A unified structure for Scandinavian DPs
Susanne Lohrmann · Linguistik aktuell · 2011
This paper discusses doubling patterns of determiners in Scandinavian, the interaction between definite markers and adjectival inflection, and its effects on the structure of the DP. When an adjective precedes a definite noun an additional article is added preceding the adjective. This phenomenon has been referred to as ‘double definiteness’. Moreover, the adjective receives definite inflection so that the noun is actually defined three times. Questions arise as to the function of this multiple exponence of definiteness and the syntactic/semantic role of the morphemes involved. This article develops an account that argues for three components of definiteness in Scandinavian expressed by three distinct morphemes (the two articles and the adjectival inflection). The result is an analysis, based on the framework of Distributed Morphology, which captures the different realizations of definiteness in the Standard Scandinavian languages and which shows that multiple exponence in Scandinavian DPs evidently contributes to interpretation.