The Category of Determiner in Albanian
Hysnie Haxhillari · Athens Journal of Philology · 2024
The Determiners are D-Category words which have a D position into the Determinative Phrases. In Albanian D-Category includes: the definite/indefinite article, pre-nominal demonstrative pronuons and pre-nominal possessive pronouns. Compositional Aspect, an universally language category, explains the boundedness/non-boundedness of the sentence referring also to the D-Category and their role in denoting Noun Phrase’s specificity. From this point of view, Determiners are also grammatical markers of boundedness or perfectivity of the sentence: a NP preceded by a Determiner is bounded or quantified, a bare NP is non-bounded/unquantified. In Albanian the specified NPs make the sentences (SVO order) more grammatical and acceptable, providing this way bounded sentences. The unspecified NPs, singular and plural are not grammatically correct in the subject position in Albanian, they are grammatically correct only in object position. Hence, compared to English sentences, the Albanian imperfective or non-bounded counterparts are more limited. Keywords: D-Category, Noun Phrase, Compositional Aspect, Bounded NP, Non-bounded NP