Editing Determiner phrase (section)

===Definite pronouns===

The fact that definite pronouns are in complementary distribution with determiners is taken as evidence in favor of DP.<ref>Hordós et al. produce the behavior of definite pronouns as an argument in favor of the DP-analysis.</ref> The important observation in this area is that definite pronouns cannot appear together with a determiner like ''the'' or ''a'' in one and the same DP, e.g.

# they
# *the they

# him
# *a him

On a DP-analysis, this trait of definite pronouns is relatively easy to account for. If definite pronouns are actually determiners, then it makes sense that they should not be able to appear together with another determiner since the two would be competing for the same syntactic position in the hierarchy of structure. On an NP-analysis in contrast, there is no obvious reason why a combination of the two would not be possible. In other words, the NP-analysis has to reach to additional stipulations to account for the fact that combinations like ''*the them'' are impossible. A difficulty with this reasoning, however, is posed by indefinite pronouns (''one'', ''few'', ''many''), which can easily appear together with a determiner, e.g. ''the old one''. The DP-analysis must therefore draw a distinction between definite and indefinite pronouns, whereby definite pronouns are classified as determiners, but indefinite pronouns as nouns.