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Language and Linguistics Compass 2 (2008):
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Reformulating the Determiner Phrase Analysis
Judy B. Bernstein*William Paterson University of New Jersey
AbstractDeveloped in the 1980s, the Determiner Phrase (DP)
analysis stimulated a lot ofinterest in the internal structure of
nominal phrases and in the study of corre-spondences between
nominal and clausal structure. Research across a range oflanguages
has uncovered correspondences in areas such as agreement
morphology,syntactic movement, and argument structure, some of
which are reviewed here.Nominal phrases and clauses also match up
in terms of their semantic function:both can serve as predicates or
arguments. The issue of exactly what distinguishesa nominal
argument from a nominal predicate has received a lot of
attention,leading in particular to proposals about the underlying
role of the definite article(and determiner elements in general).
This article reviews some of these issuesand proposals and suggests
a reformulation that appeals to the feature person, afeature found
in both the nominal and clausal domains.
1. Introduction
Twenty-one years after Abneys (1987) influential work on the
internalstructure of nominal phrases, this article reviews some of
the originalarguments for Abneys DP (Determiner Phrase) analysis,
examines severalproposals that grew out of the analysis, and offers
a somewhat novel ideafor the reformulation of the core property of
the functional head D.
During the 1980s, important work by Chomsky (1986) developed
theidea that verbs project functional structure [i.e., Inflection
Phrase (IP), andcomplementizer phrase (CP)], leaving open the
question of if, and thenhow, this idea could be applied to nouns.
Over the course of the decade,other researchers took up the topic
of the internal structure of nominalphrases. Abney (1987),
Szabolcsi (1983 and later work) and many othersdemonstrated that
nominal phrases display clausal properties and proposedthat nouns,
like verbs, must also project functional structure. Among
theproperties of clauses that may also be found in nominals, we can
observe:(i) (identical) agreement morphology in nominals and
clauses, in somecases licensing pro-drop (non-expression of a
pronominal subject); (ii)instances of wh-movement in nominals and
clauses; and (iii) parallel argu-ment structure in nominals and
clauses. I briefly discuss and provide evidenceof these properties
here (some material drawn from Bernstein 2001).
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Hungarian, a nominative/accusative language, displays identical
agree-ment affixes on nouns and verbs. The data in (1) and (2)
(drawn fromSzabolcsi 1983 and also discussed in Abney 1987)
illustrate the Hungariannominal and clausal agreement patterns. In
(1), Case is expressed on thepossessor and the head noun agrees
with the possessor in person andnumber. In (2) the sentential
subject is also marked for Case and the verbdisplays number and
person agreement with the subject.
Although Turkish nominal agreement morphology is not identical
in formto the corresponding verbal agreement morphology, Kornfilt
(1984) hasshown for Turkish that both nominal and verbal agreement
morphologylicense pro-drop.
Horrocks and Stavrou (1987) show that in Greek,
wh-movementapplies in a parallel fashion in nominal phrases and
clauses [data fromHorrocks and Stavrou 1987, their (13) on p.
89]:
In (3a), the echo question represents the assumed underlying
position ofthe wh-word tinos. In (3b), tinos has raised to a
position peripheral to the
(1) a. az n- vendg-e-m (Hungarian)the I-nom guest-poss-1sgmy
guest
b. a te- vendg-e-dthe you-nom guest-poss-2sgyour guest
c. (a) Mari- vendg-e-(the) Mary-nom guest-poss-3sgMarys
guest
(2) Mari- alud-t- (Hungarian)Mary-nom sleep-past-3sgMary
slept.
(3) a. to vivlio tinos (Greek)the book who-genwhose book
b. tinos to vivliowho-gen the bookwhose book
(4) a. ekane ti (Greek)did-3sg whathe did what
b. ti ekanewhat did-3sgwhat did he do
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Reformulating the Determiner Phrase Analysis 3
nominal phrase to vivlio (the book). In (4), we see the same
pattern in theclause: in (4a) we see the underlying position of the
wh-word ti (what)and in (4b) the raised position.
Both nominals and clauses admit internal and external arguments,
asillustrated in the examples in (5), which are adapted from
Chomsky(1970):
The sentence in (5a) and the derived nominal in (5b) display
both aninternal argument (theme), Carthage, of the lexical head
(the verb destroyor the noun destruction), and an external argument
(agent), Rome. In bothdomains, the agent subject may bind a
reflexive anaphor:
On the topic of argument structure in nominals, Cinque (1980)
demon-strated that only the highest argument in the nominal domain
can bepossessivized, and work by many authors since Chomsky has
examinedissues related to the argument structure of nominals as
well as the natureof the lexical stem (nominal, verbal, or
underspecified) in a derivednominal like destruction (see, among
many others, Grimshaw 1990; Giorgiand Longobardi 1991; Picallo
1991; Valois 1991; Marantz 1997; Alexiadou2001).
Analysis of these and other properties within the nominal domain
andan emerging recognition of general similarities between nominal
phrasesand clauses led to proposals for parallel syntactic
structures for the twophrase types. Abney (1987) proposed that DP
is the maximal functionalcategory projected by the lexical noun and
hosts determiners (e.g., definitearticles). Abney reasoned that
determiners in the nominal domain areanalogous to modals in the
clausal domain, each lexicalizing a functionalhead projected by the
lexical noun or verb (Grimshaw 1991). Abneysresearch on the syntax
of DP led to work focusing on DP properties atthe syntaxsemantics
interface, such as issues of reference and definiteness(e.g.,
Vergnaud and Zubizarreta 1992; Longobardi 1994; Zamparelli
1995).Since then, D(P) has also been argued to be relevant to
properties such asCase (e.g., Giusti 1995), deixis (e.g., Giusti
1993; Klinge 2008), and specif-icity (e.g., Campbell 1996; Ihsane
and Puskas 2001).1
In this article, I focus on another correspondence between
nominalsand clauses, namely, the predicate vs. argument
distinction. I re-examinesome of the arguments for D as the
functional head relevant to thisdistinction (contrasting it with
the parallel distinction in the clausal
(5) a. Rome destroyed Carthageb. Romes destruction of
Carthage.
(6) a. Romei destroyed itselfi.b. Romesi destruction of
itselfi.
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domain), a proposal I ultimately adopt. I consider whether
nominal argu-ments can be distinguished from nominal predicates in
terms of interpretivefeatures. I observe, as many others have, that
no single interpretive propertyrepresents the fundamental nature of
D(P), and I go on to suggest that theinterpretive properties can be
derived from another more fundamentalproperty. Specifically, I
develop the idea that D (and DP) is best viewedas the locus of
person. This property, I argue, underlies whether a givennominal is
referential, definite, and/or an argument (or a predicate).Because
of space limitations, I will not review here proposals
forfunctional projections intervening between NP and DP (e.g.,
NumberP,GenderP, QuantifierP, and CaseP), but I will occasionally
touch on issuesrelevant to these proposals.
