On October 25th, Dorothy Ahn gave an invited colloquium talk at the University of Maryland. The title of the talk was “Building Blocks of Reference.”
Reference in language generally involves two main conceptual elements: the grammatical description and the linker between that form and the intended referent. Sometimes, this linker is overtly given by gestural or linguistic content. At other times, the intended referent can be so salient that neither element is necessary. This talk focuses on definite expressions in the nominal domain that make use of these elements in different combinations. Based on their distribution, I argue that the semantic space of definiteness should be divided along two dimensions, namely the content of the description and the presence of the linker, updating the traditionally three-way distinction between pronouns, definite descriptions, and demonstratives. This division is assumed to be universal, though languages morphosyntactically realize the space in different ways. I explore how this view accounts for the various ways ‘definiteness’ is marked across languages.