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This article offers a minimalist account of determiner phrases in Spanish-English codeswitching data. The minimalist approach to codeswitching developed by MacSwan is selected on conceptual grounds assuming that all codeswitching samples can be analysed in terms of mechanisms independently motivated for the analysis of monolingual data and therefore, codeswitching phenomena can be explained without appealing to ad hoc constraints specific to it. This model is then tested on data from native bilingual speakers of English and Spanish, focusing on the syntax and semantics of determiner phrases. On the semantic side, we examine the parametric variation between English and Spanish with respect to bare nominal phrases. On the syntactic side, we focus on the grammatical reasons that explain one of the most frequent codeswitches in the data, which is the alternation between the Spanish definite article and the English noun

This chapter examines the question of prepositions, pursuing the argument in favor of an above-verb phrase (VP) source for some of them. Certain quantifier movements must then be reanalyzed as instances of remnant movement, as had been suggested for some cases in earlier work by Antonia Androutsopoulou and Michal Starke. This chapter contains, in addition, an extended argument in favor of the presence of unpronounced elements such as AMOUNT and NUMBER and MUCH and MANY, in French and in English. In conclusion, many instances of French de (“of”) and English of that look determiner phrase (DP)-internal can be reanalyzed as being VP-external. What looks like movement of bare “quantifiers” such as peu (“few”/“little”) turns out to be remnant movement. In many cases there is reason to postulate the presence of an unpronounced AMOUNT or NUMBER or an unpronounced MUCH or MANY, both in French and in English.

This chapter brings order to the bewildering complexity of genitive placement in determiner phrase (DP) in Old English (OE). In OE DPs containing a determiner, a genitive, and the head noun, all orders are possible except those with the determiner after the noun. The four basic patterns are characterized as one structurally comparable to the modern s-genitive, one involving an incorporated genitive (as in modern N-N compounds), a postnominal genitive, and a pattern fronting the genitive from postnominal position. The first change in the system is loss of the postnominal genitive. Three subsequent developments are affected by this change: the reanalysis of genitive -s in pre-head position as a phrasal clitic, the development of by-marking for posthead external arguments, and the development of of-marking. The chapter shows that the notion of a prior change ‘affecting’ a subsequent one is complex: In the case of the reanalysis of genitive -s, for example, the earlier change does not force the subsequent one, but rather removes a cue that would have otherwise precluded the later change.

This chapter shows that, in contrast to Latin, the Romance languages present abundant evidence for the widespread existence of functional structure and associated functional categories in the left edge of the nominal, verbal, and clausal groups. Within the context of the discussion of the rise of configurationality in Chapter 3, these facts now find an immediate and natural explanation. In particular, we can link the rise of Romance functional structure directly to the emergence of configurationality: as long as Latin had a flat, non-configurational structure, it also lacked functional structure, which only began to emerge when the language started to develop configurationality, first at the level of the clause (CP) and in the prepositional group (PP), and subsequently within the verbal (IP) and nominal (DP) groups. In short, when in the passage from Latin to Romance the language began to project configurational phrase structure according to the universally available X-bar schema, the functional projections CP, PP, IP, and DP (and eventual splits thereof) came at once ‘for free’.

This chapter explores unpronounced elements in the context of a discussion of the English words few, little, many, much, and numerous. As is well known, few has regular comparative and superlative forms that make it natural to take the word as an adjective. Given this, the general parallelism between few and little, many, and much, combined with the more specific fact that they, too, have comparative and superlative forms, leads to the natural conclusion that little, many, and much are also adjectives. In the phrases many booksor few books, many and few are presumed to modify NUMBER rather than directly modifying books. This claim can be elevated to a claim about universal grammar (UG): in all languages, modifiers with the interpretation of many or few necessarily modify NUMBER (or number).

This chapter examines the correlation between the noun phrase and the verb phrase by focusing on the morphological and semantic properties of Case and agreement in a number of languages including Finnish, Scots Gaelic, and Eastern Armenian. Drawing on unpublished work of Jean-Roger Vergnaud, it argues that nominal and verbal phrases constitute a fixed set of primitive elements having a root, a category feature, and functional features of aspect and reference. The former functional feature is associated with an interpretation denoting “boundedness” while the latter is associated with an interpretation concerning “instantiation.” The chapter also discusses functional projections in the determiner phrase, checking relations and structural case, subjects, and Case marking in Eastern Armenian and Finnish.

