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Cooccurrence of Nonarticle Determiners as Evidence for Split DPs and Bundled Projections

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2026

Brian Hsu and
Saurov Syed
Brian Hsu*
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Saurov Syed*
Affiliation:
University of Auckland
*
[hsub@email.unc.edu]
[s.syed@auckland.ac.nz]
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Abstract

This research report examines crosslinguistic variation in cooccurrence among nonarticle determiners (demonstratives, proper names, pronouns, possessors) and its implications for understanding nominal (DP) structure and its variation. We present data from several language families and show that languages vary in both the number and permitted combinations of nonarticle determiners within a nominal phrase. These patterns provide new evidence that the primary semantic components of nominal reference—PERSON, DEIXIS, and INCLUSIVENESS—correspond to syntactic features in a universal hierarchy. Languages vary in how these features are bundled on functional heads; nonarticle determiners can cooccur only if their corresponding features are on separate heads.

Keywords

determiner phrasesdeterminersdefinitenesspronounsdemonstrativespossessorsfunctional projectionshead bundling

Information

Type
Research Report
Information
Language , Volume 96 , Issue 3 , September 2020, pp. e114 - e134
Copyright
Copyright © 2020 Linguistic Society of America

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Footnotes

*

For their helpful discussion on earlier stages of this project, we thank Theresa Biberauer, Željko Bošković, Liliane Haegeman, Georg Höhn, Richard Larson, Elliott Moreton, Ileana Paul, Ivy Sichel, Jennifer L. Smith, Lisa Travis, and Jenneke van der Wal. We also thank Language associate editor Susi Wurmbrand and two anonymous referees for their very helpful comments. Finally, we are grateful for feedback from audiences at WCCFL 36 at UCLA, the 2018 LSA Annual Meeting, Cambridge Comparative Syntax 7, and a UNC Linguistics Friday Colloquium. Portions of this work were supported by the Faculty Research Development Fund (FRDF) of the University of Auckland and the Carolina Postdoctoral Program for Faculty Diversity at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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