Definiteness

[Kersti Börjars]

I was interested in Dunstan's distinction: between 'coincidence of form'
vs. 'agremeent'.

>If we take it to be a feature of NPs, then an NP
>may be marked as definite in more than one place, and we would
>have a coincidence of form, rather than one agreeing with the other.

Now, that seems a really tricky distinction to make. Does it depend on
whether or not one of the elements can be seen as "inherently" having the
feature, so that since nouns could be said to *have* gender, gender
agreement within the noun phrase exists. Is this it?

The argument you give I can't quite follow: from the (possible) lack of
definiteness agreement between verbs and objects you conclude that
definiteness marking within the noun phrase is not agreement. Why is this?

Kersti

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Kersti Börjars
Department of Linguistics
University of Manchester
Manchester M13 9PL             k.borjars at man.ac.uk
UK	       http://lings.ln.man.ac.uk/html/keb/
Tel: 44+(0)161-275 3042
Fax: 44+(0)161-275 3042

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