Editing Determiner phrase (section)

===Possessive ''-s'' in English===

Possessive ''-s'' constructions in English are often produced as evidence in favor of the DP-analysis.<ref>For an example of possessive ''-s'' used as an argument in favor of DPs, see Carnie (2021: 214-217).</ref> The key trait of the possessive ''-s'' construction is that the ''-s'' can attach to the right periphery of a phrase. This fact means that ''-s'' is not a suffix (since suffixes attach to words, not phrases). Further, the possessive ''-s'' construction has the same distribution as determiners, which means that it has determiner status. The assumption is therefore that possessive ''-s'' heads the entire DP, e.g.

# [the guy with a hat]'s dog
# [the girl who was laughing]'s scarf

The phrasal nature of the possessive ''-s'' constructions like these is easy to accommodate on a DP-analysis. The possessive ''-s'' heads the possessive phrase; the phrase that immediately precedes the ''-s'' (in brackets) is in specifier position, and the noun that follows the ''-s'' is the complement. The claim is that the NP-analysis is challenged by this construction because it does not make a syntactic category available for the analysis of ''-s'', that is, the NP-analysis does not have a clear means at its disposal to grant ''-s'' the status of determiner. This claim is debatable, however, since nothing prevents the NP-analysis from also granting ''-s'' the status of determiner. The NP-analysis is however forced to acknowledge that DPs do in fact exist, since possessive ''-s'' constructions have to be acknowledged as phrases headed by the determiner ''-s''. A certain type of DP definitely exists, namely one that has ''-s'' as its head.