From NP to DP, Vol. 1: The Syntax and Semantics of Noun Phrases, Vol. 2: The Expression of Possession in Noun Phrases (review)

This two-volume set is an impressive attempt to present as much of the current debates on issues in the grammar of nominal expressions as space and platform allow. The titles speak for themselves, and it has to be said that the contents fit very well. Both volumes contain contributions from a quite heterogeneous range of scholars who investigate issues in nominal grammar as promised by the respective book titles. Aside from the interesting individual analyses and proposals, one welcome concomitant result of the twenty-two highly crosslinguistic case studies and two introductions is the emergence of a clearer picture of the internal structure of noun phrases—or rather, D(eterminer) P(hrases)—and the major types of operations involved in their derivation. Both volumes profit tremendously from the excellent introductory overviews by the editors.

For the purposes of this notice, I adopt the editors’ partition of the volumes into three thematic parts each and note that both volumes contain a comprehensive overview by the editors as well. For Vol. 1, Martine Coene and Yves D’hulst provide an extensive ‘Introduction: The syntax and semantics of noun phrases’ which is split into ‘Theoretical background’ (1–33) and ‘Case studies’ (35–46). The latter briefly introduces each paper and puts it into perspective with regard to the issues mentioned in the former. The introduction proper is a very useful summary of the structural evolution from NP to DP over the past two decades and a discussion of syntactic, and to a minor extent semantic, issues arising in the grammar of nominal expressions (including agreement, adjective placement, and so on).

The unofficial Part 1 of Vol. 1 is given the heading ‘On the internal syntax of the DP’ by the editors in their overview of the papers. It consists of seven studies (out of thirteen) in near-perfect order of presentation. Paul Boucher tracks the development of ‘Determiner phrases in Old and Modern French’ (47–69) and argues it to be both quite regular and not uniquely due to the loss of morphological case in Latin. ‘On three types of movement within the Dutch nominal domain’ (297–328) is Norbert Corver’s concern (namely head-, A-, and A′-movement), which he employs to analyze two types of quantity-denoting NPs. Looking at languages as diverse as Halkomelem, Shuswap, and Japanese, ‘On pro-nouns and other “pronouns” ’ (71–89) by Rose-Marie Déchaine and Martina Wiltschko rejects a uniform structure for all pronouns, in particular the assumption that all pronouns are DPs. Mila Dimotrova-Vulchanova addresses ‘Modification in the Balkan nominal expression: An account of the (A)NA : AN(*A) order contrast’ (91–118) without the need for DP-internal (N- or Adj-/AP-) movement, covering Bulgarian, Romanian, and Albanian. Exploring French nominal ellipsis, Petra Sleeman analyzes ‘Subnominal empty categories as subordinate topics’ (119–37) instead of being derived (purely) syntactically. Edith Kaan and Nadezhda Vinokurova take a stab at ‘Resolving number ambiguities in Sakha: Evidence for the determiner phrase as a processing domain’ (179–93). Alexander Grosu presents ‘ “Transparent” free relatives as a special instance of “standard” free relatives’ (139–78), namely one in which the semantic nucleus is in the predicate position of an embedded small clause whose subject is bound by the wh-element.

Part 2 addresses ‘The syntax and semantics of bare nouns and indefinites’. Greg Carlson’s contribution ‘Weak indefinites’ (195–210) revisits the ambiguous reading of bare plurals. From a Romance-Germanic perspective on the syntax-semantics of bare common nouns, Giuseppe L...