What’s in a determiner and how did it get there?

I investigate determiner systems of three unrelated languages (Blackfoot, German, and Halkomelem). I show that the features encoded in determiners vary in content, distribution, and spell-out properties. I argue that the distributional differences are best understood as reflecting the familiar structural difference between heads and adjuncts. As such, features are to be analysed as regular linguistic objects which participate in the syntactic operation merge. Regarding the differences in spell-out properties, I argue that they can be accounted for if we recognize a distinction between early and late insertion of functional morphemes.

Published online: 28 October 2009
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.147.01wil