Year: 2002
Type: article
Abstract: As noted by Haspelmath (1997), determiners and pronouns sensitive to "knowledge of the speaker" exist in different languages.Examples are the -to series in Russian, some and a certain (see Farkas, thi� volume), and irgendein in German (Kratzer 2001).This paper examines the episternic properties of a set of French determiners, i.e. un N quelconque (some), quelque (some) and un certain (a certain).They ap pear to be in complementary distribution due to their symmetric sensitivities to the epistemic status of the NP referent.We aim to contribute to a better understanding of their sensitivity by relating it to the well-known problem of "identifiability" in epistemic logic.
Authors: Jacques Jayez, Lucia M. Tovena
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W2277196335