In the discussion of the nature of definiteness in Chapter 1, various distinctions apparently subsidiary to that between definite and indefinite were made: identifiable and inclusive, situational and anaphoric, specific and nonspecific. We will examine these distinctions more closely in this chapter, with a view to determining whether they warrant splitting the concepts of definite and indefinite into a number of independent parameters of meaning, which just happen not to have distinct encodings in certain languages. In other words, could it be that English the expresses two or more separate semantic categories, misleading us into failing to see them as distinct? Or that “definite” is a broad, superordinate category embracing a number of distinct but related categories, which can be expected to be separately encoded in some languages? There are also semantic distinctions, like that between generic and non-generic, which appear to be independent of that between definite and indefinite, but which interact with the latter distinction. Generics are typically definite in form in some languages, but not in others. But generics do have a lot in common with definites in terms of behaviour, so the question arises: are they also a kind of semantically definite expression which does not necessarily appear in definite form in certain languages (like English) in which the encoding of [+ Def] by an article is limited to a more restricted version of definiteness? Finally, we return to the analysis of proper nouns, which we have seen resemble generics in being overtly definite in form in some languages but not in others. It will be suggested that proper nouns are a kind of generic.