Indefinite articles and the structure of the DP

Description

One of the challenges in the syntactic analysis of the determiner phrase is to “fit in” all the possible candidates for the head of the determiner phrase (DP): articles, demonstratives, quantifiers, and possessive determiners, and this has resulted in proposals for more functional categories between the determiner and noun. Those degree words and phrases which can precede or follow the article: a too quick conclusion/too quick a conclusion and rather a strange conclusion/ a rather strange conclusion as well as those like such that must precede the article: such a strange conclusion are useful for giving evidence of structure and possible movement in the DP. There is however, disagreement about the position of such. Alexiadou, Haegeman& Stavrou (2007:109) use its position preceding the indefinite article to argue that demonstratives are DP specifiers, while (Wood 2002) argues that such is the specifier of Number Phrase. In this paper we compare the position of English degree adverbs like such, so and too with possible positions for degree elements in German and Danish: solch ein Wetter/ein solches Wetter; sådan en konklusion, en sådan konklusion in order to further the analysis of the structure of DP.

References

Alexiadou, Haegeman& Stavrou 2007. Noun Phrase in the Generative Perspective. Berlin: Mouton

Wood, Johanna L. 2002. Much about such. Studia Linguistica, 56, 91-115.