Definetness and coreference: revisiting the issue of a single category of nouns (in Hungarian and German)
DOI 10.51955/2312-1327_2025_4_
Polina I. Kondratenko
Abstract. This article provides an overview of extant theories on the grammatical categories of definiteness-indefiniteness (D/ID) and coreference-incoreference (C/IC) in the German and Hungarian grammatical systems. Despite the fact that this issue has been the subject of study by a number of Russian and foreign linguists in the context of German grammar since the 19th century, it is the contention of the present study that an examination of it from the perspective of typological linguistics will facilitate the highlighting of elements of the system that have not been considered in this discussion before. Utilising the accomplishments of linguistic typology as a theoretical foundation, it is imperative to incorporate the issue of the categorisation of German and Hungarian nouns into the discourse on determination as a domain that, in a broad sense, encompasses the two categories previously mentioned. Consequently, we propose a novel perspective on D/ID and C/IC, along with their interaction within the grammatical systems of structurally diverse article languages. This proposal is accompanied by a supplemented classification of the expressions of these grammar categories. The phenomenon described by V. G. Admoni of the layering of grammatical meanings on top of each other in the process of communication is taken into account.
Keywords: grammatical category, noun, coreference, determination, German grammar, Hungarian grammar, continuum-discrete principle, functional grammar, grammar-context complex, grammatical category exponents.
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