The phenomenon of weak definites has attracted the attention of linguists mainly because it poses serious challenges to one of the most well established consensus about the semantics (and use) of definite articles: the uniqueness (either as an assertion or as a presupposition) associated with it. Examples such as (1) and (2), below do not seem to require, at least in Brazilian Portuguese (BrP), a unique referent; they also convey “enriched meanings” – the two most distinguished features of weak definites (cf. Aguilar-Guevara & Zwarts, 2010; Vogel, 2011, among others):

(1) Pra chegar até aqui, você tem que pegar o ônibus.

To arrive until here you have to take the bus.

‘To get here, you must take the bus.’

(2) Bom, gente, agora vou sair, vou no mercado (i.e., do shopping)

Well guys now will first-person leave go firstperson in+the market

‘Well guys, I’m leaving now, I’m going to the market.’

In short, it is possible to find in the literature the following properties associated with weak definites, all of them exemplified by the example in (3) below:

a) (apparent) violation of the uniqueness presupposition

b) enriched meaning

c) sloppy identity in elliptical contexts

d) narrow scope

e) lexical restriction

f) compatibility only with modifiers that establish (or result in) subtypes of the nouns they modify

(3) João foi para o hospital. ‘John went to the hospital’

a) (apparent) violation of the uniqueness presupposition -> the identity of the hospital is irrelevant, and (3) can be used in a context in which the participants know that there is more than one (salient) hospital.

b) enriched meaning -> John went to the hospital to be treated, for healing, or because he works there...

c) sloppy identity in elliptical contexts -> John went to the hospital and Mary did too (possibly to different hospitals)

d) narrow scope -> Every student was sent to the hospital (distributive interpretation; i.e., the students were sent to different hospitals)

e) lexically restricted -> John went to the clinic. – no weak interpretation

f) accepts only modifiers that establish subtypes (or subkinds) of the nouns they modify

-> John went to the mental hospital –weak interpretation is possible

-> John went to the old hospital – no weak interpretation

Although a lot of work has been devoted to the weak definite article, analyzing this phenomenon either as a type of kind-reference (Aguilar- Guevara & Zwarts, 2010) or as a type of semantic incorporation (Carlson et alii 2006; Bosch 2010), no attention has been devoted to the other sort of determiner which has a definite interpretation, namely demonstratives.

As we’ll see in the following sections (mainly in section 2), although there are some controversies about the semantic of demonstratives, we’ll argue that demonstratives and definite descriptions form a class; our evidence is examples such as1:

According to Aguilar-Guevara and Zwarts (2010)’s theory, weak definites maintain the uniqueness presupposition associated with definites although not with respect to particular concrete individuals but with respect to kinds.

Their analyses involve an instantiation or realization relation R, and a notion of stereotypical usage events U (which accounts for the enriched meaning associated with weak definites). These ideas can explain, in principle, the main properties of weak definites. Consider the following sentence:

(9) John went to the hospital According to their analyses we have:

(9’) $e[go-to(e) ^ Ag(e) = John ^ R(Ref(e); H) ^ U(e; H)]

As the formula in (9’) shows, there is no quantification over ‘hospitals’

(H) but only an instantiation relation applied to the kind ‘hospital’ (R(Ref(e); H)), which is the goal (or theme) of the “going event”; and there is a set of usage (common, typical) events associated with hospital (U(e; H)), which involves healing or treatment events among others. The absence of quantification can account for the sloppy identity in anaphora as well as for the narrow scope reading. The usage events constraint can account for the lexical restrictions associated with weak readings and also for the fact that only modifiers which results in subkinds can maintain the weak interpretation (as claimed by the authors, usage events can be established only with kinds and/or subkinds).

There are of course more subtleties and further developments of this theory. Be it as it may, to our purposes in this paper, the two most important features of Aguilar-Guevara and Zwarts (2010)’s theory are: (a) the maintenance of the uniqueness associated with definite descriptions and (b) the assumption that weak interpretations involve kinds and/or subkinds.

We have at last a theory which assumes uniqueness and appeals to kinds (and subkinds), in the next section we’ll consider the semantics of demonstratives.

In principle, it is possible to have two different approaches for demonstrative descriptions2: (i) a direct reference approach, as proposed by Kaplan (1989), Braun (2008), Dever (2001), etc. (note that each author argues for a direct reference approach but their proposals are not the same); and (ii) indirect reference approach, in which the demonstrative can be treat as a quantifier (King, 2001) or as a determiner (Roberts, 2002; Elbourne, 2008; Wolter, 2006).

