Agreement and definiteness in Germanic DPs

Across a variety of languages, the morphological expression of definiteness and agreement within the noun phrase appears incompatible with the semantic import of these features. Accounts in the literature have responded to this challenge by positing mechanisms such as feature regulation and post-syntactic movement. Focusing on DPs in Germanic languages, we will explore a different perspective, one in which the relevant features are subject to a scopal licensing condition, and where the licensors are subject to a condition of structural economy.

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