In linguistics, definiteness is a semantic feature of noun phrases, distinguishing between referents or entities that are identifiable in a given context and entities which are not. There is considerable variation in the expression of definiteness across languages and some languages do not express it at all. For example, in English definiteness is usually marked by the selection of determiner. Certain determiners, such as a, an, many, any, either, and some, typically mark an NP as indefinite. Others, including the, this, every, and both, mark the NP as definite. In some other languages, the marker is a clitic that attaches phonologically to the noun : the Hebrewdefinite articleha- or the Arabic definite articleal-. In yet other languages, definiteness is indicated by affixes on the noun or on modifying adjectives, much like the expression of grammatical number and grammatical case. In those languages, the inflections indicating definiteness may be quite complex. In the Germanic languages and Balto-Slavic languages, for example, there are two paradigms for adjectives, one used in definite noun phrases and the other used in indefinite noun phrases. In some languages, such as Hungarian, definiteness is marked on the verb.
Use in different languages
Examples are:
Phrasal clitic: as in Basque: Cf. emakume, emakume-a, emakume ederr-a ; Romanian: om, om-ul, om-ul bun or bun-ul om
Noun affix: as in Albanian: djalë ; djal-i ; djal-i i madh ; vajzë ; vajz-a ; vajz-a e bukur
Prefix on both noun and adjective: Arabic الكتاب الكبير with two instances of al-
Distinct verbal forms: as in Hungarian: olvasok egy könyvet versus olvasom a könyvet
Germanic, Romance, Celtic, Semitic, and auxiliary languages generally have a definite article, often preposed but in some cases postposed. Many other languages do not. Some examples are Chinese, Japanese, Finnish, and modern Slavic languages except Bulgarian and Macedonian. When necessary, languages of this kind may indicate definiteness by other means such as demonstratives. It is common for definiteness to interact with the marking of case in certain syntactic contexts. In many languages, a direct object receives distinctive marking only if it is definite. For example, in Turkish, the direct object in the sentence adamı gördüm is marked with the suffix -ı. The absence of the suffix on a direct object in Turkish means that it is indefinite and, in the absence of the indefinite article bir, no longer explicitly singular: adam gördüm,. In Serbo-Croatian, in the Baltic languagesLatvian and Lithuanian, and, to a lesser extent in Slovene, definiteness can be expressed morphologically on prenominal adjectives. The short form of the adjective is interpreted as indefinite, while the long form is definite or specific:
short : Serbo-Croatian nov grad "a new city"; Lithuanian balta knyga "a white book"
long : novi grad "the new city, a certain new city"; baltoji knyga "the white book, a certain white book"
In some languages, the definiteness of the object affects the transitivity of the verb. In the absence of peculiar specificity marking, it also tends to affect the telicity of mono-occasional predications.
Morphological marking of definiteness
In some languages definiteness can be seen a morphological category of nouns. For example, in some Scandinavian languages, such as Swedish, definite nouns inflect with a dedicated set of suffixes. This is known in Swedish as the grammatical category of :sv:Species |Species. In Semitic languages the category of state is sometimes tied to definiteness, as some Semitic languages are said to distinguish between three morphological states: Indefinite State, Definite State, and Construct State. Such a system exists for instance in Old Aramaic. Yet in other Semitic languages, like Hebrew or Arabic, definiteness is marked by a pro-clitic, and the state category relates only to the question whether a nominal is necessarily modified by a complement or not.
