ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the internal structure of the Determiner Phrase (DP) in several Asian languages, and discusses different syntactic phenomena and recent debates. The chapter is divided into four parts, each part addressing an important aspect of the DP-structure, with corresponding relevant case studies from several Asian languages. First, the chapter discusses the general structure of the DP as proposed for various Asian numeral-classifier languages. Then, the next section discusses different kinds of movement inside the DP. Head-movement is argued inside the nominal domain of Asian languages, in the form of noun-classifier (N-CL) movement, and in the form of N-D movement. In addition to head-movement, several Asian languages exhibit phrasal movement of NP-movement. Moreover, complex patterns inside the Madurese DP suggest that Madurese allows both N-movement and NP-movement inside the DP. Thirdly, the chapter addresses the NP versus DP debate, a debate relevant for many Asian languages which do not have definite articles. It has been suggested in the recent literature that languages which do not have articles are ‘NP languages’ and nominal constituents in such languages have no level of DP structure, and that these languages display a number of common syntactic characteristics. This debate is discussed with the case study of Bangla, which has no articles, and yet behaves like typical DP-languages. Finally, the chapter discusses a debate regarding headedness inside the nominals. An overview of arguments is presented that elements inside Japanese and Korean nominals are head-initial, even though Japanese and Korean are otherwise head-final languages, leading to straightforward explanations for attested patterns within the nominal domain of these languages.
