Stephens (1993)

De Arbres


 Abstract
 
 This paper examines the structure of the noun phrase in Breton within 
 Government and Binding (GB) theory. Urien (1982) has argued that, the 
 clause and the noun phrase in Breton have common characteristics, 
 observable in the absence of agreement between the verb and its subject 
 in the ordinary finite clause and between the possessor and possessum 
 in the genitive nominal construction. 
 I propose to re-examine the structure of the Breton noun phrase within 
 the GB model. The similarities between the finite clause and the noun 
 phrase will be discussed in terms of structure and Case assignment.
 
 The paper is organized as follows: the introduction presents a brief 
 description of the theoretical model. The second part investigates 
 the status of the various determiners and will show that although 
 articles and possessive pronouns are superficial clitics, there is at 
 least one determiner, the quantifier kement, which is a strong
 constituent.
 Having established that the functional constituent Determiner exists 
 in Breton, the structure of the genitive construction, also reffered 
 to as the construct state in the litterature, is then examined in the 
 second part.
 Finally consideration is given to the derivation of non-construct state 
 NPs: ordinary, possessive and demonstrative. The data is taken from the 
 dialect of Tregor but the conclusions are relevant to the other dialects.


Il existe une version légèrement antérieure de cet article en français:
Stephens, J. 1992. 'Structure du groupe nominal en breton', Recherches Linguistiques 21, 143-156.