The Internal Structure of the DPHowever, the problem in viewing the possessor as the specifier of the DP is that this
would predict that possessors can appear in front of a determiner, when in actual fact
possessors and determiners seem to be in complementary distribution:
(39) a the book
b John’s book
c *John’s the book
If X-bar theory is correct however, this observation cannot be taken to show what it
seems to: i.e. that the specifier and the determiner sit in the same structural position.
Words and phrases cannot be in complementary distribution as they cannot appear in
the same positions in a phrase. Some other element must appear in complementary
distribution with the determiner in (39c), not the possessor. But what?
To answer this question we first have to consider another property of the possessor.
Pre-nominally, possessors are marked by the element ‘’s’. What is this morpheme?
Some have suggested that it is the marker of genitive Case born by the possessor.
However, if this is a Case marker, it is a very strange one for at least two reasons. First
it is a Case marker in a language which does not usually mark Case on its nominal
elements. English only normally marks Case on its pronouns and noun forms are
typically invariant no matter what Case position they occupy. Yet if we take ‘’s’ to be
a marker of genitive Case we have to assume that nominals are marked for this Case.
The other strange thing about this morpheme seen as a marker of Case is that it does
not behave anything like a Case morpheme in any other language. Note that it does not
attach itself to the noun, but to the last element in the whole DP:
(40) a John’s book
b that man’s book
c the man that I told you about’s book
d the man that you met’s book
This behaviour is consistent with the claim that this morpheme does not attach itself to
any word, but to the whole phrase. Note this is not the way that Case morphemes
behave in other languages. In Hungarian, for example, the accusative case morpheme –
t is attached to the noun inside the DP, not to the last element in the DP:
(41) a egy képet Mariról
b *egy kép Marirólt
There is another morpheme in English however that behaves like the possessive
‘’s’:
(42) a the man’s going
b the man that I told you about’s going
c the man that you met’s going
(43) a the man’ll do it
b the man that I told you about’ll do it
c the man that you met’ll do it