Logos

CATEGORYcat.definiteness

definiteness

Whether a noun phrase's referent is presented as identifiable to the addressee, as a particular but new referent, or as unidentified.

Definiteness marks how identifiable a noun phrase's referent is meant to be to the addressee at the moment of the utterance. A definite marking signals that the referent can be picked out uniquely, typically because it has already been introduced or is otherwise known from context. An indefinite marking signals that the referent is not assumed to be identifiable in this way. Between these two poles, a specific marking can signal that the speaker has a particular referent in mind even though the addressee cannot yet identify it, while a non-specific marking signals that no particular referent is intended at all. A grammar may mark this distinction on the noun phrase itself, through a separate determiner, or leave it to be inferred from context, and only a subset of the distinctions described here need be grammaticalized in any one system.

statusstatus
documentedasserted, and the sources agree
provenanceprovenance
authoredwritten for Logos, from first principles
derivation statusderivation_status
unstatednobody has said whether it follows from anything
saliencesalience
No salience. Where no frequency source applies the object carries none, rather than a default or a guess (03-schema.md §3.5).
aliasesaliases
None recorded.
sourcessources
  • SOURCEUniMorph Schema (Sylak-Glassman 2016)src.unimorph-schemano page in v1

What kind of category this is

category.classification

A category is either a question or one of its answers. Which it is decides what else may be said about it.

tiertier
dimensiona question a language can answer: it has a set of values
comparabilitycomparability
comparativethe same category is compared across languages
scopescope
No language scope. The field is null and that is an assertion, not a silence: a category is language-particular exactly when it names one.
groupsgroups
  • nominalit lives on nouns and the phrases they head
orderedordered
the values form a scale, and their declared order is significant

The values this dimension admits

category.values

One admits edge per value. A dimension with no values is a question nobody has answered.

This dimension declares its values a scale. Shown in the declared order, without a scale drawn.

cat.definiteness

Where a dimension declares itself ordered, the scale draws the axis the set above deliberately does not (06-surface.md §3.5).

CATEGORYdefinitecat.definite
CATEGORYnonspecific indefinitecat.nonspecific-indefinite
CATEGORYspecific indefinitecat.specific-indefinite

3-point scale, definite to specific indefinite. Evenly spaced by declared rank, not by distance — the record states an order, not how far apart the steps are.

Everything joined to this object

One group per typed edge, in both directions. A1b guarantees no object node is an orphan, so this is the whole navigation: an object with no edges would have failed the build rather than reached this page.

What this object is a kind of

Walking this object's own `is-a` edges: what it is a kind of. Several branches from one object are several classification axes, not competing supertypes.

objects
1
places drawn
1
multi-parent
None in this view. This subgraph happens to be a tree, which the explorer draws as one without assuming it is one.

Siblings are listed by name, then by id to break ties. That is a display choice made here and not an order the graph asserts.

Fan-out per dimension

A4

One row per dimension, largest first. That is a display order, not a verdict: 03-schema.md declares no threshold above which fan-out is too much, so this reports the count and grades nothing.

  • case13 values
  • mood8 values
  • voice8 values
  • aspect7 values
  • aktionsart6 values
  • number6 values
  • person6 values
  • tense6 values
  • comparison4 values
  • evidentiality4 values
  • gender4 values
  • politeness4 values
  • valency4 values
  • animacy3 values
  • definiteness3 values
  • deixis3 values
  • finiteness2 values
  • information structure2 values
  • interrogativity2 values
  • polarity2 values
  • switch-reference2 values

What kinds of this object there are

Walking the `is-a` edges that point at this object: what kinds of it there are. An object reachable two ways is drawn in both places and is still one object.

objects
1
places drawn
1
multi-parent
None in this view. This subgraph happens to be a tree, which the explorer draws as one without assuming it is one.

Siblings are listed by name, then by id to break ties. That is a display choice made here and not an order the graph asserts.

has-a

edges.has-a

the parent carries this

these carry this object

derives

edges.derives

the why-chain

derived by