On (in)definite ART in Italian and Italo-Romance varieties

Giuliana Giusti

doi:10.1515/ip-2025-3005

Article

On (in)definite ART in Italian and Italo-Romance varieties

Giuliana Giusti
Giuliana Giusti is a professor of Linguistics at the University Ca’ Foscari of Venice and honorary professor at the University of Bucharest. Her principal research interest is the comparative syntax of Romance, Germanic, and Balkan languages, as well as Italoromance varieties. Her research has focused on theoretical, as well as empirical and applied, environments, including language attrition and translation, first and second language acquisition, language change and dialectal variation, language and gender, and language education for wellbeing and inclusion. In the last three decades, she has published extensively in international journals and collective works. She is the director of the Centro Studi sul Multilinguismo https://www.unive.it/pag/43436/, the editor in chief of the series LiVVal Linguaggio e Variazione / Variation in Language at Edizioni Ca’ Foscari, and a co-director of the journal Annali di Ca’ Foscari Serie Occidentale https://edizionicafoscari.unive.it/en/edizioni4/riviste/annali-di-ca-foscari-serie-occidentale/.

Published/Copyright: October 15, 2025

Published by

Become an author with De Gruyter Brill

Author Information Explore this Subject

From the journal Intercultural Pragmatics Volume 22 Issue 3

Abstract

This paper addresses the challenging nature of definiteness and indefiniteness, focusing on several non-canonical interpretations of the definite article (ART) in Italian. The core objective is to demonstrate that so-called “indefinite definites” should be unified with canonical indefinites, rather than being grouped with other non-canonical uses like “weak definites” (WDs) or “reference to kind”. Using cross-Romance diagnostics, the paper shows that ART-indefinites—which are exclusive to Italian—are fundamentally different from WDs, which are attested cross-linguistically. Unlike WDs, which often involve singular count nouns, are lexically marked, and sensitive to modification restrictions, ART-indefinites are restricted to mass and plural count nouns and appear broadly in verb-object combinations without modification restrictions. Structurally, ART-indefinites are unified with bare nouns and partitive determiners (di+ART), forming four possible indefinite nominal expressions in Italian. This variation is analysed as resulting from the overt or covert realisation of the indefinite operator (di/ de) in SpecDP and nominal features (ART) in D. Analysis of informal Italian and Italo-Romance varieties confirms that ART-indefinites correlate with weak indefinites and compete with bare nouns. Ultimately, the study supports the hypothesis that the so-called “definite article” in Italian realises nominal features (gender, number, and abstract Case) at the morphosyntactic level, implying that its semantic interpretations are often independent of it.

Keywords: weak definites; (in)definiteness; articles; Italo-Romance

Corresponding author: Giuliana Giusti, University Ca’ Foscari of Venezia, Veneto, Italy, E-mail: giusti@unive.it

About the author

Giuliana Giusti

Giuliana Giusti is a professor of Linguistics at the University Ca’ Foscari of Venice and honorary professor at the University of Bucharest. Her principal research interest is the comparative syntax of Romance, Germanic, and Balkan languages, as well as Italoromance varieties. Her research has focused on theoretical, as well as empirical and applied, environments, including language attrition and translation, first and second language acquisition, language change and dialectal variation, language and gender, and language education for wellbeing and inclusion. In the last three decades, she has published extensively in international journals and collective works. She is the director of the Centro Studi sul Multilinguismo https://www.unive.it/pag/43436/, the editor in chief of the series LiVVal Linguaggio e Variazione / Variation in Language at Edizioni Ca’ Foscari, and a co-director of the journal Annali di Ca’ Foscari Serie Occidentale https://edizionicafoscari.unive.it/en/edizioni4/riviste/annali-di-ca-foscari-serie-occidentale/.

References

Aguillar-Guevara, Ana. 2014. Weak definites: Semantics, lexicon and pragmatics. Utrecht: LOT.Search in Google Scholar

Aguillar-Guevara, Ana, Bert Le Bruyn & Joost Zwarts (eds.). 2014. Weak referentiality. Amsterdam: Benjamins.10.1075/la.219Search in Google Scholar

Aguillar-Guevara, Ana & Joost Zwarts. 2011. Weak definites and reference to kinds. In N. Li & D. Lutz (eds.), Proceedings of SALT 20, 179–196.10.3765/salt.v20i0.2583Search in Google Scholar

Aguillar-Guevara, Ana & Joost Zwarts. 2013. Weak definites refer to kinds. Recherches Linguistiques de Vincennes 42. 33–60. https://doi.org/10.4000/rlv.2169.Search in Google Scholar

Beyssade, Claire & Roberta Pires de Oliveira (eds.). 2013 Weak definites across languages: theoretical and experimental investigations. Recherches linguistque de Vincennes, 42.Search in Google Scholar

