Received: 15 July 2020

DOI: 10.1111/lnc3.12406

ARTICLE
- -
Revised: 15 January 2021 Accepted: 19 January 2021

An overview of the NP versus DP debate

Yılmaz Köylü

Center for Language Education, School of

Humanities and Social Science, The Hong
Kong University of Science and
Technology, Hong Kong
Correspondence
Yılmaz Köylü, Center for Language
Education, School of Humanities and
Social Science, The Hong Kong
University of Science and Technology,
Office 3023, Clearwater Bay, Kowloon,
Hong Kong.
Email: lcyilmaz@ust.hk
[Correction added on March 31, 2021,
after first online publication: Half of
Section 5.1 and the beginning of Section
5.2 has been included. Also, language
example alignment and some missing
elements has been corrected.]
Abstract
This article provides an overview of what is known as
the noun phrase (NP) versus determiner phrase (DP)
debate. I first revisit the arguments by which a lan-
guage would be assigned an NP or rather a DP struc-
ture, followed by the proper characterisation, function
and features of determiners. I then summarise the
typological endeavour of Bošković, surveying some of
the syntactic and semantic correlates of the NP versus
DP parameter and applying four of the diagnostics
Bošković developed to Turkish as well as providing
examples from other languages such as Korean,
Vietnamese and Lithuanian. For each diagnostic, I
provide some counterarguments that cast doubt on the
validity of those diagnostics. I conclude, in line with
Kornfilt (2017, 2018) that proposing correlations be-
tween an NP or a DP status of the nominal domain and
a certain clustering of syntactic or semantic properties
should be abandoned.

1 | INTRODUCTION

The proper characterisation of the nominal domain has received considerable attention in the
last couple decades since Abney's (1987) Universal DP Hypothesis, according to which a
functional projection, determiner phrase (DP), dominates noun phrases. In a number of studies,
Bošković (2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2012), Despić (2011), Bošković & Gajewski (2011) and
Bošković & Şener (2014) have proposed what is known as the parameterised DP hypothesis.
They argue that the only languages that display a functional DP projection are the ones with
overt definite determiners such as English and German. They further claim that the absence of a
definite determiner translates into a lack of DP projection. Bošković (2005, 2007, 2008, 2009)

Lang Linguist Compass. 2021;e12406. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/lnc3 © 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 1 of 15
https://doi.org/10.1111/lnc3.12406
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and Bošković and Gajewski (2011) make a distinction between the nominal domain of lan-
guages with and without definite determiners. Bošković (2008) rejects a DP projection for
languages not having overt definite determiners and coins the term traditional noun phrases
(TNP) for noun phrases in those so‐called articleless1 languages. According to the typological
endeavour by Bošković (2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2012), Bošković & Gajewski (2011) and
Bošković & Şener (2014), the NP or the DP status of the nominal domain in a given language
can be deduced from certain clustering of properties such as whether left branch extraction is
licensed or whether clause‐mate NPI‐licensing under negative raising is allowed.
The structure of noun phrases in languages with overt determiners (e.g., English, Italian,
French) is uniform based on those two hypotheses since in such languages, a functional DP
projection dominates NPs irrespective of the intermediate functional projections involved.
Nevertheless, where the universal DP hypothesis and the parameterised DP hypothesis part
ways is with respect to the nominal domain of articleless languages such as Serbo‐Croatian.
The objective of this article is to provide an overview of the NP versus DP debate by
scrutinising some of Bošković's diagnostics and providing counterarguments for those di-
agnostics. The structure of the paper is as follows. In Section 2, I discuss the arguments by
which a language would be assigned an NP structure or rather a DP structure. Section 3
provides an analysis of the proper characterisation, function and features of determiners.
Section 4 gives an overview of the syntax of the nominal domain. In Section 5, I present the
parameterised DP hypothesis as well as some arguments against it. Finally, Section 6 con-
cludes this article.

