# Definite/indefinite and specific/non-specific



## cheshire

http://forum.wordreference.com/showpost.php?p=2726768&postcount=37



			
				alijsh said:
			
		

> By the way, I should remind that definite vs. indefinite differs from specific vs. non-specific (generic)


What is the difference between definite/indefinite and specific/non-specific (generic)?


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## Alijsh

Here I quote from a document about Persian grammar but unfortunately, I didn't find its URL:

We define "definiteness" as a property of the noun phrase that indicates reference to a unique entity identifiable by both speaker and hearer. This contrasts with "indefiniteness" which is where the noun phrase lacks this property. Definiteness can also be compared to specific reference vs. nonspecific (generic) reference. Specific reference is where the speaker refers to a particular instance of a class of referents and generic reference is where the whole class of entities is referred to. So, in English a reference can be definite but generic, as in _The tiger is a dangerous animal_. Here the definite reference _the tiger_ is generic as it does not refer to a particular example of "tiger".

- As far as I know, Persian, Latin, and Russian are among languages having no article so a clear differentiation might be only found in such languages. I have never paid to it so that I can speak with certainty.


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## I_like_my_TV

> So, in English a reference can be definite but generic, as in The tiger is a dangerous animal.


Is it possible to have a reference which is _indefinite_ but _specific_?


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## Alijsh

I don't exactly know but let me try it:

*a man* is taken to *hospital* following a shooting in X street.

dar pey-e tirandâzi dar xiyâban-e X *mard-i* be *bimârestân* borde šod.

Regarding Persian, "hospital" is definite but generic and "man" is indefinite but specific


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## modus.irrealis

I_like_my_TV said:


> Is it possible to have a reference which is _indefinite_ but _specific_?



What about something like "a certain man came over" or "a friend of mine came over"?


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## I_like_my_TV

> a man is taken to hospital following a shooting in X street.





> a certain man came over


The examples by Alijsh and modus.irrealis are good and seem to be clear cut. However, this one seems to be problematic:
_"My sister wants to marry a Japanese."_
Is _"a Japanese"_ specific or non-specific?


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## modus.irrealis

I_like_my_TV said:


> _"My sister wants to marry a Japanese."_
> Is _"a Japanese"_ specific or non-specific?



That's ambiguous for me between specific and non-specific, but I think there are languages that distinguish between the two -- I want to say Spanish, but I'm not sure. Although you can also say Alijsh's original example of "The tiger is a dangerous animal" is (borderline) ambiguous between generic and non-generic too.


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## Athaulf

I_like_my_TV said:


> Is it possible to have a reference which is _indefinite_ but _specific_?



I googled a bit about this topic and found a thesis that presents the following example as indefinite but specific:
_
I met __*a survivor* from the Asian tsunami yesterday.

_The example certainly makes sense, but I'm afraid these theoretical concepts are an attempt to construct a logical and systematic theory for something that's just far too irregular and dependent on the pure native speaker feeling and intuition. I've been looking for years for a satisfactory theory of English articles, or at least a sufficiently accurate list of prescriptive rules for their use, but I never came across anything that would be more than, perhaps, 80% accurate.


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## Athaulf

I_like_my_TV said:


> The examples by Alijsh and modus.irrealis are good and seem to be clear cut. However, this one seems to be problematic:
> _"My sister wants to marry a Japanese."_
> Is _"a Japanese"_ specific or non-specific?



It's context-dependent. If you want to say that she has a Japanese boyfriend whom she wants to marry, then it's specific. But if you want to say that she's excluding all non-Japanese from her choice of potential husbands as a matter of principle, without having any particular Japanese man in mind at this moment, then it's non-specific.


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## karuna

Athaulf said:


> It's context-dependent. If you want to say that she has a Japanese boyfriend whom she wants to marry, then it's specific. But if you want to say that she's excluding all non-Japanese from her choice of potential husbands as a matter of principle, without having any particular Japanese man in mind at this moment, then it's non-specific.



