Inconsistencies of the Consistency test

Abstract

The Consistency test from Dayal 2004 – inspired by Löbner's (1985) logical property of Consistency – has been used to distinguish between demonstratives and definite determiners in a language, particularly in a type-shifting analysis of bare nouns following Chierchia 1998 and Dayal 2004. This paper looks at three classifier languages, Nuosu Yi (Jiang 2018), Thai (Jenks 2015), and Shan (Moroney 2018) and examines the use of the Consistency test in the study of N/DP syntax and semantics. While the Consistency test can identify demonstratives from their ability to shift reference using deixis, it cannot identify when a nominal expression 'counts' as a definite determiner.