The DP Hypothesis in the grammar of Basque

This article justifies Abney’s DP Hypothesis from a point of view internal to Basque grammar. The author reviews Abney’s arguments and adapts them to Basque, devoting special attention to proper names and personal pronouns. Two separate sections discuss (a) the relevance of the NP/DP distinction in three constructions (vocatives, complex predicates and predicate nominals), and (b) the language internal evidence for further functional projections (Q and Num), based on quantification data and DP-internal number agreement. Finally, the author proposes that doubly determined noun phrases with initial demonstratives (only found in Western Basque) should be analyzed in the light of the DP Hypothesis.