is understood as 'the sun of our solar system', which is a unique object. If so, there is no uniqueness presupposition associated with the nominal *sun* in (29). Rather, it is simply the fact that there is only one such object so the noun *sun* by default denotes a singleton set. If we apply a choice function analysis to this type of case, the function will simply yield this unique object.17

17Ontological uniqueness accounts for counterexamples that Dayal (2017) gives for Heim's (2011) theory.

### 13 Definiteness in the absence of uniqueness: The case of Russian

The next source of definiteness is topicality, which strongly favors a definite interpretation cross-linguistically (Reinhart 1981, Erteschik-Shir 2007, i.a.). Although there is a strong preference for a definite reading of a nominal in topic position, specific indefinites are not excluded from being topics either (Reinhart 1981). Specific indefinites are discourse new, but they are anchored to other discourse referents (von Heusinger 2002), or D-linked (Pesetsky 1987, Dyakonova 2009), and thus can appear in topic position.

Topicality in Russian is associated with clause-initial position (Geist 2010, Jasinskaja 2016, i.a.). The majority of the examples discussed above involve bare nominals that are actually topics, as in (30), repeated from (21):

(30) Avtor author.nom ėtogo this očerka essay.gen polučil received Pulitcerovskuju Pulitzer premiju. prize.acc 'The author of this essay got a Pulitzer prize.'

As was argued in §3, preverbal nominals in Russian, like the one illustrated in (30), do not give rise to uniqueness presuppositions, however, the existence of their referents is certainly presupposed. This existence presupposition is not necessarily a counterargument to the absence of semantic definiteness in bare nominals in languages without articles. In particular, those elements that appear in topic position can only be referential (see, for instance, Reinhart 1981, Erteschik-Shir 1998, Endriss 2009). An intuitive idea behind this generalization is that if there is no entity that the nominal topic refers to, this expression cannot be an aboutness topic because then there is no entity to be talked about.

Another important source of definiteness is familiarity/anaphoric reference, when an antecedent is provided by the previous context or, more generally, is retrievable from shared encyclopedic knowledge of the participants of communication. This kind of definiteness is completely discourse- and situationdependent. One example to illustrate the phenomenon is given in (31):

(31) Včera yesterday v in zooparke zoo ja I videla saw sem'ju family.acc tigrov. tigers.gen Životnye animals spokojno calmly spali slept v in uglu corner kletki cage.gen posle after obeda. lunch 'Yesterday at the zoo I saw a family of tigers. The animals were calmly sleeping in the corner of the cage after lunch.'

Once again, this type of examples do not pose any threat to the indefiniteness theory of bare nominals proposed in the previous section. First of all, anaphoric

### Daria Seres & Olga Borik

definites are usually not explained by appealing to the uniqueness theory of definites that we are testing here, but by a familiarity hypothesis developed in Kamp (1981) and Heim (1982). According to this hypothesis, definite descriptions introduce a referent that is anaphorically linked to another previously introduced referent. Anaphoric definites need not have any uniqueness presupposition, their referent is simply established and identified by a link to a previous antecedent.18

To sum up, in this section we have considered three factors that facilitate a definite interpretation of bare singular nominals in Russian: ontological uniqueness, topicality, and anaphoricity. We have shown that none of these cases need to rely on a presupposition of uniqueness to explain the definiteness effects that arise in any of the contexts discussed here.

### **5 Conclusions**

In this paper we have focused on the questions related to (in)definiteness in languages that do not have an overt straightforward strategy to encode/decode reference. Apparently, the contrast between the definite and indefinite interpretation is still perceptible to speakers of such languages. Taking Russian as an example of a language without articles, we have looked at various lexical, grammatical, syntactic, and prosodic means that are used in this language to express (in)definiteness, showing, however, that none of them is strong enough to be considered equivalent to a definite article in languages which have it. Based on the empirical evidence from Russian, we hypothesized that what is perceived as definiteness in languages with and without articles may be semantically different. Russian bare nominals with a perceived definite reading, unlike their English counterparts, seem to lack the presupposition of uniqueness, which should thus be linked to the semantics of the definite article. Following this line of reasoning, we claim that the perceived definiteness of Russian bare nominals in certain contexts is due to a pragmatic strengthening of an indefinite, a semantically default interpretation of a bare nominal. Thus, we conclude that there is no semantic definiteness in Russian if we assume the uniqueness theory of definiteness. Instead, we suggest that bare nominals in Russian are semantically indefinite and definiteness effects are achieved by pragmatic strengthening. The pragmatic definiteness effects emerge in the case of "ontologically unique" referents, nominals in topic position or familiar/anaphoric nominals, whose interpretation is strongly dependent on the discursive or situational context.

18There have been attempts in the literature to unify a uniqueness approach with the familiarity approach to definites, e.g. Farkas (2002).

13 Definiteness in the absence of uniqueness: The case of Russian

### **Abbreviations**

### **Acknowledgements**

We acknowledge financial support from the Spanish MINECO (FFI2017-82547-P) and the Generalitat de Catalunya (2017SGR634).

### **References**

### Daria Seres & Olga Borik

13 Definiteness in the absence of uniqueness: The case of Russian

### Daria Seres & Olga Borik

### 13 Definiteness in the absence of uniqueness: The case of Russian

### Daria Seres & Olga Borik

### 13 Definiteness in the absence of uniqueness: The case of Russian

*Slavic and beyond* (Studies in Generative Grammar 116), 17–38. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI: 10.1515/9781614512790.17.

## **Chapter 14**

## **Inherent vs. accidental uniqueness in bare and demonstrative nominals**

### Radek Šimík

Charles University, Prague

This paper provides an analysis of Czech bare vs. demonstrative NPs and in particular of their referential uses involving situational uniqueness. Contrary to the traditional view that bare NPs correlate with uniqueness and demonstrative NPs with anaphoricity, I argue that the relevant classification involves two types of uniqueness: inherent uniqueness, correlated with bare NPs, and accidental uniqueness, correlated with demonstrative NPs. The notions of inherent and accidental uniqueness are formalized using situation and modal semantics. An extension to generic, anaphoric, and non-specific NPs is proposed.

**Keywords:** Czech, bare NPs, demonstratives, uniqueness, situation semantics

### **1 Introduction**

In this paper I investigate the meaning and distribution of two kinds of nominal phrases (NPs) in Czech: bare NPs and demonstrative NPs. A bare NP, illustrated by *garáž* 'garage' in (1a), is an NP without any determiners such as quantificational determiners, demonstratives, or indefinite markers. A demonstrative NP, illustrated by *ta garáž* 'dem garage', is an NP introduced by a demonstrative.1,2

2 I distinguish between "contexts", which involve explicitly uttered material that precedes the target utterance (I only provide English translations), and "situations", which only describe the setting in which the target utterance is made.

1A comprehensive discussion of the Czech demonstrative system can be found in Berger (1993). For recent discussion couched in the formal approach, see Šimík (2016) (I use "formal" as shorthand for generative/formal-semantic). Notice also that I gloss the Czech demonstrative *ten/ ta/to* 'dem.m/f/n' as dem, as it does not perfectly correspond to either 'this' or 'that' (it is primarily anaphoric and also largely neutral with respect to proximity).

### Radek Šimík

	- Ta dem garáž garage zářila shined novotou. novelty.instr demonstrative NP 'The garage shined with novelty.'