Brasoveanu, Adrian & Donka F. Farkas. 2016. Indefinites. In Maria Aloni & Paul Dekker (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of formal semantics, 238–266. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781139236157.009Search in Google Scholar

Cardinaletti, Anna & Giuliana Giusti. 2015. Cartography and optional feature realization in the nominal expression. In Ur Shlonsky (ed.), Beyond functional sequence, the cartography of syntactic structures, vol. 10, 151–172. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190210588.003.0009Search in Google Scholar

Cardinaletti, Anna & Giuliana Giusti. 2016. The syntax of the Italian determiner dei. Lingua 181. 50–80.10.1016/j.lingua.2016.05.001Search in Google Scholar

Cardinaletti, Anna & Giuliana Giusti. 2018. Indefinite determiners: Variation and optionality in Italo-Romance. In Roberta D’Alessandro & Diego Pescarini (eds.), Advances in Italian dialectology, 135–161. Amsterdam: Brill.10.1163/9789004354395_008Search in Google Scholar

Cardinaletti, Anna & Giuliana Giusti. 2020. Indefinite determiners in informal Italian: A preliminary analysis. Linguistics 58(3). 679–712. https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2020-0081.Search in Google Scholar

Carlson, Greg. 1997. Reference to kinds in English. Amherst: University of Massachusetts PhD thesis.Search in Google Scholar

Carlson, Greg & Rachel Sussman. 2005. Seemingly indefinite definites. In Stephan Kepsen & Marga Reis (eds.), Linguistic evidence: Empirical, theoretical, and computational perspectives, studies in generative grammar, vol. 85, 71–85. Berling: De Gruyter.10.1515/9783110197549.71Search in Google Scholar

Chierchia, Gennaro. 1997. Partitives, reference to kinds and semantic variation. In Aaron Lawson (ed.), Proceedings of semantics and linguistic theory (SALT), vol. VII, 73–98. Ithaca NY: CLC Publications.10.3765/salt.v7i0.2792Search in Google Scholar

Chierchia, Gennaro. 1998. Reference to kinds across languages. Natural Language Semantics 6(4). 339–405.10.1023/A:1008324218506Search in Google Scholar

Cyrino, Sonia & M. Teresa Espinal. 2020. On the syntax of number in romance. Studia Linguistica 74(1). 165–203. https://doi.org/10.1111/stul.12123.Search in Google Scholar

Delfitto, Denis & Jan Schroten. 1991. Bare plurals and the number affix in DP. Probus 3. 155–185. https://doi.org/10.1515/prbs.1991.3.2.155.Search in Google Scholar

Donazzan, Marta. 2013. Familiarity constraints on weak definite DPs. Recherches Linguistiques de Vincennes 42. 61–90. https://doi.org/10.4000/rlv.2177.Search in Google Scholar

Dryer, Matthew S. 2013a. Definite articles. In Matthew S. Dryer & Martin Haspelmath (eds.), WALS Online (v2020.4) [Data set]. Zenodo. Available at: http://wals.info/chapter/37 (accessed 18 January 2025).Search in Google Scholar

Dryer, Matthew S. 2013b. Indefinite articles. In Matthew S. Dryer & Martin Haspelmath (eds.), WALS Online (v2020.4) [Data set]. Zenodo. Available at: http://wals.info/chapter/38 (accessed 19 January 2025).Search in Google Scholar

Espinal, M. Teresa & Sonia Cyrino. 2017. On weak definites and their contribution to event kinds. In Fernández Soriano Olga, et al. (eds.), Boundaries, phases, and interfaces. Case studies in honour of Violeta Demonte, 129–149. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/la.239.07espSearch in Google Scholar

Espinal, M. Teresa & Sonia Cyrino. 2022a. A syntactically-driven approach to indefiniteness, specificity and anti-specificity in Romance. Journal of Linguistics 58(3). 535–570. https://doi.org/10.1017/S002222672100030X.Search in Google Scholar

Espinal, M. Teresa & Sonia Cyrino. 2022b. The status of de in Romance indefinites, partitives and pseudopartitives. Studia Linguistica 76(1). 167–211. https://doi.org/10.1111/stul.12184.Search in Google Scholar

Espinal, M. Teresa & Giuliana Giusti. 2024a. On the property-denoting clitic ne and the determiner de/di: a comparative analysis of Catalan and Italian. Linguistics 62(2), 457–489. https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2022-0084.Search in Google Scholar

Espinal, M. Teresa & Giuliana Giusti. 2024b. Indefiniteness and the clitics “lo” and “ne” in Italian. In Silvia Gumiel Molina, Ignacio Bosque, Cristina Sánchez López (eds.), Buceando entre palabras: inmersiones en la gramática de la mano de Manuel Leonetti, 203–214. Alcalá: Editorial Universidad de Alcalá.Search in Google Scholar

