The Concept of Familiarity, Identifiability, Uniqueness, and Inclusiveness in the Definiteness in English

Noun is a syntactic category which bears a grammatical status related to the context whether it is new, old or identified information. Noun mentioned previously is called a definite noun since it is already known by both the speaker and the hearer. Noun which is mentioned in the first time is indefinite because the hearer does not recognize it yet. Some languages have certain markers to identify the definiteness of a noun. For instance, English has special articles such as a, an, and the to mark definite or indefinite noun. However, not all languages have the markers. Indonesian, for example, does not possess definite articles to identify its noun. Indonesian has –nya or itu positioned in the end of the noun to show it as old information. The differences of these languages in marking the definiteness can be related to the characteristic of the language and the basic concept of definiteness. There are some basic concepts of definiteness, including familiarity, identifiability, uniqueness, and inclusiveness. These concepts might be perceived differently in each language, including in English and Indonesian language. Thus, Indonesian people who learn English should pay attention to the concepts of definiteness in English to construct grammatical English constructions. However, as learners, they are still influenced by Indonesian language. Therefore, this paper aims at describing these four concepts of definiteness in English by analyzing students’ writings