Basic English Syntax with Exercises

post-determiner

1.3.5.2 Determiners

Traditionally this group of quantifiers are known as post-determiners as they always follow other determiners (which are sometimes called central determiners). This terminology gives the impression that post-determiners are a subclass of determiner, which is likely to be inaccurate. These elements often have many adjectival qualities, including being able to be modified by degree adverbs and having comparative and superlative forms:

1.3.6 Functionally underspecified categories

Next, let us consider possible non-thematic non-functional adjectives. Recall that post-determiners are elements which seem to have adjectival properties in that they have comparative and superlative forms and may be modified by adverbs:

1.3.6 Functionally underspecified categories

However, degree adverbs do not have comparative and superlative forms and so it would be inaccurate to categorise the post-determiners as functional adjectives (i.e. as [+F, +N, +V]). Therefore we propose that these elements be categorised as [+N, +V] elements. It seems that post-determiners always select nominal complements, which is why they have been confused with determiners and hence they have the following lexical entries:

4.3 Multiple Determiners

Traditionally, the determiner which appears in the middle is called a Central Determiner, the one in front a Pre-determiner and the one following a Post-determiner. One might think that an appropriate analysis for this kind of structure would be as follows:

4.3 Multiple Determiners

Unfortunately however this fails to capture some rather basic facts about multiple determiners and it also complicates the theory of heads to some extent. The first problem is obvious: if a determiner like the can take a DP as its complement, why can it not take any DP complement? The only ‘DP’ that can follow this determiner is one headed by a post-determiner:

4.3 Multiple Determiners

So what is the proper analysis of multiple determiners? The easiest case to deal with is the post-determiner. We argued in chapter 1 that these are adjectival elements which are undefined for the F feature and hence are neither functional nor thematic adjectives. The fact that they may be modified in the same way as thematic adjectives, however, indicates that they head APs:

4.3 Multiple Determiners

We can see from this that the traditional term ‘post-determiner’ is a rather misleading one as they are not determiners, nor even heads but whole adjectival phrases. Where is this AP situated? Clearly it follows the determiner and what follows the head is its complement. But determiners do not take AP, but NP complements. It must therefore be the case that post-determiners occupy a position within the NP complement of the determiner, the specifier position of the NP complement. Thus, we have the following structure:

4.3 Multiple Determiners

The only difference between pre-determiners and other determiners is that when they appear in front of a DP the pre-determiner has an optional of whereas this is obligatory with other types of determiner. The fact that we can have a post-determiner in this position is interesting. We have stated that these come in specifier of NP, but where is the NP in (67c) that the post-determiner is in the specifier of? If there is an NP in this structure the head of which cannot be seen, it seems that we are forced to assume that this head is an unpronounced empty category and therefore the structure must be something like the following: