Education of the republic of uzbekistan fergana state university facilty of foreign languages

Familiarity and identifiability

The familiarity hypothesis was for the first time presented by the Danish grammarian Paul Christophersen who stated an important condition for familiarity, namely, that both the speaker and the hearer (the addressee) have to know what is referred to: A condition of the use of the is that there is a basis of understanding between speaker and hearer. This basis comprises the subjects and things known by both parties.

Thus the difference between the two sentences below is that in the second sentence, the hearer is assumed to know – to be familiar to what car is meant by the speaker.

(1) a I bought a car this morning.

b I bought the car this morning.

Or more precisely, the use of the definite noun phrase presupposes the existence of a referent that has been already mentioned or introduced into the discourse before.

Nevertheless, considering other examples, we recognize that the familiarity approach as an explanation of definiteness is not sufficient in all cases:

(2) Paul left with the girl who had come with George.

(3) Could you pass me the hammer please?

In (2) the girl could be replaced with a girl without changing the referent. It is clear therefore that the content of the relative clause itself does not establish familiarity.

In the sentence (3) familiarity does not work either: the addressee does not necessarily know about the existence of the hammer; nevertheless, he is presupposed to be able to identify the referent of the definite noun phrase the hammer. Hence the familiarity approach has been abandoned in favour of the concept of “identifiability”.

Familiarity, if present, contributes to the identification of the referent, but it is not a necessary condition for a felicitous use of the definite article.