This week-long course surveys a range of theoretical advances in the generative analysis of nominal constructions. Following the widespread adoption of Abney’s (1987) DP-hypothesis, various other functional heads (e.g. Number, Ritter 1991;
Gender, Bernstein 1993; Classifier, Li 1999) were proposed to be included in the extended projection of the noun. With any expansion of functional architecture, questions arise concerning the universality and cross-linguistic uniformity of the functional structure associated with the lexical core. In other words, it must be determined whether, for example, every nominal in every language realises the same set of functional categories organised in the same hierarchical order, or, whether the existence of different types of nominals within a language (such as noun phrases with and without determiners in an ‘article language’ like English) and of morphosyntactic variation across languages (such as the existence of article and articleless languages) necessitate revising the hypothesis of structural uniformity.
In this course, we will take a closer look at the motivations for and against structural uniformity in the nominal domain by considering the functional structure of
pronouns, demonstratives, and diminutives. With no background knowledge assumed other than a familiarity with the basic constructs of syntactic description and representation, we will begin by framing [1] extant approaches to the functional structure of nominals against [2] the NP vs DP debate (Boškovic 2005, 2009; Bruening, Dinh & Kim 2018; Salzmann 2020; Köylü 2021). Next, we will address the question what, if anything, distinguishes [3] pronouns (Postal 1969; Wiltschko 1998; Déchaine & Wiltschko 2002; Patel-Grosz & Grosz 2017) and [4] demonstratives (Brugè 2002; Leu 2014; Ahn 2022; Colasanti & Wiltschko 2025) from non-pronominal DPs. The course concludes with an examination of [5] diminutives (Wiltschko 2006, 2007; Ott 2011; De Belder, Faust & Lampitelli 2014), which are well known to ‘display a variety of morphosyntactic and semantic … peculiarities’ (Manova, Grestenberger & Korecky-Kröll 2024).
Pre-Course Readings
Pereltsvaig, Asya. 2013. Noun phrase structure in article-less Slavic languages:
DP or not DP? Language and Linguistics Compass 7, 201-219.
Punske, Jeffrey. 2014. Functional structure inside nominal phrases. In Andrew Carnie, Yosuke Sato & Dan Siddiqi (eds), The Routledge handbook of syntax, 97-120. Abingdon & New York: Routledge.
References
Abney, Steven. 1987. The English noun phrase in its sentential aspect.
PhD dissertation, MIT.
Ahn, Dorothy. 2022. Indirectly direct: An account of demonstratives and pointing. Linguistics and Philosophy 45, 1345-1393.
Bernstein, Judy. 1993. Topics in syntax of nominal structure across Romance.
PhD dissertation, City University of New York.
Bošković, Željko. 2005. On the locality of left branch extraction and the structure of NP. Studia Linguistica 59, 1-45.
Bošković, Željko. 2009. More on the no-DP analysis of article-less languages. Studia Linguistica 63, 187-203
Bruening, Benjamin, Xuyen Dinh & Lan Kim. 2018. Selection, idioms, and the structure of nominal phrases with and without classifiers. Glossa: A journal of general linguistics 3(1), 42.
Brugè, Laura. 2002. The positions of demonstratives in the extended nominal projection. In Guglielmo Cinque (ed.), Functional structure in DP and IP: The cartography of syntactic structures, 15-53. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Colasanti, Valentina & Martina Wiltschko. 2025. Demonstratives locate referents in common space and ground: A comparative syntactic approach. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 43, 2483–2521.
De Belder, Marijke, Noam Faust & Nicola Lampitelli. 2014. On a low and a high diminutive: Evidence from Italian and Hebrew. In Artemis Alexiadou, Hagit Borer & Florian Schaefer (eds), The syntax of roots and the roots of syntax, 149-163. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Déchaine, Rose-Marie & Martina Wiltschko. 2002. Decomposing pronouns. Linguistic Inquiry 33, 409-442.
Köylü, Yılmaz. 2021. An overview of the NP versus DP debate. Language and Linguistics Compass 15, e12406.
Leu, Thomas. 2014. The architecture of determiners. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.
Li, Yen-Hui Audrey. 1999. Plurality in a classifier language. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 8, 75-99.
Manova, Stela Laura Grestenberger & Katharina Korecky-Kröll. 2024. Introduction. In Stela Manova, Laura Grestenberger & Katharina Korecky-Kröll (eds), Diminutives across languages, theoretical domains and linguistic domains, 1-33. Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.
Ott, Dennis. 2011. Diminutive-formation in German: Spelling out the classifier analysis. Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 14, 1-46.
Patel-Grosz, Pritty & Patrick G. Grosz. 2017. Revisiting pronominal typology.
Linguistic Inquiry 48, 259-297.
Postal, Paul M. 1969. On so-called ‘pronouns’ in English. In D. Reibel & Sandford Schane (eds), Modern studies in English, 201–244. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Reprinted (abridged) in Richard S. Kayne, Thomas Leu, & Raffaella Zanuttini (eds), An Annotated syntax reader: Lasting insights and questions, 12-25. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 2014.
Ritter, Elizabeth. 1991. Two functional categories in noun phrases: Evidence from Modern Hebrew. Syntax and Semantics 25, 37-62.
Salzmann, Martin. 2020. The NP vs. DP debate. Why previous arguments are inconclusive and what a good argument could look like. Evidence from agreement with hybrid nouns. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics 5,1-46.
Wiltschko, Martina. 1998. On the syntax and semantics of (relative) pronouns and determiners. Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 2, 143-181.
Wiltschko, Martina. 2006. Why should diminutives count? In Hans Broekhuis, Norbert Corver, Riny Huybregts, Ursula Kleinhenz & Jan Koster (eds), Organizing grammar: Studies in honor of Henk van Riemsdijk, 669-678. Berlin & New York: de Gruyter.
Wiltschko, Martina & Olga Steriopolo. 2007. Parameters of variation in the syntax of diminutives. In Milica Radišic (ed.), Proceedings of the 2007 annual conference of the Canadian Linguistic Association, University of Saskatchewan, May 26-29, 2007. http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~claacl/actes2007/Wiltschko_Steriopolo.pdf.