7
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Are there any languages that mark plural before the noun, while everything else comes after?
WALS is a great tool to answer questions like this. With this combined view of three features I find Zapotec and Sre as languages with the following features:
Plural prefix / Noun-Adjective / ...
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7
votes
Accepted
Languages where articles occur to the right of nouns
One problem is determining that the item is an article, not a demonstrative (assuming that we use semantic tests and not conventional translations into English to decide that matter). There might be ...
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7
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Languages where articles occur to the right of nouns
In Persian the indefinite article /i/ can be attached to a noun, or to a noun+adjective phrase. For example:
pesar-i “a boy”
pesar-e bozorg-i “a big boy”.
Though of course in written Persian this ...
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6
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Languages where articles occur to the right of nouns
The answer to your question definitely seems to be "yes".
However, finding clear-cut examples has been difficult for me (though I would imagine that there are a number of them). It is of course ...
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5
votes
What do you call what a noun phrase refers to?
The term for what a nominal refers to is referent.
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4
votes
Accepted
Why "a liter of water" but not "a 100ºC of water"?
I believe what you are seeing is the difference between Partitive and a normal DP.
Partitive indicates that the phrase is about a quantified subset of a bigger set of objects.
Some languages even have ...
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3
votes
What do you call what a noun phrase refers to?
Unfortunately, the idea that we can define nouns or noun phrases through meaning won't stand close scrutiny. Very often a noun phrase will have no referent at all. For example, in the phrase:
It's ...
- 3,159
3
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NP or DP for "that book"
I like that book.
In the DP theory, the determinative "that" is head and the noun is the dependent. The demonstrative determinative "that" is just as much a determiner here as &...
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3
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NP or DP for "that book"
First, a note: this isn't the only possible way to answer the question. You can also argue for it being an NP with special restrictions that mean it can only combine with the null determiner. There ...
- 51.9k
3
votes
Languages with overt determiners AND pronouns/proper nouns
Lots of languages precede proper names with a definite article. The phenomenon is called the 'preproprial definite article'. You can find an article with a quick survey of languages and some ...
3
votes
The term for the state of a noun
You're perhaps looking for the term Part of Speech. It's a rather vague term, and in syntax theory you usually wanna specify the noun by stating its thematic role (agent, patient, experiencer, theme, ...
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2
votes
Accepted
How could you summarise the noun phrase of a certain language?
The list of "things that are useful when describing noun phrases" cannot be complete, because there is no one list of what is relevant to every analysis. That being said, here are a few relevant ...
- 2,324
1
vote
Materialization of nouns by adjectives
"Car" picks out a set, the set of cars. It is not particularly abstract, but it is large. "Red car" picks out the intersection of red things and cars, which is a subset of the set ...
- 316
1
vote
Constituency-based parse trees and the word 'both' in noun phrases
I would like to expand on the answer provided by David Vogt and supported by BillJ in the comments. The word both is often the first part of a two-part conjunction, called correlative conjunction. ...
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Constituency-based parse trees and the word 'both' in noun phrases
Note that both is not a determiner here. Barring conversion (such as the you I knew), you cannot be modified by a determiner.
In your case, both is part of a correlative conjunction. Other examples ...
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1
vote
Accepted
Substantivized Adjectives and the NP vs. DP Debate
While the analysis of phrases like "the meek" and "the happy" is debated, one common strategy is to view them as containing some syntactic element without an overt phonological ...
- 16.6k
1
vote
Has there been cross-linguistic work on differential adjective-noun order?
There's an oft-cited 1988 paper by Matthew Dryer dealing with adjective-noun order, most of which goes over my head, really, but the gist of it is that the purported tendency of VO (verb-object) ...
- 1,185
1
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Has there been cross-linguistic work on differential adjective-noun order?
As usual, WALS is a great start, explaining the different modifiers: genitives, adjectives, and relative clauses. And there are number of articles on the order of modifiers:
order of genitives
order ...
- 4,324
1
vote
Languages where articles occur to the right of nouns
The answer to your question is not clear. What an article is and what separate is is arguable. (many of my references are from WALS)
Historically, the definite article derives from demonstratives, ...
- 4,324
1
vote
Adverbs as NP pre-modifiers
While I support your remarks about the interpretation of probably as a supposed NP modifier, CGEL might still be right about the syntax. Following McCawley's analysis of only as a syntactic modifier ...
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