Multiple Determiners(72) a some of the dancers
b a group of the dancers
These two constructions are interpreted in very similar ways. (72b) involves a measure
or group noun, which we have argued are non-thematic nouns lacking a specification
for the F feature. Semantically these work in a very uniform way: the complement of
the group noun identifies a set of individuals (in this case the dancers) and the group
noun focuses on a part of this set by dividing the set up into natural quantities (groups
of individuals, bottles of wine, cups of tea, etc.). This is exactly how the structure with
the pre-determiner is interpreted: the set is identified by the inner DP (the dancers) and
this set is partitioned into natural quantities (individual dancers in this case) and the
pre-determiner quantifies these.
One possible way to account for this similarity is to assume that the empty noun in
the pre-determiner structure works like a group or measure noun. Thus, if this can be
maintained, there is semantic evidence for the presence of the empty noun. We can
take this further by the following observation. Group nouns allow their DP
complements to be fronted:
(73) a of the dancers, a group were selected to perform
b of the wine, ten bottles remained unopened
c of the tea, three cups were set aside
Other nouns do not allow their complements to be fronted like this:(74) a of Bugsy, a photograph was distributed
b of relativity, a theory was proposed
c *of linguistics, a student was examined
With pre-determiner structures, the fronting of the of-phrase is also possible:
(75) a of the dancers, some were sent home
b of my family, all were famous cuckoo clock engineers
As this phenomenon is restricted to structures involving group nouns, it seems that this
is strong evidence in favour of the assumption that pre-determiner constructions
involve a group noun in the position we have proposed an empty category.
If this analysis can be maintained, then we can claim that pre-determiners are no
different to other determiners (apart from the optionality of of) in that they may
introduce a DP that has an NP complement with an empty head: