Reformulating DP Analysis

Language and Linguistics Compass 2 (2008): 10.1111/j.1749-818x.2008.00091.
Reformulating the Determiner Phrase Analysis

Judy B. Bernstein*
William Paterson University of New Jersey
Abstract
Developed in the 1980s, the Determiner Phrase (DP) analysis stimulated a lot of
interest in the internal structure of nominal phrases and in the study of correspondences between nominal and clausal structure. Research across a range of
languages 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 distinguishes
a 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 issues
and proposals and suggests a reformulation that appeals to the feature person, a
feature found in both the nominal and clausal domains.
1. Introduction
Twenty-one years after Abneys (1987) influential work on the internal
structure of nominal phrases, this article reviews some of the original
arguments for Abneys DP (Determiner Phrase) analysis, examines several
proposals that grew out of the analysis, and offers a somewhat novel idea
for the reformulation of the core property of the functional head D.
During the 1980s, important work by Chomsky (1986) developed the
idea that verbs project functional structure [i.e., Inflection Phrase (IP), and
complementizer phrase (CP)], leaving open the question of if, and then
how, this idea could be applied to nouns. Over the course of the decade,
other researchers took up the topic of the internal structure of nominal
phrases. Abney (1987), Szabolcsi (1983 and later work) and many others
demonstrated that nominal phrases display clausal properties and proposed
that nouns, like verbs, must also project functional structure. Among the
properties of clauses that may also be found in nominals, we can observe:
(i) (identical) agreement morphology in nominals and clauses, in some
cases licensing pro-drop (non-expression of a pronominal subject); (ii)
instances of wh-movement in nominals and clauses; and (iii) parallel argument structure in nominals and clauses. I briefly discuss and provide evidence
of these properties here (some material drawn from Bernstein 2001).
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Journal Compilation 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
2 Judy B. Bernstein
Hungarian, a nominative/accusative language, displays identical agreement affixes on nouns and verbs. The data in (1) and (2) (drawn from
Szabolcsi 1983 and also discussed in Abney 1987) illustrate the Hungarian
nominal and clausal agreement patterns. In (1), Case is expressed on the
possessor and the head noun agrees with the possessor in person and
number. In (2) the sentential subject is also marked for Case and the verb
displays number and person agreement with the subject.
(1) a. az n- vendg-e-m
the I-nom guest-poss-1sg
my guest
b. a te- vendg-e-d
the you-nom guest-poss-2sg
your guest
c. (a) Mari- vendg-e-
(the) Mary-nom guest-poss-3sg
Marys guest
(2)
Mari- alud-t-
Mary-nom sleep-past-3sg
Mary slept.
(Hungarian)
(Hungarian)
Although Turkish nominal agreement morphology is not identical in form

to the corresponding verbal agreement morphology, Kornfilt (1984) has
shown for Turkish that both nominal and verbal agreement morphology
license pro-drop.
Horrocks and Stavrou (1987) show that in Greek, wh-movement
applies in a parallel fashion in nominal phrases and clauses [data from
Horrocks and Stavrou 1987, their (13) on p. 89]:
(3) a. to vivlio tinos
the book who-gen
whose book
b. tinos to vivlio
who-gen the book
whose book
(4) a. ekane ti
did-3sg what
he did what
b. ti ekane
what did-3sg
what did he do
(Greek)
(Greek)
In (3a), the echo question represents the assumed underlying position of

the wh-word tinos. In (3b), tinos has raised to a position peripheral to the
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Language and Linguistics Compass 2 (2008): 10.1111/j.1749-818x.2008.00091.x
Reformulating the Determiner Phrase Analysis 3
nominal phrase to vivlio (the book). In (4), we see the same pattern in the
clause: 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, as
illustrated in the examples in (5), which are adapted from Chomsky
(1970):
(5)
a. Rome destroyed Carthage

b. Romes destruction of Carthage.
The sentence in (5a) and the derived nominal in (5b) display both an
internal argument (theme), Carthage, of the lexical head (the verb destroy
or the noun destruction), and an external argument (agent), Rome. In both
domains, the agent subject may bind a reflexive anaphor:
(6)
a. Romei destroyed itselfi.

b. Romesi destruction of itselfi.
On the topic of argument structure in nominals, Cinque (1980) demonstrated that only the highest argument in the nominal domain can be
possessivized, and work by many authors since Chomsky has examined
issues related to the argument structure of nominals as well as the nature
of the lexical stem (nominal, verbal, or underspecified) in a derived
nominal like destruction (see, among many others, Grimshaw 1990; Giorgi
and Longobardi 1991; Picallo 1991; Valois 1991; Marantz 1997; Alexiadou
2001).
Analysis of these and other properties within the nominal domain and
an emerging recognition of general similarities between nominal phrases
and clauses led to proposals for parallel syntactic structures for the two
phrase types. Abney (1987) proposed that DP is the maximal functional
category projected by the lexical noun and hosts determiners (e.g., definite
articles). Abney reasoned that determiners in the nominal domain are
analogous to modals in the clausal domain, each lexicalizing a functional
head projected by the lexical noun or verb (Grimshaw 1991). Abneys
research on the syntax of DP led to work focusing on DP properties at
the 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 as
Case (e.g., Giusti 1995), deixis (e.g., Giusti 1993; Klinge 2008), and specificity (e.g., Campbell 1996; Ihsane and Puskas 2001).1
In this article, I focus on another correspondence between nominals
and clauses, namely, the predicate vs. argument distinction. I re-examine
some of the arguments for D as the functional head relevant to this
distinction (contrasting it with the parallel distinction in the clausal
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4 Judy B. Bernstein
domain), a proposal I ultimately adopt. I consider whether nominal arguments can be distinguished from nominal predicates in terms of interpretive
features. I observe, as many others have, that no single interpretive property
represents the fundamental nature of D(P), and I go on to suggest that the
interpretive properties can be derived from another more fundamental
property. Specifically, I develop the idea that D (and DP) is best viewed
as the locus of person. This property, I argue, underlies whether a given
nominal is referential, definite, and/or an argument (or a predicate).
Because of space limitations, I will not review here proposals for
functional projections intervening between NP and DP (e.g., NumberP,
GenderP, QuantifierP, and CaseP), but I will occasionally touch on issues
relevant to these proposals.
The article is organized as follows. In Section 2, I review some of the
original arguments for DP, including its relevance to the predicate/argument distinction. In this regard, I consider the role of D in nominal
phrases and identify it, following others before me, as the functional head
relevant to establishing reference and anaphoric dependencies. In Section
3, I develop the idea that person is the core property of D and the
feature underlying reference, providing some support for the idea from
constructions involving personal pronouns, definite articles, and proper
names. Section 4 offers some concluding remarks.
2. Predicates and Arguments
Abney (1987) and others developed the influential idea of a nominal
functional projection, DP, analogous to Chomskys (1986) clausal functional
projection, CP:2
(7) clauses:
(8) nominals:
[CP [C C [IP [I I [VP [V V ]]]]]]

