Defining definiteness in Turoyo

Abstract

This paper puts forth an expanded typology of definiteness marking, which includes not only ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ but also ‘super-weak’. It also proposes a methodology for identifying ‘super-weak’ definites, and applies it to Ṭuroyo, an endangered Semitic language. Data from questionnaires and interviews shows that Ṭuroyo’s definite article has a very wide distribution, including anti-uniqueness effects with exclusives, suggesting ‘super-weak’ status. Syntactic factors also affect their distribution: We find definiteness-spreading uses with demonstratives and possessives, even in non-contrastive environments, and superlative adjectives appear to compete for the article’s syntactic position. On the semantic side, we propose that Ṭuroyo’s definiteness-markers are not ‘weak’ but ‘super-weak’ articles. To explain their anaphoric uses, typical of ‘strong’ articles, we propose that the typology is arranged as a cline ordered by entailment, so that stronger articles entail weaker ones.