The article is organized as follows. In Section 2, I review some
of theoriginal arguments for DP, including its relevance to the
predicate/argu-ment distinction. In this regard, I consider the
role of D in nominalphrases and identify it, following others
before me, as the functional headrelevant to establishing reference
and anaphoric dependencies. In Section3, I develop the idea that
person is the core property of D and thefeature underlying
reference, providing some support for the idea fromconstructions
involving personal pronouns, definite articles, and propernames.
Section 4 offers some concluding remarks.
2. Predicates and Arguments
Abney (1987) and others developed the influential idea of a
nominalfunctional projection, DP, analogous to Chomskys (1986)
clausal functionalprojection, CP:2
For a language like English, Abney proposed that determiner
elements,such as the definite article in examples like (9a), are
the lexical instantiationof the functional head D [see (9b)], in
the same way that modals, as tense/aspect markers in English, can
be taken as the lexical instantiation of thefunctional head I.3
Following insights from work by Postal (1966), Abneyfurther claimed
that English pronouns in examples like (10) also occupy D.
(7) clauses: [CP [C C [IP [I I [VP [V V ]]]]]](8) nominals: [DP
[D D [NP [N N ]]]]
(9) a. the linguist(s)b. [DP [D the [NP [N linguists ]]]]
(10) a. we linguistsb. you linguistsc. [DP [D we/you [NP [N
linguists ]]]]
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Reformulating the Determiner Phrase Analysis 5
The structural distinction between NP and DP also maps onto a
semanticand functional distinction between predicates on the one
hand, and argu-ments, those expressions that satisfy the thematic
requirements of lexicalheads, nouns, and verbs. Longobardi (1994),
building on work by Szabolcsi(1987), Stowell (1989), and others,
argued convincingly that an argumentmust be introduced by D. Put
another way, D converts a predicate (i.e.,NP) into an argument
(i.e., DP; Stowell 1989: 248). The Italian examplesin (11)
illustrate the distinction [examples from Longobardi 1994
(19)].
The determinerless nominal predicate medico of (11a), an NP
according tothis line of reasoning, is unable to serve as the head
of a relative clause(introduced by che who). Presumably this is
because the head of a relativeclause must be an argument and the
bare noun medico cannot satisfy thisrequirement. The grammaticality
of un medico as the head of a relativeclause in (11b) strongly
suggests that this phrase is a (DP) argument.Under this general
approach, parametric differences among languageswith respect to
obligatory vs. optional appearance of overt lexical materialin D
reduce to featural differences of this functional head.
Still pursuing the idea of parallels between nominals and
clauses, we canask if the predicate/argument distinction just
examined in the nominaldomain is relevant at the clausal level as
well. Recall that under theapproach adopted here, the lexical
projection NP corresponds to a pred-icate and the functional
projection DP to an argument. Within thedomain of the clause, we
might expect that IP corresponds to a (clausal)predicate and CP to
a (clausal) argument. This prediction is borne outand can be
illustrated straightforwardly by the English examples in (12).
The matrix sentence in (12a) (a proposition but not an argument)
wouldcorrespond to IP. When the same proposition appears as the
sententialsubject in (12b), ungrammaticality results. This is
because the propositionin this case, as a sentential subject of the
verb surprise, is not in theform of an argument but should be.
Insertion of the subordinator that(Szabolcsi 1992: 130) converts
the IP predicate into a CP argument,resulting in a licit expression
in (12c). In a parallel fashion, according toSzabolcsi, in the
nominal domain definite articles function as subordinators.
(11) a. Gianni medico (*che si cura davvero dei suoi
pazienti).John is doctor (who really cares for his patients)
b. Gianni un medico (che si cura davvero dei suoi pazienti).John
is a doctor (who really cares for his patients)
(12) a. [IP Tiffany married Louise].b. *[IP Tiffany married
Louise] didnt surprise me.c. [CP That [IP Tiffany married Louise]]
didnt surprise me.
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The approach pursued by Longobardi (following Stowell,
Szabolcsi)with respect to the NP/DP distinction and its relation to
argumenthoodhas been an influential one, and I adopt it here as
well as in previouswork. However, the literature also features
another important analysisworthy of consideration. Chierchia (1998)
takes the predicate/argumentdistinction to vary
cross-linguistically: some languages allow NPs to bearguments
(e.g., in English) and in other languages only DPs can bearguments
(e.g., in Italian). So whereas a Longobardi-style approach takesthe
locus of parametric variation to reside in the feature content
offunctional heads like D (an idea about parametric variation going
back toBorer 1984), according to Chierchias Nominal Mapping
Parameter, thelocus of parametric variation is not with functional
(or lexical) heads perse, but rather in the type of phrase that
functions as a predicate or anargument in a particular language.4 I
come back to these proposals verybriefly at the end of the article
(Section 3.4), where I share some specu-lations about how they
might be complementary.
Stowells (1989) and Longobardis (1994) early work on the
predicate/argument distinction (NPs are predicates, DPs are
arguments) did notcontemplate cases involving non-argument DPs (see
Mandelbaum 1994for some relevant discussion). In this regard,
vocative expressions, stand-ardly taken to be predicative (see
Szabolcsi 1987; Longobardi 1994), areworthy of examination in light
of recent evidence that they may in factinvolve DP structure.
Consider the following examples:
Example (13a) with bare plural kids! is expected as a vocative;
the absenceof an overt article is consistent with a predicate (NP)
structure.5 Corre-spondingly, the impossibility of the kids! in
(13b) as a vocative in Englishis consistent with the basic idea
that the definite article corresponds to Dand vocatives, as
non-arguments, do not involve a DP layer.6 The examplesin (13c,d)
with a proper name (Patricia) and a pronoun (you) are
moreproblematic, because these expressions may also function as
arguments,suggesting that they are DPs.7 The internal structures
adopted for theseexamples [recall (10) and see (14)(15)] are
consistent with a DP structure:the pronoun you in (13d) occupies D
and the proper name Patricia in (13c)is underlying in N and overtly
raises to D in certain languages.
Observing that vocative expressions in some languages may
includerelative clauses, demonstratives, and even definite
articles, Crisma (1997:31, 135137) in fact proposes that vocatives
may have a D position as partof their structure (although the D may
not always be lexicalized). Given
(13) a. Kids! Come here!b. *The kids! Come here!c. Patricia!