[DP [D D [NP [N N ]]]]
For a language like English, Abney proposed that determiner elements,

such as the definite article in examples like (9a), are the lexical instantiation
of 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 the
functional head I.3 Following insights from work by Postal (1966), Abney
further claimed that English pronouns in examples like (10) also occupy D.
(9)
a.
b.
(10) a.
b.
c.
the linguist(s)
[DP [D the [NP [N linguists ]]]]
we linguists
you linguists
[DP [D we/you [NP [N linguists ]]]]
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The structural distinction between NP and DP also maps onto a semantic

and functional distinction between predicates on the one hand, and arguments, those expressions that satisfy the thematic requirements of lexical
heads, nouns, and verbs. Longobardi (1994), building on work by Szabolcsi
(1987), Stowell (1989), and others, argued convincingly that an argument
must 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 examples
in (11) illustrate the distinction [examples from Longobardi 1994 (19)].
(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)
The determinerless nominal predicate medico of (11a), an NP according to
this 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 relative
clause must be an argument and the bare noun medico cannot satisfy this
requirement. The grammaticality of un medico as the head of a relative
clause in (11b) strongly suggests that this phrase is a (DP) argument.
Under this general approach, parametric differences among languages
with respect to obligatory vs. optional appearance of overt lexical material
in D reduce to featural differences of this functional head.
Still pursuing the idea of parallels between nominals and clauses, we can
ask if the predicate/argument distinction just examined in the nominal
domain is relevant at the clausal level as well. Recall that under the
approach adopted here, the lexical projection NP corresponds to a predicate and the functional projection DP to an argument. Within the
domain of the clause, we might expect that IP corresponds to a (clausal)
predicate and CP to a (clausal) argument. This prediction is borne out
and can be illustrated straightforwardly by the English examples in (12).
(12) a. [IP Tiffany married Louise].
b. *[IP Tiffany married Louise] didnt surprise me.
c. [CP That [IP Tiffany married Louise]] didnt surprise me.
The matrix sentence in (12a) (a proposition but not an argument) would
correspond to IP. When the same proposition appears as the sentential
subject in (12b), ungrammaticality results. This is because the proposition
in this case, as a sentential subject of the verb surprise, is not in the
form 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 to
Szabolcsi, in the nominal domain definite articles function as subordinators.
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6 Judy B. Bernstein
The approach pursued by Longobardi (following Stowell, Szabolcsi)

with respect to the NP/DP distinction and its relation to argumenthood
has been an influential one, and I adopt it here as well as in previous
work. However, the literature also features another important analysis
worthy of consideration. Chierchia (1998) takes the predicate/argument
distinction to vary cross-linguistically: some languages allow NPs to be
arguments (e.g., in English) and in other languages only DPs can be
arguments (e.g., in Italian). So whereas a Longobardi-style approach takes
the locus of parametric variation to reside in the feature content of
functional heads like D (an idea about parametric variation going back to
Borer 1984), according to Chierchias Nominal Mapping Parameter, the
locus of parametric variation is not with functional (or lexical) heads per
se, but rather in the type of phrase that functions as a predicate or an
argument in a particular language.4 I come back to these proposals very
briefly at the end of the article (Section 3.4), where I share some speculations 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 not
contemplate cases involving non-argument DPs (see Mandelbaum 1994
for some relevant discussion). In this regard, vocative expressions, standardly taken to be predicative (see Szabolcsi 1987; Longobardi 1994), are
worthy of examination in light of recent evidence that they may in fact
involve DP structure. Consider the following examples:
(13) a.
b.
c.
d.
Kids! Come here!