2 | THE NP VERSUS THE DP STATUS OF THE NOMINAL DOMAIN

Salzmann (2020) explores in detail the arguments by which a language would be assigned an NP
structure or rather a DP structure. Salzmann (2020) first reviews the arguments by which a
language would be assigned a DP structure. First of all, there are theory internal arguments
stemming from the particular assumptions of the Government and Binding framework about
phrase structure. These theory internal arguments include evidence from numbers of specifiers,
distribution of D‐elements and consistent selection, as well as projection. There are also
parallelism arguments that hinge on the presupposition that the clausal and the nominal ar-
chitecture must be very similar. Specific evidence for the parallelism arguments come from
agreement on functional heads only, possessors in different positions and finally, Spec DP as an
A0 ‐position. Moreover, there are constituency arguments, which simply illustrate that N forms a
constituent to the exclusion of D. Such evidence includes NP‐ellipsis/one‐substitution, as well
as coordination. Finally, there are head‐movement arguments, resting on the assumption that
there is an X0‐position above N. Salzmann (2020) also provides other miscellaneous arguments
for the DP hypothesis based on gerunds and asymmetries between languages with and without
articles.
Salzmann (2020) also discusses arguments by which a language would be assigned an NP
structure. The only two arguments for postulating an NP structure are noun incorporation, and
possessive determiners.2
Salzmann (2020) concludes that many of the arguments that have been used to assign an NP
or a DP status of the nominal domain are not conclusive as most of them solely rely on theory‐
internal premises, and thus lose their power considering the recent developments in syntactic
theory.
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3 | WHAT IS A DETERMINER?

The meaning of determiners can be interpreted in two ways. One is the broad definition that
includes different word categories that precede an NP. These encompass, but are not limited to,
possessive determiners such as my, your, demonstratives such as this, that, indefinite de-
terminers such as a/an or the definite determiner the. According to the broad definition, a
determiner is an inclusive phrase that comprises anything that occupies the syntactic position D
(Ghomeshi et al., 2009). This is illustrated below.

(1)

The narrow definition, on the other hand, is to treat only the indefinite determiner a/an and
the definite determiner the as determiners. In this paper, I adopt the view that only the in-
definite and definite determiners are indeed determiners.
According to Ghomeshi et al. (2009), we need to draw a distinction between the word
category determiner and the syntactic position determiners are argued to occupy since it has
been shown in the literature that word categories that have quite distinct features can also
occupy the syntactic position D. To illustrate, Longobardi (1994) has shown that proper names
in Italian can indeed raise from N to D. Similarly, Abney (1987) also demonstrated that pro-
nouns can occupy the D position.
As Ghomeshi et al. (2009) note, in the early days of formal generative grammar, de-
terminers were treated as occupying the Spec NP position. However, it was Abney who
argued that determiners should be analysed as occupying the head of a functional category
D. One of the crucial observations in the X'‐theory was the resemblance between the
nominal and verbal constituents. Abney (1987), in his DP hypothesis, argued that D(eter-
miner) is the nominal counterpart of I(nflection). This parallelism is shown in the examples
below.3

(2)
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(3)

Despite the postulation of a functional DP projection by many scholars, the validity of the
DP hypothesis has not been unchallenged especially in languages that lack overt determiners.
Given the lack of determiners in many of the world's languages such as Chinese, Korean and
Japanese, we can articulate three syntactic representations of the nominal domain (Ghomeshi
et al., 2009).
The first one is abandoning the idea that NPs are embedded in a larger functional
projection, especially in languages that lack overt articles. According to such a postulation,
nouns should be able to act as arguments without additional syntactic material. This is one
of the arguments adopted in Chierchia (1998), who maintains that in certain languages,
nouns are arguments and their meaning does not need to be mediated by a determiner.
According to this first position, the noun cats should have the syntactic structure represented
below.

(4)

If, however, we argue that determiners essentially create arguments, or that they turn a
predicate into a referential argument, an idea first put forward in Higginbotham (1985), then we
must entertain the possibility that a silent determiner is needed as the head of a DP, where the
D is the head, and the NP is the complement.

