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Linguistic Variation
Vol. 24:1 (2024) ► pp.77–115

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What adjectival agreement reveals about determinerless headlines in Dutch and German

ORCID logo | Leiden University
ORCID logo | Leiden University

This paper offers novel insights on articlelessness in noun phrases in Dutch and German headlines. Modified noun phrases that lack a determiner in headlines exhibit adjectival agreement that cannot be explained if one assumes an article that is phonologically null or that has been PF-deleted. We describe the pattern, consider different analytical options and eventually conclude that the interpretation, distribution as well as the observed adjectival agreement characteristic of articlelessness noun phrases calls for an account in which the article is never projected to begin with.

Keywords: headlinese, ellipsis, non-projection, DP, adjective, agreement, article, Dutch, German
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The representation of articleless nouns in Dutch and German headlines
    • 2.1Analytical option 1: PF-deletion
    • 2.2Analytical option 2: Null Article insertion
    • 2.3Analytical option 3: DP-less noun phrases
  • 3.Evidence from adjectival agreement
  • 4.Summary and further discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 4 July 2023
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https://doi.org/10.1075/lv.22001.lip
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