Editing Determiner phrase (section)

===Idiomatic meaning===
{{POV section|date=October 2021}}

The fixed words of many idioms in natural language include the noun of a noun phrase at the same time that they exclude the determiner.<ref>The fact that the fixed words of idioms are continuous in the vertical dimension is explored by Osborne et al. (2012).</ref> This is particularly true of many idioms in English that require the presence of a possessor that is not a fixed part of the idiom, e.g. ''take X's time'', ''pull X's leg'', ''dance on X's grave'', ''step on X's toes'', etc. While the presence of the Xs in these idioms is required, the X argument itself is not fixed, e.g. ''pull his/her/their/John's leg''. What this means is that the possessor is NOT part of the idiom; it is outside of the idiom. This fact is a problem for the DP-analysis because it means that the fixed words of the idiom are interrupted in the vertical dimension. That is, the hierarchical arrangement of the fixed words is interrupted by the possessor, which is not part of the idiom. The traditional NP-analysis is not confronted with this problem, since the possessor appears below the noun. The point is clearly visible in dependency-based structures:

[[File:DP vs. NP 2.png|DP vs. NP 2|center]]

The arrangement of the words in the vertical dimension is what is important. The fixed words of the idiom (in blue) are top-down continuous on the NP-analysis (they form a [[catena (linguistics)|catena]]), whereas this continuity is destroyed on the DP-analysis, where the possessor (in green) intervenes. Therefore the NP-analysis allows one to construe idioms as chains of words, whereas on the DP-analysis, one cannot make this assumption. On the DP-analysis, the fixed words of many idioms really cannot be viewed as discernible units of syntax in any way.