*The kids! Come here!
Patricia! Come here!
You (kids)! Come here!
Example (13a) with bare plural kids! is expected as a vocative; the absence
of an overt article is consistent with a predicate (NP) structure.5 Correspondingly, the impossibility of the kids! in (13b) as a vocative in English
is consistent with the basic idea that the definite article corresponds to D
and vocatives, as non-arguments, do not involve a DP layer.6 The examples
in (13c,d) with a proper name (Patricia) and a pronoun (you) are more
problematic, because these expressions may also function as arguments,
suggesting that they are DPs.7 The internal structures adopted for these
examples [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 include
relative clauses, demonstratives, and even definite articles, Crisma (1997:
31, 135137) in fact proposes that vocatives may have a D position as part
of their structure (although the D may not always be lexicalized). Given
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this broadening of the characterization of vocatives, we are led to the

conclusion that at least some non-arguments may include a DP layer. Must
the Stowell/Szabolcsi intuition distinguishing predicates (as NPs) and arguments (as DPs) be abandoned? Not entirely. In fact, a re-characterization
of the generalization still evokes the original intuition. Crisma (1997: 1389;
see also Longobardi 2008) partitions entities (here, nominal phrases) into
properties and individuals (see Carlson 1977; Chierchia 1984). Very
loosely 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, which
typically correspond to arguments.9 What of vocatives? Crisma reasons that,
although not arguments, vocatives share a property with them: both types
of 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 what
Crisma proposes, is that both arguments and vocatives denote individuals
and 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 sense
of examples in (13c,d) with proper name and pronoun: in both examples,
a DP layer is projected despite the fact that these vocative expressions are
non-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 names
and personal pronouns, both possible as vocatives and now seen to arguably involve DP, pattern differently from a nominal expression with a
definite article, barred in vocative expressions in many languages? The
solution I propose to distinguish the grammatical (13c,d) from the
ungrammatical (13b) will require a further consideration, which I take up
in Section 3.
Having reviewed the proposal that DPs correspond to arguments and
now also to vocatives (as individuals), and NPs to properties, I turn next
to an examination of some issues relevant to the identification of the
property 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-style

approach) or only some languages do so (under a Chierchia-style
approach), it seems reasonable to assume that at least in some languages a
nominal phrase may not function as an argument, as a type of individualdenoting 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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8 Judy B. Bernstein
(14) a. Lantica Roma era una citt potente.

the ancient Rome was a city powerful
b. Roma antica era una citt potente
Rome ancient was a powerful city
c. *Antica Roma era una citt potente.
(Italian)
The contrast between the grammatical (14a) and ungrammatical (14c)

illustrates that, at least for Italian, the definite article is necessary, presumably because antica Roma, as an argument, must be a DP and cannot be
without a definite article.
The grammaticality of (14b) is interesting, because the subject Roma
antica lacks an overt determiner and yet is grammatical. This suggests that
the requirement for Italian that D be filled can be satisfied in another way.
For examples like (14b), Longoardi (1994 and later work) has developed
the idea that the proper name Roma overtly raises from N to D, the locus
of reference. The contrast between the internal structures of lantica Roma
and Roma antica would be represented as follows, abstracting away from
the position of the adjective:
(15) a. [DP la (antica) [NP Roma ]]
b. [DP Romai (antica) [NP ti ]]
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).
(16) a. Ancient Rome was a powerful city.
b. *Rome ancient was a powerful city.
Longobardi (1994) postulated that the movement of proper names to D,
a general requirement of arguments cross-linguistically, is covert in
English. A Chierchia-style approach would take the same facts to indicate
that English allows NPs (as well as DPs) to be arguments, unlike Italian
arguments that must be DPs.10
Assuming that the relevance of D to argumenthood is ultimately supported, we can ask exactly what D (e.g., the definite article) contributes
to the nominal phrase. For many authors, a nominal phrase is definite by
virtue of the presence of a definite article, regardless of any effect the
article may have on interpretation. Other authors focus on the possible
interpretive effects of the definite article (or D more generally), among
them definiteness, specificity, referentiality, identifiability, and deixis. An
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extensive review of these proposals is beyond the scope of this article (but
see Lyons 1999 for extensive discussion and Alexiadou et al. 2007: 578
for a survey of the issues and proposals).11 However, a quick examination
of some simple examples illustrates that no single interpretive property
characterizes D, even though all the examples include a definite article.
For each example in (17), the accompanying parenthetical indicates the
most salient interpretation for the relevant nominal phrase, but not always
the only one [(17g) is from Dchaine and Wiltschko 2002, their (61b)].
Did you go to the beach when
you visited Croatia?
b. I protected my eyes from the
sun.
c. The lion is a dangerous animal.
d. I picked up the car from the
mechanic.
e. Je me suis cass le bras. (French)
(17) a.
f.
g.
I CL-me have broken the arm

(Spanish)
I broke my arm.
Sal con la mam.12
went-out with the mother
I went out with my mother.
Jean aime le vin. (French)
(non-specific)
(unique)
(generic)
(possessive)
(inalienable
possession)
(possessive)
(generic or
definite)
Jean likes (the) wine.

