Indefinitus

Indefinitus is a term used in linguistic and philosophical discussions to denote a specific kind of indefinite referent. In this usage, indefinitus refers to referents that are not anchored to a particular individual or entity, yet are treated as existing within the discourse as a variable or non-specified element. The concept is primarily theoretical and is used to analyze how languages encode indefiniteness, scope, and quantification without committing to a concrete witness.

The word indefinitus is a neologism formed from the English adjective indefinite and the Latin suffix -us, echoing Latinized terminology common in academic nomenclature. It is not universally adopted and may be found only in certain texts or pedagogical contexts. The term is distinct from indefiniteness as a broader semantic property and from specific categories such as indefinite pronouns or determiners.

In syntactic analyses, indefinitus readings may appear in embedded clauses where a participant is not explicitly introduced but is quantificationally available. It is used to discuss how bare nouns, bare plural forms, or demonstratives interact with indefiniteness. In philosophy of language, the term may be invoked to separate indefinite referents from definite or uniquely identifiable ones, clarifying issues of scope, presupposition, and existential commitment.

As an example, a sentence like 'Someone filed a report' can be described as containing an indefinitus referent in the presence of an indefinite noun phrase whose referent is not fixed in advance. The label helps scholars trace differences between similar readings across languages. See also: indefiniteness, indefinite pronoun, indefinite article, referential theory, cross-linguistic indefiniteness.