The Interpretation of the German Specificity Markers Bestimmt and Gewiss

Abstract

We closely investigate two specificity markers in German, namely, bestimmt and gewiss, by discussing their commonalities and differences w.r.t. matters of identification and scope-taking properties in connection with negation, nominal quantifiers, conditionals and intensional operators. Eventually we propose to analyse both markers as uniformly contributing the information that some salient agent is in possession of identifying knowledge of the referent that is introduced by the modified indefinite. The crucial differences between the two markers are that in case of gewiss, (1) this agent must be the speaker and (2) this information is contributed as a conventional implicature, whereas in the case of bestimmt, (1) the agent must not necessarily coincide with the speaker and (2) the information is contributed as at-issue meaning, which will allow for interaction of this meaning component with other operators in the sentence. © 2013, Springer Science+Business Media B.V.