This chapter discusses the local and global properties of English quantifiers. The local properties of English quantifiers include the noun property, the three semantic classes of determiners (Dets), generalizing Dets and Determiner Phrases (DPs), and non‐logical Dets. The global properties of English quantifiers include global logicality and first‐order definability.

This introductory chapter is organized into three parts. The first part focuses on the syntactic structure and compositional interpretation of determiner phrases, and frames the ontological issues related to reference to kinds in this context. It addresses a series of ontological issues relevant to the analysis of natural language: in order to account for linguistic data, must we postulate the existence of kinds, viewed as a type of entities, distinguished from particulars or tokens? What is the relationship between kinds and sets of entities, between kinds and properties, between kinds and sets of properties? The second part is comprised of three sections which are dedicated respectively to the stage-level/individual-level distinction, to the contribution of unboundedness and plurality, and to the dispositional reading of generic sentences. The questions addressed in this part pertain to the relationship between genericity, habituality, abilities, and dispositions. The third part examines the type of generic sentences, opposing analytic vs synthetic judgments, and raises the question of the notion of normality. It comprises two sections. The first section addresses the issue of the linguistic manifestation of the analytic/synthetic distinction and investigates the sources of the available interpretations for indefinite generic sentences, bare plurals, and definite plural generics. The second section discusses the notion of normality, comparing the view of normality as a statistical fact and the view of normality as a normative one.

This chapter focuses on polyadic quantification, which exists when n-tuples (n > 1) of determiner phrases (DPs) yield a single quantifier interpreted as quantifying over n-tuples of individuals. It begins by considering the ordinary standard English sentence No one ever showed me anything, in which the any phrase is commonly assumed to be a negative polarity item (NPI), licensed by the c-commanding no one phrase. It then gives a nonstandard example, No one ever showed me nothing, which represents a distinct phenomenon known as negative concord and is deformed by various NEG deletions. In yet another example, No man loves any woman, in which, under polyadic interpretation, the two quantifiers are not interpreted independently. The chapter also discusses syntactic determiner sharing between the different DPs whose noun phrases denote the sets quantified over, the semantics of determiner sharing, and the realizations of polyadic quantifier structures.

This chapter deals with the DP and its various layers. The lowest layer is the lexical domain, the NP. On top of the NP, there is a grammatical domain, calledsee Inflectional Phrase (IP), which contains the nominal inflectional categories of number and definiteness. The highest domain is the referential domain, the DP. The noun may be followed by complements and adjuncts, mainly in the form of PPs, and preceded by adjectives or quantifiers. Definiteness may be expressed as a preposed definite article or as a suffix on the noun. A non-modified noun moves to D, but an adjective blocks this movement and the definite article is spelt out as a separate word in D. There are several ways of expressing possession, especially in Norwegian, where the possessor can be either pre- or postnominal. In the other languages it is prenominal. Restrictive relative clauses are right-adjoined to IP, non-restrictive to DP. Universal quantifiers are generated above DP.

This chapter argues that Cinque's (2005) result concerning the noun phrase internal order of demonstrative, numeral, adjective, and noun can be derived with- appeal to Kayne's (1994) Linear Correspondence Axiom. It claims that a theory which allows branching to the left and to the right but restricts (at least certain kinds of) movement to the left has a better chance of explaining universal word-order asymmetries than theories based on the Linear Correspondence Axiom, because these necessarily invoke movement in an unconstrained way.

This chapter examines parametric variation within the nominal domain and shows that crosslinguistic variation across a variety of nominal constructions can be linked to a single parameter: the presence versus absence of an overt determiner in French versus Italian. Drawing on the determiner phrase hypothesis and remnant movement, it compares three structures in French and Italian: superlatives, which-phrases with a silent noun, and mass nouns/partitives. It illustrates how Romance bare plurals arguably contain a definite article of the sort seen overtly in French partitives. It also discusses interrogatives and English possessors.

Chapter 6 investigates determiner phrase (DP) structure. Arguments for the existence of a DP are given and an exemplification provided of filled and unfilled structural positions. Evidence suggests that N does not take a DP complement in modern Kayardild. Concord of case occurs within DP and of number within DP or NP under the constraint that Number heads, such as ‘one’, ‘two’, ‘many’, cannot inflect for number. Some case values only appear on DPs embedded in other DPs. Detailed arguments indicate that true locative case DPs do exist even though they are morphologically neutralized in most instances with DPs that are unmarked for case.

