FUNCTIONAL PROJECTIONS OF THE NOUN*
Andrew Radford
University of Essex
This paper is concerned with the syntax of nominal and pronominal
constituents of various kinds, focusing particularly on the structure of
nominals such as those below which contain (italicised) adnominal 'modifiers'
of various kinds (Determiners, Quantifiers and Adjectives):
(1)(a)
(b)
all the good students of Linguistics
few good students of Linguistics
Within the classic NP analysis of such nominals (as outlined e.g. in Radford
1988), prenominal Adjectives are analysed as N-bar adjuncts, prenominal
Quantifiers like few/many and Determiners like the are analysed as NPspecifiers, and predeterminer Quantifiers like all/both are analysed as NPadjuncts. Thus, (1)(a) and (b) would be assigned the respective structures
indicated in (2)(a) and (b) below:
(2)(a)
(b)
[NP [QP all] [NP [D the] [N' [AP good] [N' students of Linguistics]]]]
[NP [QP few] [N' [AP good] [N' students of Linguistics]]]
The classic NP analysis has the virtue of providing a fairly
straightforward account of a number of aspects of the syntax of nominals. For
example, if universal Quantifiers like all/both are NP-adjuncts, then since
adjuncts are often positioned to the left or right of the expressions they
modify (cf. Radford 1988: 255-6), this would provide a natural account of the
dual prenominal and postnominal position of the italicised universal
Quantifiers in structures such as:
(3)(a)
(b)
both you and me/you and me both
tot textul/textul tot (Romanian)
all text+the/text+the all (= 'all the text')
Similarly, if both Determiners and prenominal Quantifiers such as few/many
function as NP-specifiers, and if we assume that Maximal Projections are
binary-branching, we correctly predict that they are generally mutually
exclusive: a structure such as *few the remaining hostages would be ill-formed
because the overall NP would be a ternary-branching structure comprising the
QP few, the D the and the N-bar remaining hostages. What remains to be
accounted for under such an analysis is why Quantifiers like many/few can be
positioned after Determiners, e.g. in nominals such as the few remaining
hostages. One possible solution might be to posit that many/few in such uses
function as Adjectives: this would account for the fact that they can precede
or follow other Adjectives, and can be used predicatively: cf.
______________________________________________________________________________
*This is the text of a paper presented at a workshop on functional categories
at a meeting of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain in York, 16
September 1991. It was published under the same title in Radford, A. (ed)
Functional Categories: Their Nature and Acquisition, Dept. Language and
Linguistics Occasional Papers 33: 1-25 (1992), University of Essex.
(4)(a)
(b)
the remaining few hostages/the few remaining hostages
His friends are few; his enemies are many
It might also account for the fact that few triggers 'Auxiliary Inversion'
when used as a Quantifier, but not when used as a (seeming) Adjective: cf.
(5)(a)
(b)
Few of the remaining hostages will they release unharmed
*The few remaining hostages will they release unharmed
As Adjectives, few/many would serve as adjuncts to N-bar, and hence follow
Determiners like the.
If we assume that prenominal Adjectives are adjuncts to N-bar, we provide a
straightforward account of the fact that Adjectives follow Determiners (cf.
'the good students'/*'good the students'). More specifically, if we assume
that Adjectives are potentially iterable adjuncts to N-bar, as in (6) below:
(6)
N' = AP*
N'
we then predict that Adjectives can be recursively stacked either linearly or
hierarchically: linearly stacked Adjectives would have an appositive
interpretation, and hierarchically stacked Adjectives would have a restrictive
interpretation. This would enable us to provide a structural account of the
ambiguity of a string such my first(,) disastrous marriage, along the lines
suggested in Radford 1988: 222. The two interpretations would correspond to
the two structures in (7) below, with the Adjectives hierarchically stacked in
(7)(a), and linearly stacked in (7)(b):
(7)(a)
(b)
[NP [D my] [N' [AP first] [N' [AP disastrous] [N' marriage]]]]
[NP [D my] [N' [AP first], [AP disastrous] [N' marriage]]]
If we posit that prenominal APs have scope over any nominal they c-command,
it follows that disastrous in both structures will have scope over the N-bar
marriage, but that the two structures will differ in that first has scope over
the N-bar disastrous marriage in (7)(a) (implying that I had other disastrous
marriages), but has scope only over the N-bar marriage in (7)(b). Of course,
the structural differences here correlate with phonological differences
(relating to stress pattern and intonation contours), and these are reflected
in the orthography by the presence or absence of a comma between the stacked
Adjectives.
Interesting though the classic NP analysis is, there are some aspects of it
which seem potentially problematic. One of these is the treatment of
prenominal Determiners. In early versions of the 'classic' analysis, these
were treated as unprojectable (i.e. zero-level categories which had no phrasal
projections into single-bar or double-bar categories). However, such an
analysis is objectionable on both theoretical and empirical grounds. From a
theoretical point of view, if D is unprojectable, then it is anomalous in that
all other categories have phrasal projections (including other functional
categories such as C and I, which have phrasal projections into CP and IP
within the framework of Chomsky's 1986 Barriers monograph). Moreover, if we
assume that Determiners are generated by a PS rule of the form NP = D N',
there will be an obvious violation of the constraint proposed by Stowell
(1981, p. 70) to the effect that 'Every non-head term in the expansion of a
rule must itself be a maximal projection of some category.' Thus, theoretical
considerations would lead us to conclude that if Determiners are specifiers of
N-bar, they must have the status of DP (Determiner Phrase) constituents.
Empirical considerations lead us to the same conclusion, since we find that
Determiners can be premodified by a variety of expressions which could
arguably be analysed as their specifiers: e.g. the italicised constituents in
the bracketed NPs below might be argued to function as the specifiers of the
bold-printed Determiners:
(8)(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
He made [precisely this point]
Diamonds sell at [several times the price of rubies]
He is [quite the best student] we've ever had
There is [many a slip] twixt cup and lip
(e)
(f)
(g)
(h)
(g)
[What a fool] I was!
I have never witnessed [so tragic an accident]
He made [rather a mess]
[Not a drop] did I spill
Tu veux [encore une pomme]? (French)
You want [again an apple]? (= Do you want another apple?)
N-a venit [nici o persoana] (Romanian)
Not-has come [not a person] (= 'Not a single person came')
(h)
If the italicised constituents do indeed function as the specifiers of the
bold-printed Determiners, then it seems clear that Determiners must have
phrasal projections (from D into DP), just like other categories. Within the
spirit of the NP framework, we might therefore propose (cf. Radford 1988: 263)
that Determiner expressions which function as NP-specifiers project into DP,
so that nominals such as [several times the price of rubies] or [so tragic an
accident] would have the structure (9) below:
(9)(a)
NP
(b)
DP
NP
several
times
NP
N'
D'
D
N
price
DP
PP
of rubies
AP
so tragic
the
N'
D'
D
N
accident
an
If we analyse s-phrases (i.e. so/such phrases) as specifiers of D, we can
provide a straightforward account of paradigms such as the following:
(10)(a)
(b)
(c)
I have never before witnessed [such a quite so tragic accident]
*I have never before witnessed [such quite so tragic an accident]
*I have never before witnessed [quite so tragic such an accident]
If we assume (as earlier) that maximal projections are binary-branching and
that an s-phrase can serve as the specifier of the Determiner a, then it
follows that only one of the two s-phrases can occupy the predeterminer DPspecifier position in structures like (10) - in precisely the same way as only
only wh-phrase can serve as the specifier of C in English.
