La tête du groupe nominal: l’hypothèse du DP dans les théories génératives

Abstract

This paper discusses what is known in the generative literature as the ‘DP-hypothesis’, i.e., the idea that the head of the Noun Phrase is actually the Determiner, rather than the Noun. We start by a discussion of the notions of heads and dependency and the classical criteria for deciding which item is the head in a given construction. Using these we provide a series of arguments suggesting that the classical position is correct and that the Noun is the head of the NP. We then discuss a series of specific arguments and analyses that have been advanced in support of the DP analysis, showing why we do not believe them to be convincing. We conclude by observing that the choice between the NP and DP analyses may not actually be an empirical issue if one allows the very abstract kind of syntactic representations currently fashionable within Chomskyan generative linguistics.

Keywords

• DP-hypothesis
• heads
• Noun Phrase
• Determiners
• abstract syntax