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Specificity and existence: A reply

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2026

María-Luisa Rivero
María-Luisa Rivero*
Affiliation:
University of Ottawa
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Abstract

This paper, a reply to Rojas 1977, re-affirms my conclusion (Rivero 1975) that specificity is marked in Spanish NP's by the mood of restrictive modifiers, and that it is independent of the degree of definiteness and the existential claims associated with those NP's. Specific and non-specific NP's alike may be referring expressions depending on their position in sentences. However, contrary to what I previously assumed, the notion of specificity is not connected with the pragmatic distinction between the referential and attributive uses of definite descriptions.

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Type
Reply
Information
Language , Volume 53 , Issue 1 , March 1977 , pp. 70 - 85
Copyright
Copyright © 1977 by Linguistic Society of America

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