So, it would seem that a fairly trivial modification of the traditional NP
analysis (viz. treating Determiner expressions as phrasal DP constituents
which allow specifiers of their own) will accommodate the fact that
Determiners can be 'premodified' by a range of predeterminer expressions. Such
an analysis also has obvious theoretical advantages, in that it is no longer
necessary to posit that Determiners are unprojectable heads: under the revised
analysis, just as N projects into NP, V into VP, I into IP, and C into CP, so
too D projects into a DP constituent which functions as the specifier of NP.
However, there are both theoretical and empirical problems posed by analysing
DPs as specifiers of NPs. From a theoretical point of view, the essential
problem is that Determiners are anomalous in that they have no complements of
their own - as we see from the fact that D is the sole constituent of D-bar in
structures like (9). Thus, DPs fail to conform to the generalised X-bar schema
(11) below:
(11)
[XP specifier [X' [X head] complement/s]]
What (11) says is that any head category X can combine with a following
complement to form an X-bar constituent (which in turn can be combined with a
preceding specifier to form an XP). Under the analysis of DPs as NPspecifiers, Determiners are anomalous in that no Determiner ever permits a
following complement of any kind - unlike other functional categories (e.g. C
takes an IP complement, and I takes a VP complement).
One way in which we might try and overcome this problem would be to suggest
that the 'defectiveness' of Determiners in not permitting complements is not
restricted to Determiners alone, and that other categories share this
property. For example, it is suggested by Jackendoff (1977: 78) that Adverbs
are similarly heads which permit specifiers but not complements, and in this
respect contrast with Adjectives, which permit both complements and
specifiers: cf. e.g.
(12)(a)
(b)
(c)
She smiled, [very confident of success]
She smiled [very confidently]
*She smiled [very confidently of success]
Thus, whereas an Adjective like confident permits both a following complement
like of success and a preceding specifier like very, the corresponding Adverb
confidently permits a preceding specifier, but no following complement. We
might therefore suggest that Determiners are no more anomalous than Adverbs in
respect of not permitting complements.
However, the generalisation that Adverbs never permit complements is
falsified by examples such as the following:
(13)(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
(e)
You must make up your mind independently of me
Are you going to do it differently from me?
She dresses similarly to me
She goes swimming more than me
I'll let you know immediately she arrives
Thus, it is not a general structural property of Adverbial Phrases that they
do not license complements, but rather a lexical property of individual
Adverbs. By contrast, under the analysis of DPs as NP-specifiers, we are
forced to posit either that it is a general structural property of all DPs
that they never permit a complement, or that it is an idiosyncratic#lexical
property of every individual Determiner in English that (coincidentally) none
of them permits a complement. Now, it seems unlikely to be either a general
structural property of DPs, or an accidental lexical property of (all)
Determiners that they never permit complements, since we do find other uses of
certain Determiners in which they permit complements (such as those boldprinted below):
(14)(a)
(b)
Her behaviour was that of a four-year-old
Those of you who wish to do so may leave
Thus, if DPs are to be analysed as NP-specifiers, we have no principled
explanation of the fact that only when used prenominally do Determiners not
allow complements. Given that the essential motivation of X-bar syntax is to
establish cross-categorial symmetry in the ways in which heads project into
phrases, the resulting asymmetry is clearly problematic.
Moreover, the specifier analysis is also questionable on the grounds of its
putative descriptive inadequacy, in that the constituent structure which it
assigns to DPs is counterintuitive. Thus, it seems counterintuitive to claim
that in structures such as (10) above, the strings several times the and so
tragic an are constituents. On the contrary, it seems more plausible at an
intuitive level to claim that Determiners are closely linked to (and form a
constituent with) the expressions which follow them, so that the strings the
price of rubies and an accident are constituents of some kind. This kind of
'close relation' between Determiners and the expressions following them seems
plausible on phonological grounds, in that the phonological form of a
Determiner is often dictated by the initial segment of the first word of the
postdeterminer string: for example, a takes the form an and the is homophonous
with thee when the initial segment of the postdeterminer expression is a
vowel. In Italian, the masculine singular definite article takes the form l'
before a vowel (e.g. l'albero 'the tree'), lo before an s+consonant cluster
(e.g. lo specchio 'the mirror'), and il before other consonants groups (e.g.
il mondo 'the world'). In many languages, this 'close relation' between
Determiners and postdeterminer expressions leads to cliticisation of
Determiners to the initial word of the postdeterminer expression: e.g. in
Yorkshire dialects of English, the definite article procliticises to the
following word (cf. 'On Ilkley Moor bar t'hat'), while in Romanian the
definite article encliticises to the following word (cf. 'textul', literally
'text+the', i.e. 'the text').
Moreover, coordination evidence strongly suggests that in sequences of the
form Predeterminer+Determiner+Nominal, the Determiner forms a constituent
together with the following nominal, rather than with the preceding
predeterminer. Thus, in the following examples, the pattern of coordination in
the (a) example is far more natural than that in the (b) examples:
(15)(a)
Diamonds sell at [several times the price of rubies or the price
of amethysts]
(b)
*Diamonds sell at [four times the or five times the price of
rubies]
(16)(a)
(b)
I have never met [so outstanding an academic or a politician]
*I have never met [so outstanding an or so witty an academic]
These examples show that a Determiner+postdeterminer string can be coordinated
with another such string (as in the (a) examples), so suggesting that the two
form a constituent of some kind: however, they also show that a
predeterminer+Determiner sequence cannot be coordinated in this way, so
suggesting that it is a nonconstituent sequence. Thus, coordination evidence
seems to falsify the analysis in (8) above, since (8) specifically claims that
predeterminer+Determiner strings are constituents.
What all of this seems to suggest is that the immediate phrasal projection
of a prenominal Determiner must include the expression which follows the
Determiner, rather than that which precedes it. But how can this be? A natural
answer would be to take the postdeterminer expression to be the complement of
the Determiner, and the predeterminer expression (as before) to be its
specifier. This would mean (e.g.) that strings such as several times the price
of rubies and so tragic an accident would no longer have the respective
structures in (10)(a) and (b) above, but rather those in (17)(a) and (b)
below:
(17)(a)
DP
(b)
NP
several
times
D'
D
the
DP
AP
NP
price of gold
so tragic
D'
D
an
NP
accident
We might refer to the analysis in (17) as the DP analysis (since it posits
that determinate nominals are DP constituents), and that in (10) as the NP
analysis (since it posits that determinate nominals are NP constituents). It
should be clear that the DP analysis offers both theoretical and descriptive
advantages over the earlier NP analysis. From a theoretical point of view, the
obvious advantage is that we now no longer need to posit that prenominal
Determiners are anomalous in respect of not permitting a complement, since the
postdeterminer nominal is analysed as the complement of the Determiner (e.g.
price of gold is the complement of a in (17)(a), and accident is the
complement of an in (17)(b)). From a descriptive point of view, the most
immediate advantage is that we are now able to handle the coordination data in
(15) and (16), since the DP analysis correctly predicts that a
Determiner+nominal structure forms a D-bar constituent, and can therefore be
coordinated with another similar D-bar string.
