Demonstratives as arguments and modifiers of N

The aim of this paper is to provide a minimalist account of adnominal demonstratives along the lines of a recent proposal by Giusti (2015) which distinguishes three types of feature sharing: Agreement, Concord, and Projection. As demonstratives bind and identify an open position in the argument structure of N, they are claimed to be arguments and, as such, to undergo Agreement. But unlike possessor arguments, which are assigned genitive and are sent to the interfaces independently of the possessee phase, demonstratives are probed to the Edge of the phase and are interpreted as part of it. In order to do so, they must also concord with N, namely, they must check and delete uninterpretable N-features. This dual nature of demonstratives as agreeing arguments and concording modifiers can explain the different positions demonstratives display across languages, as well as their apparently ambiguous behavior as determiners, as adjectives and as exophoric elements, as claimed by Diessel (2006).

The aim of this paper is to provide a minimalist account of adnominal demonstratives along the lines of a recent proposal by Giusti (2015) which distinguishes three types of feature sharing: Agreement, Concord, and Projection. As demonstratives bind and identify an open position in the argument structure of N, they are claimed to be arguments and, as such, to undergo Agreement. But unlike possessor arguments, which are assigned genitive and are sent to the interfaces independently of the possessee phase, demonstratives are probed to the Edge of the phase and are interpreted as part of it. In order to do so, they must also concord with N, namely they must check and delete uninterpretable N-features. This dual nature of demonstratives as agreeing arguments and concording modifiers can explain the different positions demonstratives display across languages, as well as their apparently ambiguous behavior as determiners, adjectives and exophoric elements, as claimed by Diessel (2006).