• Language and Information
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.77-93
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• 2008

This paper examines a condition that licenses distributivity. Choe (1987) and Link (1998) have proposed an indefiniteness condition on distributivity. However, detecting counter-examples, Zimmermann (2002) has argued for a non-specificity condition. This paper primarily revises the indefiniteness/non-specificity condition. Observing that the systematic class of the exceptions belongs to weak definites proposed by Poesio (1994), I claim that the property that constrains distributivity is non-strong-definiteness. Based on Landman (2000), I further explain the non-strong-definiteness condition and argue that the condition does not need to be imposed on the grammar independently. The new condition naturally accounts for Spector's (2003) scopal asymmetry. Even more, defining donkey pronouns as weak definites, I cope with various properties of donkey sentences.

• Language and Information
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.67-86
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• 2007

The semantic literature on definiteness and specificity shows that the former is relatively an established notion, whereas the latter is still a vague notion that needs to be more clarified and confirmed. Given this, Ionin (2006) argues for the reality of specificity based on the informal use of this. She proposes this in spoken English as a specificity marker which has a semantic feature indicating "peaker intent to refer" and "noteworthiness." She also provides as evidence the results of some crosslinguistics studies including an L2 acquisition study with both L1-Russian and L1-Korean L2-English learners. However, this paper will argue that the informal use of this does not seem to mark specificity according to Ionin's definition of specificity. It will also be argued that the L2 acquisition study cannot be used as evidence for the reality of specificity. Based on these arguments, this paper will try to redefine specificity, based on the notions of existence and uniqueness.