Determiner agreement and noun conjunction

Determiner-noun agreement in English and many other languages appears to be straightforwardly describable; singular determiners go with singular nouns, and plural determiners go with plural nouns. The situation is more complicated with coordinated nouns, however, since unexpected agreement patterns...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of linguistics 2004-03, Vol.40 (1), p.69-104
Main Authors: KING, TRACY HOLLOWAY, DALRYMPLE, MARY
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Alignment
Comparative analysis
Coordinate systems
Descriptive studies and applied theories
Determinants
Determiners
English language
Grammatical agreement
Grammatical gender
Linguistic agreement
Linguistics
Newman, Paul
Noun phrases
Nouns
Phrase structure
Phrases
Syntax
Verb phrases
Verbs
Citations: Items that cite this one
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Description
Summary:Determiner-noun agreement in English and many other languages appears to be straightforwardly describable; singular determiners go with singular nouns, and plural determiners go with plural nouns. The situation is more complicated with coordinated nouns, however, since unexpected agreement patterns often result. Our theory makes the correct predictions for English and other languages by combining two crucial insights: the dual nature of agreement features inside the noun phrase (Kathol 1999; Sadler 1999, 2003; Wechsler & Zlatić 2000, 2003) and the distinction between distributive and nondistributive features in coordination (Dalrymple & Kaplan 2000).
ISSN:0022-2267
1469-7742
DOI:10.1017/S0022226703002330