(5)

Yet another possibility according to Ghomeshi et al. (2009) is to postulate a D position that
exists independently of the merger of a determiner. According to this view, bare nominals still
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project a DP even if no lexical item is merged in D (Progovac, 1998). This view differs from the
previous one in two crucial respects. First, the D position is a syntactic position, and it does not
play any role in creating arguments out of predicates. Second, the D position can host a silent or
an overt determiner.

(6)

3.1 | The function and features of determiners

Another issue, which has partially been addressed in the previous section, is about the
function and features of determiners. One significant proposal is that determiners are
argument creators (Higginbotham, 1985). That is, they take a predicate, and output an
argument of type <e>. Chierchia (1998) is a proponent of this idea. He investigated under
what conditions nouns can be used in argumental positions without requiring any addi-
tional syntactic material. Through an analysis of Chinese, various Romance languages (e.g.,
Italian and French), and some Germanic languages including English, Chierchia (1998)
tried to reduce all variation in the nominal domain to variation in the lexicon, more
specifically to the variation in the semantics of the category N. He proposed the nominal
mapping parameter (NMP), which accounts for the observed variation in how arguments
are fed into verbs cross linguistically. He argues that in certain languages, such as Chinese,
NPs can only be in argumental positions and indicate names of kinds, but not properties.
Thus, in Chinese‐like languages, nouns have the semantic type <e> and they have the
property [+argumental, −predicative]. He further argues that in Romance languages, all
nouns are predicates, since they cannot occur in argumental positions unless the category
D(eterminer), either overt or covert (the latter being subject to licensing conditions by a
lexical head), is projected. Thus, in Romance languages, nouns have the semantic type <e,
t> and they have the property [−argumental, +predicative]. A final language group is
Germanic languages such as German and English, in which NPs can have a dual role as
arguments or predicates. This means that in Germanic languages, nouns can be arguments
of type <e> or predicates of type <e,t> and have the property [+argumental, +predicative].
More specifically, in those languages, it is argued that bare plurals and mass nouns are of
type <e> while bare singulars are of type <e,t>.4 Chierchia's (1998, p. 402) view is in stark
contrast to the DP Hypothesis. He maintains “the present view contrasts with the one that
the syntax‐semantics map is universally fixed and that, as a consequence, the category D
must always be projected for argumenthood”. That is, as it tries to reduce the cross‐lin-
guistic variation in the nominal domain to the variation in the lexicon, Chierchia's (1998)
NMP is incompatible with the DP Hypothesis.
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Yet another popular proposal is that determiners encode definiteness (Lyons, 1999).
Lyons (1999) makes the bold claim that a DP should be conceived of as a definiteness phrase.
Nevertheless, based on data from Salish, Matthewson (1996) demonstrates that determiners do
not universally encode definiteness.

4 | SYNTAX OF THE NOMINAL DOMAIN

There are three competing proposals regarding the existence of a functional DP projection cross
linguistically. The first one postulates a uniform DP structure with either overt or covert de-
terminers (Cheng & Sybesma, 1999; Cinque, 1999; Longobardi, 1994; Pereltsvaig, 2007;
Progovac, 1998).
Some scholars, on the other hand, argue for the omission of the DP in favour of a simpler NP
analysis in languages without definite determiners (Bošković, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009; Bošković
& Gajewski, 2011; Chierchia, 1998; Despić, 2011).
The final proposal maintains that the nominal domain in languages oscillates between
NP and DP structures (Franks & Pereltsvaig, 2004; Gillon, & Armoskaite, 2015; Lyutikova &
Pereltsvaig, 2015). To illustrate, Franks & Pereltsvaig (2004) argue, based on evidence from
Russian, that not all potential functional categories above the NP are realised in all structures in
a given language. That is, while certain structures in a specific language can be NPs, others may
be DPs. Similarly, Cyrino and Espinal (2015) demonstrate that some languages (e.g., Brazilian
Portuguese) license NPs in object position with a specific class of predicates (namely, have‐
predicates), but DPs (with overt or covert D) in argument positions of any other predicate.5

