Séminaire de Recherche en Linguistique

Firstly, in (Swiss) German, determiners have intricate inflectional systems, sensitive to gender. Abstracting in the right way, we can identify a consonantal inflection that is shared across all determiners, including the indefinite article, and a vocalic inflection which is essentially specific to the definite article, which is a diachronically weakened demonstrative, and which, thus, is doubly inflected. Secondly, the World’s languages employ distinct noun classification devices: noun classifier systems, numeral classifier systems, noun markers, and gender systems. The various classifier systems, whether of the Chinese or Mayan or Siouan variety (etc.) interact in interesting ways with definiteness. Patterns have been described in which noun classifiers induce definite readings, and other patterns in which numeral classifiers introduce new referents (i.e. are indefinite) but can be turned definite by adding a demonstrative. In this talk, I aim to motivate a look at (Swiss) German definite article inflection as a reflex of an underlying mixed classifier system, not unlike those described in the literature on Mayan and other non-Indo-European languages.