D, DP form and discourse accessibility
Jocelyn Ballantyne, University of Utrecht
The DP hypothesis (Abney 1987) has led to many analyses in which pronouns are
treated as determiners. Cross-linguistically, determiners serve as the locus of the referential
phi-features (Ouhalla 1991) that participate in agreement processes. A noun is not
referential, but acquires referentiality via the DP; determiners, including null D, are a natural
class because they carry the person features necessary for referential index (cf. Ouhalla
1991; Cohan 1998). Classifying pronouns with determiners also allows nominals occurring
with pronouns to be treated as NP complements rather than appositives, as in constructions
like English We linguists, you kids, and that devil (Zwarts 1994). An issue, however, that
arises in many syntactic treatments is the fact that determiners are not uniform in
complement selection. While some determiners can appear with or without an overt NP
complement, others are barred from appearing with an overt NP complement
(‘intransitive’or ‘strong’ Ds, e.g., in English: *I linguist, *She linguist), others cannot appear
without an NP (‘obligatorily transitive’ Ds, e.g., in English, the, a(n), Ø).
The paper to be presented develops an earlier proposal that the complement selection
of determiners is related to the use of the determiners in discourse. It connects the evident
syntactic form of the DP to the level of cognitive accessibility of the referring expression in
discourse (Prince 1981; Gundel et al. 1993). Specifically, when determiners require
complements, they are associated with lower levels of cognitive accessibility in discourse
(unused or brand new for the English examples appearing in Table 1 below) -- these are also
the DPs most likely to be connected to focus. In referring expressions with the highest levels
of cognitive accessibility scale, we find determiners that bar co-occurrence with an NP
(active in Table).
Table 1: Cognitive state and form of referring expression (taken from Prince 1981)
HIGH
↑
↓
LOW
Cognitive state
active
accessible
unused (familiar)
brand-new, anchored
brand-new, unanchored
form of expression
clitics, unstressed pronouns
definite NP
definite NP
indefinite, specific NP
indefinite NP
Examples
she, he, her, him, it, etc.
I, you, that, the cat, John
the boss, John
a guy at work
a guy
Languages vary in how cognitive accessibility of referring expressions is marked,
and languages vary in the kind of overt DPs that they allow. In languages like English, the
more ‘active’ the referent, the more likely it is to be expressed by a DP without an overt NP.
In head-marking languages, arguments appear as agreement markers or clitics, and full DPs
are optional, restricted to a “use induc[ing] a certain kind of emphasis on the denoted
individual” (Wiltschko 2002) – a use related to discourse focus, and thus a lower level of
cognitive accessibility. The general prediction is that the realization of DPs within a
language will align with the cognitive accessibility scale cross linguistically.
The DPs occurring at the highest levels of accessibility indicated in Table 1 can be
used felicitously as arguments only when they have known unique referents in the discourse
context; these are the so-called intransitive determiners. All remaining DPs, on the other
hand, can be used as arguments without specific unique referents, in a generic or indefinite
sense (even with ‘definite’ determiners, e.g., You coffee drinkers can sure be testy, The/That
first cup is always the best). The ‘intransitive’ determiners thus differ from other (in)definite
determiners in that they must have a known unique referent.
‘Obligatorily transitive’ determiners (e.g., in English the, a(n), Ø), correspond to the
lower levels of cognitive accessibility. While arguably specified for (3rd) person, they do not
provide fully referential indices on their own – an NP is needed to complete the specification
of their phi features (Ouhalla 1991) and the required referentiality of the DP. The determiner
the, for example, requires number and some feature like +HUMAN (Zwarts 1994 inter alia), or
perhaps +ANIMATE, to fulfill its referential index, while a, already singular, requires only
+ANIMATE. Without these, agreement, binding, co-reference and semantic restrictions on
predicates cannot operate. On the other hand, ‘optionally transitive’ determiners (in English,
the demonstratives and plural personal pronouns), may serve in argument position without
an overt NP (e.g., Youi must ask yourselvesi the right questions). These determiners can get
the features required to complete their referential index from the context. A determiner that
appears without an overt complement is one that picks up the features of its referential index
from the discourse context.
This gives us the means to define two categories of determiners that should be
attested cross linguistically:
1. UNIQ:
a D is UNIQ if and only if its referential index maps onto a unique entity
or set of entities present in the discourse context.
2. DISC:
a D is DISC if features of its referential index can be determined from
discourse context.
Figure 1: Determiner types with cognitive accessibility scale
DETERMINERS
(1ST/2ND/3RD PERSON)
DISC
UNIQ
HIGH
LOW
Figure 1 shows that UNIQ Ds are a subset of DISC Ds, and that determiners associated with
the lowest levels of cognitive accessibility on cognitive accessibility hierarchies are not DISC
Ds, while determiners associated with the highest levels are UNIQ Ds. Cross linguistically,
we should thus expect to find (1) that UNIQ Ds are also DISC Ds; (2) that UNIQ Ds, barring
noun phrase complements, are associated with the highest levels of cognitive accessibility;
(3) that Ds requiring noun phrase complements are associated with the referring expressions
of the lowest level of accessibility; and finally, (4) that gaps in the determiner system of a
language will occur at either end of the proposed hierarchy, but not in the middle.
These generalizations are to be supported by a discussion of referring expressions
from Greek, Polish, Hebrew, Turkish, and Dutch.
Selected References:
Abney, Steven P. (1987) The English NP in its Sentential Aspect. Dissertation, MIT, Cambridge,
MA.
Cohan, Jocelyn (1998). Semantic features of determiners: toward an account for complements of D.
In A. Dimitriadis, H. Lee, C. Moisset and A. Williams. Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Penn
Linguistics Colloquium.
Gundel, J.K., Hedberg, N., Zacharski, R. (1993) Cognitive states and the form of referring
expressions in discourse. Language 69: 274-307.
Ouhalla, Jamal. (1991) Functional categories and parametric variation. London: Routledge.
Prince, Ellen (1981) Toward a taxonomy of given-new information. In Cole, ed., Radical
Pragmatics, New York: Academic Press. 223-255.
Wiltschko, Martina (2002). “The syntax of pronouns: evidence from Halkomelem Salish” Natural
Language and Linguistic theory 20:157-195.
Zwarts, Joost (1994). Pronouns and N-to-D movement. In M. Everaert, B. Schouten and W. Zonneveld, eds.,
OTS Yearbook, Utrecht: 93-112.