GENGO KENKYU (Journal of the Linguistic Society of Japan)
Online ISSN : 2185-6710
Print ISSN : 0024-3914
The Notion of ‘X-specificity’ and Indefinite Noun Phrases
Ken-ichi MIHARA
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JOURNAL FREE ACCESS

1989 Volume 1989 Issue 96 Pages 43-60

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Abstract
This article will be centered around the proposal of factoring out the notion of specificity into X-specificity (X= a subject or speaker). An indefinite noun phrase of the form α+a common noun will be specifically dealt with in the discourse context consisting of more than one sentence. X-specificity can be seen to show clause-boundedness effects in the c-domain of a human subject, giving rise to n+1 potentialities for a sentence containing n subjects over and above an omnipresent speaker.
It will be argued that universal import observed in a donkey sentence results from cumulative effects: for each donkey-owner, there exists a uniquely identifiable donkey. The influence of Lewis's (1975) and Heim's (1982) works is readily recognizable in the analysis of an if version of a donkey sentence. It can be seen that a donkey phenomenon is best captured in the quantification-over-cases approach. It may be concluded that the evidence points to the validity of relativizing X-specificity to each possible world.
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