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Qualitative binominal noun phrases

Definiteness, φ-features, and the referentiality of phasehood

ORCiD logo with link | Roma Tre University
Published online: 2 October 2026
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https://doi.org/10.1075/lv.24074.mas
Abstract
This paper tackles the issue of phasehood in qualitative binominal Noun Phrases by proposing an indexically-driven analysis of phases. We will look at phasehood in qualitative binominals, adjectival phrases, and genitives with definiteness agreement, and propose that these three structures meet the criteria of a diagnostic for phasehood in nominals (Adger, David. 2003. Core syntax: A minimalist approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) in that they all involve single reference. This proposal is in line with work such as Arsenijević, Boban. 2007. The syntactic triangle: phases, categories and reference. Linguistics, 5, 25.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, for whom phases are “units with the capacity to establish one reference relation”, and does so by updating Harley, Heidi, & Ritter, Elizabeth. 2002. Person and number in pronouns: A feature-geometric analysis. Language, 482–526. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar’s individuation node by adding a branch that contains definiteness, resulting in a node in which individuation is yielded by both φ-features and definiteness. In order to do this, we will use data from Sandəmarkesə, a southern Italo-Romance language spoken on the Gargano promontory in the southern Italian region of Apulia.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The D layer in Apulian Qualitative Binominals
  • 3.Agreement, linearization and derivation
  • 4.Phasehood and propositionality
    • 4.1Definiteness and φ-features
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
References (39)
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