One of the ways in which the DP analysis differs from the NP analysis is
that the DP analysis sees the relation between a Determiner and a following
nominal as a head-complement relation, whereas the NP analysis sees it as a
specifier-head relation. Some empirical evidence in support of the DP analysis
would seem to come from agreement facts in sentences such as the following:
(18)
[This/*These parliament] has/have decided to revoke the act
The bracketed nominal this parliament would standardly be analysed as the
specifier of the Auxiliary have, so that there is a specifier-head relation
between the two. The agreement relation between the subject specifier and the
Auxiliary head may either be 'syntactic' (so that the singular form has may be
used because this parliament is a morphosyntactically singular nominal), or
'semantic' (so that the plural form have may be used because the subject this
parliament denotes a set of individuals). Now, if the relation between a
Determiner and a following nominal were similarly a specifier-head relation,
then we should expect to find the same dual pattern of 'syntactic/semantic'
agreement holding between the Determiner this and the Noun parliament. But in
fact this is not the case at all: on the contrary, strict syntactic agreement
is required here, suggesting that the relation between a Determiner and a
following Noun may be structurally distinct from the specifier-head relation
which holds between a subject and a Verb. Of course, under the DP analysis,
the relationship is indeed distinct, since it is a head-head relation (between
a governing matrix head and a governed complement head).
The assumption that Determiners are the heads of their containing nominals
has interesting implications for the structure of Noun Phrases. Under the
classic NP analysis, D was the specifier of NP; but if D is now the head of a
separate phrasal projection (DP) and so lies 'outside' the N-system, the
obvious question to ask is whether N now licenses a specifier of its own or
not. The answer given to this question in Fukui 1986 is 'No'. Fukui argues
that there is a crucial asymmetry between lexical and functional categories,
in that any lexical category L can be combined with a following complement to
form an L-bar constituent, which in turn can be recursively combined with
modifiers (adjuncts) of various kinds to form successively larger and larger
L-bar constituents - so that the maximal projection of any lexical head is a
single-bar constituent. By contrast (Fukui argues) any functional head F will
project into F-bar by the addition of a complement, into further F-bar
constituents by the addition of modifiers (adjuncts), but will also project
into F-double-bar (= FP) by the addition of a specifier phrase of an
appropriate kind. Thus, for Fukui, the crucial difference between lexical and
functional categories is that the maximal projection of a lexical head is a
single-bar constituent, whereas the maximal projection of a functional head is
a double-bar constituent.
Given that the essential motivation for the DP analysis is to eliminate any
asymmetry between lexical and functional categories with respect to the ways
in which they are projected into the syntax, Fukui's analysis seems a
retrograde step from a theoretical point of view (in that it creates a new
asymmetry between the two types of head, relating to whether they have a
double-bar projection or not). In Radford 1991, I argue against Fukui's
asymmetrical analysis and in favour of an alternative symmetrical analysis in
which both N and D constituents can be projected from a single-bar to a
double-bar constituent by the addition of a phrasal specifier. More
specifically, I argue that the italicised nominal in structures such as (19)
below functions as the specifier of the capitalised Noun head:
(19)(a)
(b)
(c)
ministry of defence INSTRUCTIONS to all employees
government CRITICISM of the press
Labour Party POLICY on defence
(d)
military police INVOLVEMENT in torture of prisoners
(e)
university management ALLEGATIONS of a concerted student
campaign of disruption
(f)
European Community DEMANDS for monetary union
(g)
student assessment of lectures
(h)
Department of the Environment plans for a new motorway
Under the analysis proposed in Radford 1991, the nominal expressions in (19)
would be NPs of the schematic form [specifier+HEAD+complement], so that (e.g.)
(19)(a) would have the simplified superficial syntactic/thematic structure
(20) below:
(20)
NP
NP
<------AGENT-------
Ministry of
Defence
N'
N -----GOAL----> PP
instructions
to all employees
A structure such as (20) conforms to the canonical pattern of theta role
assignment in English (with the AGENT argument being externalised and the GOAL
argument internalised), and likewise conforms to canonical configurational
properties, so that e.g. the HEAD/COMPLEMENT PARAMETER is properly set in
that the head Noun instructions precedes its PP complement to all employees.
What makes it all the more plausible to analyse the italicised expression
in nominals such as (19) as the specifier (and external AGENT argument) of its
containing nominal is the fact that (like other specifiers) it can serve as
the controller of PRO, e.g. in structures such as the following:
(21)(a)
Ministry of Defence reluctance PRO to admit mistakes
(b)
opposition attempts PRO to secure themselves a place on the
committee
(c)
government unwillingness PRO to compromise with the opposition
(d)
Department of the Environment plans PRO to commission a new
railroad linking London to Dover
Thus, the assumption that nominals such as (19) are Noun Phrases with an
internal constituent structure along the lines of (20) above would seem to
have a certain amount of initial plausibility.
An interesting variant of the pattern found in (19) above is that found in
nominals like those in (22) below:
(22)(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
(e)
(f)
(g)
(h)
(i)
(j)
enemy heavy artillery losses
Labour Party defence policy
government income tax reforms
opposition corruption allegations
European Community sheep meat subsidies
Ministry of Defence satellite intelligence procurement
student lecture assessment
cabinet higher education expenditure cuts
press censorship claims
Buckingham Palace reporting restrictions
It seems plausible to suppose that the italicised nominal serves the thematic
role of AGENT, whereas the bold-printed nominal serves that of PATIENT. Since
canonical AGENTS are specifiers and canonical PATIENTS are complements, we
might suggest that an NP such as (22)(a) has the structure (23) below:
(23)
NP
NP
enemy
<--------AGENT-------NP
N'
<---PATIENT-- N
heavy artillery
losses
What makes it all the more plausible to consider the first nominal to be an
AGENT specifier and the second to be a PATIENT complement is the fact that the
former is often paraphraseable by a by-phrase, and the latter by an of-phrase:
(24)(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
(e)
(f)
(g)
loss of heavy artillery by the enemy
reforms of income tax by the government
allegations of corruption by the opposition
subsidies of sheep meat by the European Community
procurement of satellite intelligence by the Ministry of Defence
assessment of lectures by students
claims of censorship by the press
A further piece of evidence which suggests that it is plausible to treat
nominals such as those in (20) as structures of the form
[specifier+complement+head] relates to the fact that the putative specifier
and complement cannot be substituted for each other (i.e. cannot have their
relative ordering changed), as we see from the ungrammaticality of examples
such as the following:
(25)(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
(e)
(f)
(g)
(h)
*income tax government reforms
*heavy artillery enemy losses
*corruption opposition allegations
*sheep meat European Community subsidies
*satellite intelligence Ministry of Defence procurement
*lecture student assessment
*censorship press claims
*reporting Buckingham Palace restrictions
This suggests that the two occupy different structural positions (precisely as
is claimed in (23) above).
If the analysis outlined here is along the right lines, then it follows
that (contrary to the claim made by Fukui 1986) there are no projectional
asymmetries between lexical and functional categories: both can project from a
single-bar into a double-bar constituent by the addition of a preceding
specifier phrase. The specifier of an NP is a 'subject' NP which is thetamarked by its sister N-bar, and which can serve as the controller for a PRO
subject in a complement clause. This analysis ties up in interesting ways with
the recent suggestion in a number of works that clausal subjects originate
within VP as the specifier of the V-bar which assigns a theta role to them
(cf. e.g. Hoekstra 1984, Sportiche 1988, Kuroda 1987, Fassi Fehri 1988 and
many others). We can then arrive at a unitary analysis by positing that just
as the 'subject' of a clause originates as the specifier of VP, so too the
'subject' of a nominal originates as the specifier of NP (For some thoughts on
the conditions under which an NP is licensed to occur as the specifier of
another NP, see Radford 1991).