Come here!d. You (kids)! Come here!
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Reformulating the Determiner Phrase Analysis 7
this broadening of the characterization of vocatives, we are led
to theconclusion that at least some non-arguments may include a DP
layer. Mustthe Stowell/Szabolcsi intuition distinguishing
predicates (as NPs) and argu-ments (as DPs) be abandoned? Not
entirely. In fact, a re-characterizationof the generalization still
evokes the original intuition. Crisma (1997: 1389;see also
Longobardi 2008) partitions entities (here, nominal phrases)
intoproperties and individuals (see Carlson 1977; Chierchia 1984).
Veryloosely speaking, properties characterize entities in their use
as predicates,typically taking the form of adjectives (e.g., tall,
hot) and nouns (e.g., gold,John).8 Properties are therefore
entities that do not denote individuals, whichtypically correspond
to arguments.9 What of vocatives? Crisma reasons that,although not
arguments, vocatives share a property with them: both typesof
expressions denote individuals.
Where does this leave us with respect to DP vs. NP and arguments
vs.predicates? What emerges from the above considerations, and
whatCrisma proposes, is that both arguments and vocatives denote
individualsand so involve DP. Properties do not denote individuals
and involve NP,never DP. The original insight about arguments
involving DPs (not NPs)is preserved.
Crismas expanded structure for vocatives (as DPs) now makes
senseof examples in (13c,d) with proper name and pronoun: in both
examples,a DP layer is projected despite the fact that these
vocative expressions arenon-arguments. Now, however, the
ungrammaticality of an example like(13b) with the definite article
receives no immediate explanation,although it could have been
excluded on the Longobardi or Szabolcsi/Stowell approach to
vocatives as NP predicates. Why would proper namesand personal
pronouns, both possible as vocatives and now seen to argu-ably
involve DP, pattern differently from a nominal expression with
adefinite article, barred in vocative expressions in many
languages? Thesolution I propose to distinguish the grammatical
(13c,d) from theungrammatical (13b) will require a further
consideration, which I take upin Section 3.
Having reviewed the proposal that DPs correspond to arguments
andnow also to vocatives (as individuals), and NPs to properties, I
turn nextto an examination of some issues relevant to the
identification of theproperty of D(P) responsible for
distinguishing individuals from properties.
2.1 THE ROLE OF D
Whether all languages distinguish DPs and NPs (under a
Longobardi-styleapproach) or only some languages do so (under a
Chierchia-styleapproach), it seems reasonable to assume that at
least in some languages anominal phrase may not function as an
argument, as a type of individual-denoting expression, unless it is
a DP. Italian is apparently such a language,as the examples in (14)
illustrate (examples from Longobardi 2008):
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The contrast between the grammatical (14a) and ungrammatical
(14c)illustrates that, at least for Italian, the definite article
is necessary, presum-ably because antica Roma, as an argument, must
be a DP and cannot bewithout a definite article.
The grammaticality of (14b) is interesting, because the subject
Romaantica lacks an overt determiner and yet is grammatical. This
suggests thatthe requirement for Italian that D be filled can be
satisfied in another way.For examples like (14b), Longoardi (1994
and later work) has developedthe idea that the proper name Roma
overtly raises from N to D, the locusof reference. The contrast
between the internal structures of lantica Romaand Roma antica
would be represented as follows, abstracting away fromthe position
of the adjective:
Example (15a) shows the base position of the proper name to be N
and(15b) shows the raised position to be D, after crossing over the
adjective.
The Italian pattern contrasts with the equivalent English facts
in (16),where the proper name Rome appears in the lower (N)
position in (16a),even though no definite article appears, not the
higher (D) one in (16b).
Longobardi (1994) postulated that the movement of proper names
to D,a general requirement of arguments cross-linguistically, is
covert inEnglish. A Chierchia-style approach would take the same
facts to indicatethat English allows NPs (as well as DPs) to be
arguments, unlike Italianarguments that must be DPs.10
Assuming that the relevance of D to argumenthood is ultimately
sup-ported, we can ask exactly what D (e.g., the definite article)
contributesto the nominal phrase. For many authors, a nominal
phrase is definite byvirtue of the presence of a definite article,
regardless of any effect thearticle may have on interpretation.
Other authors focus on the possibleinterpretive effects of the
definite article (or D more generally), amongthem definiteness,
specificity, referentiality, identifiability, and deixis. An
(14) a. Lantica Roma era una citt potente. (Italian)the ancient
Rome was a city powerful
b. Roma antica era una citt potenteRome ancient was a powerful
city
c. *Antica Roma era una citt potente.
(15) a. [DP la (antica) [NP Roma ]]b. [DP Romai (antica) [NP ti
]]
(16) a. Ancient Rome was a powerful city.b. *Rome ancient was a
powerful city.
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Reformulating the Determiner Phrase Analysis 9
extensive review of these proposals is beyond the scope of this
article (butsee Lyons 1999 for extensive discussion and Alexiadou
et al. 2007: 578for a survey of the issues and proposals).11
However, a quick examinationof some simple examples illustrates
that no single interpretive propertycharacterizes D, even though
all the examples include a definite article.For each example in
(17), the accompanying parenthetical indicates themost salient
interpretation for the relevant nominal phrase, but not alwaysthe
only one [(17g) is from Dchaine and Wiltschko 2002, their
(61b)].
My approach to the definite article essentially follows Vangsnes
(1999)idea that determiners (e.g., definite articles) do not have
semantic/pragmatic features of their own. Dchaine and Wiltschkos
observationsabout the ambiguity of (17g) with a definite article
are analogous to themore general observation I make here. Their
analysis of the ambiguitydistinguishes two different internal
structures, one corresponding to eachof the interpretations. I
return to their proposal in Section 3.2 within thecontext of my own
proposal about these examples.
2.2 ESTABLISHING REFERENCE AND REFERENTIAL DEPENDENCIES
One prominent idea found in the literature is that D is relevant
to refer-ence. Building on early Minimalist ideas of Chomsky (1993)
and the workof Szabolcsi (1983 and later work) and Stowell (1989),
Longobardi (1994,1996) proposed that a reference feature is encoded
in D and that argumentnominal phrases must check this feature,
subject to parametric variation
(17) a. Did you go to the beach when you visited Croatia?
(non-specific)
b. I protected my eyes from the sun.
(unique)
c. The lion is a dangerous animal. (generic)d. I picked up the
car from the
mechanic.(possessive)
e. Je me suis cass le bras. (French) (inalienable
possession)
I CL-me have broken the arm (Spanish)I broke my arm.
f. Sal con la mam.12 (possessive)went-out with the motherI went
out with my mother.
g. Jean aime le vin. (French) (generic or definite)
Jean likes (the) wine.
