Abstract
In this chapter, we will take a look at the constraints that govern extraction from the local domain which is traditionally called “noun phrase” (NP). As before, I will follow the DP-hypothesis as advanced in Abney (1987) and most subsequent work in generative grammar. According to the DP-hypothesis, D is the formal head of the phrase, while N is its lexical head. Thus, the label NP will exclusively refer to the maximal projection of N. As has often been claimed, there is architectural parallelism between the categories IP and DP. We will see, however, that SpecDP can also be the landing site for phrases that are generated inside DP and can be extracted via SpecDP, which makes the DP comparable to CP. The chapter starts with a brief discussion of overt movement from DP. This part (section 4.2) will introduce the bulk of phenomena that play a role in the following discussion, especially the fact that colloquial German permits fronting of NP-internal PPs to Spec DP. If in German N selects an argument, it does so to its right. In order to deal with this situation, the definition of barrier which has been used in the previous chapter has to be expanded. Section 4.2 also contains a discussion of the Left Branch Constraint (LBC), including the so-called Doubling Possessive Construction. On the basis of this, section 4.3, the central part of this chapter, provides a discussion of LF-movement from DP. It will be shown in 4.3.1 that post-nominal PPs may move to a VP-adjoined operator position via SpecDP, and thus take propositional scope. In 4.3.2, the doubling possessive construction will be compared with the possessive construction involving the Saxon -s genitive. It will be explained why the former allows movement of a quantified possessor phrase while the latter can do this exclusively under the precondition that there is feature percolation from Spec-DP to the entire DP. It will be demonstrated that despite superficial evidence to the contrary, the LBC holds at LF in full generality. Section 4.3.3 shows why a quantified PP can move from a quantified DP overtly but not abstractly. Section 4.3.4 contains a discussion of some variability of grammaticality judgements I have found among speakers of English. Section 4.3.5 addresses the question why CPs quantified with a focusing particle are impossible as complements of nouns.
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Notes
For English, see Fiengo and Higginbotham (1981). The reason lies presumably in a feature conflict between D and material in SpecDP which is absent in German.
See chapter 2, section 2.2.
Notice that (i) and (ii) are ungrammatical unless there are strong contextual cues.
See Sportiche (1988b).
In spoken language one can never observe leftward shift but occasionally rightward shift of genitive DPs, as the following example from a TV-interview shows:
An example would be
Similar arguments have recently been advanced by Pafel (1993).
An immediate prediction is that the LBC does not hold if for some reason the D-head does not move with the possessor-DP, or if there is no D-head. The latter seems to be the case in the Slavic lan-guages.
See Baker (1988: 140).
Notice cases like (i) where the so-called Saxon genitive is completely absent, and in which the possessor DP cannot move either as seen in (ii)::
See Taraldsen (1977) and Fiva (1985) for Norwegian, van Riemsdijk (1984) and Bhatt (1990: ch.6) for German, Corver (1990) for Dutch and Norwegian. Ramat (1986) gives a cross-linguistic overview of this widespread construction. I will not pursue the question why the possessor appears with dative Case. Notice that the dative is often associated with the semantic role of a beneficient. Thus, a plausible reason could be that the dative marking on the possessor DP is a historical reflection of this semantic encoding.
The reduction process is best visible in Dutch where we find next to the Saxon genitive the cliticized possessive pronoun z’n (from the full form zijn). Notice also that in this construction the possessive pronoun must not be focused.
See Taraldsen (1977) and Fiva (1985). The examples are taken from Corver (1990: 182f.).
See Corver (1990: 192, fn.20). Corver assumes the Barriers analysis of movement by which the VP-barrier has to be crossed by adjunction to VP.
See Fanselow (1991).
This is not intended to be an explanation. It is not really clear why only PPs can extract from DPs but not (genitive) DPs themselves.
I would like to thank Ray Jackendoff for a discussion of the English examples.
For the sake of the discussion, I assume that the C-position is occupied by the fmite verb hat,and that this element is compatible with an abstractly represented Wh-feature.
As already mentioned, the test with sogar can only be successful if we place sogar to the right of the focused DP. Otherwise, the attachment site of the particle remains ambiguous.
Notice that as in the examples with the Saxon genitive, the degree of embedding does not matter as long as the operator phrase is in SpecDP:
Anna Szabolcsi informs me that in Hungarian (i) can only be analyzed as in (iia), not as in (iib):
For arguments that proper names are N° which raise to D° see Taraldsen (1990) and Longobardi (1994). Complex proper names are marked with the inflectional -s on the right edge only, as can be expected historically: Johann Wolfgang von Goethes Werk (“Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s oyuvre”) or Herrn Müllers Hund (“Mr. Müllers dog”). I will not pursue the various questions that arise here, and instead refer the reader to the discussion in Bhatt ( 1990: 6. 4 ).
See Zwicky and Pullum (1983) for a number of relevant tests which discriminate between clitics and inflectional affixes.
In that case DP* is a clitic phrase, and the clitic -s would fail to bind the trace under D,. It seems to be more suitable then to assume base generation of the clitic phrase DP2* in SpecDP, and identification of the empty head D, via spec-head agreement.
One can see this in the following example where a PP with a plural DP has been extracted from a singular DP:
See (65) in section 3.4 of chapter 3. For the inverse linking constructions one has to make sure though that the quantifier of the matrix phrase and the quantifier of the embedded phrase are not simultaneously activated. In (58), the elements meist-and jed-would introduce contradictory +Q features.
See, for instance, Kayne (1993).
Cinque (1990: ch.1) observes a sharper difference between DP- and PP-movement in violations of the CNPC:
The same is true for Rumanian, as pointed out to me by Alexander Grosu.
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Bayer, J. (1996). Focusing Particles and Quantifiers in Determiner and Noun Phrases. In: Directionality and Logical Form. Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, vol 34. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1272-9_5
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