Our earlier observation (made in relation to examples such as (8) above)
that Determiners license specifiers of their own suggests an interesting
analysis of structures involving so-called 'genitive 's'. Consider, for
example, how we might deal with a possessive 's structure such as that in (26)
below:
(26)
the government's tax reforms
Following a suggestion attributed by Abney (1987, p. 79) to Richard Larson, we
might suggest that possessive 's (in this kind of use) be analysed as a head
Determiner which licenses an NP complement and a DP specifier. Given these
(and earlier) assumptions, (26) would have the skeletal structure indicated in
(27) below:
(27)
[DP [DP the government] [D' [D 's] [NP tax reforms]]]
There are a number of empirical arguments in support of analysing possessive
's as a head Determiner in English. For example, like demonstrative
Determiners in English, possessive 's can be used both prenominally and
pronominally: cf.
(28)(a)
(b)
These houses are bigger that those
Mary's house is bigger than John's
Moreover, there are strong distributional parallels between 's and the
definite determiner the: they are the only two Determiner constituents which
can precede the postdeterminer Quantifier every: cf.
(29)(a)
(b)
Congressmen pander to the every whim of the president
Congressmen pander to the president's every whim
In addition, both the and possessive nominals can be preceded by the same
range of predeterminer Quantifiers, as we can illustrate in terms of (30)
below:
(30)(a)
(b)
all/both the problems
all/both John's problems
And significantly, possessive 's and other Determiners are mutually
exclusive, as we see from examples such as the following:
(31)
*the president's this/that/a/the friend
(Nominals like (31) do not seem to be semantically ill-formed in any way,
since they have coherent paraphrases - cf. 'a/the friend of the president',
'this/that friend of the president's'.) Given that Determiners do not license
DP complements, what this suggests is that possessive 's belongs to the same
category as items like this/that/a/the - i.e. to the category of third
person Determiners. Thus, it seems reasonable to posit that possessive 's is
a Determiner which carries much the same morphosyntactic and semantic
properties as the, but differs from the in that it licenses (indeed,
requires) a possessor DP as its specifier (perhaps because 's is a suffix, or
perhaps because it must obligatorily discharge case onto an overt specifier,
in much the same way as a finite INFL constituent like will in English
obligatorily requires an overt specifier to discharge nominative case onto),
and in that it can be used pronominally as well as prenominally.
Interestingly, 's generally requires a nominal rather than pronominal
specifier (so we have 'what party's policy?', but not *'what's policy?').
English possessive 's structures find an interesting counterpart in
structures such as the following in Dutch (from Stuurman 1991):
(32)
Jan z'n vrienden
Jan his friends (= 'Jan's friends')
It seems reasonable to suppose that the possessive pronoun z'n here is the
head of the overall DP, and that Jan is its specifier (though this is not the
analysis adopted by Stuurman) , so that a string like (32) has the structure
(33) below (where SPEC = specifier)
(33)
[DP [SPEC Jan] [D' [D z'n] [NP vrienden]]]
We might then see the structural relationship between the head and specifier
of a possessive DP in (33) as very much akin to the relationship between INFL
and its specifier: thus, the head agrees with the specifier (Jan is third
person singular, so the head pronoun z'n is also third person singular), while
the specifier is case-marked by the head: similarly, INFL agrees with (and
assigns case to) its specifier.
Of course, a possessive pronoun such as z'n does not require an overt
specifier, and hence can occur in nominals such as z'n vrienden 'his friends'.
One way of analysing such nominals would be to suppose that the specifier
(i.e. the possessor phrase) is null in such cases, and that the null specifier
is licensed by the rich system of specifier-agreement properties carried by
possessive pronouns in Dutch (in much the same way as null subjects are
licensed by the rich system of specifier-agreement inflections carried by
finite Verbs in many languages). We might then extend this analysis to
possessive pronouns in English, so that in an expression such as her car, her
is a head Determiner which licenses a null specifier: this specifier (viz. the
possessor) is unamiguously identifiable as a third person feminine singular
expression by virtue of the rich specifier-agreement properties carried by
possessive pronouns like her in English.
The parallel drawn here between the D system and the I system raises an
interesting question, in the light of the observation made in Chomsky's (1989)
Economy of Derivation paper that INFL in languages with rich inflection
systems carries both subject-agreement (= AGR-S) and object agreement (= AGRO) properties. If we reinterpret AGR-S to mean 'specifier-agreement' (i.e.
agreement between a head and its specifier), then we might say that pronouns
such as her in English and z'n in Dutch agree with their specifiers (whether
overt or covert), and so carry AGR-S properties. But this would lead us to
expect to find languages in which possessive Determiners exhibit AGR-O
properties as well as AGR-S properties - i.e. languages in which possessive
pronouns agree with their complements as well as their specifiers.
It seems reasonable to suppose that French is such a language, as we can
see by considering the morphosyntax of the italicised possessive pronouns in
(34) below:
(34)(a)
(c)
sa copine
his/her (girl-) friend
ses copines
his/her (girl-) friends
(b)
(d)
son copain
his/her (boy-) friend
ses copains
his/her (boy-) friends
We might argue that possessive pronouns in French inflect for agreement both
with their 'understood' specifier (more specifically, with the person/number
properties of the specifier), and with their complement (more specifically,
with the number/gender properties of their complement). The initial consonant
of the pronoun (m+/t+/s+/n+/v+/l+) generally seems to carry the AGR-S features
(identifying the person and number of the possessor), while the remainder of
the pronoun carries AGR-O features (identifying the number and gender of the
complement). Thus, in a form such as sa, s+ carries the AGR-S properties and
identifies the possessor as third person singular (his/her/its), whereas +a
carries the AGR-O properties and identifies the possessee as feminine
singular. In contrast to French, possessive pronouns in English mark only AGRS properties, and hence do not carry complement agreement properties: this may
well be related to the fact that English is a language in which Verbs agree
with their subjects, but not with their complements.
Given the assumptions we are making here, the range of possessive
structures found in Dutch, English and French would be as indicated in
schematic form in (35) below (where e denotes an empty/null specifier, and
dotted lines represent a morphophonologically realised agreement relation):
(35)
DP
SPECIFIER
D'
D
Jan/e .......
John
e ..........
e ..........
z'n
's
his
sa ........
COMPLEMENT
vrienden
friends
friends
copine
We might suppose that there are three main parameters along which possessive
heads differ in the three languages. One is in respect of whether they agree
with their specifier and/or complement - these agreement relations being
marked by dotted lines in (35). A second is in respect of whether or not
possessive heads license an overt and/or covert (possessor) specifier. A third
is whether or not a given possessive head licenses an overt and/or null
complement (e.g. my in English licenses an overt NP complement such as picture
of you, but mine does not - cf. *mine picture of you). We might pursue a
variety of explanations for these properties: e.g. the fact that 's does not
license a null specifier might be because of its lack of any overtly marked
AGR properties, and/or because it is a suffix which needs to be attached to
an appropriate host, and/or because it must obligatorily discharge case
features onto an overt nominal specifier. Equally, alternative analyses might
be envisaged (e.g. we might argue that possessive heads with no overt
specifier absorb the case they assign to their specifier and so have an
incorporated specifier which is not projected into the syntax; we might follow
Abney 1987 in taking possessive 's to be a head case assigner, or Lyons 1991
in taking it to be a genitive case ending).
Our brief discussion of possessive pronouns raises the more general
question of how we deal with the morphosyntax of pronouns (and especially
personal pronouns) within the DP framework. Since pronouns are words, the most
principled account which we can offer of the syntax of such items is that
(like all other words) they must therefore belong to word-level categories:
this excludes in principle any analysis of pronouns as phrasal proforms (e.g.
it excludes the traditional analysis outlined in Radford 1981 under which one
is analysed as an N-bar proform, and he as an NP proform), if
principles of
Universal Grammar forbid the insertion of a word under a phrasal node (viz.
under X-bar or XP). Given these assumptions, then it follows that each
different type of nominal head might be expected to have a pronominal
counterpart. Thus, in an analysis which posits that determinate nominals are
double-headed constituents (in the sense that they comprise an N which
projects into an NP which serves as the complement of a D which projects into
a DP), we might expect to find two rather different types of pronominal
constituent - viz. pronominal N and pronominal D constituents respectively.