You have a good point. I too can't get a hang of the indefinite/definite articles in English well. One reason might be that the indefine article can include both specific and non-specific instances. In the first case I would have translated this sentence into Latvian as
_
1) Mana māsa grib apprecēt japāni.

_and in non-specific case the translation would

_2) Mana māsa grib apprecēti*es ar* japāni.

_The difference in not big but in the version (2) the reflexive verb is used which makes it non-specific. 

Latvian has definite and indefinite adjective endings. But somehow they in most cases don't correspond with the indefinite/definite article use in English. Maybe they are actually specific/non-specific adjective endings? If we would add an adjective in this example, then for translation (1) it would be the definite ending and indefinite for the translation (2).


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## I_like_my_TV

Athualf, I like your explantion for _"My sister wants to marry a Japanese."_ 

At the beginning of the thread, I was thinking we might have difficulty in finding "indefinite + specific" examples but it seems clear now not to be the case. One rule of thumb I've discovered for this is that anything that is indefinite but has something to do with the past (in either meaning or form) is specific. That is to say, having a leg in the past is a certificate for being specific.


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## Alijsh

I_like_my_TV said:


> The examples by Alijsh and modus.irrealis are good and seem to be clear cut. However, this one seems to be problematic:
> _"My sister wants to marry a Japanese."_
> Is _"a Japanese"_ specific or non-specific?


I think it's generic (non-specific) since we only have the class i.e. Japanese. If we want to make it specific we must give more explanation e.g "a Japanese who is from Tokio"


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## Athaulf

karuna said:


> You have a good point. I too can't get a hang of the indefinite/definite articles in English well. One reason might be that the indefine article can include both specific and non-specific instances. In the first case I would have translated this sentence into Latvian as
> _
> 1) Mana māsa grib apprecēt japāni.
> 
> _and in non-specific case the translation would
> 
> _2) Mana māsa grib apprecēti*es ar* japāni.
> 
> _The difference in not big but in the version (2) the reflexive verb is used which makes it non-specific.



Could you please elaborate on this? Is _ar_ the reflexive pronoun? And is the _-es_ an indefinite adjective ending? 



> Latvian has definite and indefinite adjective endings. But somehow they in most cases don't correspond with the indefinite/definite article use in English. Maybe they are actually specific/non-specific adjective endings? If we would add an adjective in this example, then for translation (1) it would be the definite ending and indefinite for the translation (2).


Croatian also has definite and indefinite endings for some adjectives. I think this is an ancient common feature of Baltic and Slavic languages. This is however a somewhat archaic feature in modern Croatian, and  nowadays definite forms are often used in colloquial speech in place of indefinite ones (indefiniteness is expressed using pronouns, numbers, etc. as necessary).

However, these adjectival endings signify only definiteness, not specificity. The Croatian adjective _japanski_ (=_Japanese_) doesn't have an indefinite form, but if we constructed a similar example using some adjective that does have it, the meaning would be more or less equivalent to the analogous English sentence with an indefinite article in front of the adjective.


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## karuna

_Ar_ (= with) is actually the preposition for the intrumental case, which is actually the accusative case with this preposition. _-ies _is simply the infinitive ending of the reflexive verb. Somehow it sounds less specific too.

In Latvian _japāniski = _in Japanese language. The adjective is _japānisk*s* _(indefinite) and _japānisk*ais* _(definite) and can take both definite and indefinite endings. _Japānisk*s* stils _would be style that copies or looks like that of the Japanese but may not be genuine Japanese item_. Japānisk*ais *stils _would be used if we compared several styles but it also gives the indication that it is a real Japanese thing.

Adjectives with the definite ending can have noun features. As in _gudrais _(_= _a wise man, a sage) is really the adjective with the definite ending (_gudrs __= _wise) but it acts as a noun.