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 observations
about the ambiguity of (17g) with a definite article are analogous to the
more general observation I make here. Their analysis of the ambiguity
distinguishes two different internal structures, one corresponding to each
of the interpretations. I return to their proposal in Section 3.2 within the
context 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 reference. Building on early Minimalist ideas of Chomsky (1993) and the work
of Szabolcsi (1983 and later work) and Stowell (1989), Longobardi (1994,
1996) proposed that a reference feature is encoded in D and that argument
nominal phrases must check this feature, subject to parametric variation
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10 Judy B. Bernstein
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 therefore
an important object of study. In this regard, the examples from (14) serve
to 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 D
carries a referential index, which she takes to be an independent phi
feature and so syntactic in nature.14 In order to control the number of
possible referential indices in the lexicon, corresponding to a potentially
limitless number of entities, Pereltsvaig invokes processing limitations and
suggests that indices may be reused in different discourses (2007: 6970).15
If Pereltsvaigs appeal to processing limitations may serve to restrain the
number of referential indices from reaching infinity, why do the core phi
features (number, gender, person) never seem to require such restraining?
As far as I know, the possible values for these core phi features are quite
limited (e.g., singular, dual, and plural number), even considering
languages with a rich array of gender classes.
I will not follow Pereltsvaigs proposal that a referential index is an
independent phi feature, but instead I will take reference to be derivable
from the core feature person (see Section 3). As MacLaughlin (1997: 101,
footnote 2) points out, person plays a crucial role in syntactic phenomena
related to reference, such as anaphora, verbal agreement, and the licensing
of null arguments. In other words, in my view these syntactic phenomena
rely on the feature person, as does the computation of reference.
Although I do not adopt Pereltsvaigs proposal about a referential index as
an independent phi feature, I do accept the more general idea that D is
the head relevant to interpreting the reference of a nominal phrase.
Unlike approaches of Longobardi and Pereltsvaig, Baker (2003, see also
2008) argues that it is the noun that carries a referential index. Under this
approach and thinking of the internal structure of the Italian examples in
(14) with proper names, the reference (or referential index) of a nominal
expression could plausibly be established via the base position of the
proper 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 in
Italian, but apparently not in English. The explanation could still reduce
to the individuals vs. properties distinction discussed above, with the
question left open about the role of D, perhaps playing no role in
reference at all.
In order to tease apart the relevance of D vs. N in establishing referential dependencies, I return to complex nominals, those involving personal
pronouns plus nouns. I repeat here the examples and structures from (10):16
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(18) a. we linguists
b. you linguists
c. [DP [D we/you [NP [N linguists ]]]]
Recall that I adopted (18c) as the representation of the internal structure
for these types of examples. Let us next examine the referential dependencies admitted between these complex nominals and anaphoric expressions. Consider now the examples in (19).
(19) a. Wei linguists like to study ourselvesi/ouri own languages.
b. *We linguistsi like to study themselvesi/theiri own languages.
Here we observe some evidence that, at least for certain languages, D
rather than N is the relevant head for establishing referential dependencies:
the personal pronoun we in (19a), but not the noun linguists in (19b), may
bind a pronominal anaphor.17
Now although examples like (19) are consistent with Longobardis proposal about the relevance of D to reference, they raise another set of
questions. Until this point, I have focused almost exclusively on definite
articles, because these elements are the prototypical candidates for D. If
personal pronouns also correspond to D recall Postals (1966) intuition
we need to re-evaluate the characterization of D, which was developed
primarily around examples with definite articles [recall examples in (17)].
The idea I develop in the next section in fact crucially relies on examples
like (18) and (19). Specifically, I will appeal to the person feature of these
personal pronouns and suggest that this property characterizes D; I will
furthermore suggest that person is necessary for establishing referential
dependencies.
3. D Encodes Person
In this section, I explore and develop the idea that person is the core
feature of D(P), building on recent work by Longobardi (2008) and Bernstein (2008).18 The intuition is that the individuals (DP) vs. properties
(NP) distinction, referential dependencies, and even definiteness rely on
person. Person, which is lexicalized in many languages through personal
pronouns (also reflexives and other anaphors) and also is displayed in the
clausal domain in the form of verbal agreement marking, identifies a
nominal 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, them
and also lexical nominal phrases). So person, like other core phi features
such as number, has a limited number of values: 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person
(some authors arguing for 4th, 5th, and 6th).
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I begin the section by examining the status of first- and second-person

pronouns in predicate and argument expressions, focusing the discussion
around familiar English examples involving the already-seen pronounplus-noun construction (we linguists) and then simple personal pronouns
(we). For both sorts of pronominals, I argue that the D position is relevant
to interpretation (reference) through the grammatical feature person.
Next, I look at so-called definite nominal phrases, those displaying a
definite article (e.g., the), a demonstrative (e.g., this), or even a third-person
pronoun (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 homogenous 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 we
saw above in (17) with definite articles. In a section on proper names,
I interpret the fact that such elements require or admit a definite article
in many languages as support for Longobardis (1994) idea that they are
underlyingly of category N, like common nouns. Because no semantic or
pragmatic information is conveyed by the so-called expletive definite
article, I speculate that its function is to supply a person feature to DP. At
the end of the section, I briefly discuss correspondences between the
expression of person in the nominal and clausal domains.
3.1
PERSONAL PRONOUNS
Recall Postals intuition about we linguists, that we corresponds to a determiner, taken to be D since Abney (1987).19 Examples like (19) further
illustrated that we, rather than linguists, serves as the antecedent for a
possessive or reflexive anaphor, supporting the general hypothesis that D
encodes person and that person is relevant for establishing referential/
anaphoric dependencies.
Related to the Postal examples with pronouns and determiners are
the vocative facts discussed in Section 2. The examples are repeated here
in (20).
(20) a.
b.
c.
d.
Kids! Come here!

*The kids! Come here!
Patricia! Come here!
You (kids)! Come here!
Recall that I followed Crismas idea that vocatives may include a DP

structural layer. This provides an analysis of proper names and personal
pronouns in these constructions. An example like (20b) with the definite
article was left unexplained. I appeal here to another property of vocative
expressions, namely, a required second-person interpretation that is either
lexically expressed or implicit (see Szabolcsi 1987). I repeat the examples
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from (20) above in (21), representing in upper case letters (in parentheses)
what I take to be unpronounced material.
(21) a.
b.
c.
d.
(YOU) kids!
*The kids!
(YOU) Patricia!
You (KIDS)!
I suggest that the common noun and proper name in (21a,c) have an
implicit second person pronoun, that this YOU occupies D, and that the
common noun or proper name occupies N.20 In (21d), the pronoun you
would again occupy D, and N would contain an unpronounced noun. All
the examples in (21) now have the same internal structure and all involve
second person, except for (21b). The ungrammaticality of *the kids! as a
vocative is now accounted for by the absence of second person, which
should be explicitly or implicitly in D. Moreover, and as I develop in the
next section, the definite article the in D identifies the DP vocative as
third person.
We have now seen two sorts of constructions involving personal pronouns plus nouns, the pronouns taken to occupy D and to supply person
and the nouns to occupy N. If these personal pronouns are D elements
in vocative expressions like you guys! and also in arguments like we linguists,
what of simple personal pronouns like we, whose referential and argument
status are equivalent to those with accompanying nouns (explicit or implicit)?
Work by Cardinaletti (1994) and Longobardi (1994) illustrates that personal
pronouns used in non-argument function as exclamations arguably lack a
determiner layer and correspond to N underlyingly:
(22)
a. poor [NP us]!

