270 Roni Katzir & Tal Siloni
(4) Compositionality within the definite DP: N composes first with PP; D com-
poses with the resultD- en
NPDPN
hest...PPInformally, then, the second puzzle is this:
(5) Puzzle II (Definiteness):
a. Adjectival modification correlates with a pre-adjectival definiteness
marker in Danish and Swedish; in Danish this marker replaces post-
nominal -EN, while in Swedish it supplements it. In Icelandic -EN
appears both with adjectival modification and without it.
b. In all three languages, the surface morpheme order N -EN PP is at odds
with standard assumptions about compositionality.1.2 Spreaders, realizers, and licensors; and why we ignore licensors here
The general Germanic agreement puzzle in (2) and the Scandinavian definiteness
puzzle in (5) both involve the appearance and disappearance of various function
elements – markers of φ-features, case, and definiteness – within the noun phrase.
Traditionally, such elements can be one of two things. They might be independent
syntactic heads, possibly appearing in a dislocated position, and possibly also spread-
ing certain features within an appropriately defined domain; we will call such elements
spreaders to highlight this possibility. If C is a spreader, for example, it is an inde-
pendent projection, presumably carrying the semantics of gender, number, etc., and
possibly spreading a feature FC onto elements such as the adjective. And if -EN is a
spreader, then it is an independent projection, presumably carrying the semantics of
definiteness and possibly spreading a feature FDEF onto elements such as the adjective
or the head noun. Alternatively, elements such as C and -EN might be meaningless
agreement markers, surfacing according to an appropriate feature-realization mecha-
nism such as the Subset Principle,^3 and possibly realizing various feature combinations
on their host; we will call such elements realizers. For example, it seems reasonable to- The Subset Principle (Halle 1997: 128): The Phonological exponent of a vocabulary item
is inserted into a morpheme (i.e. the syntactic or morphological head), if the item matches all
or a subset of the grammatical features specified in the morpheme. Insertion does not take
place if the vocabulary item contains features not present in the morpheme. When several