Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-02T21:12:20.518Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

On the nature of object omission: indefiniteness as indeterminacy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2017

JINSEUNG EU
JINSEUNG EU*
Affiliation:
38 Chungparo 63-gil, Yongsan-gu, Seoul, South [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This squib attempts to bring more precision to the understanding of object omission in English by investigating the referential behavior of omitted objects. Allerton (1975) and Fillmore (1986) understand omitted objects as being indefinite, by which they mean that omitted objects are unknown and insulated from their potential referents available in the context. However, this squib presents data that challenge this understanding of indefiniteness, and proposes that the indefiniteness of omitted objects may be more precisely understood as their indeterminacy over their potential referents.

Type
Squib
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , November 2018 , pp. 523 - 530
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allerton, D. J. 1975. Deletion and proform reduction. Journal of Linguistics 11, 213–37.Google Scholar
Condoravdi, Cleo & Gawron, Jean Mark. 1996. The context dependency of implicit arguments. In Kanazawa, Makoto, Piñon, Christopher & de Swart, Henriëtte (eds.), Quantifiers, deduction and context, 1–32. Stanford: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Cummins, Sarah & Roberge, Yves. 2004. Null objects in French and English. In Auger, Julie, Clements, J. Clancy & Vance, Barbara (eds.), Contemporary approaches to Romance linguistics, 121–38. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Farkas, Donka F. 2002. Specificity distinctions. Journal of Semantics 19 (3), 213–43.Google Scholar
Fillmore, Charles. 1986. Pragmatically controlled zero anaphora. In Nikiforidou, Vassiliki, VanClay, Mary, Niepokuj, Mary & Feder, Deborah (eds.), Proceedings of the twelfth annual meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 95–107. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Linguistics Society.Google Scholar
Fillmore, Charles. 2007. Valency issues in FrameNet. In Herbst, Thomas & Götz-Votteler, Katrin (eds.), Valency: Theoretical, descriptive and cognitive issues, 128–60. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
García Velasco, Daniel & Muñoz, Carmen Portero. 2002. Understood objects in functional grammar. Working papers in functional grammar 76. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam.Google Scholar
Groefsema, Marjolein. 1995. Understood arguments: A semantic/pragmatic approach. Lingua 96, 139–61.Google Scholar
Lambrecht, Knud. 1994. Information structure and sentence form. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Levin, Beth. 1993. English verb classes and alternations. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Massam, Diane & Roberge, Yves. 1989. Recipe context null objects in English. Linguistic Inquiry 20 (1), 134–9.Google Scholar
Rice, Sally. 1988. Unlikely lexical entries. In Axmaker, Shelley, Jaisser, Annie & Singmaster, Helen (eds.), Proceedings of the fourteenth annual meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 202–12. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Linguistics Society.Google Scholar
Ruppenhofer, Josef & Michaelis, Laura. 2014. Frames and the interpretation of omitted arguments in English. In Bourns, Stacey Katz & Myers, Lindsy L. (eds.), Perspectives on linguistic structure and context, 57–86. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Somers, Harold. 1984. On the validity of the complement–adjunct distinction in valency grammar. Linguistics 22, 507–30.Google Scholar
Steinbeck, John. 1994 [1947]. The pearl. London: Penguin Books.Google Scholar