Introduction

Abstract

This volume comprises a selection of articles that are based on papers presented at the workshop ‘Funny Indefinites – Different Kinds of Specificity Across Languages', which took place at the Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (ZAS) in Berlin in July 2007. The aim of the workshop was twofold: on the one hand, we wanted to broaden the empirical coverage of the discussion of specificity by taking languages into account in which specificity markers exist whose properties have either not been described at all or not in any detail. In particular, we paid close attention to subtle differences between specificity markers concerning their scopal properties, identification requirements, etc. On the other hand, we hoped that by learning more about the variety as well as about common properties among specificity markers, a clearer understanding of what the notion of specificity actually comes down to would emerge. As the reader can verify for herself, we are still a good deal away from an understanding of specificity that encompasses and systematically relates all the dimensions along which specificity markers in and across languages vary. Nevertheless, we think that the papers collected in this volume contain many important observations and theoretical ideas that will bring us closer to such a goal. © 2013, Springer Science+Business Media B.V.