5 | PARAMETERISED DP HYPOTHESIS AND ARGUMENTS

AGAINST IT

In a series of papers, Bošković (2005, 2008, 2009, 2012), Bošković and Gajewski (2011) and
Bošković and Şener (2014) make a distinction between the nominal domain of languages with
and without definite determiners. Bošković (2008, 2012) outlines 19 diagnostics that can be used
to tease apart whether nominal phrases in any given language are TNPs or DPs. Four of those
diagnostics that will be scrutinised in the rest of the article are given below.6

(7) Bošković's (2008, 2012) generalisations to tease apart TNP languages from DP languages:
Diagnostic 1: Only languages without articles may allow left‐branch extraction.7
Diagnostic 2: Articleless languages disallow clause‐mate NPI‐licensing under
negative raising, article languages allow it.
Diagnostic 3: Only languages with articles allow the majority reading of most.
Diagnostic 4: Inverse scope is unavailable in articleless languages.

Bošković's parameterised DP hypothesis has been criticised by a number of scholars, who

have shown that; (a) the diagnostics proposed by Bošković are irrelevant for certain NP
languages lacking overt determiners; (b) the so‐called NP languages sometimes share properties
found in DP languages and vice versa; and (c) the correlation between the NP versus DP status
of the nominal domain and certain clustering of the properties advocated in Bošković's work is
not always warranted (Chacón & Wellwood 2012; Cyrino & Espinal, 2013; Gillon &
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Armoskaite, 2015; Kornfilt, 2017, 2018; Lander & Haegeman, 2014; LaTerza, 2016; Lyutikova &
Pereltsvaig, 2015; Phan & Lander, 2015; Syed & Simpson, 2017; Van Hofwegen 2013). Below, I
scrutinise four diagnostics primarily in Turkish and a few other languages and illustrate that the
nominal domain in those languages do not conform to Bošković's parameterised DP hypothesis
in that they provide evidence for a DP projection despite the lack of a definite determiner.

5.1 | Diagnostic 1: Only languages without articles may allow

left‐branch extraction

According to Ross (1986), the left branch condition blocks the extraction of determiners, pos-
sessors and adjectives out of noun phrases. The reason why a DP language is argued to prohibit
extraction of elements out of a noun phrase is that D acts as a phase (Svenonius, 2004), blocking
movement in line with Chomsky's (1999) phase impenetrability condition (PIC; Van
Hofwegen, 2013).
One counterargument for this diagnostic comes from Turkish, an agglutinative Altaic lan-
guage with a canonical SOV word order. Turkish lacks a definite determiner, but it has an
indefinite determiner bir (one). In Turkish, left branch extraction is not licensed as shown by
the examples below where the extraction of an indefinite determiner, a possessive wh‐phrase
and an adjective lead to ungrammaticality.

(8) *bir Orhan [bir ev] almak istiyor

a Orhan [a house] buy want.PROG.3SG
“Orhan wants to buy a house”.

(9) *kimin Orhan dün [kimin evini] aldı

whose Orhan yesterday [whose house.POSS.ACC] bought
‘Whose house did Orhan buy yesterday?'

(10) *pahalı Orhan dün [pahalı ev] aldı

expensive Orhan yesterday [expensive house] bought
“Orhan bought an expensive house yesterday“.

On the surface, this diagnostic supports a DP analysis of nominal phrases in Turkish based
on Bošković (2008, 2012). Bošković and Gajewski (2011) accept that Turkish does not allow LBE
while still arguing for an NP analysis of the nominal domain in Turkish. They argue that for a
language to have LBE means that the nominal domain can only be NPs. However, all languages
in which the nominal domain is NPs do not necessarily have LBE. In that respect, this diag-
nostic is a one‐way implication, and it is inconclusive for Turkish. Based on this diagnostic,
Turkish nominal domain is still compatible with an NP or a DP analysis.
Similarly, Kim (2011) demonstrates that Korean, an articleless language with an SOV word
order, should be categorised as an NP language based on Bošković's typology. However, it does
not allow left branch extraction, either.

