Determiners and (Un)certainty

As noted by Haspelmath (1997), determiners and pronouns sensitive to “knowledge of the speaker” exist in different languages. Examples are the –to series in Russian, some and a certain (see Farkas, this volume), and irgendein in German (Kratzer 2001). This paper examines the epistemic properties of a set of French determiners, i.e. un N quelconque (some), quelque (some) and un certain (a certain). They appear to be in complementary distribution due to their symmetric sensitivities to the epistemic status of the NP referent. We aim to contribute to a better understanding of their sensitivity by relating it to the well–known problem of “identifiability” in epistemic logic. The structure of the paper is as follows. In section 2, we present the basic data on un N quelconque and introduce the notion of identification needed to spell out the conditions of non-identification required by this expression. We discuss differences and points of contact between ignorance and indifference to the identity of the referent, which brings us to contrast the items under examination with free choice items (FCIs). Then, we take into consideration the fact that the epistemic agent is not necessarily the speaker, but several perspectives may be taken up. In section 3, we look at un certain which, on the contrary, seems to require the referent to be identified. We show that, beside the speaker’s knowledge of the referent, there must be another independent identification. Finally, in section 4, we look at the interaction of these determiners with abstract mass nouns.