For reasons outlined in detail in Radford 1990, we might argue that the
pronoun one (in expressions like 'a blue one') is an N proform, since it has
all the characteristics of a singular count Noun: for example, it can take the
Noun plural +s inflection, it can be premodified by both an Adjective and a
Determiner, and it can take an of complement, as we see from examples such as
the following:
(36)
Which photos? Those awful ones of you in a bikini?
By contrast, pronouns such as this/that/these/those/mine (in the use
illustrated in (28) above) would seem to be more plausibly analyseable as
pronominal Determiners: this would then account for the fact that (unlike the
pronominal N one) they do not take the Noun plural +s inflection and cannot
normally be premodified by Adjectives or other Determiners: cf.
(37)
Which photos? *The awful those of you in a bikini
Thus, it seems plausible to conclude that one (in the relevant use) is a
pronominal N, whereas this is a pronominal D.
An obvious question raised by the assumption that there are two different
types of pronoun (pronominal N and pronominal D constituents) is which
category so-called 'personal pronouns' (like I/you/he etc.) belong to. Such
pronouns seem to have none of the characteristics of typical N constituents:
for example, they never take the N plural +s suffix, and are not normally
premodified by Adjectives or Determiners, and do not take an of complement:
cf.
(38)
Which pictures? *Those awful thems of you in a bikini?
In these respects, they seems to behave more like pronominal Determiners: and
indeed, just such an analysis of personal pronouns as pronominal Determiners
was proposed (within the earlier NP framework) by Postal 1966, and taken up
(within the more recent DP framework) by Abney 1987.
One type of argument in support of analysing personal pronouns as
Determiners can be formulated in relation to paradigms such as the following:
(39)
[The/We/You opponents of the poll tax]
government down
are trying to bring the
In a structure such as (39), the would seem to have the status of a prenominal
Determiner, taking as its complement the NP opponents of the poll tax. The
fact that the can be substituted here by we or you would suggest that we/you
likewise function as prenominal Determiners in structures such as (39). More
precisely, we might suggest that we in (39) functions as a first person
Determiner, you as a second person Determiner, and the as a third person
Determiner. If this is so, then the bracketed nominal in (39) above will have
the skeletal structure indicated in (40) below (simplified by omission of Dbar and the constituents of NP):
(40)
DP
D
we/you/the
NP
opponents of the poll tax
Interestingly, in some varieties of English we/you can serve as Determiners
for the pronominal N ones (hence we find the compound pronouns we'uns and
you'uns in Ozark English, as noted in Jacobs and Rosenbaum 1968, p. 98).
One of the predictions made by an analysis such as (40) is that because the
overall structure has the status of DP, its grammatical properties will be
determined not just by properties of the head N of NP (which may percolate up
to the containing DP) but also by the head D of DP. In this connection, it is
interesting to note the following paradigm:
(41)(a)
(b)
(c)
[We opponents of the poll tax]
have committed ourselves/
*yourselves/*themselves to non-payment, haven't we/*you/*they?
[You opponents of the poll tax]
have committed yourselves/
*ourselves/*themselves to non-payment, haven't you/*we/*they?
[The opponents of the poll tax] have committed themselves/
*ourselves/*yourselves to non-payment, haven't they/*we/*you?
Data such as (41)(a) tell us that a (bracketed) DP headed by we functions as a
first person plural expression and hence can only serve as the antecedent of
the first person plural anaphor and can only be tagged by a first person
pronoun; (41)(b) similarly tells us that a DP headed by you is a second person
expression (and so can only serve as the antecedent of a second person anaphor
and be tagged by a second person pronoun); (41)(c) tells us that a DP headed
by the is a third person expression, and so can only serve as the antecedent
of a third person anaphor like themselves and be tagged by a third person
pronoun like they. What all of this suggests is that the person properties of
the overall structure are dictated by properties of the Determiners
we/you/the, and not by properties of the nominal opponents. Thus,
reflexivisation and tag facts like those in (41) provide us with clear
evidence that pronouns are Determiners, and function as the heads of their
containing nominals (so that the overall nominal structure has the status of a
DP constituent).
We might argue that it is not just the person properties of nominals which
are determined by their D-system, but also their case properties, as we see
from examples such as the following (in Standard English):
(42)(a)
(b)
[We/*Us Americans] envy the British
The British envy [us/*we Americans]
From examples such as (42), it is clear that a nominal like we Americans is a
nominative expression which can only occur within the domain of a nominative
case-assigner (i.e. as the subject of a finite clause), whereas an expression
such as us Americans is an objective expression which can only occur within
the domain of an objective case assigner (e.g. where governed by an
immediately preceding transitive Verb like envy). The case of the overall
nominal structure would seem to be determined not by any property of the Noun
Americans (indeed, we might even suggest that Nouns do not carry case in
Modern English), but rather by the prenominal Determiner we/us. Since it is
the case properties of the Determiner which control the case properties of the
containing nominal, it therefore seems natural to take the Determiner to be
the head of the overall nominal expression we/us Americans.
Although it seems plausible to analyse pronouns like we and you as
Determiners, such an analysis might seem far less plausible for (e.g.) a third
person pronoun such as they. In Standard English, they cannot be used as a
prenominal Determiner, as we see from the ungrammaticality of structures such
as *they students. Doesn't this vitiate the D analysis of pronouns like they?
The answer is 'No'. After all, all items have idiosyncratic complementselection properties: just as some Verbs select an overt complement and others
do not, so too we might posit that some Determiners (e.g. we/you/these) select
an overt NP complement, whereas others (e.g. he/she/they) do not. If whether a
given D does or does not select an overt NP complement is a lexical property
of the item concerned, then since much variation between one variety of
English and another is lexical in nature, we might expect to find varieties of
English in which pronouns like they do indeed select an overt NP complement.
It is therefore significant that person pronouns such as they and them can be
used as prenominal Determiners in some varieties of English, as we see from
examples such as the following:
(43)(a)
Tell Cooper to shift they stones there (Devonshire, from Harris
1991, p. 23)
(b)
It was like this in them days, years ago, you see (Somerset, from
Ihalainen 1991, p. 156)
Hence, it is far from implausible to say that items like they/them are
Determiner constituents. What lends cross-linguistic support to the analysis
of personal pronouns as Determiners is the fact that many such pronouns in
other languages can also function as prenominal Determiners (so that e.g.
French les corresponds both to the English Determiner the and to the English
pronoun them, and likewise le corresponds to both 'the' and 'he', and la to
both 'it' and 'she').
The assumption that Nouns and Determiners head separate phrasal projections
provides us with an interesting way of handling the syntax of quantification.
Quantifiers seem to fall into two different distributional classes, as we can
illustrate by contrasting the plural Quantifiers tous 'all' and plusieurs
'several' in French. The (masculine plural) Quantifier tous 'all' in French
can generally premodify only a determinate (masculine plural) nominal (i.e. a
masculine plural nominal premodified by a Determiner), so that we can have
'tous les garc,ons' ('all the boys'), 'tous ces beaux arbres' ('all these
beautiful trees') and 'tous nos ance^tres' ('all our ancestors'), but not
*'tous (beaux) arbres' ('all (beautiful) trees'). By contrast, the
(masculine/feminine plural) Quantifier plusieurs 'several' can modify only an
indeterminate plural nominal (i.e. a plural nominal not premodified by a
Determiner), so that we can have 'plusieurs questions' ('several questions')
and 'plusieurs faux pas' ('several false steps'), but not *'plusieurs ces
arbres' ('several these trees'). How can we account for the fact that tous
quantifies a determinate nominal, whereas plusieurs quantifies an
indeterminate nominal? Within the framework adopted here, it seems natural to
suppose that quantification of a determinate nominal involves quantification
of a DP, whereas quantification of an indeterminate nominal involves
quantification of an NP. But what is the structural relation between the
Quantifier and the quantified expression?