This chapter examines Horn clauses in relation to Negative Inversion. It first considers the properties of the Negative Inversion focus and the Negative Inversion Condition (first and second versions), along with various difficulties for the latter condition. In the sentences A human can know a finite number of primes and A finite number of primes can a human know, a finite number is decreasing in the first case, but the second is still ungrammatical. The chapter also considers a range of expressions with decreasing semantic values for which speakers differ with respect to whether Negative Inversion can be triggered, including cases of decreasing expressions that do not systematically form legitimate Negative Inversion foci but involve the numeral zero, which forms decreasing (in fact, antiadditive) determiner phrases. Finally, it discusses the Negative Inversion Condition (third and fourth versions), the relevance of scope to Negative Inversion, and the implications of quasi-Horn clauses for the Horn clause argument concerning the syntactic nature of Classical NEG Raising (NR).

This chapter focuses on the assumption that the negative polarity item (NPI) phrase occupies a scope position as well as the object position, suggesting that NEG raising takes place only from the scope position. It also claims that [[NEG SOME] thing] must occupy a scope position, a common assumption in the syntax and semantics literature; that for a determiner phrase (DP) with a scope occurrence, the scope occurrence is the unique available launching point for NEG raising; and that if the NEGs of quantifier DPs raise out of nonscope positions, “overgeneration” will result in certain clear cases, whereas if such raising can only launch from scope positions, the overgeneration is avoided. In the sentence Rodney claimed that Evelyn did not own any cheetah, the scope of the quantifier DP is internal to the complement clause. The chapter also considers a structure with negation in the main clause in the sentence Rodney did not claim that Evelyn owned any cheetah.

The foundations of direct reference semantics are laid out. Two key puzzles pertaining to the fundamental notions are examined. The first puzzle, from Frege, concerns the notions of informativeness and cognitive significance. It has been viewed for over40 years as threatening direct reference semantics with paradoxes. To the contrary, it is found that the relevant data is a consequence of the fundamental cognitive findings by direct reference theorists regarding what information ordinary users need in order to use language effectively. A second puzzle is concerned with the integration of a referential proper noun semantics with a general theory of compound determiner (“denoting”) phrases. This puzzle is said to concern the very possibility of generalizing the insights of direct reference into a general global semantics for natural language and a semantics that does not indulge in revisionist analyses of logical forms but takes visible surface forms of English at face value. The solution to this puzzle launches a sequel monograph, The Semantics and Logic of Visible English, where such a direct—logical form free—account of a general syntax-semantics interface is given.

This chapter discusses the representation of quantifier scope and its general assumptions. It takes the scope of quantifiers to be represented syntactically by the presence of determiner phrase (DP) in clausal scope positions. It outlines representations whose key feature is that relative semantic scope is represented by relative height in syntactic structures. Since the relations between multiple DPs in scope positions are hierarchically represented, the fact that some quantifier DPs in a clause scope over others falls out from the representation. The chapter also considers the assumption that there are principles relating syntactic scope to the corresponding semantics, along with evidence for the syntactic reality of syntactic scope positions directly related to negation. Finally, it discusses support for the syntactic representation of quantifier scope from neither expressions, negative parentheticals, appended phrases such as I guess not, and confirmation tags.

The fact that the Romance languages appear to be, from the viewpoint of syntactic typology, much closer to one another than to their documented common Latin ancestor is often cited as a striking case of parallel development. This poses a serious challenge to non-directional theories of syntactic change. This chapter tackles this by focusing on the observed sequence of morpho-syntactic changes affecting the realization of arguments of nominal heads (genitives) from Latin to Old French. It argues that the source of the Romance prepositional construction can be traced back to various parametric features inherited from Late Latin, where the genitive was still realized inflectionally. Old French inflectional genitives are a continuation of Latin from a syntactic viewpoint: The chapter proposes that they represent the result of a reanalysis of the Late Latin construction, and that the coexisting, innovating prepositional realizations share the same structural source.

This chapter reviews some crosslinguistic evidence that shows how pronominals agree with imposters. It suggests that languages divide into two groups depending on how pronominal agreement with imposters works. Specifically, it proposes a parameter for pronominal agreement in which an imposter A immediately antecedes a pronominal P, focusing on examples from Mandarin and Indonesian. It then compares Mandarin and Indonesian imposters with ass-camouflage construction determiner phrases.