b. poor [NP me]!
c. poor [NP you]!
These same pronouns used in argument function must raise to D, judging

by the impossibility of a preceding definite article (23a) or numeral (23b).
The internal structure proposed for the grammatical we two (i.e., pronoun
preceding the numeral) is provided in (23c).
(23) a. *the [NP we/us ]
b. *two [NP we/us]
c. [DP we/usi . . . (two) . . . [NP ti ] ]
In the above discussion, we have seen that in two sorts of expressions D
is the relevant position, underlying or derived, for personal pronouns.
2008 The Author
Why would that be? From the perspective developed here, person-bearing
elements are associated with D precisely because person is its core property.
I take this property to underlie the referential and anaphoric properties
of nominal arguments, and now also vocatives, although I have not
articulated the specifics of such an analysis. Important questions remain,
such as: What is the mechanism responsible for the raising of personal
pronouns to D? Is it a feature of the pronoun itself that compels it to
raise or is it a feature of the functional head D? If the latter, does D
have a probe for person (see Chomsky 2000, 2001 for the idea of functional heads as probes for features)? These questions must remain open for
now.
In the next section, we will see how the basic idea that D encodes
person may generalize to so-called definite expressions, particularly those
involving 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 definite

article does not always yield a definite interpretation, a point made by
many authors including Dchaine and Wiltschko (2002: 4289). They
observed that French l- (definite article) forms do not always involve a
definite interpretation and in many cases may yield either a generic interpretation or a definite one, as illustrated by the two possible glosses for
(24):
(24) Jean aime le vin.
Jean likes (the) wine.
(French)
Their approach to pronouns and determiners cross-linguistically distinguishes three basic types, corresponding either to the syntactic category
NP (true predicates), DP (true arguments), and P (intermediate status).
Under their analysis, le vin would correspond to a DP under the definite
interpretation of (24) (this particular wine) and to P under the generic
interpretation (wine in general). Whether or not le vin is definite, it
functions as an argument and so could not correspond to NP under their
analysis. The internal structures they assign, corresponding to the possible
interpretations, are the following [their (i) and (ii) in Dchaine and Wiltschko 2002, footnote 21 on p. 430]:
(25) a. [D [ le [NP vin]]]
the wine (definite)
b. [ le [NP vin]]
wine (generic)
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According to Dchaine and Wiltschkos analysis, the definite description

in (25a) does not derive directly from the presence of the article, but
rather from the presence of an unfilled D, which they take to be necessary
for the relevant interpretation; the generic interpretation corresponds to
a structure lacking a DP layer in (25b), but still an argument because of
its P status. Their analysis, which is meant to generalize across Romance
languages, includes the idea that definite articles (like pronouns) may
correspond to different functional categories across languages.
I follow a somewhat different approach to the English th- and Romance
l- article and pronominal forms (building on Bernstein 2008; see also
Radford 1997: 187ff.; Lyons 1999: 27), and treat them as a homogenous
group. In particular, I take the definite article in languages like English
and French to consist of a th- or an l- third-person morpheme.21 In this
way, both of the expressions with definite articles in (25) may be arguments by virtue of the third-person morpheme, without definiteness as a
necessary corollary and without positing additional functional structure to
distinguish (25a) from (25b). The same analysis can apply to demonstratives, which are not always deictic. The example in (26a) is non-specific
and the one in (26b) is deictic (discussed in Bernstein 1997; see Fodor
and Sag 1982).
(26) a. This guy (on the subway last night)
gave me his seat.
b. This guy (right here) just gave me
a dollar!
(indefinite)
(deictic)
Thus, a th- demonstrative may be neutral or vague on deixis, just as a

th- definite article may be neutral on definiteness. Nevertheless, from my
perspective, a nominal phrase with a th- demonstrative will always contain
a person feature expressed through th-, and will therefore function as an
argument.22
We saw above that English th- forms like definite articles and demonstratives are not uniformly interpreted as definite and deictic, respectively.
I suggested that th- contributes a (third-)person feature, and yet is neutral
with respect to definiteness and deixis. What of third-person personal
pronouns like they? Consider the examples in (27).
(27) a. They (over there) are Italian.
b. They say its gong to rain tonight.
(deictic)
(impersonal)
We seem to find the same potential ambiguity with these forms. As

