[Lingtyp] Optional determination?

[Juergen Bohnemeyer]

Dear Christian – No, I don’t share the presupposition you mention at all. Rather, there is a specific role of obligatoriness vs. optionality in the particular case of determination: if determination is optional, then it is presumably the case that both determined (i.e., maximal) and non-determined (i.e., non-maximal) noun phrases can express arguments. My question is whether there is then any other known reason to still treat them as belonging to distinct syntactic categories. I hope this makes sense? – Best – Juergen

Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him)
Professor, Department of Linguistics
University at Buffalo

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From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Christian Lehmann via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Date: Saturday, August 31, 2024 at 03:57
To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Optional determination?
Dear Jürgen,

before considering your specific question, let me ask about its presupposition: If a process is optional, it seems doubtful to you whether it can be considered a grammatical process.

Now if something is (structurally) obligatory, it is grammatical. The inverse does not hold, because although obligatoriness has been regarded by some as the most important feature of grammaticalization, it is not the only one. Moreover, there are degrees of optionality/obligatoriness (s. Lehmann, Thoughts on grammaticalization).

Thus, the grammatical rules concerning determination may say that determiners are optional in certain contexts, but obligatory in others; that if there is a determiner, it has to go in such and such a syntagmatic position; that determiners are chosen from a small closed paradigm and cannot be combined syntagmatically; etc. Compare, e.g., adjectives, for which there are such rules, too; but they are less strict.

During the documented history from Vulgar Latin to the modern Romance languages, articles have been developping from absent to increasingly obligatory. At which point has determination by articles become "a grammatical process"?

Best, Christian
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