(11) a. enu chayki‐ul John‐i chayk ilk‐ko‐iss‐ni?

which book‐ACC John‐NOM book read‐&‐BE‐Q?
‘Which book is John reading?'
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b. *enu John‐i enu chayk‐ul ilk‐ko‐iss‐ni?

which John‐NOM which book‐ACC read‐&‐BE‐Q?
‘*Which book is John reading?'

On a similar note, Phan and Lander (2015) applied ten diagnostics from Bošković to Viet-
namese, an Austroasiatic language with an SVO word order. Phan and Lander (2015) discuss
that despite not having a fully grammaticalised means of definiteness marking, Vietnamese
displays a number of ways to express definiteness through lexical items. Thus, Phan and
Lander (2015) conclude that Vietnamese lacks genuine definite determiners. They demonstrate
that regarding left branch extraction, Vietnamese patterns with English in disallowing such
constructions, exemplified below.

(12) *Đẹp anh đã thấy những ngôi nhà

beautiful 3SG ANT see PL CLS house
Intended: “Beautiful houses, he saw”.
(Phan & Lander 2015, p. 398)

Given that Vietnamese does not have genuine definite determiners, it should be categorised
as an NP language with respect to Bošković's typology. However, that it disallows left branch
extraction makes it similar to DP languages. Thus, Phan and Lander (2015) conclude that
Vietnamese can be categorised as an NP or a DP language, hence providing yet another
counterargument against Bošković (2008, 2012).
Syed and Simpson (2017) provide a step‐by‐step explanation for why Bošković (2008, 2012)
and Bošković and Gajewski (2011) postulate that having DPs translates into not allowing left
branch extraction. These steps are given verbatim below.

(13) The reasoning behind why LBE is disallowed in DP languages such as English:
a. English nominals are (always) DPs.
b. DPs are phases.
c. Given the PIC, a phrasal constituent can only be extracted from a DP if it first
moves to SpecDP.
d. The antilocality hypothesis: Any application of Move must cross at least one
phrasal boundary.
e. In the structure [DP D [NP ADJP [NP N]]], an ADJP cannot move to SpecDP as such
movement will not cross a phrasal boundary. Consequently, ADJP movement out
of DP will not be possible.
(Syed & Simpson, 2017, p. 9)

According to Syed and Simpson (2017), the rationale above regarding the disallowing of LBE
in DP languages such as English hinges upon a critical assumption that a DP immediately
dominates an NP without any intervening functional projections. It is plausible to assume,
however, that the existence of a functional projection above NP and below DP would suffice for
an ADJP adjoined to NP to move to SpecDP and, therefore, potentially extract out of DP, as
antilocality would not be violated. Since it is commonly accepted that at least one functional
projection, namely the NumP, occurs between DP and NP, then extraction of ADJPs from DPs
in article languages such as English cannot be banned by antilocality and must be attributed to
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some other property. Based on these points, Syed and Simpson (2017) maintain that the
availability of LBE in a language is not a reliable diagnostic for distinguishing NP and DP
languages.

5.2 | Diagnostic 2: Articleless languages disallow clause‐mate NPI‐

licensing under negative raising, article languages allow it

Bošković and Şener (2014) maintain that whether a language allows clause‐mate NPI‐licensing
under negative raising out of indicative clauses depends on whether the language under
investigation has definite determiners. They state that Turkish clause‐mate negative polarity
items (NPIs) cannot be licensed long‐distance within typical indicative clauses. This is illus-
trated below with the Turkish NPI en az iki yıldır.

(14) Pelin Mete‐yi en az iki yıl‐dır ziyaret et‐me‐di/*et‐ti

Pelin Mete‐ACC at least two year‐for visit do‐neg‐PAST/do‐past
“Pelin hasn't/*has visited Mete in at least two years“.

According to Bošković and Şener (2014), this rule applies even under typical raising verbs
such as sanmak “think/believe”. Bošković and Şener (2014) give the following example to
substantiate their point and argue that Turkish patterns with NP languages.

(15) Mete [Pelin‐ø/‐i (*en az iki yıl‐dır) Timbuktu‐ya git‐ti] san‐m‐ıyor

Mete Pelin‐ø/‐ACC at least two year‐for Timbuktu‐DAT go‐PAST think‐
NEG‐PRES
“Mete doesn't think Pelin went to Timbuktu in at least two years“.