personal pronouns (containing th-), the forms display a person feature and
function as arguments (here, nominative subjects). This provides some
2008 The Author
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, a
question arises about the singular h- pronouns in English (e.g., him, her,
and (h)it).23 In particular, do these pronouns have an identifiable person
morpheme? My approach to these pronouns draws on Dchaine and
Wiltschkos observations and their examples of word formation with hpronouns [e.g., he-goat, she-society, from 2002, (51)]; these ideas are
developed more extensively in Bernstein (2008). I take the contribution
of 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 leaders
and/or residents). So the idea I pursue is that rather than person, hencodes gender, which I associate with N, thinking of languages with
robust gender systems (see Ritter 1993 for the idea that gender is a feature
of 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 issue
about the nature of third person and how exactly it differs from first/
second person, an issue addressed by many authors. Kayne (2000), for
example, building on Benveniste (1966: 228), argues that third person
does not form a natural class, unlike first and second person. Harley and
Ritter (2002) follow Forchheimers (1953) idea that first and second
person are marked compared with unmarked third person (see also Lyons
1999: 316). The idea that th- may encode third person (just as m- and y- may
encode first and second person) is apparently at odds with these other
views about third person. I will maintain that third person does count as
a full-fledged person, although its interpretation and syntactic nature do
tend to differ from that of first/second person.24
In terms of interpretation, first- and second-person pronouns refer to
speaker and hearer, respectively. In this sense, they are deictic and their
reference is specific. The interpretation of third-person pronouns, involving
neither speaker nor hearer, is potentially vaguer and as we saw not
necessarily deictic. Unlike first or second person, the vagueness of third
person pronouns allows for participation in bound variable anaphora:25
(28) a. Everyonei likes theiri (own) mother
b. *Everyonei likes myi/youri (own) mother.
In contrast to my treatment of third person in the nominal domain, thirdperson verbal agreement is often less robust than that of first or second
person. In many Indo-European languages, for example, the third-person
verbal form is a bare form, whereas the first- and second-person forms
are identifiable via dedicated verbal morphology (see discussion in Lyons
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1999: 316). In addition and probably related to the interpretational vagueness of third person, definite articles and third-person clitic pronouns in
many Indo-European languages agree with nouns in number and gender
(and sometimes case), unlike first- and second-person forms (see Kayne
2000; Nevins 2007).
3.3
PERSON WITH PROPER NAMES
Longobardi (1994) (see also Vergnaud and Zubizarreta 1992) shows that proper
names 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
(29) a. Maria
b. la Maria
Mary
(30) a. Pere
b. en Pere
Peter
(Italian)
(Catalan)
Longobardi hypothesizes that the function of the expletive definite article

in these cases is to fill in the D position when the proper name itself does
not raise to D. Recall that for Longobardi the D position is necessary
for referential expressions like proper names. According to the proposal
developed here, the article supplies a person marker, spelling out the
third-person status of the proper name in languages (like Italian) that also
allow raising of the proper name to D. The expression of the expletive
article is not limited to Italian and Catalan, but rather seems to be possible
in a number of the worlds languages.
If the so-called expletive definite articles in the preceding examples
with proper names may be reinterpreted as person markers, those examples
would now resemble those with true personal pronouns, such as the following:
(31) a. We Marys have to stick together.
b. You Marys have to stick together.
In these examples, the first- and second-person pronouns identify the
person and in turn the reference of the nominal subjects, just as in the
examples we saw with common nouns in (18) from Section 2.2. Therefore, in all these cases in (29)(31), the insertion of a person-bearing
element 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).
2008 The Author
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, illustrate
that it is the person feature of D (not N) that is relevant for the syntactic
relation that establishes anaphoric dependencies.
(3 2 )
a.
b.
c.
[We Marys]i have to watch ouri backs/ourselvesi.

*[We Marys]i have to watch theiri backs/themselvesi.
[The Marys]i (of the world) have to watch theiri backs/
themselvesi.
Example (32a) shows that a possessive or reflexive pronoun our(selves) is

licit when its antecedent is the pronoun we (in D); example (32b) shows
that 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 definite
article) in (32c) that provides the antecedent for the third-person anaphors.
Recall Longobardis idea (see Section 2.1) that proper names start out
in N and raise to D in order to check a referential feature in D. I have
retained Longobardis idea about N-to-D raising and identified Ds
relevant property to be person rather than reference (as Longobardi has in
recent work, see Longobardi 2008). Personal pronouns spell out this property just as, I claim, definite articles do (even the so-called expletive ones).
What about cases of articleless proper names like Mary that arguably raise
to D overtly in Italian but not in English? In particular, does Mary have
a person feature? The straightforward answer is yes, but some of the details
need to be further articulated.27 The basic idea proposed by Longobardi
is that proper names do have a third-person feature but that their movement to D is unrelated to their morphology (unlike pronouns and definite
articles); instead, it is related to their interpretation. For this reason, unlike
pronouns, proper names do not move to D overtly in all languages.
Longobardi develops a parametric approach to person and distinguishes
strong from weak person languages. In the former (like Italian), proper
names 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 the
person head unifies several interrelated ideas about nominal phrases in
general and DPs in particular. First, it offers an explanation for why
elements like definite articles and personal pronouns may occupy the same
functional head, namely, both sorts of elements encode the same grammatical information, person, whether we adhere to Postals intuition that
pronouns are determiners or follow Lujns (2001) idea that determiners
are modified pronouns.28 Second, it identifies a property characterizing
some nominal phrases but not others, and as such could turn out to be
the criterion distinguishing DPs from NPs and consequently arguments
2008 The Author
and vocatives (as individuals) from predicates (as properties). Third, it

provides D an underlying phi feature on which to build or derive interpretive properties such as reference and even definiteness. Still to be
worked 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 about

