On Definiteness And Indefiniteness

Definiteness and indefiniteness, as an inherent feature of language, exists widely in almost all linguistic aspects, such as phonetics, semantics, and grammar, etc. This feature is also conveyed by various grammatical categories, including modifier, determiner, pronoun, proper noun, etc. The feature of definiteness and indefiniteness, to be brief, refers to the identifiability of the grammatical categories in specific context, that is, whether the grammatical categories serve to identify the reference and whether the semantic meaning expressed by the grammatical categories is clear or not. Linguists, from different angles of study on indefiniteness, use different terms, such as "fuzziness", "vagueness', and "ambiguity". Researchers at home and abroad have made comprehensive studies on fuzziness, but no in-depth and systematic studies have been made on the feature of definiteness and indefiniteness, while some investigations in this field conducted by foreign scholars is limited to the study of definiteness and indefiniteness in the definite and indefinite articles. This dissertation, therefore, based on the knowledge of English grammar, attempts to analyze the feature of definiteness and indefiniteness in a systematic way, with the illustration of copious examples. The focus is put on the discussion of the following issues in this dissertation: what is the feature of definiteness and indefiniteness; what are the grammatical categories which express this feature and how do they express it; and the value of our investigation. This dissertation makes a brief survey of the study of definiteness and indefiniteness, by presenting some basic ideas concerning this feature. Then, we list some important definites and indefinites. Chapter Two, chiefly based on the knowledge of English grammar, analyzes in details the representation of definiteness and indefiniteness in various grammatical categories, such as modifier, determiner, pronoun, and proper noun, etc. A large number of examples are provided to help the reader obtain a deep understanding of definiteness and indefiniteness. Chapter Three is devoted to the application of the study of definiteness and indefiniteness, from both theoretical and practical perspectives. Theoretically, the study of definiteness and indefiniteness is concerned with some sub-disciplines of linguistics such as semantics, pragmatics, and fuzzy linguistics. While from the practical view, we focus on the application of the study of definiteness and indefiniteness to the foreign language teaching, daily communication, English journalism, foreign business negotiation, and advertisement language. In the conclusion part, we sum up the main contributions of our study in this dissertation and point out some issues that are worth studying in the future.