Nevertheless, Kornfilt (2017) challenges Bošković and Şener's (2014) idea by demonstrating
that en az iki yıldır may not be a true NPI since it is licensed without negation when there is
progressive aspect.

(16) Pelin Mete‐yi en az iki yıl‐dır ziyaret edi‐yor

Pelin Mete‐ACC at least two year‐for visit do‐PRES.PROG
“Pelin has been visiting Mete for at least two years“.
(Kornfilt, 2017)

Kornfilt (2017) goes on to show that different NPIs behave differently with respect to
licensing even in the same language. She makes a distinction between local licensing of NPIs
under negation in embedded and matrix clauses. Kornfilt (2017) illustrates that negation can
locally license NPIs in embedded clauses with predicates such as bilmek (know), düşünmek
(think) and iddia etmek (claim) in Turkish. However, she demonstrates that negation can
locally license NPIs in matrix clauses only with the predicate düşünmek (think), but not with
bilmek (know), or iddia etmek (claim).8 According to Kornfilt (2017) such an alignment is
identical to the one in languages such as English and German, which is why Turkish seems to
pattern more with DP languages. That is another counterargument to Bošković's typological
work.
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5.3 | Diagnostic 3: Only languages with articles allow the majority

reading of most

Bošković (2008, 2012) argues that most has two readings in languages that have definite
determiners. These are the majority reading and the plurality reading.

(17) Rebecca owns most bracelets.

Majority reading: In a given context, Rebecca owns more than half of the bracelets.

(18) Rebecca owns the most bracelets.

Plurality reading: In a given context, Rebecca owns more bracelets than any relevant
alternative individual does.

According to Bošković (2008, 2012), the majority reading is only possible in languages with
overt definite determiners. However, the examples in Turkish below show that both the ma-
jority reading and the plurality reading are plausible given sufficient contextual background.

(19) en çok gömlek Özkan‐da

most shirt Özkan‐LOC
“Özkan owns more than half of the shirts”. (Majority reading)
“Özkan owns more shirts than any relevant alternative individual does”. (Plurality reading)

This point illustrates that an overt definite determiner is not a prerequisite for the majority
reading of most, thus a counterargument against Bošković (2008, 2012). If we reinterpret this
diagnostic in such a way that the majority reading of most is made possible by the presence of
any determiner, overt or covert, (19) can be interpreted as Turkish having DPs.
Another counterargument comes from Van Hofwegen (2013), who applied seven of the
diagnostics from Bošković (2012) to Lithuanian, an Indo‐European language with an SVO word
order. She demonstrates that diagnostics such as left branch extraction, adjunct extraction from
NPs, scrambling, superiority and multiple wh‐fronting and exhaustivity of possessors substan-
tiate an NP analysis of Lithuanian. However, Van Hofwegen (2013, p. 21) shows that Lithuanian
behaves like a DP language in allowing the majority reading of most.

(20) daugiausia žmon‐iy ger‐ia al‐y

most person‐FEM.PL.GEN drink‐3.PRS beer‐MASC.SG.ACC
“More than half the people drink beer”. (Majority reading)
“More people drink beer than drink any other beverage”. (Plurality reading)

5.4 | Diagnostic 4: Inverse scope is unavailable in articleless languages

Yet another diagnostic in Bošković (2012) is that inverse scope should be unavailable in
languages without definite determiners. Consider the example from Bošković and
Şener (2014).
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(21) iki öğrenci her sandalye‐yi wkır‐mış

two student every chair‐ACC break‐EVID.PAST
“Two students have broken every chair”.

According to Kornfilt (2017), the universal quantifier her (every) cannot take wide scope
over iki öğrenci (two students). That is in line with the postulation of Bošković and Şener (2014).
Nevertheless, Kornfilt (2017) also demonstrates that it is hard to get an inverse scope reading
with such examples in English.

(22) Two students have broken every chair.

(23) Two students have broken each chair.