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## Flaminius

Athaulf said:
			
		

> karuna said:
> 
> 
> 
> You have a good point. I too can't get a hang of the indefinite/definite articles in English well. One reason might be that the indefine article can include both specific and non-specific instances. In the first case I would have translated this sentence into Latvian as
> _
> 1) Mana māsa grib apprecēt japāni.
> _My sister wants toMarry aJapanese(accusative)
> 
> and in non-specific case the translation would
> 
> _2) Mana māsa grib apprecēti*es ar* japāni.
> _My sister wants toMarryOneself with aJapanese(instrumental)
> 
> The difference in not big but in the version (2) the reflexive verb is used which makes it non-specific.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Could you please elaborate on this? Is _ar_ the reflexive pronoun? And is the _-es_ an indefinite adjective ending?
Click to expand...

Many Latvian verbs can make a reflexive form with the suffix _-ies_.  I cannot speak for Karuna, a Latvian native, but I read his post as saying that a direct object as in Sentence 1) is specific whereas an indirect object is non-specific.


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## karuna

Flaminius said:


> Many Latvian verbs can make a reflexive form with the suffix _-ies_.  I cannot speak for Karuna, a Latvian native, but I read his post as saying that a direct object as in Sentence 1) is specific whereas an indirect object is non-specific.



Exactly, direct vs. indirect object might be the reason here.


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## Athaulf

karuna said:


> _Ar_ (= with) is actually the preposition for the intrumental case, which is actually the accusative case with this preposition. _-ies _is simply the infinitive ending of the reflexive verb. Somehow it sounds less specific too.



Now I see, thanks for the explanation. (How was that for bad guesswork? ) 

A very similar thing exists in Croatian: the verb _oženiti_ (= _to take for a wife_) can be used as a transitive verb with an object in accusative, but it can also be used in the reflexive form _oženiti se_, which then goes with instrumental. There is however no difference in meaning whatsoever between these two uses. 



> In Latvian _japāniski = _in Japanese language. The adjective is _japānisk*s* _(indefinite) and _japānisk*ais* _(definite) and can take both definite and indefinite endings. _Japānisk*s* stils _would be style that copies or looks like that of the Japanese but may not be genuine Japanese item_. Japānisk*ais *stils _would be used if we compared several styles but it also gives the indication that it is a real Japanese thing.


Yes, this is totally different from the definiteness of Croatian adjectives. Although this feature of both languages probably has a common origin, the meaning has apparently diverged over the millenniums.


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## cheshire

Alijsh said:


> I don't exactly know but let me try it:
> 
> *a man* is taken to *hospital* following a shooting in X street.
> 
> dar pey-e tirandâzi dar xiyâban-e X *mard-i* be *bimârestân* borde šod.
> 
> Regarding Persian, "hospital" is definite but generic and "man" is indefinite but specific


I understand about mard-i, (that -i makes a noun indefinite, just like the English "a".) But I don't know what makes a noun definite in Persian? Could you show me any suffix or affix in "bimarestan"?
Thank you very much!


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## Outsider

modus.irrealis said:


> That's ambiguous for me between specific and non-specific, but I think there are languages that distinguish between the two -- I want to say Spanish, but I'm not sure.


I don't think so. It's "Mi hermana quiere casarse con un japonés" in both cases.


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## modus.irrealis

Outsider said:


> I don't think so. It's "Mi hermana quiere casarse con un japonés" in both cases.



Thanks. After making my comment and looking around, what I think I was thinking of was examples like

Busca a un medico vs. busca un medico

where I'm under the (quite possibly mistaken) impression that the first refers to a specific but indefinite doctor. But if I understand this construction right it's impossible to use in the marriage example because un japonés occurs with con and is not the direct object.

I also realized soon after I posted that what I said is probably trivial in the sense that any language can (probably) reformulate the sentence and make the meaning clear like in English "She wants to marry a certain Japanese." Although, it's harder (or maybe I'm not thinking right) to come up with a sentence that's unambiguously non-specific, without explicitly saying it's non-specific or something like "She wants to marry Japanese" but I don't know how many English speakers would accept a sentence like that.


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## Outsider

"She wants to marry Japanese" --> sounds like a patriotic slogan. 

