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In linguistics, definiteness is a semantic feature of that distinguishes between or senses that are identifiable in a given context (definite noun phrases) and those that are not (indefinite noun phrases). The prototypical definite noun phrase picks out a unique, familiar, specific referent such as the sun or Australia, as opposed to indefinite examples like an idea or some fish.
There is considerable variation in the expression of definiteness across languages, and some languages such as Japanese do not generally mark it, so the same expression can be definite in some contexts and indefinite in others. In other languages, such as English language, it is usually marked by the selection of determiner (e.g., the vs. a). Still other languages, such as Danish language, mark definiteness morphologically by changing the noun itself (e.g. Danish en mand (a man), manden (the man)).
A number of tests have been proposed to distinguish definite from indefinite noun phrases. "Each has a foundation in intuition, as well as some degree of grammatical effect. However, it is not clear that any of them corresponds cleanly to formal categories."
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Germanic, Romance, Celtic languages, Semitic, and auxiliary languages generally have a definite article, often preposed but in some cases postposed. For example, Hebrew prefixes the letter he, while Aramaic suffixes the letter aleph. Many other languages do not. Some examples are Chinese language, Japanese, Finnish language, and modern Slavic languages except Bulgarian and Macedonian. When necessary, languages of this kind may indicate definiteness by other means such as .
In most languages, definiteness is marked only on common nouns, since proper nouns are already considered inherently definite. However, Biblical Hebrew shows exceptions where the definite article can be prefixed to proper nouns. This demonstrates that, unlike in most languages, Biblical Hebrew may apply overt definiteness even to proper names, possibly for emphasis or specificity.
It is common for definiteness to interact with the marking of Declension in certain syntactic contexts. In many languages, a direct object receives distinctive marking only if it is definite. For example, in Turkish language, the direct object in the sentence adamı gördüm (meaning "I saw the man") is marked with the suffix -ı (indicating definiteness). The absence of the suffix on a direct object in Turkish means that it is indefinite and, in the absence of the indefinite article bir, no longer explicitly singular: adam gördüm ("I saw a man/I saw men").
In Serbo-Croatian, in the Baltic languages languages Latvian language and Lithuanian, and, to a lesser extent in Slovene language, definiteness can be expressed morphologically on prenominal adjectives. The short form of the adjective is interpreted as indefinite, while the long form is definite or specific:
In some languages, the definiteness of the object affects the transitivity of the verb. In the absence of peculiar specificity marking, it also tends to affect the telicity of mono-occasional predications.
In some Scandinavian languages, such as Swedish language, definite nouns inflect with a dedicated set of suffixes. This is known in Swedish as the grammatical category of species.
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