Topic
Determiner
About: Determiner is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1089 publications have been published within this topic receiving 19793 citations. The topic is also known as: adnominal adjective & attributive.
Papers published on a yearly basis
1 / 2
Papers
TL;DR: In this paper, a crosslinguistic analysis of argumental bare nominal arguments is presented, in which determinerless NPs are assumed to occur in canonical argumental positions.
Abstract: This paper is devoted to the study of bare nominal arguments (i.e., determinerless NPs occurring in canonical argumental positions) from a crosslinguistic point of view. It is proposed that languages may vary in what they let their NPs denote. In some languages (like Chinese), NPs are argumental (names of kinds) and can thus occur freely without determiner in argument position; in others they are predicates (Romance), and this prevents NPs from occurring as arguments, unless the category D(eterminer) is projected. Finally, there are languages (like Germanic or Slavic) which allow both predicative and argumental NPs; these languages, being the ‘union’ of the previous two types, are expected to behave like Romance for certain aspects of their nominal system (the singular count portion) and like Chinese for others (the mass and plural portions). This hypothesis (the ‘Nominal Mapping Parameter’) is investigated not just through typological considerations, but also through a detailed contrastive analysis of bare arguments in Germanic (English) vs. Romance (Italian). Some general consequences of this view, which posits a limited variation in the mapping from syntax into semantics, for current theories of Universal Grammar and acquisition are considered.
1,556 citations
TL;DR: The authors argued that the null determiner is not to be regarded as the plural of the indefinite article a. A brief analysis is sketched in which bare plurals are treated in all instances as proper names of kinds of things.
Abstract: It is argued that the English ‘bare plural’ (an NP with plural head that lacks a determiner), in spite of its apparently diverse possibilities of interpretation, is optimally represented in the grammar as a unified phenomenon. The chief distinction to be dealt with is that between the ‘generic’ use of the bare plural (as in ‘Dogs bark’) and its existential or ‘indefinite plural’ use (as in ‘He threw oranges at Alice’). The difference between these uses is not to be accounted for by an ambiguity in the NP itself, but rather by explicating how the context of the sentence acts on the bare plural to give rise to this distinction. A brief analysis is sketched in which bare plurals are treated in all instances as proper names of kinds of things. A subsidiary argument is that the null determiner is not to be regarded as the plural of the indefinite article a.
601 citations
Book•
1 Oct 1990
TL;DR: Early Child Grammars of English: as mentioned in this paper The overall structure of early child grammars is described in detail in Section 3.2.1.2 The Grammar of Missing Arguments in Early Child English.
Abstract: Preface. 1. Aims and Approaches. 2. Categorization in Early Child English. 3. Lexical Category Systems in Early Child English. 4. Absence of a Determiner System in Early Child English. 5. Absence of a Complementizer System in Early Child English. 6. Absence of an Inflection System in Early Child English. 7. Absence of a Case System in Early Child English. 8. The Grammar of Missing Arguments in Early Child English. 9. The Overall Structure of Early Child Grammars of English. 10. Explanations and Implications. Bibliography. Index.
514 citations
1 Jan 2017
TL;DR: This paper presented an analysis of the German indeterminate pronoun or determiner irgendein from a Japanese point of view, which raises the question as to what makes such system look so different from more familiar determiner quantification systems.
Abstract: The quantificational system in Japanese makes use of so-called indeterminate pronouns, which take on existential, universal, interrogative, negative polarity, or free choice interpretations depending on what operator they associate with. Similar systems are found crosslinguistically, which raises the question as to what makes such system look so different from more familiar determiner quantification systems. This paper takes a first step toward answering this question by presenting an analysis of the German indeterminate pronoun or determiner irgendein from a Japanese point of view.
494 citations
TL;DR: The results suggest that regularization processes in natural language learning, such as those seen in the acquisition of language from non-native speakers or in the formation of young languages, may depend crucially on the nature of language learning by young children.
447 citations
Related Topics (5)
Performance Metrics
| Year | Papers |
|---|---|
| 2025 | 17 |
| 2024 | 17 |
| 2023 | 48 |
| 2022 | 90 |
| 2021 | 31 |
| 2020 | 49 |