Names are often (Geurts 1997, Anderson 2006) claimed to be syntactically "definite," since they can occur with markers of definiteness, such as the definite article in English.
Proto-Uralic did not have specialized voice markers, such as the Indo-European passive; rather, the function of voice was interwoven with topicalization (a way of indicating the main subject of a sentence), emphasis, and definiteness of the subject and object as well as with verbal aspect.
Another work, the fountain of the Triton in the Piazza Barberini, Rome, from which all clarity of profile or of shadow, all definiteness of plane, are removed, is also characteristic of Bernini's style, widely imitated throughout Europe.
The category of definiteness (like English "the") is marked in numerous ways in the modern languages and originally appears to have been tied to the manner of number marking in Uralic (plural being reflected by indefiniteness).
Intellectual progress has gone not from confusion toward definiteness but from definiteness toward confusion.
"The main trouble with soccer is that it lacks definiteness," he began.
Havelock Ellis, in the 1906 edition of his book "Sexual Inversion," noted that the Wilde trials "generally contributed to give definiteness and self-consciousness to the manifestations of homosexuality," and quoted a correspondent saying that Wilde's sufferings made him feel "ready to strike a blow, when the time comes, for what we deem to be right, honorable, and clean".
You may say that this kind of definiteness is just a verbal trick, or proceeds merely from a childish desire to shock.
"Yes," she says, with disarming definiteness.
If Hamlet has something of the definiteness of a work of art, he also has all the obscurity that belongs to life.