correspondences between person in the nominal domain and person in
the clausal domain. Unlike the other nominal/clausal correspondences
examined 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 person
across the two domains is limited, although there have been many proposals in the literature analyzing person agreement markers in the verbal
domain as incorporated pronouns, at least for certain languages. Siewierska (2004: 1227) extensively discusses and compares anaphoric pronouns
and person agreement across a broad array of languages, distinguishing among
languages exhibiting pronominal agreement markers, syntactic agreement
markers, and ambiguous agreement markers (Siewierska 2004: 126),
observing that the particular characterization of person marking is often
determined by a linguists theoretical framework (Siewierska 2004: 125).
For present purposes, it is interesting to observe that languages vary
significantly in terms of if and where person is expressed. In the Romance
languages, for example, person is typically expressed robustly both in the
clausal and nominal domains, except that in several Romance languages
the 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 person
marking in the nominal domain.29 In other languages (perhaps Chinese),
there is no obvious evidence of person in either the nominal or clausal
domain.30 In addition to being a worthwhile focus of study in its own
right for typological reasons, a comparison of person across the two
domains may prove useful for discovering how grammars of natural
language are organized and how they change over time.31
For my own particular proposal about person, languages (like Japanese
or Chinese) that lack definite articles and also personal pronouns (including
in the form of reflexive anaphors) raise important issues. In particular, if
a language lacks person marking in the nominal domain does it necessarily
lack the functional category DP? If so, what category do arguments
belong to in such a language? Recall that in this article I have pursued
the idea that the presence or absence of person (encoded in D) underlies
whether a nominal phrase is an argument or not. Another set of questions
arises with languages that lack person marking in the nominal domain and
yet display person marking in the clausal domain: what is the trigger for
2008 The Author
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 be
shown that languages like Japanese allow NPs in argument function, this
would provide support for Chierchias (1998) approach to arguments
cross-linguistically (i.e., they are or can be NPs in some languages and
must be DPs in others).32 If these languages lack DP, how is person that
is relevant to interpretation computed? For those languages like Japanese
arguably lacking grammatically encoded person, correlating with absence
of DP, Longobardi (2008) speculates that person is interpreted pragmatically.
This parametrization of phi features grammatically encoded in some
languages, pragmatically interpreted in others should then generalize beyond
person to other phi features, such as number. Further cross-linguistic investigation will determine whether such predictions are borne out.
4. Conclusion
The DP analysis has been influential and fueled a lot of research on the
internal structure of nominal phrases. In this short article, I have reviewed
some of the data illustrating cross-linguistic correspondences between
nominal phrases and clauses, data pointing to parallel internal structures
in the nominal and clausal domains. I focused on one particular property
arguably shared by clausal CP and nominal DP, namely, their status as
thematic arguments (matching up with IP and NP predicates, respectively).
Directing my attention to DP arguments, I asked if some identifiable
property of the functional head D is responsible for the argument status
of DP. Following other authors, I observed that elements typically associated
with D do not have or contribute a consistent interpretation. I concluded
that Ds role is probably not involved directly in interpretation, but might
certainly be involved derivationally. This general conclusion is consistent
with recent proposals that some interpretive features may not be encoded
in the syntax at all, or instead may be hosted in the left periphery of the
clause or nominal DP.
The reformulation I proposed for DP takes D to be a nominal functional head encoding person (1st, 2nd, or 3rd), information upon which
reference and anaphora can be established. Examining expressions with
personal pronouns, determiners (definite articles, demonstratives), and
proper names, I conjectured that what the relevant D elements share, or
contribute, is person, information that helps us determine whether the
individual denoted by a nominal phrase is one of the participants in the
conversation (first, second person) or not (third person).
Short Biography
Judy B. Bernsteins research focuses on morpho-syntactic phenomena, in
particular on micro-parametric variation in Romance languages and more
2008 The Author
recently in varieties of English. She has worked extensively on nominal

structure and has published articles in Language, Lingua, Linguistic Inquiry
and Probus. She is currently involved in a collaborative project on the
morpho-syntax of Appalachian English. She has been awarded an American
Council of Learned Societies fellowship, a Fulbright grant, and a National
Science Foundation grant. Before coming to William Paterson University,
where she is Associate Professor of Linguistics, she taught at Syracuse
University and before that she was a postdoctoral fellow at the University
of Southern Maine. She holds a BA in Spanish and Psychology from the
University at Albany, an MA in Teaching English as a Second Language
from Hunter College, and a PhD in Linguistics from The Graduate
Center of the City University of New York.
Notes
* Correspondence address: Judy B. Bernstein, William Paterson University of New Jersey, 300
Pompton Rd., Wayne, NJ 07470, USA. Email: bernsteinj@wpunj.edu.
1
As far as I know, Giusti is the only author to associate Case with D directly. Recent work by
Watanabe (2006) posits a DP-internal CaseP for Japanese, an idea that has appeared over the years
in work on several languages. Similarly for deixis, Roca (1996) has posited a DP-internal
DemonstrativeP, unlike other authors (e.g., Giusti 1993) who take demonstrative elements to
be adjectival (Dryer 1992) and interpreted through D(P), though not corresponding to D
underlyingly. 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 left
periphery of the clause).
2
Abneys proposal actually aligned DP with IP, but that would no longer be the relevant
analogy.
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, it
may 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 fact
is unexpected under the NP (predicate) approach to vocatives, but also under my proposed
approach to vocatives. Dchaine and Wiltschkos (2002) approach to the definite article in
French (see discussion in Section 3.2) would offer an account, because for them the definite
article does not correspond to D in French.
7
In argument function, both sorts of expressions appear as subjects of lexical verbs: Patricia met
an intelligent woman; You kids talk too much.
8
Longobardi (2008) illustrates the notion of properties, typically adjectives or nouns used as
predicates: 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, Gold
is precious.
10
In this regard, the question of English bare plural arguments is crucial: Girls enrolled in science
courses. For Chierchia, the subject (girls) would be an NP argument; for Longobardi, the subject
would involve a null D.
11
Lyons (1999) extensively reviews the concept of definiteness from various theoretical
perspectives, analyses ranging across notions of familiarity, identifiability, inclusiveness, uniqueness,
and presupposition. As Lyons points out (1999: 274), no one approach is able to account for
the full range of facts; he takes identifiability (i.e., a DPs referent is identifiable to the speaker
and hearer) to be the pragmatic property that definiteness encodes (Lyons 1999: 278).
2008 The Author
12
Francisco Ordez (personal communication) points out that he would only use this when
talking among family members.
13
For a DP argument like the lion, Longobardi, building on work by Carlson (1977), appeals
to a distinction between kind referring for the generic interpretation and individual referring
for the definite one.
14
She distinguishes coindexing from coreference, which she takes to be a semantic/pragmatic
notion, following Fiengo and May (1994; see Pereltsvaig 2007: 678).
15
Pereltsvaig (2007: 70) discusses sign languages such as American Sign Language (as described
in MacLaughlin 1997), which assign reference spatially. Unlike MacLaughlin (1997: 59), who
takes these spatial loci to involve person, Pereltsvaig takes the relatively large number of spatial
loci in sign languages to support her proposal of referential indices, which would similarly
involve 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 person
in 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 proposal
that th- encodes third person). Although *I linguist displays person through I, it lacks number
agreement between the singular noun linguist and the pronoun I, which Kayne (1989) argued
is 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 of
h- pronouns in this construction (*he/him linguist), see Section 3.2 for the idea that h- does not
encode person, but rather gender.
17
I expect this to be the case in languages admitting this type of construction. Italian, for
example, displays the same pattern: Noi italiani ammiriamo il nostro presidente (We Italians admire
our president.).
18
I depart from Lyons (1999: 313) approach, which conflates person and definiteness and starts
from the observation that personal pronouns and so-called personal determiners (e.g., we linguists) come from the same source (Lyons 1999: 310). I also depart from the specifics, but not
the spirit, of Platzack (2004), who takes person to correspond to a functional projection internal
to DP.
19
Roehrs (2005), on the basis of new data and arguments, concludes, as Postal did, that the
relationship between the determiner pronoun and noun is one of complementation and not
apposition.
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 the
right 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 D
underlyingly (see Giusti 1993; Bernstein 1997). In this way, they would resemble the simple
pronouns discussed above.
23
Historically, the neutral pronoun it patterned with the other h- forms: her, him, and hit. The
form 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 constraint
led 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, particularly
in colloquial language. This is consistent with the claim that th- (and not h-) encodes third
person.
26
Catalan reserves this form of the definite article for proper names. With common nouns, the
masc. sg. form of the article would be el: el gos the dog (see Longobardi 1994: 656 for
discussion).
27
Recall that Longobardi (2008) distinguishes individuals from properties, only the former
involving person specification.
28
Historically, many present-day determiners developed from pronouns or demonstratives.
2008 The Author

