[Lingtyp] Optional determination?

[Sylvain Kahane]

Dear colleagues,

As always, we can consider the term “determiner” as denoting a comparative concept or language-specific categories. I think that the initial question of Juergen concerned the language-specific categories and the criteria associated to their definitions. If I reformulate Juergen’s question, I will say: Does it make sense in every language to consider a syntactic category of determiner, distinct from the category of adjective due to specific syntactic properties. Is one of these properties always obligatoriness? What could be the other properties characterizing determiners as a syntactic category?

Let me give the example of French, which is not as simple as people generally think (including linguists of French). French has three paradigms that I will call D1, D2, and D3, which can be distinguished from adjectives by a property of obligatoriness:
- D1 only contains the definite article (le), the demonstrative (cet) and possessives pronouns
- D2 contains the numerals after 2 and about three other elements: quelques ’some, a few, few’, différents ‘different’, divers ‘various’. Items in D2 are always plural.
- D3 contains a big set of (indefinite) determiners: un ‘a’, chaque ‘each’, plusieurs ’several’, etc.

A bare noun is impossible in the subject position. You need an element of one the three categories: D1 N, D2 N, D3 N, but D1 D2 N is also possible! (quelques amis ‘a few friends’, ces quelques amis ’these few friends’). All other combinations are impossible: *N, *D1 D3 N, *D2 D1 N, etc. So it makes sense to gather all elements of D1, D2 and D3, in common distributional class of elements which are obligatory in the NP/DP. But we don’t have the property of uniqueness of the determiner.

The French determiners have another common property: They precedes all the adjectives, except one: tout ‘all’, which must combine with an element of D1, excluding D2:
- toute ma famille ‘my whole family’
- tous ces problèmes ‘all these problems’
So we have: tout D1 N, but *tout N, * tout D1 D2 N, *tout D2 N, *tout D3 N.

Kahane Sylvain (2007) La distribution des articles du français <https://kahane.fr/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/articles-2007.pdf>, in M. Charolles, N. Fournier, C. Fuchs & F. Lefeuvre (éds.), Parcours de la phrase – Mélanges offerts à Pierre Le Goffic, Ophrys, Paris, 159-174.

I would be interested in examples in other languages of the characterization of a language-specific category of determiners based only on syntactic/distributional criteria and to have an idea of the criteria that could appear to characterize determiners.

Best
Sy

> Le 2 sept. 2024 à 15:30, Christian Lehmann via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> a écrit :
> 
> Similarly as ‘adverb’, ‘determiner’ may be an interlingual category which, by its traditional use(s), is internally heterogeneous, so if you tried to define it, you would have a janus-faced problem:
> Traditionally, ‘determiner’ comprises, as core instances!, categories which usually differ markedly in their distribution.
> ‘Determiner’ is probably a prototypical concept.
> Ad 1: As far as I know, demonstratives and articles are the clearest cases of determiners. In several languages which have both, they differ in their distribution in that articles only occur as subconstituents of NPs while demonstratives (like other pronouns) can constitute an NP.
> Ad 2: If ‘determiner’ is a typical interlingual category, it is a ‘hybrid’ category, i.e., it is constituted both by functional and by structural features.
> The basic functional feature is reference fixation (to be explicated …).
> The structural features would at least comprise the conditions
> that a determiner be a grammatical formative
> that it form a nominal syntagma (typically, an NP) together with a nominal (independently of other contexts in which it may be found additionally).
> If this were applied to a language in order to identify its determiners, then in many a language possessive pronouns would come under the category. If one wanted to exclude them, one could specify the functional criterion. Then articles would be prototypical determiners, possessive pronouns might be peripheral to the category.
> 
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