10.
(a) I remember the beginning of the war very well.
(b) There was a funny story on the front page of the Guardian this morning.
(c) ... the bottom of the sea.
(d) ... the fight during the war.
The syntactic structure of a definite description does not guarantee that it is unfamiliar. Unexplanatory Modifiers Use
Finally, Hawkins lists a small number of modifiers (that he calls unexplanatory) which require the use of the definite article:
11.
(a) My wife and I share the same secrets.
(b) The first person to sail to America was an Icelander.
(c) The fastest person to sail to America ...
There is nothing in the modifier that informs the hearer what is being referred to; Hawkins says that in the first of the examples above the definite points merely to an identity between two sets of secrets.
3. Prince’s theory of familiarity
Prince studied in detail the connection between the speaker/writer's and hearer/reader's assumptions about each other and the linguistic realisation of noun phrases (Prince, 1981; Prince, 1992). Although she studies noun phrases in general, the taxonomy she proposes has proved equally useful for our analysis of definite descriptions in particular. What is original and especially interesting in Prince’s work is the important distinction between two kinds of familiarity, a distinction not explicitly observed in Hawkins’ theory. She distinguishes between discourse and hearer familiarity, as seen below.
Hearer new / Hearer old
One factor affecting the choice of a noun phrase, according to Prince, is whether a discourse entity is old or new with respect to the hearer’s knowledge. Typically, a speaker will use a
proper name or a definite description when he or she assumes that the addressee already knows the entity whom the speaker is referring to, as in:
12.I'm waiting for it to be noon so I can call Sandy Thompson.
O n the other hand, if the speaker believes that the addressee does not know of Sandy Thompson, in general, an indefinite will be used:
13.I'm waiting for it to be noon so I can call someone in California.
D iscourse entities can also be new or old with respect to the discourse model.
D iscourse new / Discourse old
A ccording to Prince, a NP may refer to an entity that has already been `evoked' in the current discourse (textually evoked), or it may evoke an entity which has not been previously mentioned (situationally evoked, unused, inferrable, containing inferrable, brand new). “Discourse novelty” is distinct from “hearer novelty”: both Sandy Thompson and someone in California mentioned above may well be discourse new even if only the second one will be hearer new. On the other hand, for an entity being discourse old entails it being hearer old. As pointed out by Prince, the distinction between containing inferrable and unused is sometimes ambiguous: what is unused for one reader may be containing inferrable for another, depending on their inpidual knowledge background.
P rince criticises the traditional binary distinction between “given” and “new” discourse entities as too simplistic, and proposes a much more detailed taxonomy of “givenness”---or, as she calls it, assumed familiarity---meant to address this problem.
A ssumed Familiarity
B rand-new A NP may introduce an entity which is both discourse and hearer new. Brand new entities are usually introduced by indefinites, such as someone in California in the example above.
B rand new anchored A new entity is anchored, according to Prince, if it is linked to another discourse entity, this link is contained in the NP representing the entity and this link is not itself new. An example is: A guy I work with... Prince seems to be considering only indefinites in this class, but a definite such as the guys I work with could perhaps be regarded as brand new anchored in the same sense. There are also some definite descriptions that describe new entities and are linked to entities that are new, as in the footsteps of a yeti. Their place in Prince’s framework is not clear.
E voked NPs may invoke situationally evoked or textually evoked entities. Only textually evoked entities are discourse old. Situationally evoked entities correspond to Hawkins' visible/immediate situation use.
U nused NPs may evoke hearer old but discourse new entities. Unused NPs describe entities that are known to the speaker/hearer but which haven’t been mentioned (used) previously in
the discourse. These are like those cases called by Hawkins larger situation/specific knowledge.
I nferrable Some discourse entities are not discourse old or even hearer old, but they are not entirely new, either. Hawkins called such uses of definite descriptions associative anaphoric: a book, the author. Prince called such entities inferrables. Prince did not introduce a class for those entities which are inferrable from the situation (Hawkins' larger situation/general knowledge); they will be referred to later as situationally inferrable.
C ontaining inferrable Prince proposes a category for entities, which are like inferrables, but whose connection with previous hearer's knowledge is specified as part of the NP itself. Her example the door of the Bastille in the example below.
14.The door of the Bastille was painted purple.
A t least three of the unfamiliar uses of Hawkins--NP complements, referent-establishing relative clauses, and associative clauses--fall in this category. As pointed out by Prince, the distinction between containing inferrable and unused is sometimes ambiguous: what is unused for one reader may be containing inferrable for another, depending on their inpidual knowledge background.
4. L?bner’s theory
L?bner (L?bner, 1985) observes that the interpretation of descriptions may depend on arguments and attributes given in the referring act itself or by the immediate situation, and not only on textual antecedents. He takes descriptions to be terms like proper names. L?bner adopts Christopherson's (1939) view according to which the fundamental property of definite NPs is that they refer unambiguously. L?bner claims that the definite article indicates that the noun is to be taken as a functional concept (FC). This idea is based on the distinction between sortal and relational nouns: sortal nouns identify a class (woman), while relational nouns describe objects as standing in a certain relation to others (wife). Functional nouns are a subclass of relational nouns. Functions relate objects unambiguously (one to one) to others: they assign values to arguments. Functional concepts identify a referent when the situation and proper arguments are given. L?bner’s classificatory scheme is based on the distinction between semantic and pragmatic definites. Semantic definites are those cases in which the interpretation is independent of the utterance's previous discourse or immediate context of utterance; the general situation, however, is always an argument1. The semantic definites L?bner lists correspond to Hawkins' larger situation and unfamiliar uses. Pragmatic definites, on the other hand, are essentially dependent on the particular context of utterance for their non-ambiguous interpretation.
S emantic Definites
1This argument relates the description to the location, time and circumstances of the utterance.
L?bner defines a semantic definite as a NP denoting a functional concept. According to the number of arguments definites take, they are classified into FC1s, FC2s and FC3s. All of them involve the general situation as one of their arguments, often implicitly.
S emantic FC1s These semantic definites are concepts for objects that play a unique role in a given situation. This class includes:
a) proper names;
b) sortal nouns followed by a proper name of some sort;
c) cases in which a subordinate clause specifies an abstract sortal head as FC1s;
d) combinations of certain adjectival attributes (superlatives, ordinals, as well as next, last, only, etc.) with sortal or relational nouns forming a complex FC1; and
