Parallels in clausal and nominal periphery

This paper argues for a nominal periphery in terms of a split DP-system, parallel to the clausal split CP of Rizzi (1997). This issue arises naturally from the interaction of two main lines of research in generative grammar: the possibility to displace constituents in the clause and the parallels between nominal expressions and clause structure. After a very brief overview of previous literature, I state the unmarked structure of noun phrases in UG. I derive the parallelism in the tripartite structure of nominal and clausal structure from independent properties of Merge. While the two layers (nP and AgrP) have been shown to be “split” in multiple projections, the upper layer (generally referred to as DP) has not yet been studied in detail under this respect. This will be the core of the paper, where I argue for a split DP in Italian, Albanian and Serbo-Croatian. At the end of the paper, I outline some theoretical consequences of my proposal, in particular on the different nature of the features in nominal and clausal left peripheries.