Basic English Grammar with Exercises

Multiple Determiners

determiner, the specifier position of the NP complement. Thus, we have the following
structure:

(66) DP

D'

D NP

the AP N'

many N

analyses

This leaves the pre-determiners to accommodate. These are more problematic.
However, it turns out that pre-determiners are not such a special class of determiner
after all, once one considers the following:

(67) a all (of) the people
b those of his students who knew him
c few of his enemies

The only difference between pre-determiners and other determiners is that when they
appear in front of a DP the pre-determiner has an optional of whereas this is obligatory
with other types of determiner. The fact that we can have a post-determiner in this
position is interesting. We have stated that these come in specifier of NP, but where is
the NP in (67c) that the post-determiner is in the specifier of? If there is an NP in this
structure the head of which cannot be seen, it seems that we are forced to assume that
this head is an unpronounced empty category and therefore the structure must be
something like the following:

(68) DP

D'

D NP

e AP N'

few N PP

e P'

P DP

of his enemies