5. Determiners
5. Determiners
Determiners are operators which take a single argument. In English, as in most Indo-European languages, determiners take a QP argument:
(1) a. the six books
b. these eight bananas
c. that (one) volcano.
All determiners are definite [+Def]. There is a null determiner; it marks indefinite [-Def].
(2) a. six books
b. eight bananas
c. a (one) volcano.
Today more and more linguists are treating 'a, an' as an indefinite quantifier that occurs in a non-definite context. Here, the context is [D NULL]. The determiners 'that' and 'this' are called demonstratives and marked here as [+Dem]. These two demonstrative determiners show agreement for number:
(3) a. these six books
b. this one book
c. *this six books
d. *one books.
The two demonstratives are marked negatively for inherent number feature: [-Pl_Inh]. This means that the value of number is not inherent, but it must be assigned an absolute value--based on agreement. Determiners govern QuP and its head Qu.
The determiner 'the' is not inherently marked for number; hence number does not occur in the feature distribution of it; the same holds for the null indefinite determiner.
Universal
Quantifiers.
Universal quantifiers are hard to define. We will not attempt to do so here. There are five undisputed universal quantifiers and two disputable ones:
(4). all, both, each, every, any.
(5) no, [NULL].
'No' is a universal quantifier in such sentences as:
(6) a. No two persons are exactly alike.
b. No seven dances in Salome are ever expunged.
'No'
This page last updated 2 FE 2000
This page last updated 3 JN 2001