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as to whether the feature is checked overtly (in the syntax), as
in Italian,or covertly (post-syntactically), as in English.13
Proper names, as unambiguously referential expressions, are
thereforean important object of study. In this regard, the examples
from (14) serveto illustrate the well-known analysis Longobardi
developed for Italian:proper names raise to D overtly in order to
check their [+referential]feature in (14b); otherwise, an overt D
element (i.e., the definite article)occupies the D position in
(14a).
Pereltsvaig (2007) adopts the general Stowell/Longobardi idea
that D,not N, is relevant to reference. In particular, she develops
the idea that Dcarries a referential index, which she takes to be
an independent phifeature and so syntactic in nature.14 In order to
control the number ofpossible referential indices in the lexicon,
corresponding to a potentiallylimitless number of entities,
Pereltsvaig invokes processing limitations andsuggests that indices
may be reused in different discourses (2007: 6970).15
If Pereltsvaigs appeal to processing limitations may serve to
restrain thenumber of referential indices from reaching infinity,
why do the core phifeatures (number, gender, person) never seem to
require such restraining?As far as I know, the possible values for
these core phi features are quitelimited (e.g., singular, dual, and
plural number), even consideringlanguages with a rich array of
gender classes.
I will not follow Pereltsvaigs proposal that a referential index
is anindependent phi feature, but instead I will take reference to
be derivablefrom the core feature person (see Section 3). As
MacLaughlin (1997: 101,footnote 2) points out, person plays a
crucial role in syntactic phenomenarelated to reference, such as
anaphora, verbal agreement, and the licensingof null arguments. In
other words, in my view these syntactic phenomenarely on the
feature person, as does the computation of reference.Although I do
not adopt Pereltsvaigs proposal about a referential index asan
independent phi feature, I do accept the more general idea that D
isthe head relevant to interpreting the reference of a nominal
phrase.
Unlike approaches of Longobardi and Pereltsvaig, Baker (2003,
see also2008) argues that it is the noun that carries a referential
index. Under thisapproach and thinking of the internal structure of
the Italian examples in(14) with proper names, the reference (or
referential index) of a nominalexpression could plausibly be
established via the base position of theproper name, that is, in N.
If reference is determined by or in N, however,another explanation
is needed for why the D position must be filled inItalian, but
apparently not in English. The explanation could still reduceto the
individuals vs. properties distinction discussed above, with
thequestion left open about the role of D, perhaps playing no role
inreference at all.
In order to tease apart the relevance of D vs. N in establishing
referen-tial dependencies, I return to complex nominals, those
involving personalpronouns plus nouns. I repeat here the examples
and structures from (10):16
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Reformulating the Determiner Phrase Analysis 11
Recall that I adopted (18c) as the representation of the
internal structurefor these types of examples. Let us next examine
the referential depend-encies admitted between these complex
nominals and anaphoric expres-sions. Consider now the examples in
(19).
Here we observe some evidence that, at least for certain
languages, Drather than N is the relevant head for establishing
referential dependencies:the personal pronoun we in (19a), but not
the noun linguists in (19b), maybind a pronominal anaphor.17
Now although examples like (19) are consistent with Longobardis
pro-posal about the relevance of D to reference, they raise another
set ofquestions. Until this point, I have focused almost
exclusively on definitearticles, because these elements are the
prototypical candidates for D. Ifpersonal pronouns also correspond
to D recall Postals (1966) intuition we need to re-evaluate the
characterization of D, which was developedprimarily around examples
with definite articles [recall examples in (17)].
The idea I develop in the next section in fact crucially relies
on exampleslike (18) and (19). Specifically, I will appeal to the
person feature of thesepersonal pronouns and suggest that this
property characterizes D; I willfurthermore suggest that person is
necessary for establishing referentialdependencies.
3. D Encodes Person
In this section, I explore and develop the idea that person is
the corefeature of D(P), building on recent work by Longobardi
(2008) and Bern-stein (2008).18 The intuition is that the
individuals (DP) vs. properties(NP) distinction, referential
dependencies, and even definiteness rely onperson. Person, which is
lexicalized in many languages through personalpronouns (also
reflexives and other anaphors) and also is displayed in theclausal
domain in the form of verbal agreement marking, identifies anominal
phrase as referring to the participants in the conversation
(i.e.,first person I, me; second person you) or not (i.e., third
person they, themand also lexical nominal phrases). So person, like
other core phi featuressuch as number, has a limited number of
values: 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person(some authors arguing for 4th, 5th,
and 6th).
(18) a. we linguistsb. you linguistsc. [DP [D we/you [NP [N
linguists ]]]]
(19) a. Wei linguists like to study ourselvesi/ouri own
languages.b. *We linguistsi like to study themselvesi/theiri own
languages.
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I begin the section by examining the status of first- and
second-personpronouns in predicate and argument expressions,
focusing the discussionaround familiar English examples involving
the already-seen pronoun-plus-noun construction (we linguists) and
then simple personal pronouns(we). For both sorts of pronominals, I
argue that the D position is relevantto interpretation (reference)
through the grammatical feature person.Next, I look at so-called
definite nominal phrases, those displaying adefinite article (e.g.,
the), a demonstrative (e.g., this), or even a third-personpronoun
(e.g., they), all of which I take to share a feature, third
person,expressed through a th- morpheme in D. I will capitalize on
the homog-enous character of English th- third-person forms (e.g.,
the, they, and this)and on the fact that they are not always
definite in interpretation, as wesaw above in (17) with definite
articles. In a section on proper names,I interpret the fact that
such elements require or admit a definite articlein many languages
as support for Longobardis (1994) idea that they areunderlyingly of
category N, like common nouns. Because no semantic orpragmatic
information is conveyed by the so-called expletive definitearticle,
I speculate that its function is to supply a person feature to DP.
Atthe end of the section, I briefly discuss correspondences between
theexpression of person in the nominal and clausal domains.
3.1 PERSONAL PRONOUNS
Recall Postals intuition about we linguists, that we corresponds
to a deter-miner, taken to be D since Abney (1987).19 Examples like
(19) furtherillustrated that we, rather than linguists, serves as
the antecedent for apossessive or reflexive anaphor, supporting the
general hypothesis that Dencodes person and that person is relevant
for establishing referential/anaphoric dependencies.
Related to the Postal examples with pronouns and determiners
arethe vocative facts discussed in Section 2. The examples are
repeated herein (20).
