I am currently performing a cross-linguistic investigation of determiner phrases, and I was wondering if there are languages out there where an overt determiner can occur with a pronoun or proper noun, such that an example like "the Mary" or something along those lines would be grammatical. Thanks!
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2Longobardi gives an analysis of this phenomenon in Italian and other Rmance languages in his 1994 or 1995 paper "A case of construct state in Romance". – Keelan Nov 11 '20 at 14:32
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2Then the place to start is Matthew Dryer's two articles on the definite and indefinite article in WALS. – jlawler Nov 11 '20 at 15:52
Colloquial German has the combination of article and proper noun like "the Mary" in the southern part of Germany, for a geographical distribution of the feature see this map with explanations in German. There is a second map for article+surname with a similar geographical distribution.
answered Nov 11 '20 at 12:12
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2I believe there are also varieties of Spanish where this is common. Standard Italian also requires articles with possessive pronouns (e.g. il mio cavallo "my horse" but literally "the my horse") – Tristan Nov 11 '20 at 13:44
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Colloquial Italian also can use articles with proper nouns (in my idiolect only with feminine proper nouns for some reason, but in others different combinations are allowed) – Denis Nardin Nov 11 '20 at 20:41
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2It’s more or less mandatory in Greek and Portuguese as well with personal names. Can’t think of any languages where determiner + pronoun (‘the you’, ‘the who’ – well, apart from the group, of course) is used, though. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Nov 11 '20 at 20:55
