The Finnish definite article

Abstract While there is a great deal of work analyzing definiteness in Finnish, the literature on the ongoing development of a definite article is either inconclusive or incomplete. Using a battery of tests gauging definiteness and articlehood, this article argues that Finnish has developed a definite article. The core proposal is that the demonstrative elements se / ne ‘that/those’ have developed into definite articles, syntactically D heads, while still also occurring as neutral demonstratives. This paper therefore proposes that, for Finnish se and ne , each one has two lexical entries: one for the definite article, and one for the demonstrative.