Chapter 4 - The Determiner Phrase(11) NP NP
N' N'
AP N' AP N'
permanent AP N' noticeable AP N'
noticeable N permanent N
stain stain
Determiners, on the other hand, are not recursive and have a very fixed position at
the beginning of the phrase:
(12) a the this book cf. the book/this book
b some a property cf. some property/a property
c *boring these lectures cf. these boring lectures
Even if we claimed the determiner to be adjoined to the NP rather than the N', so that it
would always precede AP adjuncts, which are adjoined to the N', as in (13), the non-
recursiveness of determiners would remain a problem:
(13) NP
D NP
the N'
AP N'
plentiful N PP
supply of water
A further problem with this analysis is that adjuncts adjoined to XP or X' are
phrasal. Only adjuncts adjoined to a head are X^0 categories. But the determiner looks
suspiciously like a word and to analyse it as a phrase by itself begs the question of why
determiners never have complements, specifiers or adjuncts of their own:
(14) NP
DP NP
? D' problematic assumption
D?
this