Recall that I followed Crismas idea that vocatives may include a
DPstructural layer. This provides an analysis of proper names and
personalpronouns in these constructions. An example like (20b) with
the definitearticle was left unexplained. I appeal here to another
property of vocativeexpressions, namely, a required second-person
interpretation that is eitherlexically expressed or implicit (see
Szabolcsi 1987). I repeat the examples
(20) a. Kids! Come here!b. *The kids! Come here!c. Patricia!
Come here!d. You (kids)! Come here!
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Reformulating the Determiner Phrase Analysis 13
from (20) above in (21), representing in upper case letters (in
parentheses)what I take to be unpronounced material.
I suggest that the common noun and proper name in (21a,c) have
animplicit second person pronoun, that this YOU occupies D, and
that thecommon noun or proper name occupies N.20 In (21d), the
pronoun youwould again occupy D, and N would contain an
unpronounced noun. Allthe examples in (21) now have the same
internal structure and all involvesecond person, except for (21b).
The ungrammaticality of *the kids! as avocative is now accounted
for by the absence of second person, whichshould be explicitly or
implicitly in D. Moreover, and as I develop in thenext section, the
definite article the in D identifies the DP vocative asthird
person.
We have now seen two sorts of constructions involving personal
pro-nouns plus nouns, the pronouns taken to occupy D and to supply
personand the nouns to occupy N. If these personal pronouns are D
elementsin vocative expressions like you guys! and also in
arguments like we linguists,what of simple personal pronouns like
we, whose referential and argumentstatus are equivalent to those
with accompanying nouns (explicit or implicit)?
Work by Cardinaletti (1994) and Longobardi (1994) illustrates
that personalpronouns used in non-argument function as exclamations
arguably lack adeterminer layer and correspond to N
underlyingly:
These same pronouns used in argument function must raise to D,
judgingby the impossibility of a preceding definite article (23a)
or numeral (23b).The internal structure proposed for the
grammatical we two (i.e., pronounpreceding the numeral) is provided
in (23c).
In the above discussion, we have seen that in two sorts of
expressions Dis the relevant position, underlying or derived, for
personal pronouns.
(21) a. (YOU) kids!b. *The kids!c. (YOU) Patricia!d. You
(KIDS)!
(22) a. poor [NP us]!b. poor [NP me]!c. poor [NP you]!
(23) a. *the [NP we/us ]b. *two [NP we/us]c. [DP we/usi . . .
(two) . . . [NP ti ] ]
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Why would that be? From the perspective developed here,
person-bearingelements are associated with D precisely because
person is its core property.I take this property to underlie the
referential and anaphoric propertiesof nominal arguments, and now
also vocatives, although I have notarticulated the specifics of
such an analysis. Important questions remain,such as: What is the
mechanism responsible for the raising of personalpronouns to D? Is
it a feature of the pronoun itself that compels it toraise or is it
a feature of the functional head D? If the latter, does Dhave a
probe for person (see Chomsky 2000, 2001 for the idea of
func-tional heads as probes for features)? These questions must
remain open fornow.
In the next section, we will see how the basic idea that D
encodesperson may generalize to so-called definite expressions,
particularly thoseinvolving definite articles but also (other)
third-person forms.
3.2 SO-CALLED DEFINITE EXPRESSIONS
As we saw in Section 2 [examples in (17)], the presence of the
definitearticle does not always yield a definite interpretation, a
point made bymany authors including Dchaine and Wiltschko (2002:
4289). Theyobserved that French l- (definite article) forms do not
always involve adefinite interpretation and in many cases may yield
either a generic inter-pretation or a definite one, as illustrated
by the two possible glosses for(24):
Their approach to pronouns and determiners cross-linguistically
distin-guishes three basic types, corresponding either to the
syntactic categoryNP (true predicates), DP (true arguments), and P
(intermediate status).Under their analysis, le vin would correspond
to a DP under the definiteinterpretation of (24) (this particular
wine) and to P under the genericinterpretation (wine in general).
Whether or not le vin is definite, itfunctions as an argument and
so could not correspond to NP under theiranalysis. The internal
structures they assign, corresponding to the
possibleinterpretations, are the following [their (i) and (ii) in
Dchaine and Wilt-schko 2002, footnote 21 on p. 430]:
(24) Jean aime le vin. (French)Jean likes (the) wine.
(25) a. [D [ le [NP vin]]]the wine (definite)
b. [ le [NP vin]]wine (generic)
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Reformulating the Determiner Phrase Analysis 15
According to Dchaine and Wiltschkos analysis, the definite
descriptionin (25a) does not derive directly from the presence of
the article, butrather from the presence of an unfilled D, which
they take to be necessaryfor the relevant interpretation; the
generic interpretation corresponds toa structure lacking a DP layer
in (25b), but still an argument because ofits P status. Their
analysis, which is meant to generalize across Romancelanguages,
includes the idea that definite articles (like pronouns)
maycorrespond to different functional categories across
languages.
I follow a somewhat different approach to the English th- and
Romancel- article and pronominal forms (building on Bernstein 2008;
see alsoRadford 1997: 187ff.; Lyons 1999: 27), and treat them as a
homogenousgroup. In particular, I take the definite article in
languages like Englishand French to consist of a th- or an l-
third-person morpheme.21 In thisway, both of the expressions with
definite articles in (25) may be argu-ments by virtue of the
third-person morpheme, without definiteness as anecessary corollary
and without positing additional functional structure todistinguish
(25a) from (25b). The same analysis can apply to demonstra-tives,
which are not always deictic. The example in (26a) is
non-specificand the one in (26b) is deictic (discussed in Bernstein
1997; see Fodorand Sag 1982).
Thus, a th- demonstrative may be neutral or vague on deixis,
just as ath- definite article may be neutral on definiteness.
Nevertheless, from myperspective, a nominal phrase with a th-
demonstrative will always containa person feature expressed through
th-, and will therefore function as anargument.22
We saw above that English th- forms like definite articles and
demon-stratives are not uniformly interpreted as definite and
deictic, respectively.I suggested that th- contributes a
(third-)person feature, and yet is neutralwith respect to
definiteness and deixis. What of third-person personalpronouns like
they? Consider the examples in (27).
We seem to find the same potential ambiguity with these forms.
Aspersonal pronouns (containing th-), the forms display a person
feature andfunction as arguments (here, nominative subjects). This
provides some
(26) a. This guy (on the subway last night) gave me his
seat.
(indefinite)
b. This guy (right here) just gave me a dollar!
(deictic)
(27) a. They (over there) are Italian. (deictic)b. They say its
gong to rain tonight. (impersonal)
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support for the uniform treatment of the definite articles,
demonstratives,and third-person pronouns.
