Abstract
The aim of this chapter is to show that Uzbek has the crosslinguistically rather unusual property of using two indefinite articles, namely, the expressions bir and bitta. From a synchronic perspective, the two indefinite articles can be shown to compete (at least in certain environments), and from a diachronic perspective, there is evidence that bitta significantly expands to the expense of bir. The in-depth investigation of corpus data and data from an online questionnaire contributes to the discussion of the diachronic development of indefinite articles in general.
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- 1.
See Haspelmath (1997) for indefinite pronouns, and Farkas (2002), Jayez and Tovena (2006) and the papers by Alonso-Ovalle and Menendez-Benito (this volume), Ebert et al. (this volume), Ionin (this volume), Martin (this volume), and Yanovich (this volume) for comparisons of different kinds of indefinite determiners/specificity markers within and across languages.
- 2.
It is interesting to compare this with the German contrast between weak and strong definite articles in (i)–(ii). The weak (non-referential form) merges with the preposition in ‘to’ to the form ins, while the strong (referential) form in das does not allow such merging (see Schwarz 2009).
(i)
Er geht ins Gefängnis.
‘He goes to prison’.
(ii)
Er geht in das Gefängnis.
‘He goes to the prison’.
- 3.
Schroeder (2006) suggests a modification of Heine’s model. He assumes a stage 1 ‘emergent indefinite article’ that is specific, stage 2 ‘pragmatic indefinite article’, stage 3 ‘referential indefinite article’ and stage 4 ’extended indefinite article’, which covers predicational uses. He thus differs from Heine in exchanging the pragmatic and the specific indefinite article in their order. Heine assumes with Givón (cf. Wright and Givón 1987) that the first use of a numeral in non-cardinal contexts signals pragmatic prominence and only in a second step semantic specificity, while Schroeder assumes that in the first step it signals specificity and only in a second discourse salience. See (von Heusinger 2011b) for a similar discussion of German indefinite dies and indefinite so’n. See also the extensive study of indefinite pronouns by Haspelmath (1997).
- 4.
We use the following abbreviations: ABL, ablative; ACC, accusative; AGR, agreement; CLF, classifier; CVB, converg; COND, conditional; DAT, dative; DEM, demonstrative; EVID, evidential; F, feminine; FUT, future; GEN, genitive; IMP, imperative; LOC, locative; NEG, negation; PL, plural; POSS, possessive; PRF, perfect; PROG, progressive; PRS, present; PTCP, participle; SG, singular; SPEC, specifier (in contrast to a classifier); and SPRL, superlative.
- 5.
A brief terminological note: Beckwith’s class of measures corresponds to Aikhenvald (2000)’s class of mensural classifiers, whereas Beckwith’s classifiers correspond to Aikhenvalds’s notion of sortal classifier. See Aikhenvald (2000, pp. 114–120) for criteria distinguishing these types of classifiers.
- 6.
Bodrogligeti (2003, p. 456): ‘The suffix -ta attached to cardinal numbers creates a complete set of numbers used to count objects by units. They are followed by nouns in the singular’. Von Gabain (1945, p. 91): ‘+ta, t∂ (<pers.). Einfache Zahlwörter werden häufig durch dies Formans erweitert, das ursprünglich ein Zählwort für Sachen und Personen war, und das im Özb. [= Uzbek] nicht vor Mengenbezeichnungen gebraucht wird’. Boeschoten (1998, p. 363): ‘The cardinal numbers one to nine are bir, ikki, üç, tört […]’. Optionally -ta may be added, in particular to lower numerals, e.g. bittá, ikkitá, […]’.
- 7.
Compare the study of Keenan and Ebert (1973) on two definite articles in Malagasy and Frisian. They claim that the two articles primarily express the contrast between situational (anaphoric) use and encyclopaedic (unique) use. The articles in both languages also express a secondary use, namely, the contrast between a referential and an attributive use.
- 8.
The percentages of bir- and bitta-indefinites in both texts are rough approximations: We counted all bare and non-bare noun phrases on the first three pages of both novels and categorised them according to definite and indefinite interpretation. In order to collect enough instances of bir- and bitta-indefinites, we had to analyse the first 85 pages of the 1926 novel and the first 150 pages of the 2001 novel. We then projected the number of all definite and all indefinite to 150 pages and calculated from this the percentage of bir- and bitta-indefinites, as in Tables (7.i) and (7.ii).
Table 7.i Calculation of percentages of bir- and bitta-indefinites in the 1926 novel Table 7.ii Calculation of percentages of bir- and bitta-indefinites in the 2001 novel - 9.
The basic idea behind an ANOVA is to estimate how likely or unlikely it is for a given difference in judgements to be due to chance. If it is unlikely that the difference is due to chance, then the difference is called statistically significant. This estimation is based on comparing the variance between two (or more) sets of judgements (e.g. the set of judgements of sentences whose indefinite article is bir with the set of judgements whose indefinite article is bitta) with the variance within these sets of judgements. If the variance between the sets of judgements is high while the variance within the sets of judgements is low, then the difference is likely to be statistically significant. If on the other hand, the variance between the sets of judgements is low, while the variance within the sets of judgements is high, then the difference is likely to be due to chance.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank our informant Dildora Niyazmetova for her patience in answering our questions, for annotating the Uzbek corpus which we used and for her help with the questionnaire, as well as Jaklin Kornfilt, Elena Skribnik and Dolgor Guntsetseg for discussion of an earlier version of this paper. We are also very grateful for the very helpful comments of the editors, Cornelia Ebert and Stefan Hinterwimmer, and their continuous efforts editing this volume. All remaining errors are, of course, our own. The present work has been carried out as part of the project C2 ‘Case and Referential Properties’ of the collaborative research centre SFB 732 ‘Incremental Specification in Context’ of the German Science Foundation, whose financial support we gratefully acknowledge.
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von Heusinger, K., Klein, U. (2013). The Distribution of two Indefinite Articles: The Case of Uzbek. In: Ebert, C., Hinterwimmer, S. (eds) Different Kinds of Specificity Across Languages. Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, vol 92. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5310-5_7
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