Determiner phrase
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In the determiner phrases below, the determiners are in boldface:
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In linguistics, a determiner phrase (DP) is a syntactic category, a phrase headed by a determiner. The noun phrase is strictly speaking a determiner phrase, and NP designates a constituent of the noun phrase, taken to be the complement of the determiner.[1][2][3] This is opposed to the traditional view that determiners are specifiers of the noun phrase. The DP analysis of noun phrases is the majority view in generative grammar today,[4] but it is a minority stance in the study of theoretical syntax in general.[5]
On the DP analysis of noun phrases, determiners govern the referential or quantificational properties of the noun phrases they embed. The idea that noun phrases preceded by determiners are determiner phrases is known as the DP hypothesis. The DP hypothesis is compatible with the theory of generalized quantifiers, which is the prevailing theory of the semantics of determiners.[6][7]
In some versions of the Minimalist Program the DP is itself the complement of a phase head, n*, from which it inherits the ability to agree with its complement and assign case.[8]
[edit] Notes and references
- ^ Szabolcsi, A. (1983). The possessor that ran away from home. The Linguistic Review 3.
- ^ Horrocks, Geoffrey and Melita Stavrou. 1987. The Linguistic Review.
- ^ Abney, S. P. (1987). The English Noun Phrase in its Sentential Aspect. Ph. D. thesis, MIT, Cambridge MA.
- ^ Poole, Geoffrey. Syntactic Theory. Basingstoke: Palgrave
- ^ Most frameworks outside of the Minimalist Program continue to assume the traditional NP analysis of noun phrases. For instance, representational phrase structure grammars assume NP (Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, Lexical Functional Grammar, Categorial Grammar) and most dependency grammars (Word Grammar being the one exception) also assume the traditional NP analysis of noun phrases (e.g. Meaning-Text Theory, Functional Generative Description, Lexicase Grammar). Construction grammars are also likely to assume NP over DP.
- ^ Montague, Richard: 1974, 'The proper treatment of quantification in English', in R. Montague, Formal Philosophy, ed. by R. Thomason (New Haven).
- ^ Barwise, Jon and Robin Cooper. 1981. Generalized quantifiers and natural language. Linguistics and Philosophy 4: 159-219.
- ^ Chomsky, Noam. Approaching UG from Below. Interfaces + Syntax = Language? Chomsky's Minimalism and the View from Syntax-Semantics. ed. Uli Sauerland and Hans-Martin Gärtner, 1-29. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
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