Band 34, Heft 2

This study is concerned with the distribution of the definite article in German with plural nominals that have a generic reading . In Standard German, genericity is typically expressed by bare nouns ( Tiger sind gefährlich ‘Tigers are dangerous’). Many researchers have claimed that there is variation in article use in the expression of generic reference in German (e.g., Brugger 1993; Longobardi 1994; Krifka et al. 1995; Chierchia 1998; Dayal 2004; Oosterhof 2008), but very little empirical evidence has been provided to support this claim. Besides filling this research gap, we investigate which factors influence the use of articles in plural subjects with generic reference. In doing so, we include linguistic factors (kind-level vs. individual-level predicates) as well as sociolinguistic factors (age and regional background). Results show that with generic plural subjects definite articles are optional but bare subjects are preferred; definite subjects are accepted more often with kind-level predicates than with individual-level predicates.

The present article discusses the semantic and discourse-pragmatic properties of different competing types of indefinite noun phrases in Old High German, the earliest attested period of German. In particular, it investigates the behavior of indefinites marked by sum , ein and various interrogative-based determiners, with respect to properties considered constitutive of specific indefinites from a theoretic and cross-linguistic perspective. Upon analyzing newly retrieved corpus data, the paper shows that already at the beginning of the attestation, all marked types of indefinites in historical German violate basic conditions of specificity, understood in terms of any of the relevant notions distinguished in the literature. This result rejects previous scenarios according to which marked indefinites in historical German are correlates of specific reference and challenges the explanation of the diachronic development of ein from a numeral towards an indefinite determiner via an assumed separate, intermediate stage during which it assigns referential-specific interpretation to the noun phrase.