One suggestion (adapted from the traditional NP analysis) might be to treat
Quantifiers as the specifiers of the (DP or NP) nominals they quantify.
However, this assumption would prove problematic in relation to examples such
as:
(44)(a)
(b)
few oppositions attempts to discredit the government
all the president's decisions
Given our earlier arguments that opposition is the specifier of the NP
opposition attempts to discredit the government in (44)(a), and that the
president is the specifier of the DP the president's decisions, it is apparent
that we cannot analyse few as the specifier of NP nor all as the specifier of
DP in the relevant examples, since the nominals concerned already have a
specifier of their own. However, we might alternatively suggest treating
Quantfiers as adjuncts to the nominals they quantify, so that few would be an
NP adjunct, and all a DP adjunct - as in (45) below:
(45)(a) [NP [QP [Q few]] [NP opposition attempts to discredit the government]]
(b) [DP [QP [Q all]] [DP the president's decisions]]
However, the adjunct analysis of Quantifiers poses a number of problems. For
one thing, it wrongly predicts that (since adjunction is a recursive
operation) Quantifiers can be recursively stacked. Moreover, under the adjunct
analysis, Quantifiers are anomalous in respect of not being able to take
complements of any kind (cf. the ungrammaticality of *'few of them the
president's decisions'). But if Quantifiers are neither specifiers of no
adjuncts to the nominals they modify, what is their structural relation to
those nominals?
Given our general assumption that Determiners are the heads of their
containing nominals, a natural answer would be to suppose that Quantifiers too
are the heads of their containing expressions, so that quantified nominals
have the status of Quantifier Phrases headed by their Quantifiers. On this
assumption, nominals such as tous ces arbres 'all these trees' and plusieurs
arbres 'several trees' would have the respective structures (46)(a) and (b)
below:
(46)(a)
(b)
[QP [Q tous] [DP [D ces] [NP [N arbres]]]]
[QP [Q plusieurs] [NP [N arbres]]]
Quantifiers would no longer be anomalous categories which never select
complements, since the complement of a prenominal Quantifier would be the
nominal which it quantifies. We could then say that both quantified NPs and
quantified DPs would be Quantifier Phrases, and would differ only in that the
complement of a Quantifier like tous 'all' is a DP, whereas the complement of
a Quantifier like plusieurs 'several' is an NP. Predeterminer Quantifiers
would then differ from prenominal Quantifiers in respect of their complementselection (i.e. subcategorisation) properties, viz. in respect of whether they
select an NP or DP complement.
Moreover, analysing Quantifiers as the heads of their containing phrases
would also provide us with a natural account of the fact that most Quantifiers
can be used not only prenominally, but also pronominally - as examples such as
the following illustrate:
(47)(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
Many (miners) died in the accident
Few (politicians) tell the truth
Both (students) failed their exams
Neither (one) is perfect
Given our assumption that each separate head within a nominal structure has a
pronominal counterpart, it follows that we should expect to find not only
pronominal N heads like one, and pronominal D heads like these/they, but also
pronominal Q heads like many/few/both/all etc. The difference between a
prenominal Quantifier like no and a pronominal Quantifier like none would then
be one of complement-selection, in that no requires an overt NP complement
(cf. 'no student of Linguistics') whereas none does not select an overt NP
complement (cf. *'none student of Linguistics').
An interesting issue which arises in relation to the twin assumptions that
determinate nominals are projections of a head D constituent and quantified
nominals are projections of a head Q constituent is whether or not nominals
which are indeterminate and unquantified should be analysed as headed by a
null Determiner or null Quantifier. Chomsky (1965, p. 107-8) explicitly
assumes that indeterminate nominals are premodified by a null Determiner: some
empirical evidence in support of this assumption might seem to come from
examples such as the following:
(48)
Linguists take themselves/*ourselves/*yourselves too seriously,
don't they/*we/*you, the/*we/*you poor fools?
In the context of our earlier discussion of examples such as (41) above, it is
interesting to note that the indeterminate nominal linguists is intrinsically
third person in nature, since it can serve as the antecedent of a third (but
not second or first) person anaphor like themselves, and can be tagged by a
third (but not second or first) person pronoun like they or by a nominal
headed by a third (but not second or first) person Determiner like the. Given
our earlier arguments that the person properties of nominals are carried in
their Determiner system, a natural way of accounting for the fact that
indeterminate nominals are intrinsically third person is to suppose that they
are headed by a null third person Determiner, so that a seemingly
indeterminate nominal such as linguists is in fact a determinate nominal of
the simplified form (49) below (where e represents a null head):
(49)
[DP [D e] [NP [N linguists]]]
Of course, there are also other ways of handling the relevant data - e.g. to
suppose that third person is a default value, so that any nominal which is not
headed by a first or second person Determiner is (by default) analysed as a
third person expression.
In much the same way, we might suppose that nominals such as those
italicised in (50) below:
(50)
I'd like salad/potatoes with the main course
is a QP headed by a null (partitive) Quantifier which takes the NP
salad/potatoes as its complement. If we posit such a null partitive
Quantifier, then in order to account for the ungrammaticality of sentences
such as:
(51)
*I'd like sweet after the main course
we shall have to suppose that this null partitive Quantifier may select an NP
complement headed by a mass Noun like salad or a plural Noun like potatoes,
but not an NP complement headed by a singular count Noun like sweet. In this
respect, the null Quantifier would resemble the overt Quantifier enough in its
complement-selection properties: cf.
(52)
Have you had enough salad/potatoes/*sweet?
The fact that our putative null partitive Quantifier has the same complementselection properties as a 'real' Quantifier such as enough increases the
plausibility of positing its existence.
One type of nominal constituent whose syntax we have not so far considered
are adnominal Adjectives. Under the classic NP analysis (cf. e.g. Radford
1981/1988), both prenominal attributive Adjectives and postnominal Adjectives
were analysed as adjuncts to the sister nominals which they are immediately
adjacent to, and thus occupy the same hierarchical position (differing only in
their linear position). A natural extension of this analysis within the DP
framework would be to posit that such Adjectives head APs which function as
adjuncts to the NPs they modify. In more concrete terms, what this would mean
would be that the bracketed nominals in sentences such as (53) below:
(53)(a)
(b)
[Available funds] are limited
[Funds available] are limited
would have the simplified adjunction structures indicated in (54) below:
(54)(a)
[NP [AP available] [NP [N funds]]]
(b)
[NP [NP [N funds]] [AP available]]
Treating adnominal adjectival expressions as APs which serve as adjuncts to
NPs in this way offers the obvious advantage of providing a unitary account of
the syntax of prenominal and postnominal Adjectives. Moreover, the adjunct
analysis correctly predicts that postnominal APs (being adjuncts external to
NP) will follow postnominal arguments (which are internal to NP), as we can
illustrate in terms of examples such as the following:
(55)(a)
(b)
[students of Linguistics] good at Phonetics
*[students good at Phonetics of Linguistics]
If (as we are suggesting here) of Linguistics is a complement of students, and
good at phonetics is an adjunct to the NP students of Linguistics, then the
word order facts in (55) fall out in precisely the way we should expect them
to.