According to Kornfilt (2017, p. 8), (22) and (23) align with Turkish in that it is difficult to get
an inverse scope reading with these examples in English. On a different note, Kornfilt (2017)
illustrates that the availability of an inverse scope reading may show variation depending on the
nature of the quantifier.9

(24) Two diplomats represented every country.

(25) Two diplomats represented each country.

Kornfilt (2017) reports that her native English speaker consultants find an inverse scope
reading of (25) acceptable while rejecting such a reading for (24). The examples (21) through
(23) indicate that the facts in Turkish, which is considered to be an NP language according to
Bošković and Şener (2014), sometimes align with English, a DP language. What is more, as
illustrated in (24) and (25), an inverse scope reading in a canonically DP language such as
English may show variation depending on the nature of the quantifier. Thus, Kornfilt (2017)
rejects the proposed correlation between having NP or DPs and licensing inverse scope read-
ings. She maintains that in a word‐order free language such as Turkish, it is through scrambling
that an inverse scope is generally licensed. Kornfilt (2017) argues that such overt expression of
inverse scope may block an LF‐based inverse scope reading in Turkish. As a consequence, that
an inverse scope is unavailable in Turkish may be due not to a DP or an NP status of the
nominal domain, but rather to other syntactic operations such as scrambling.
Another counterargument for this diagnostic comes from Gillon and Armoskaite (2015),
who applied Bošković's 13 diagnostics to Lithuanian, an articleless language that should be
analysed as an NP language. They conclude that Lithuanian displays mixed properties, some-
times aligning with NP languages and sometimes with DP languages. More specifically, Lith-
uanian conformed to a DP analysis with respect to six diagnostics, while behaving like an NP
language in terms of five other diagnostics. One diagnostic, namely whether the language
allows for a stacking of a question marker and a demonstrative, or stacking of a possessive and a
demonstrative, proved inconclusive for Lithuanian. A specific property of Lithuanian that
provides counterargument to Bošković's analysis is that it allows both surface scope and inverse
scope readings, a property of DP languages based on Bošković's typology.

(26) a. kažkas myli kiekvieną

someone loves everyone
“Someone loves everyone”.
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(i) there is one person that loves every person (surface scope)
(ii) everyone is loved by one person (each; inverse scope)

b. kažkoks politikas pabučiavo kiekvieną vaiką

some politician kissed every child
“Some politician kissed every kid”.
(i) there is one politician that kissed every kid (surface scope)
(ii) there is one kissing politician per kid (inverse scope)
Gillon and Armoskaite 2015, p. 101)

6 | CONCLUSION

In this article, I have provided an overview of the NP versus DP debate. I detailed the ar-
guments by which the nominal domain of a language would be assigned an NP or a DP
structure, with a subsequent discussion on the proper characterisation, function and features
of determiners.
I then discussed four diagnostics in Bošković (2008, 2012) to differentiate the nominal
domain of NP languages from those of DP languages. To recapitulate, Bošković (2008, 2012),
and Bošković and Şener (2014) claim that languages that have overt definite determiners have a
DP layer dominating noun phrases, while languages such as Serbo‐Croatian and Turkish, that
do not have overt definite determiners, only have NPs. They maintain that the existence or lack
of some phenomena based on those diagnostics should correlate with whether the language
under investigation can have a DP projection. Nevertheless, the languages surveyed in this
article, specifically Turkish, Korean, Vietnamese and Lithuanian, indicated that the diagnostics
proposed by Bošković (2008, 2012) are not conclusive to categorise those languages as NP or DP
languages since the nominal domain in those languages display properties of both the NP‐type
and DP‐type languages advocated by Bošković (2008, 2012).
Even though Bošković (2005, 2008, 2009, 2012) and Bošković and Gajewski (2011) argue
against a DP analysis for languages that do not have overt determiners, Bošković (2008, p. 7)
writes: “I don't rule out the possibility that the differences could be captured in a uniform DP
analysis (such accounts generally ignore the above generalisations, which are the most serious
problems for them”. In this article, I have shown that one should not hastily accept the cor-
relation between the stated diagnostics and whether the nominal domain in a given language is
NP or DPs. This brings up a question as to whether only some of the diagnostics are valid.
Another question is if there is any independent reason to discard some of the diagnostics to
differentiate NP languages from DP languages.
As stated previously, Salzmann (2020) maintains that many of the diagnostics that have
been put forward to assign an NP or a DP status of the nominal domain are inconclusive
since they mostly depend on theory‐internal assumptions and lose their validity in light of the
recent developments in syntactic theory. In the same way, Pereltsvaig (2013) states that
whether a language has articles may or may not have consequences for nominal‐internal
structures and interpretation as well as clause‐level word order possibilities and information
structure, clitics, negation, question formation and interpretation of adjectival and verbal
forms. Similarly, according to Kornfilt (2017, 2018), the correlation between certain properties
and a claimed status as an NP or a DP language in the typological endeavour by
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Bošković (2008, 2012) faces serious empirical challenges. Kornfilt (2017, 2018) calls for an
abandonment of the typological investigation put forward by Bošković (2008, 2012). I also
believe, in line with Kornfilt (2017, 2018), that future research should move in the direction
of scrutinising each language individually to uncover whether it does or does not have DPs
rather than trying to propose correlations between an NP or a DP status of the nominal
domain and a certain clustering of properties as advocated in the typological work in
Bošković (2005, 2007, 2008, 2012) and Bošković and Şener (2014).

