Basic English Syntax with Exercises

definiteness

1.3.5.2 Determiners

Determiners may contribute to the interpretation of the nominal in terms of the notion of definiteness. This has a number of roles to play in interpreting a sentence. One of these has to do with how we introduce new items into a discourse and how we maintain a discourse topic. Consider the short monologue below:

1.3.5.2 Determiners

In English there are a number of syntactic phenomena that seem to be determined by the notion of definiteness. For example, only indefinite nominals can go in the post-verbal position in sentences which start with there:

1.3.5.2 Determiners

They are also marked for definiteness and so may or may not introduce nouns sitting in the post-verbal position in there sentences:

4.1 Why the Noun is not the Head of the DP

Another problem that arises if we assume that determiners are not heads of phrases is that they do make a contribution to the whole phrase. In chapter 1 we spent some time discussing properties of determiners (section 3.5.2), pointing out that a major contribution determiners make to the phrases that contain them is the definiteness–indefiniteness distinction:

4.1 Why the Noun is not the Head of the DP

This then can be taken as a reason to think that there is a determiner accompanying this noun which is responsible for the definiteness interpretation on the assumption that it is determiners and not nouns which contribute this property: