The Semantics of Determiners

4. Conclusion

Looking back at the discussion in this chapter, the typology of DPs we arrive at is as given in Figure 7, which is an elaboration of the typology in Figure 2.

universal force unmarked force

fiecare ‘every’
orice ‘any’
[DEF] marked unmarked for [DEF]

unmarked dem unmarked marked for special feature

-(u)l ‘the’ acest ‘this’ un ‘a’
[PART] exist. ‘FC” [NEG] CO
un-ul ‘one of’ vreun nici un cîte

Figure 7: Classification of Ds in Romanian

The view underlying this classification (and the whole discussion in this chapter) is that semantic markedness is relevant for understanding the determiner system of a language. An interesting open issue is how blocking works across this system. Under general assumptions, if a language has two items, a and b, such that the sole difference between them is that a is marked for a semantically potent feature F while b is unmarked for it, one expects b to block a from being interpreted as having F. We have used this mechanism to explain why ordinary indefinite DPs are normally interpreted as not having determined reference. We have also noted, however, that this sort of blocking does not obtain between the ordinary indefinite article in Romanian and any of the marked indefinites that we find on the lowermost and rightmost branch of the tree in Figure 7. A possible explanation is that the contrasts here are not binary: the semantic field that the unmarked indefinite would have to denote in if it had to be interpreted as the complement of the marked indefinite determiners in Figure 7 does not form a continuous area. The issue of establishing exactly how blocking functions has to be left as an open issue for the time being.

This overview of the area of nominal semantics, and in particular, in the area of determiner-semantics, with special attention to Romanian, has given a taste of the main questions, some of the answers that have been proposed, and some of the further issues that arise. It has, I hope, convinced the reader of the importance of studying the semantics of the determiner systems of various languages and of the richness and interest of the Romanian data in particular.