Giusti, Giuliana. 2001. The birth of a functional category: From Latin ILLE to the Romance article and personal pronoun. In Guglielmo Cinque & Giampaolo Salvi (eds.), Current studies in Italian syntax. Essays offered to Lorenzo Renzi, 157–172. Amsterdam: Elsevier.10.1163/9780585473949_010Search in Google Scholar

Giusti, Giuliana. 2002. The functional structure of determiners. A bare phrase structure approach. In Guglielmo Cinque (ed.), Functional structure in DP and IP. The cartography of syntactic structure, vol. 1, 54–90. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oso/9780195148794.003.0003Search in Google Scholar

Giusti, Giuliana. 2015. Nominal syntax at the interfaces. A comparative study of languages with articles. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Search in Google Scholar

Giusti, Giuliana. 2021. A protocol for indefinite determiners in Italian and Italo-Romance. In Tabea Ihsane (ed.), Disentangling bare noun phrases and nominals introduced by a partitive article, 262–300. Leiden/Boston: Brill.10.1163/9789004437500_009Search in Google Scholar

Goldstein, David. 2022. Correlated grammaticalization: The rise of articles in Indo-European. Diachronica 39(5). 658–706. https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.20033.gol.Search in Google Scholar

Ihsane, Tabea. 2008. The layered DP: Form and meaning of French definites. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/la.124Search in Google Scholar

Lebani, Gianluca & Giuliana Giusti. 2022. Indefinite determiners in two northern Italian dialects. A quantitative approach. Isogloss. Open Journal of Romance Linguistics 8(2). 1–19. https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/isogloss.122.Search in Google Scholar

Leonetti, Manuel. 2019. On weak readings of definite DPs. In Natascha Pomino (ed.), Proceedings of the IX Nereus international workshop. Morphosyntactic and semantic aspects of the DP in Romance and beyond, 1–26. Konstanz: Fachbereich Linguistik der Universität Konstanz.Search in Google Scholar

Longobardi, Giuseppe. 1994. Reference and proper names. Linguistic Inquiry 25(4). 609–665.Search in Google Scholar

Lyons, Christopher. 1999. Definiteness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Molinari, Luca. 2022. Optionality in the expression of indefiniteness: A pilot study on piacentine. Languages 7(2). 99. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7020099.Search in Google Scholar

Molinari, Luca. 2024. One’ word, many functions. Grammaticalization and use of the numeral and indefinite ‘one’ in Bulgarian, Polish, and Russian. University of Warsaw / Ca’ Foscari University of Venice PhD dissertation.Search in Google Scholar

Morosi, Paolo & M. Teresa Espinal. 2025. Indefinite definites in Italian. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 23. 2101–2138.https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-025-09659-3.Search in Google Scholar

Pinzin, Francesco & Cecilia Poletto. 2021. Indefinite objects in micro-variation. A cross-linguistic analysis of the distribution of partitives [sic] articles, bare nominals and definite determiners in northern Italy. Studia Linguistica 76(1). 13–55. https://doi.org/10.1111/stul.12187.Search in Google Scholar

Recanati, François. 1983. La sémantique des noms propres: Remarques Sur La Notion de « désignateur Rigide. Langue Française 57. 106–118. https://doi.org/10.3406/lfr.1983.5159.Search in Google Scholar

Roberts, Ian G. & Anna Roussou. 2003. Syntactic change: A minimalist approach to grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511486326Search in Google Scholar

Seres, Daria. 2024. The grammaticalization of numeral ‘one’ in Slavic: From quantification to (non-)referentiality. Catalan Journal of Linguistics 23. 1–16.10.5565/rev/catjl.443Search in Google Scholar

Vergnaud, Jean-Roger & María Luisa Zubizarreta. 1992. The definite determiner and the inalienable constructions in French and English. Linguistic Inquiry 23(4). 595–652.Search in Google Scholar

Zamparelli, Roberto. 2002. Definite and bare kind-denoting noun phrases. In Claire Beyssade, Reineke Bok-Bennema, Frank Drijkoningen & Paola Monachesi (eds.), Current issues in linguistic theory 232, Romance languages and linguistic theory, 305–343. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/cilt.232.17zamSearch in Google Scholar

Zamparelli, Roberto. 2008. Dei ex machina: A note on plural/mass indefinite determiners. Studia Linguistica 63(3). 301–327. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9582.2008.00149.x.Search in Google Scholar

Published Online: 2025-10-15

Published in Print: 2025-06-26

You are currently not able to access this content.

Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/ip-2025-3005

Keywords for this article

weak definites; (in)definiteness; articles; Italo-Romance