29
Varieties of English may differ as to which phi feature is encoded in the verbal system. In
current work, Raffaella Zanuttini and I contrast what we take to be singular number expressed
through verbal -s in standard English (following Kayne 1989) to what we propose to be third
person 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) appeals
additionally to differences between post-copular instrumental and nominative nominal phrases
in Russian to argue for the DP status of the latter but not the former. Interestingly, and as
expected given her analysis, post-copular pronouns are also typically nominative (Pereltsvaig
2007: 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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Language and Linguistics Compass 2 (2008): 10.1111/j.1749-818x.2008.00091.

Reformulating the Determiner Phrase Analysis

Although Turkish nominal agreement morphology is not identical in form

In (3a), the echo question represents the assumed underlying position of

Reformulating the Determiner Phrase Analysis 3

a. Rome destroyed Carthage

a. Romei destroyed itselfi.

[CP [C C [IP [I I [VP [V V ]]]]]]

For a language like English, Abney proposed that determiner elements,

2008 The Author

Reformulating the Determiner Phrase Analysis 5

The structural distinction between NP and DP also maps onto a semantic

The approach pursued by Longobardi (following Stowell, Szabolcsi)

Kids! Come here!

Reformulating the Determiner Phrase Analysis 7

this broadening of the characterization of vocatives, we are led to the

Whether all languages distinguish DPs and NPs (under a Longobardi-style

(14) a. Lantica Roma era una citt potente.

The contrast between the grammatical (14a) and ungrammatical (14c)

Reformulating the Determiner Phrase Analysis 9

I CL-me have broken the arm

Jean likes (the) wine.

ESTABLISHING REFERENCE AND REFERENTIAL DEPENDENCIES

as to whether the feature is checked overtly (in the syntax), as in Italian,

Reformulating the Determiner Phrase Analysis 11

I begin the section by examining the status of first- and second-person

Kids! Come here!

Recall that I followed Crismas idea that vocatives may include a DP

Reformulating the Determiner Phrase Analysis 13

a. poor [NP us]!

These same pronouns used in argument function must raise to D, judging

SO-CALLED DEFINITE EXPRESSIONS

As we saw in Section 2 [examples in (17)], the presence of the definite

Reformulating the Determiner Phrase Analysis 15

According to Dchaine and Wiltschkos analysis, the definite description

Thus, a th- demonstrative may be neutral or vague on deixis, just as a

We seem to find the same potential ambiguity with these forms. As

support for the uniform treatment of the definite articles, demonstratives,

Reformulating the Determiner Phrase Analysis 17

PERSON WITH PROPER NAMES

Longobardi hypothesizes that the function of the expletive definite article

[We Marys]i have to watch ouri backs/ourselvesi.

Example (32a) shows that a possessive or reflexive pronoun our(selves) is

Reformulating the Determiner Phrase Analysis 19

and vocatives (as individuals) from predicates (as properties). Third, it

PERSON IN NOMINAL PHRASES AND CLAUSES

To conclude this section on person, I offer some general remarks about

the verbal agreement? Some of these issues are touched on in Longobardi

Reformulating the Determiner Phrase Analysis 21

recently in varieties of English. She has worked extensively on nominal

Reformulating the Determiner Phrase Analysis 23

Reformulating the Determiner Phrase Analysis 25

2008 The Author

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