In light of my proposal that English th- forms encode third
person, aquestion arises about the singular h- pronouns in English
(e.g., him, her,and (h)it).23 In particular, do these pronouns have
an identifiable personmorpheme? My approach to these pronouns draws
on Dchaine andWiltschkos observations and their examples of word
formation with h-pronouns [e.g., he-goat, she-society, from 2002,
(51)]; these ideas aredeveloped more extensively in Bernstein
(2008). I take the contributionof the h- forms in the relevant
examples to be nothing more than gender:a he-goat is a male goat
and a she-society is a female society (women leadersand/or
residents). So the idea I pursue is that rather than person,
h-encodes gender, which I associate with N, thinking of languages
withrobust gender systems (see Ritter 1993 for the idea that gender
is a featureof nouns). Dchaine and Wiltschko also take person to be
absent from N,although their treatment of English h- pronouns is
somewhat different,corresponding to their P.
The analysis I develop about English th- brings up an important
issueabout the nature of third person and how exactly it differs
from first/second person, an issue addressed by many authors. Kayne
(2000), forexample, building on Benveniste (1966: 228), argues that
third persondoes not form a natural class, unlike first and second
person. Harley andRitter (2002) follow Forchheimers (1953) idea
that first and secondperson are marked compared with unmarked third
person (see also Lyons1999: 316). The idea that th- may encode
third person (just as m- and y- mayencode first and second person)
is apparently at odds with these otherviews about third person. I
will maintain that third person does count asa full-fledged person,
although its interpretation and syntactic nature dotend to differ
from that of first/second person.24
In terms of interpretation, first- and second-person pronouns
refer tospeaker and hearer, respectively. In this sense, they are
deictic and theirreference is specific. The interpretation of
third-person pronouns, involvingneither speaker nor hearer, is
potentially vaguer and as we saw notnecessarily deictic. Unlike
first or second person, the vagueness of thirdperson pronouns
allows for participation in bound variable anaphora:25
In contrast to my treatment of third person in the nominal
domain, third-person verbal agreement is often less robust than
that of first or secondperson. In many Indo-European languages, for
example, the third-personverbal form is a bare form, whereas the
first- and second-person formsare identifiable via dedicated verbal
morphology (see discussion in Lyons
(28) a. Everyonei likes theiri (own) motherb. *Everyonei likes
myi/youri (own) mother.
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Reformulating the Determiner Phrase Analysis 17
1999: 316). In addition and probably related to the
interpretational vague-ness of third person, definite articles and
third-person clitic pronouns inmany Indo-European languages agree
with nouns in number and gender(and sometimes case), unlike first-
and second-person forms (see Kayne2000; Nevins 2007).
3.3 PERSON WITH PROPER NAMES
Longobardi (1994) (see also Vergnaud and Zubizarreta 1992) shows
that propernames in some languages display an optional or
obligatory definite article,argued to be expletive, because it
contributes nothing to interpretation.Consider the Italian and
Catalan examples in (29) and (30), respectively.26
Longobardi hypothesizes that the function of the expletive
definite articlein these cases is to fill in the D position when
the proper name itself doesnot raise to D. Recall that for
Longobardi the D position is necessaryfor referential expressions
like proper names. According to the proposaldeveloped here, the
article supplies a person marker, spelling out thethird-person
status of the proper name in languages (like Italian) that
alsoallow raising of the proper name to D. The expression of the
expletivearticle is not limited to Italian and Catalan, but rather
seems to be possiblein a number of the worlds languages.
If the so-called expletive definite articles in the preceding
exampleswith proper names may be reinterpreted as person markers,
those exampleswould now resemble those with true personal pronouns,
such as the following:
In these examples, the first- and second-person pronouns
identify theperson and in turn the reference of the nominal
subjects, just as in theexamples we saw with common nouns in (18)
from Section 2.2. There-fore, in all these cases in (29)(31), the
insertion of a person-bearingelement identifies the person of the
nominal subject: the referent of (31a)is first person (involving
the speaker) and that of (31b) is second person(involving the
hearer).
(29) a. Maria (Italian)b. la Maria
Mary(30) a. Pere (Catalan)
b. en PerePeter
(31) a. We Marys have to stick together.b. You Marys have to
stick together.
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The examples are also quite clearly consistent with Longobardis
idea(recall discussion in Section 2.1) that proper names, like
common nouns,start out in N. The examples in (32), like those seen
previously, illustratethat it is the person feature of D (not N)
that is relevant for the syntacticrelation that establishes
anaphoric dependencies.
Example (32a) shows that a possessive or reflexive pronoun
our(selves) islicit when its antecedent is the pronoun we (in D);
example (32b) showsthat a third-person anaphor may not have the
proper name Marys (in N)as its antecedent. The role of D in
establishing anaphoric dependencies in(32a,b) strongly suggests
then that it must also be D (hosting the definitearticle) in (32c)
that provides the antecedent for the third-person anaphors.
Recall Longobardis idea (see Section 2.1) that proper names
start outin N and raise to D in order to check a referential
feature in D. I haveretained Longobardis idea about N-to-D raising
and identified Dsrelevant property to be person rather than
reference (as Longobardi has inrecent work, see Longobardi 2008).
Personal pronouns spell out this prop-erty just as, I claim,
definite articles do (even the so-called expletive ones).What about
cases of articleless proper names like Mary that arguably raiseto D
overtly in Italian but not in English? In particular, does Mary
havea person feature? The straightforward answer is yes, but some
of the detailsneed to be further articulated.27 The basic idea
proposed by Longobardiis that proper names do have a third-person
feature but that their move-ment to D is unrelated to their
morphology (unlike pronouns and definitearticles); instead, it is
related to their interpretation. For this reason, unlikepronouns,
proper names do not move to D overtly in all languages.Longobardi
develops a parametric approach to person and distinguishesstrong
from weak person languages. In the former (like Italian),
propernames will raise to D overtly; in the latter (like English),
they will raise covertly.
In summarizing this section, I observe that the proposal that D
is theperson head unifies several interrelated ideas about nominal
phrases ingeneral and DPs in particular. First, it offers an
explanation for whyelements like definite articles and personal
pronouns may occupy the samefunctional head, namely, both sorts of
elements encode the same gram-matical information, person, whether
we adhere to Postals intuition thatpronouns are determiners or
follow Lujns (2001) idea that determinersare modified pronouns.28
Second, it identifies a property characterizingsome nominal phrases
but not others, and as such could turn out to bethe criterion
distinguishing DPs from NPs and consequently arguments
(32) a . [We Marys]i have to watch ouri backs/ourselvesi.b. *[We
Marys]i have to watch theiri backs/themselvesi.c. [The Marys]i (of
the world) have to watch theiri backs/
themselvesi.