As expected, all of these approaches have their merits and problems. From a linguistic point of view, due, among others reasons, to syntactic and semantics arguments, demonstratives are more naturally treated as determiners (for counter-arguments to this, see, e.g., Dever, 2001), alongside with definite descriptions.

Thus, considering Roberts (2002)’s, Elbourne (2008)’s and Wolter (2006)’s proposals, we’ll adopt the latter because it’s more economical and covers a wider range of data3.

Demonstrative descriptions cannot normally be used to refer to kinds, as the example (12) shows, but it’s natural to use demonstrative descriptions to refer to subkinds, as in the example (13) (at least in Brazilian Portuguese; for the same considerations and conclusions concerning English demonstratives, cf. Bowdle & Ward, 1995):

Pointing to a whale:

(12) A baleia tá em extinção OK-kind

the whale is in extinction

‘The whale is in extinction.’

(13) Essa baleia/Aquela baleia tá em extinção OK-subkind

this whale/ that whale is in extinction

‘This whale/ that whale is in extinction.’

(12) can mean something like whalek is in extinction or something like a subkind of whales is in extinction; but (13) can only mean that a subkind of whales is in extinction, i.e. the one (subkind) being pointed to or represented by the one (whale) being pointed to.

Consider now another example (“K” is for kind and “SK” is for subkind – a kind interpretation would be something like “Dogs are friendly” and a subkind interpretation, “Golden retrievers are friendly”): Pointing to a golden retriever:

The reason why it is impossible to have weak interpretations of demonstrative descriptions is that we need kind reference to have weak interpretations (according to Aguilar-Guevera and Zwarts (2010)’s proposal), but demonstratives are always restricted to smaller domains (i.e., non-default situations) in comparison to the definite description and therefore can’t refer to kinds; since demonstratives can’t refer to kinds (because kind reference works only in maximal or default situations), to only option left for the demonstratives is to refer to instantiations (or “regular individuals”), and so we don’t have weak interpretations with demonstrative descriptions.

Consider the following illustration for the example (8), repeated below:

(8) João foi pra esse/aquele hospital

João go past to this/that hospital

‘John went to this/that hospital.’

In order to describe the contexts in which we argue that it is possible to have a weak interpretation with demonstrative descriptions, consider the two conclusions we arrived so far: (i) although demonstrative descriptions can refer to subkinds by pointing to instantiations if the right contextual conditions are fullfilled, they can refer to kinds only under specific restrictions (i.e., when combined with an “empty name”, as in ‘this kind of animal’); and (ii) although weak interpretations don’t accept all types of modifiers, they do accept modifiers which result in subtypes or subkinds9.

Putting these two ideas together, maybe there are some cases in which demonstrative descriptions can have weak interpretations. Consider the sentence (14) bellow, a well-behaved weak definite with a modifier:

(14) João ligou pro médico do coração / de pele / do olho (cardiologista / dermatologia / oftalmologista)

João call past the doctor of the heart/of skin/of the eye

‘John called the heart/skin/ eye doctor.’

Imagine now a context in which there is a list showing the names of medical specialties, and Peter, reporting what John did, says (15), while pointing to the label ‘dermatology’ (‘skin doctor’):

(15) João chamou esse médico.

João callpast this doctor.

‘John called this doctor.’

In this paper, our point of departure is a theory for weak definites which preserves the uniqueness presupposition commonly associated with definites and which claims that weak interpretations involve reference to kinds. Our aim was to analyze weak interpretation with demonstrative descriptions because these descriptions show important similarities with definite ones. We present and adopt a theory for demonstrative descriptions which claim that their semantics is closely related to the semantics of the definite description and that they differ not with respect to their assertion content but with respect to their presuppositions.

Our next step was to investigate demonstrative reference to kinds because the theory for weak interpretation that we adopt explains the relevant data appealing to kind reference. When we put together all these considerations we can explain the facts concerning the possibilities of weak interpretation with demonstrative descriptions.

In our proposal for the existence and constraints concerning weak interpretations for demonstrative descriptions we can accommodate, without drastic modifications in the major picture of weak definites, the absence of weak demonstratives (which happens when there is no access to the subkind-level), on one hand, and the instances of weak demonstratives (which happen when there is access to the subkind- level), on the other hand.

The semantic analysis proposed for demonstratives in this paper also explains why demonstrative descriptions don’t usually refer to kinds and why they denote only subkinds or (specific) individuals.

Finally, our analysis highlights the role of taxonomies and domain restriction in the understanding of noun phrases weak interpretations and can be seen as an argument in favor of Aguilar-Guevera and Zwarts (2010)’s proposal.