However, a closer look at examples like (54) should alert us to a potential
problem - namely that available licenses a PP complement to us when used
postnominally, but not when used prenominally. Moreover, this is not in any
sense a lexical idiosyncrasy of the Adjective available, since the same is
true of other Adjectives (e.g. suitable and proud) as we see from paradigms
such as:
(56)(a)
(b)
(c)
resources available to us/*available to us resources
people suitable for the job/*suitable for the job people
mothers proud of their children/*proud of their children mothers
Abney (1987 p. 326) argues that it is a systematic fact about English that
'prenominal Adjectives may not have complements'. The obvious question to ask
is how we are to account for this under the adjunct analysis.
Abney (1987) suggests that the reason why prenominal Adjectives do not
permit complements is that the Noun Phrase premodified by the Adjective is
itself the complement of the Adjective. What this means is that prenominal
Adjectives are the heads of their containing phrases, and that the Noun
Phrases which they modify are the complements of the head Adjectives. If we
continue to suppose that postnominal adjectivals are adjuncts, then this would
mean that nominal pairs such as available resources and resources available to
us would have the respective simplified structures indicated in (57) below:
(57)(a)
(b)
[AP [A available] [NP [N resources]]]
[NP [NP [N resources]] [AP [A available] [PP to us]]]
Prenominal Adjectives would thus be the heads of their containing phrases,
whereas postnominal Adjectives would be adjuncts to the nominals they follow.
A structure such as (57)(a) would involve complementation (since a modified
nominal is analysed as the complement of the Adjective which modifies it),
whereas a structure such as (57)(b) would involve adjunction (with the
adjoined AP having an essentially predicative interpretation, and thus being
interpreted in much the same way as a restrictive relative clause like that
are available to us).
There are a number of interesting phenomena which lead us to the conclusion
that attributive (premodifying) Adjectives exhibit different syntactic
behaviour from predicative Adjectives, and that postmodifying Adjectives are
used in an essentially predicative way. For example (as noted in Jackendoff
1972), Adjectives like mere and utter can be used prenominally, but not
postnominally or predicatively: cf. e.g.
(58)(a)
(b)
(c)
mere excuses/utter chaos
*excuses so mere/*chaos so utter
*His excuses were mere/*The chaos was utter
Conversely, there are Adjectives which can be used postnominally or
predicatively, but not prenominally: cf.
(59)(a)
(c)
people afraid of the dark
*afraid people
(b)
They were afraid
Some Adjectives carry one meaning when used prenominally, but another when
used postnominally or predicatively: cf.
(60)(a)
(b)
(c)
present students (antonym = past)
students present (antonym = absent)
Most of them are present (antonym = absent)
What is particularly interesting about such data is that they suggest that
postnominal Adjectives are essentially predicative in nature, and distinct in
a number of ways from prenominal Adjectives. Clearly it would be difficult to
provide any systematic description of the semantic differences between
prenominal and postnominal Adjectives if we were to posit that the two have
the same function of adnominal adjuncts.
Further support for the claim that prenominal Adjectives are the heads of
their containing nominals comes from the fact prenominal Adjectives often
combine with following NP complements to form an unit with an idiosyncratic
(metaphorical) meaning which is not present when the Adjective is used
postnominally or predicatively. It is a feature of head+complement structures
that they often have a metaphorical interpretation, as we see from expressions
such as 'break the ice', 'blow the whistle', 'smell a rat', 'kick the bucket',
'spill the beans', 'toe the line', 'bite the bullet', 'bite the dust', 'hit
the roof', etc. Significantly, many Adjective+Noun collocations also have an
idiosyncratic metaphorical meaning - e.g. 'white elephant', 'red herring',
'blue stocking', 'grey matter', 'black sheep', 'cold turkey', 'hot rod',
'humble pie', 'blank cheque', 'sacred cow', 'damp squib', 'flying saucer',
'wet blanket', etc. However, the idiomatic interpretation is lost if the
Adjective is used postnominally or predicatively, so that a sentence such as
'It was a red herring' can have the idiomatic interpretation 'It was
irrelevant', but not a sentence such as 'It was a herring red as any I had
ever come across', nor a sentence such as 'The herring was red'. Given that
many head+complement structures are idiomatic collocations, treating
prenominal Adjectives as the head of their containing nominals would provide
us with a straightforward account of the fact that such prenominal Adjective
collocations have an idiosyncratic metaphorical interpretation. Much the same
point can also be made in relation to the fact that many prenominal Adjectives
take on an idiosyncratic metaphorical meaning when combined with a specific
(non-metaphorical) nominal complement - cf. expressions such as 'white lie',
'black market', 'purple prose', 'spitting image', etc.
A further way in which prenominal and postnominal Adjectives may differ is
in respect of their morphosyntactic properties. For example, in French (where
Adjectives carry overt AGR properties), we find that prenominal Adjectives may
exhibit different agreement patterns from postnominal or predicative
Adjectives. In this respect, consider the following contrast:
(61)(a)
de vieilles gens 'some old [FPL] people'
(b)
des gens qui sont plus vieux que moi 'some people who are#more
old [MPL] than me'
(c)
des gens plus vieux que moi 'some people more old [MPL] than me'
The Noun gens 'people' is feminine in French, but has the semantic property of
denoting mixed sex groups. Since masculine is the unmarked gender in French,
expressions predicated of such nominals generally take masculine plural
agreement - hence the use of the masculine form vieux in (61)(b) and (c): this
pattern of agreement is loosely termed semantic in traditional grammar.
However, prenominal Adjectives require strict syntactic agreement (i.e.
agreement with the number/gender properties of the head Noun of their NP
complement), so that the feminine form vieilles is required in (61)(a). It
would seem that it is not unusual to find that modification requires strict
syntactic agreement between a modifying and a modified head; by contrast,
predication often seems to require a relation of 'semantic compatibility'. The
two different agreement patterns can be illustrated in terms of an English
sentence such as 'This parliament have decided to reject the proposed bill'.
Here, we have strict syntactic agreement between the modifier this and the
Noun parliament which it modifies, but a relation of 'semantic compatibility'
between the singular subject this parliament and the plural head Auxiliary
have of the predicate phrase.
Under Abney's analysis, Adjectives can be used either as modifiers which
select an NP complement (as in proud woman), or as predicates which select a
PP or CP complement (as in proud of her son or proud that he won). The
ungrammaticality of strings such as:
(62)
*a proud of her son woman
is then attributable to the fact that no Adjective can function simultaneously
as both a predicate (taking an PP complement like of her son) and a modifier
(taking an NP complement like woman). Word order facts (e.g. the fact that
prenominal Determiners precede prenominal Adjectives) are determined by the
complement-selection properties of specific categories. For example, in order
to handle the word-order facts in a structure such as:
(63)
[DP [D a] [AP [A big] [NP [N dog]]]]
Abney posits that D selects either an AP complement like big dog or an NP
complement such as dog, and that A (when used attributively) selects an NP
complement.
However, Abney's core assumption that both predicative Adjectives and
(prenominal) attributive Adjectives are the heads of containing Adjectival
Phrases poses the problem that it predicts that the two behave in the same way
in every respect. And yet, this is not the case at all. For example, although
an attributive AP can be used as the complement of a Determiner, a predicative
AP cannot - as we see from examples such as the following:
(64)(a)
(b)
Mary is a proud woman
*Mary is a proud
Similarly, attributive Adjectives can be recursively stacked but predicative
Adjectives cannot be: cf.