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Reformulating the Determiner Phrase Analysis 19
and vocatives (as individuals) from predicates (as properties).
Third, itprovides D an underlying phi feature on which to build or
derive inter-pretive properties such as reference and even
definiteness. Still to beworked out is exactly how such
interpretations are derived from the input.
3.4 PERSON IN NOMINAL PHRASES AND CLAUSES
To conclude this section on person, I offer some general remarks
aboutcorrespondences between person in the nominal domain and
person inthe clausal domain. Unlike the other nominal/clausal
correspondencesexamined in this article, the person relationship is
one of agreement,typically an argument triggering person agreement
on the verb.
To my knowledge, cross-linguistic syntactic work comparing
personacross the two domains is limited, although there have been
many pro-posals in the literature analyzing person agreement
markers in the verbaldomain as incorporated pronouns, at least for
certain languages. Siewier-ska (2004: 1227) extensively discusses
and compares anaphoric pronounsand person agreement across a broad
array of languages, distinguishing amonglanguages exhibiting
pronominal agreement markers, syntactic agreementmarkers, and
ambiguous agreement markers (Siewierska 2004: 126),observing that
the particular characterization of person marking is
oftendetermined by a linguists theoretical framework (Siewierska
2004: 125).For present purposes, it is interesting to observe that
languages varysignificantly in terms of if and where person is
expressed. In the Romancelanguages, for example, person is
typically expressed robustly both in theclausal and nominal
domains, except that in several Romance languagesthe subject may
remain unexpressed. In languages like standard English,there is
arguably no longer person marking in the clausal domain (if
verbal-s is taken to be a number marker, see Kayne 1989), and yet
robust personmarking in the nominal domain.29 In other languages
(perhaps Chinese),there is no obvious evidence of person in either
the nominal or clausaldomain.30 In addition to being a worthwhile
focus of study in its ownright for typological reasons, a
comparison of person across the twodomains may prove useful for
discovering how grammars of naturallanguage are organized and how
they change over time.31
For my own particular proposal about person, languages (like
Japaneseor Chinese) that lack definite articles and also personal
pronouns (includingin the form of reflexive anaphors) raise
important issues. In particular, ifa language lacks person marking
in the nominal domain does it necessarilylack the functional
category DP? If so, what category do argumentsbelong to in such a
language? Recall that in this article I have pursuedthe idea that
the presence or absence of person (encoded in D) underlieswhether a
nominal phrase is an argument or not. Another set of
questionsarises with languages that lack person marking in the
nominal domain andyet display person marking in the clausal domain:
what is the trigger for
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the verbal agreement? Some of these issues are touched on in
Longobardi(2008), but they are far from settled. As Longobardi
observes, if it can beshown that languages like Japanese allow NPs
in argument function, thiswould provide support for Chierchias
(1998) approach to argumentscross-linguistically (i.e., they are or
can be NPs in some languages andmust be DPs in others).32 If these
languages lack DP, how is person thatis relevant to interpretation
computed? For those languages like Japanesearguably lacking
grammatically encoded person, correlating with absenceof DP,
Longobardi (2008) speculates that person is interpreted
pragmatically.This parametrization of phi features grammatically
encoded in somelanguages, pragmatically interpreted in others
should then generalize beyondperson to other phi features, such as
number. Further cross-linguistic inves-tigation will determine
whether such predictions are borne out.
4. Conclusion
The DP analysis has been influential and fueled a lot of
research on theinternal structure of nominal phrases. In this short
article, I have reviewedsome of the data illustrating
cross-linguistic correspondences betweennominal phrases and
clauses, data pointing to parallel internal structuresin the
nominal and clausal domains. I focused on one particular
propertyarguably shared by clausal CP and nominal DP, namely, their
status asthematic arguments (matching up with IP and NP predicates,
respectively).Directing my attention to DP arguments, I asked if
some identifiableproperty of the functional head D is responsible
for the argument statusof DP. Following other authors, I observed
that elements typically associatedwith D do not have or contribute
a consistent interpretation. I concludedthat Ds role is probably
not involved directly in interpretation, but mightcertainly be
involved derivationally. This general conclusion is consistentwith
recent proposals that some interpretive features may not be
encodedin the syntax at all, or instead may be hosted in the left
periphery of theclause or nominal DP.
The reformulation I proposed for DP takes D to be a nominal
func-tional head encoding person (1st, 2nd, or 3rd), information
upon whichreference and anaphora can be established. Examining
expressions withpersonal pronouns, determiners (definite articles,
demonstratives), andproper names, I conjectured that what the
relevant D elements share, orcontribute, is person, information
that helps us determine whether theindividual denoted by a nominal
phrase is one of the participants in theconversation (first, second
person) or not (third person).
Short Biography
Judy B. Bernsteins research focuses on morpho-syntactic
phenomena, inparticular on micro-parametric variation in Romance
languages and more
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Reformulating the Determiner Phrase Analysis 21
recently in varieties of English. She has worked extensively on
nominalstructure and has published articles in Language, Lingua,
Linguistic Inquiryand Probus. She is currently involved in a
collaborative project on themorpho-syntax of Appalachian English.
She has been awarded an AmericanCouncil of Learned Societies
fellowship, a Fulbright grant, and a NationalScience Foundation
grant. Before coming to William Paterson University,where she is
Associate Professor of Linguistics, she taught at
SyracuseUniversity and before that she was a postdoctoral fellow at
the Universityof Southern Maine. She holds a BA in Spanish and
Psychology from theUniversity at Albany, an MA in Teaching English
as a Second Languagefrom Hunter College, and a PhD in Linguistics
from The GraduateCenter of the City University of New York.
Notes
* Correspondence address: Judy B. Bernstein, William Paterson
University of New Jersey, 300Pompton Rd., Wayne, NJ 07470, USA.
Email: [email protected] As far as I know, Giusti is the only
author to associate Case with D directly. Recent work byWatanabe
(2006) posits a DP-internal CaseP for Japanese, an idea that has
appeared over the yearsin work on several languages. Similarly for
deixis, Roca (1996) has posited a DP-internalDemonstrativeP, unlike
other authors (e.g., Giusti 1993) who take demonstrative elements
tobe adjectival (Dryer 1992) and interpreted through D(P), though
not corresponding to Dunderlyingly. Klinge (2008) associates D, in
particular Germanic th-/- elements, with deixis.According to Ihsane
and Puskas (2001), whose analysis builds on the semantic work of
En(1991), specificity is encoded in the left periphery of the DP (
la Rizzi 1997 on the leftperiphery of the clause).2 Abneys proposal
actually aligned DP with IP, but that would no longer be the
relevantanalogy.3 Nowadays, TenseP (TP) would replace IP as the
functional projection relevant for tense.4 Longobardi (2008) points
out that if a language does not encode phi features syntactically,
itmay in fact admit NP arguments, as allowed for within Chierchias
system (see Section 3.4).5 The following Italian example is even
more telling and supports assuming NP for vocatives,since Italian
would bar the same bare plural in argument function: Ragazzi!