ORC ID
Yılmaz Köylü https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2447-4211

ENDN O TES
1
It should be noted that the term articleless only concerns the lack of a definite determiner in Bošković's (2008)
typological endeavour.
2
A thorough analysis of each of the arguments by which a language would be assigned an NP or a DP structure
is beyond the scope of this article. See Salzmann (2020) for a detailed explanation of those arguments.
3
In more recent work by Boeckx (2008), the DP is usually considered as the counterpart of CP.
4
See, among others, Schmitt et al. (1999), and Munn and Schmitt (2005), who demonstrate based on data from
bare nouns in Brazilian Portuguese that the Nominal Mapping Parameter is both conceptually and empirically
problematic.
5
I would like to thank one of the reviewers for pointing this out.
6
Due to space considerations, only four of the diagnostics are reported here as an analysis of all 19 diagnostics
would require a much longer article. An analysis of the other 15 diagnostics for Turkish indicates that the
issues either could not be investigated due to a lack of the construction under investigation or as the
diagnostics are inconclusive since they are one‐way implications. The only diagnostic based on which Turkish
could be analysed as an NP language is the one that states that only languages without articles may allow
scrambling. Since Turkish does allow scrambling, it patterns with NP languages.
7
Bošković (2008) argues that for a language to have left branch extraction (LBE) means that the nominal
domain can only be NPs. However, all languages in which the nominal domain is NPs do not necessarily have
LBE. In that respect, this diagnostic is a one‐way implication. It should be noted that most of Bošković's
diagnostics are a one‐way implication. That is, for a language to exhibit a diagnostic means that the language
under investigation has an NP or a DP status. However, not exhibiting that diagnostic is still compatible with
an NP or a DP analysis.
8
The reason why the type of the verb should have any effect on NPI‐licensing is beyond the scope of this article,
and it should be explored in future research.
9
See Beghelli and Stowell (1997) and Ruys and Winter (2011) for earlier accounts that discuss how inverse scope
effects show variation in natural languages.

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AU THO R BI O G R A PH Y

Yılmaz Köylü is a Lecturer in the Center for Language Education at The Hong Kong
University of Science and Technology. He has a PhD degree in Linguistics and Second
Language Studies from Indiana University. His interests lie in the domains of first and
second language acquisition, syntax, semantics, pragmatics and Turkish linguistics. He is
particularly interested in the syntax‐semantics interface, NP syntax and semantics, gener-
icity and mass/count noun distinction across languages.

How to cite this article: Köylü Y. An overview of the NP versus DP debate. Lang
Linguist Compass. 2021;e12406. https://doi.org/10.1111/lnc3.12406