I can't answer your doubts. This is one area where Spanish and Portuguese part ways. I do agree that you can probably rephrase the sentence to make it non-ambiguous; certainly so in Spanish: "Mi hermana quiere casarse con cierto japonés" vs. "Mi hermana quiere un marido que sea japonés". Which reminds me that in Spanish you can also use mood (indicative vs. subjunctive) to make this sort of distinction:

Quiere un marido que es japonés (ind.) --> a particular Japanese husband
Quiere un marido que sea japonés (subj.) --> any, non-specified husband, so long as he's Japanese (and we're back to patriotism )


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## modus.irrealis

Outsider said:


> "She wants to marry Japanese" --> sounds like a patriotic slogan.



And it's used that way! It also makes me think of food ("We should eat Japanese tonight.")

That use of the subjunctive in Spanish is, I think, just like one in French that I haven't really mastered, so it's surprising then that it's not more widespread in the Romance languages (although I have no idea on the question of whether Spanish or Portuguese is closer in general to French).


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## Outsider

modus.irrealis said:


> And it's used that way! It also makes me think of food ("We should eat Japanese tonight.")


I guess my subconscious was reminded of the war slogan "Buy American!" (I think it was a war slogan...) 



modus.irrealis said:


> That use of the subjunctive in Spanish is, I think, just like one in French that I haven't really mastered, so it's surprising then that it's not more widespread in the Romance languages (although I have no idea on the question of whether Spanish or Portuguese is closer in general to French).


Portuguese would work the same way in this case. As a rule of thumb, Spanish and Portuguese are both equally _apart_ from French, when it comes to the subjunctive. An example here.


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## cheshire

Outsider said:


> "
> (1)Quiere un marido que es japonés (ind.) --> a particular Japanese husband
> (2)Quiere un marido que sea japonés (subj.) --> any, non-specified husband, so long as he's Japanese (and we're back to patriotism )


Can't  (1) in any instance mean an inspecified husband?


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## Alijsh

*a man* is taken to *hospital* following a shooting in X street.
dar pey-e tirandâzi dar xiyâban-e X *mard-i* be *bimârestân* borde šod.



cheshire said:


> I understand about mard-i, (that -i makes a noun indefinite, just like the English "a".) But I don't know what makes a noun definite in Persian? Could you show me any suffix or affix in "bimarestan"?
> Thank you very much!


 
You're welcome. In Persian unmodified noun phrases are typically interpreted as definite and sometimes as generic. *mâšin dar gârâž ast*: The car is in the garage (car in garage is). az *mâr* mitarsam: I'm afraid of snakes (from snake I fear)

--- Added later
I don't think "a/an" is always specific marker: I'm looking for an apartment. I want to marry a Japanese. They are generic and not specific. Am I wrong?


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## I_like_my_TV

Alijsh said:
			
		

> I don't think "a/an" is always specific marker: I'm looking for an apartment. I want to marry a Japanese. They are generic and not specific. Am I wrong?


I don't think the article "a/ an" has anything to do with the quality of being "specific/generic". "Specific/generic" is not marked in English and depends solely on the context for interpretation ("a & an" are markers of _indefiniteness !_).
If you're looking for an apartment to rent, any apartment at all as long as it fits your requirements, then "apartment" here is _generic_. However, if someone saw you and asked "What're you doing?" and you simply said "I'm looking for an apartment.", meaning looking for its location in the area. This "apartment" is _specific_ in your mind, even if you didn't want to spell it out to the other person. For "I want to marry a Japanese", see earlier replies by others.


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## Outsider

cheshire said:


> Can't  (1) in any instance mean an inspecified husband?


Not to my knowledge.


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## Alijsh

I_like_my_TV said:


> I don't think the article "a/ an" has anything to do with the quality of being "specific/generic". "Specific/generic" is not marked in English and depends solely on the context for interpretation ("a & an" are markers of _indefiniteness !_).


Thanks. I didn't think otherwise but you made me certain.


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## cheshire

(1) az *mâr* mitarsam: I'm afraid of snakes (from snake I fear)
(2) as  *mâr-ha *mitarsam​Thanks! Can we say (2)? I know -ha is a marker for plurality.


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