(Kids!).6 French is unusual in allowing definite articles in
vocatives: les enfants! (children!). This factis unexpected under
the NP (predicate) approach to vocatives, but also under my
proposedapproach to vocatives. Dchaine and Wiltschkos (2002)
approach to the definite article inFrench (see discussion in
Section 3.2) would offer an account, because for them the
definitearticle does not correspond to D in French.7 In argument
function, both sorts of expressions appear as subjects of lexical
verbs: Patricia metan intelligent woman; You kids talk too much.8
Longobardi (2008) illustrates the notion of properties, typically
adjectives or nouns used aspredicates: The food is hot, I am John,
This is gold.9 Longobardi shows how the nouns from footnote 8 can
also name individuals: I met John, Goldis precious.10 In this
regard, the question of English bare plural arguments is crucial:
Girls enrolled in sciencecourses. For Chierchia, the subject
(girls) would be an NP argument; for Longobardi, the subjectwould
involve a null D.11 Lyons (1999) extensively reviews the concept of
definiteness from various theoreticalperspectives, analyses ranging
across notions of familiarity, identifiability, inclusiveness,
uniqueness,and presupposition. As Lyons points out (1999: 274), no
one approach is able to account forthe full range of facts; he
takes identifiability (i.e., a DPs referent is identifiable to the
speakerand hearer) to be the pragmatic property that definiteness
encodes (Lyons 1999: 278).
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12 Francisco Ordez (personal communication) points out that he
would only use this whentalking among family members.13 For a DP
argument like the lion, Longobardi, building on work by Carlson
(1977), appealsto a distinction between kind referring for the
generic interpretation and individual referringfor the definite
one.14 She distinguishes coindexing from coreference, which she
takes to be a semantic/pragmaticnotion, following Fiengo and May
(1994; see Pereltsvaig 2007: 678).15 Pereltsvaig (2007: 70)
discusses sign languages such as American Sign Language (as
describedin MacLaughlin 1997), which assign reference spatially.
Unlike MacLaughlin (1997: 59), whotakes these spatial loci to
involve person, Pereltsvaig takes the relatively large number of
spatialloci in sign languages to support her proposal of
referential indices, which would similarlyinvolve a large number.16
A reviewer asks why this construction is restricted to plural. The
idea developed in Bernstein(2008) is that these pronoun-plus-noun
constructions (for those languages admitting them)require (i)
agreement in number between pronoun and noun, and (ii) the
expression of personin D. This is satisfied by the examples with
first-plural we/us, second plural you, and third plural(vernacular)
them: we/us linguists, you linguists, them linguists (see Section
3.2 for the proposalthat th- encodes third person). Although *I
linguist displays person through I, it lacks numberagreement
between the singular noun linguist and the pronoun I, which Kayne
(1989) arguedis unmarked for number. Similarly, Kayne observed that
you is grammatically plural (you are vs.*you is), which explains
the number mismatch in *you linguist. As for the impossibility ofh-
pronouns in this construction (*he/him linguist), see Section 3.2
for the idea that h- does notencode person, but rather gender.17 I
expect this to be the case in languages admitting this type of
construction. Italian, forexample, displays the same pattern: Noi
italiani ammiriamo il nostro presidente (We Italians admireour
president.).18 I depart from Lyons (1999: 313) approach, which
conflates person and definiteness and startsfrom the observation
that personal pronouns and so-called personal determiners (e.g., we
lin-guists) come from the same source (Lyons 1999: 310). I also
depart from the specifics, but notthe spirit, of Platzack (2004),
who takes person to correspond to a functional projection
internalto DP.19 Roehrs (2005), on the basis of new data and
arguments, concludes, as Postal did, that therelationship between
the determiner pronoun and noun is one of complementation and
notapposition.20 I suspect that You Patricia! is not pronounceable
because of non-agreement (in number)between the pronoun, which is
grammatically plural, and the singular proper name. Given theright
context, the expression becomes possible when the proper name is
plural: You Patricias!21 There have been proposals equating a th-
morpheme with definiteness (see Bernstein et al.1999; Dchaine and
Wiltschko 2002) and deixis (Klinge 2008).22 I abstract away from
the idea that demonstratives, like pronouns, may not correspond to
Dunderlyingly (see Giusti 1993; Bernstein 1997). In this way, they
would resemble the simplepronouns discussed above.23 Historically,
the neutral pronoun it patterned with the other h- forms: her, him,
and hit. Theform hit is still heard in conservative varieties of
English such as Appalachian English.24 Similarly, Nevins (2007)
study of the morphological properties of the person-case
constraintled him to conclude that third person, like first and
second, is always featurally represented (p.311).25 I opt for their
over his/her in this example, because it is more natural sounding,
particularlyin colloquial language. This is consistent with the
claim that th- (and not h-) encodes thirdperson.26 Catalan reserves
this form of the definite article for proper names. With common
nouns, themasc. sg. form of the article would be el: el gos the dog
(see Longobardi 1994: 656 fordiscussion).27 Recall that Longobardi
(2008) distinguishes individuals from properties, only the
formerinvolving person specification.28 Historically, many
present-day determiners developed from pronouns or
demonstratives.
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Reformulating the Determiner Phrase Analysis 23
29 Varieties of English may differ as to which phi feature is
encoded in the verbal system. Incurrent work, Raffaella Zanuttini
and I contrast what we take to be singular number expressedthrough
verbal -s in standard English (following Kayne 1989) to what we
propose to be thirdperson expressed with the identical verbal form
in Appalachian English.30 I do not mention the Slavic articleless
languages here, because they have personal pronouns,which can be
used to establish the DP status of nominal phrases. Pereltsvaig
(2007) appealsadditionally to differences between post-copular
instrumental and nominative nominal phrasesin Russian to argue for
the DP status of the latter but not the former. Interestingly, and
asexpected given her analysis, post-copular pronouns are also
typically nominative (Pereltsvaig2007: 27).31 Siewierska (2004:
261ff.) discusses the diachronic grammaticalization of person
markers:independent person marker > weak form > clitic >
agglutinative affix > fusional form > [p. 262, (31)].32
Watanabe (2006), in fact, argues that DP is projected in
Japanese.
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