In this section the expressions of definiteness and
indefiniteness, as explained above, in Northern Sotho are illustrated.
Naturally, such an analysis becomes powerful if we think in terms of postmodern poetics--in which simultaneity can even be substituted by an alternation of attributions--in such a way that transitions from the empirical to the fictional plane would always be subject to a functional
indefiniteness of the border between the real and the apparent, between identity and its negation.
Indefiniteness. In the singular, count nouns can use an indefinite article, whereas non-count nouns do not use one (Carter--McCarthy 2006: 339).
Haspelmath proposes that all the main cross-linguistic implicational generalizations about the distributions of
indefiniteness markers can be expressed in an implicational map, shown in Figure 1.
The difference of the noise level being less than 10% both from the value measured and from the modelled quantity, this
indefiniteness meets our requirements, and the data obtained correlate.
endlessly growing, [which] oppressed her, and she was afraid, less of the wolf-cries toward the south than of the indefinite earth" (1992: 273) and "[t]he
indefiniteness of the outside earth, beyond herself, became a terror" (1992: 275).
By describing plain meaning as a "phantom" in the January Florida Bar Journal (p.43), Steven Wisotsky revealed the
indefiniteness of words and phrases.
In his reverie Ishmael thinks that the
indefiniteness of whiteness "shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe" in a manner that stabs us with the thought of annihilation.
Mourad's book points to an initial problem in trying to establish who al-Hasan was: there is a good deal of
indefiniteness in many of the textual references to him.
Significantly, when and functions as an indicator for
indefiniteness it can be marked by the definite article and-u, translated as indefinite pronoun meaning 'someone, anybody' into English (Baye 1996: 58).
Absolute certitude leads to fundamentalism, that is, a position of such exactness that those captivated by it feel "delivered from all the relativities, uncertainties,
indefiniteness and transience of human existence" which, of course, means that they end up denying their own finitude.
