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A MORPHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF DEFINITE NOUNS IN DANISH

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 September 2002

Jorge Hankamer  and
Line Mikkelsen
Jorge Hankamer
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Cruz
Line Mikkelsen
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Cruz
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Abstract

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We argue that the distribution of definiteness marking in Scandinavian DPs is best accounted for by a lexical rule converting Ns to Ds, and not by syntactic head movement. The proposed lexical rule, together with the assumption that lexical expressions can block equivalent phrasal expressions, is shown to account for the core facts about definiteness marking distribution in Danish, and is extended to Swedish and Norwegian. In addition, some previously mysterious facts about definiteness marking in DPs containing relative clauses are explained.

Type
ARTICLES
Information
Journal of Germanic Linguistics , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , June 2002 , pp. 137 - 175
Copyright
© 2002 Society for Germanic Linguistics

Footnotes

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at UCSC, GLAC 7 in Banff, Universitetet i Tromsø, Háskóli Íslands, Universität Konstanz, University of Oxford, University College London, UC San Diego, and in a morphology seminar in the fall term of 2001 at SOAS. We would like to thank audiences at these venues, as well as Judith Aissen, Ash Asudeh, Kersti Börjars, Sandy Chung, Lars-Olof Delsing, Donka Farkas, Anya Hogoboom, Chris Potts, Elizabeth Ritter, Bodil Kappel Schmidt, Peter Svenonius, Arnold Zwicky, and the two anonymous JGL reviewers for comments, help, and discussion. A preliminary version of the analysis for Danish has been published as Hankamer and Mikkelsen 2001. The work of the second author was supported by a grant from the Danish Humanities Research Council.