(65)(a)
(b)
Mary is a proud young woman
*Mary is proud young
Conversely, a predicative AP can be used as the complement of be but not an
attributive AP: cf.
(66)(a)
(b)
She is proud of her son
*She is proud woman
The contrasts between the (a) and (b) sentences in (64-66) cannot be handled
in any straightforward fashion given the assumptions we have made thus far.
Analysing both predicative and attributive adjectival expressions as APs
wrongly predicts that the two exhibit the same syntactic behaviour - and yet
this is clearly not the case. What we need is some way of capturing the fact
that when used as prenominal modifiers, Adjectives behave rather differently
than when used as predicates. But how can we do this?
Abney (1987) suggests an interesting answer to this question in terms of
the notion of inheritance. His proposal amounts to positing that prenominal
Adjectives are modifiers, and that it is a general property of phrases headed
by modifiers that they inherit the categorial status of their complements.
Implicit in this analysis is the postulation of a principle such as the
following (The suggested characterisation here is my own: Abney offers no
specific formulation):
(67)
INHERITANCE PRINCIPLE
A modifier phrase (i.e. a phrase headed by a modifier) inherits the
categorial properties of its complement
What such a principle in effect says is that the properties of a modified
expression percolate up to projections of the modifier. Given this principle,
a string such as big dog will have the intrinsic categorial status of an
Adjectival Phrase, but (being a modifier phrase headed by the modifying
Adjective big) will inherit the NP-hood of its complement dog, and so acquire
the inherited categorial status of a Noun Phrase.
Consider how we might use the INHERITANCE PRINCIPLE (allied to Abney's
assumptions) to handle the data in (64-66) above. Let us assume that both
Determiners and attributive Adjectives select an NP complement, and that
selection is sensitive to the inherited categorial properties of items. It
then follows that the string a proud woman in (64)(a) is grammatical because
the Determiner a selects as its complement a string (proud woman) which
becomes an NP by inheritance (although intrinsically an AP): by contrast, the
string *a proud in (64)(b) is ungrammatical precisely because proud is an AP
(It has no NP complement, and so cannot become an NP by inheritance), and D
selects an NP complement, not an AP complement. The possibility of recursively
stacking attributive Adjectives in a string like a proud young woman in
(65)(a) is predicted under the inheritance analysis, if we assume that
attributive Adjectives select an NP complement: the string young woman is
intrinsically an AP but becomes an NP by inheritance, and so can serve as the
complement of another attributive Adjective like proud so resulting in the
string proud young woman which is intrinsically an AP, but which inherits the
inherited NP-hood of young woman, so that the whole string proud young woman
itself becomes an NP by inheritance (and so is able to serve as the complement
of another attributive Adjective, or of a Determiner like a). By contrast,
since predicative Adjectives select only a PP or CP complement (never an AP
complement), the ungrammaticality of (65)(b) *Mary is proud young can be
accounted for in terms of a violation of complement-selection requirements.
The data in (66) can be handled straightforwardly if we assume that be selects
an AP complement but not an NP complement, since proud of her son will be an
AP (predicative Adjectives do not fall within the scope of the INHERITANCE
PRINCIPLE, since they are not modifiers), but proud woman will become an NP by
inheritance.
Interesting though the inheritance analysis is, it is potentially
problematic in a number of respects. For example, Abney implicity treats
prenominal Determiners as modifiers (which means that a DP such as a theory
inherits the NP-hood of its complement theory and so becomes an NP by
inheritance): but given that (as we have already seen) the inheritance
analysis predicts that modifiers can be recursively stacked, this predicts
that not just prenominal Adjectives but also prenominal Determiners can be
recursively stacked: however, this prediction is false - as we see from the
ungrammaticality of *a my idea, *that the house etc. in English.
Moreover, the key assumption that complement-selection is sensitive to
inherited categorial properties proves problematic in relation to data such as
the following (from French):
(68)(a)
(b)
On a choisi des vins (excellents)
We have chosen some wines (excellent)
'We chose some (excellent) wines'
On a choisi d'excellents vins
We have chosen some excellent wines
'We chose some excellent wines'
As these examples illustrate, in non-negative sentenes in French, the
partitive Quantifier des 'some' is used to quantify both an unmodified plural
NP, and a plural NP modified by a postnominal Adjective; by contrast, the
different partitive Quantifier d(e) 'some' is used to quantify a plural
nominal modified by a prenominal Adjective. However, the problem posed for the
inheritance analysis by such data is that the strings vins and vins excellents
will be NPs intrinsically, while the string excellents vins will be
intrinsically an AP but will become an NP by inheritance. Given Abney's
assumption that the inherited categorial properties of a constituent override
its intrinsic properties with respect to complement-selection, it follows that
all three strings vins, vins excellents and excellents vins will be treated
as NPs for complement-selection purposes. But this leaves us with no
straightforward way of accounting for the fact that des is required in
structures like (68)(a) but de in structures like (68)(b), since in both cases
the Quantifier will select a constituent which is an NP (intrinsically in the
(a) structure, by inheritance in the (b) structure). A number of other
problems posed by the inheritance analysis are discussed in Radford 1989.
Given the problems associated with the inheritance analysis, we might
explore an alternative approach to the problem. The intuition which is being
captured by saying that a complex constituent such as big dog is an AP
intrinsically but becomes an NP by inheritance is that big dog is an
adjectival expression, but one in which the nominal features of dog percolate
up to overall phrasal constituent, which therefore has the status of an
Adjective-modified Noun Phrase. The implicit assumption behind this analysis
is that modified expressions are co-headed: one way of capturing this
intuition would be to say that the head of the modifying Phrase is the
immediate head of the overall constituent, and the head of the modified Phrase
is its ultimate head. In these terms, the immediate head of a string such as
big dog would be the Adjective big, but its ultimate head would be the Noun
dog. One way of formalising this (suggested in Radford 1991) would be to
suggest that big dog is an ANP constituent, i.e. a double-bar constituent
whose immediate head is A, but whose ultimate head is N. In contrast, an
unmodified nominal such as students (of Linguistics) would be an NP, i.e. a
constituent whose immediate and ultimate head is the same Noun, students.
Given these assumptions, it would be a simple enough matter to handle the
contrast between des and de in (68), by saying that des quantifies (i.e.
selects as its complement) an NP constituent, whereas de selects an ANP
constituent.
An obvious question to ask is whether we could extend the coheadedness
account to deal with multiply modified phrases such as all the brown dogs. One
possibility would be as follows. We might suppose that dogs is an NP, i.e. a
constituent whose immediate and ultimate head is the same Noun dogs. We might
also suppose that brown dogs is an ANP (an Adjective-modified Noun Phrase), in
that its immediate head is the Adjective brown, and its ultimate head is the
Noun dogs. We might further suppose that the brown dogs is a DNP (Determinate
Noun Phrase), i.e. a Phrase whose immediate head is the Determiner these and
whose ultimate head is the Noun cars. Finally, we might suppose that the
overall expression all the brown dogs is a QNP (Quantified Noun Phrase), i.e.
a Phrase whose immediate head is the Quantifier all and whose ultimate head is
the Noun cars. Given these assumptions, the string all the brown dogs would
have the simplified structure (69) below:
(69)
[QNP [Q all] [DNP [D the] [ANP [A brown] [NP [N dogs]]]]]
We could then attain a unitary characterisation of the notion of a nominal
constituent as a 'constituent whose ultimate head is a Noun'. Thus, the NP
dogs, the ANP brown dogs, the DNP the brown dogs and the QNP all the brown
dogs would all be 'nominal constituents' in (69). For some thoughts on how
this analysis might be extended, see Radford 1991.
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