Editing Determiner phrase (section)

==Arguments for NP over DP==
While the DP-hypothesis has largely replaced the traditional NP analysis in generative grammar, it is generally not held among advocates of other frameworks, for six reasons:<ref>Three articles that discuss observations and arguments against the DP-analysis and in favor of the NP-analysis are Payne (1993), Langendonck (1994), and Hudson (2004).</ref> 1) absent determiners, 2) morphological dependencies, 3) semantic and syntactic parallelism, 4) idiomatic expressions, 5) left-branch phenomena, and 6) genitives.

===Absent determiners===
Many languages lack the equivalents of the English definite and indefinite articles, e.g. the Slavic languages. Thus in these languages, determiners appear much less often than in English, where the definite article ''the'' and the indefinite article ''a'' are frequent. What this means for the DP-analysis is that null determiners are a common occurrence in these languages. In other words, the DP-analysis must posit the frequent occurrence of null determiners in order to remain consistent about its analysis of DPs. DPs that lack an overt determiner actually involve a covert determiner in some sense. The problem is evident in English as well, where mass nouns can appear with or without a determiner, e.g. ''milk'' vs. ''the milk'', ''water'' vs. ''the water''. Plural nouns can also appear with or without a determiner, e.g. ''books'' vs. ''the books'', ''ideas'' vs. ''the ideas'', etc. Since nouns that lack an overt determiner have the same basic distribution as nouns with a determiner, the DP-analysis should, if it wants to be consistent, posit the existence of a null determiner every time an overt determiner is absent. The traditional NP analysis is not confronted with this necessity, since for it, the noun is the head of the noun phrase regardless of whether a determiner is or is not present. Thus the traditional NP analysis requires less of the theoretical apparatus, since it does not need all those null determiners, the existence of which is non-falsifiable. Other things being equal, less is better according to [[Occam's Razor]].

===Morphological dependencies===
The NP-analysis is consistent with intuition in the area of morphological dependencies. Semantic and grammatical features of the noun influence the choice and morphological form of the determiner, not vice versa. Consider grammatical gender of nouns in a language like German, e.g. ''Tisch'' 'table' is masculine (''der Tisch''), ''Haus'' 'house' is neuter (''das Haus''), ''Zeit'' 'time' is feminine (''die Zeit''). The grammatical gender of a noun is an inherent trait of the noun, whereas the form of the determiner varies according to this trait of the noun. In other words, the noun is influencing the choice and form of the determiner, not vice versa. In English, this state of affairs is visible in the area of grammatical number, for instance with the opposition between singular ''this'' and ''that'' and plural ''these'' and ''those''. Since the NP-analysis positions the noun above the determiner, the influence of the noun on the choice and form of the determiner is intuitively clear: the head noun is influencing the dependent determiner. The DP-analysis, in contrast, is unintuitive because it necessitates that one view the dependent noun as influencing the choice and form of the head determiner.

===Semantic and structural parallelism===
Despite what was stated above about parallelism across clause and DP, the traditional NP-analysis of noun phrases actually maintains parallelism in a way that is destroyed if one assumes DPs. The semantic parallelism that can be obtained across clause and NP, e.g. ''He loves water'' vs. ''his love of water'', is no longer present in the structure if one assumes DPs. The point is illustrated here first with dependency trees:

[[File:DP vs. NP 3.png|DP vs. NP 3|center]]

On the NP-analysis, ''his'' is a dependent of ''love'' in the same way that ''he'' is a dependent of ''loves''. The result is that the NP ''his love of water'' and the clause ''He loves water'' are mostly parallel in structure, which seems correct given the semantic parallelism across the two. In contrast, the DP analysis destroys the parallelism, since ''his'' becomes head over ''love''. The same point is true for a constituency-based analysis:

[[File:DP vs. NP 4.png|DP vs. NP 4|center]]

These trees again employ the convention whereby the words themselves are used as the node labels. The NP-analysis maintains the parallelism because the determiner ''his'' appears as specifier in the NP headed by ''love'' in the same way that ''he'' appears as specifier in the clause headed by ''loves''. In contrast, the DP analysis destroys this parallelism because ''his'' no longer appears as a specifier in the NP, but rather as head over the noun.

===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.

===Left branches===
In English and many closely related languages, constituents on left branches underneath nouns cannot be separated from their nouns. Long-distance dependencies are impossible between a noun and the constituents that normally appear on left branches underneath the noun. This fact is addressed in terms of the Left Branch Condition.<ref>The Left Branch Condition was first identified and explored by Ross (1967).</ref> Determiners and attributive adjectives are typical "left-branch constituents". The observation is illustrated with examples of [[topicalization]] and [[wh-movement|wh-fronting]]:

 (1a) ''Fred has '''helpful''' friends.''
 (1b) ''*...and '''helpful''' Fred has friends.'' <small>- The attributive adjective ''helpful'' cannot be topicalized away from its head ''friends''.</small>

 (2a) ''Sam is waiting for the '''second''' train.'' 
 (2b) ''*...and '''second''' Sam is waiting for the train.'' <small>- The attributive adjective ''second'' cannot be topicalized away from its head ''train''.</small>

 (3a) ''Susan has '''our''' car.''
 (3b) ''*'''Whose''' does Susan have car?'' <small>- The interrogative determiner ''whose'' cannot be wh-fronted away from its head ''car''.</small>

 (4a) ''Sam is waiting for '''the second''''' train.
 (4b) ''*'''Which''' is Sam waiting for train?'' <small>- The interrogative determiner ''which'' cannot be wh-fronted away from its head ''train''.</small>

These examples illustrate that with respect to the long-distance dependencies of topicalization and wh-fronting, determiners behave like attributive adjectives. Both cannot be separated from their head noun. The NP-analysis is consistent with this observation because it positions both attributive adjectives and determiners as left-branch dependents of nouns. On a DP-analysis, however, determiners are no longer on left branches underneath nouns. In other words, the traditional NP-analysis is consistent with the fact that determiners behave just like attributive adjectives with respect to long-distance dependencies, whereas the DP-analysis cannot appeal to left branches to account for this behavior because on the DP-analysis, the determiner is no longer on a left branch underneath the noun.

===Genitives===
The NP-analysis is consistent with the observation that genitive case in languages like German can have the option to appear before or after the noun, whereby the meaning remains largely the same, as illustrated with the following examples:

::a. das Haus '''meines Bruders''' 'the house of.my brother'
::b. '''meines Bruders''' Haus 'my brother's house'

::a. die Arbeit '''seines Onkels''' 'the work of.his uncle'
::b. '''seines Onkels''' Arbeit 'his uncle's work'

While the b-phrases are somewhat archaic, they still occur on occasion in elevated registers. The fact that the genitive NPs ''meines Bruders'' and ''seines Onkels'' can precede or follow the noun is telling, since it suggests that the hierarchical analysis of the two variants should be similar in a way that accommodates the almost synonymous meanings. On the NP-analysis, these data are not a problem because in both cases, the genitive expression is a dependent of the noun. The DP-analysis, in contrast, is challenged because in the b-variants, it takes the genitive expression to be head over the noun. In other words, the DP-analysis has to account for the fact that the meaning remains consistent despite the quite different structures across the two variants.