Null-Headed Nominals in German and English

In this paper we argue that certain nominal phrase constructions in German and English are best considered as having empty lexical heads. We propose a feature LP, which gives the status of the LEFT PERIPHERY of a nominal tree structure as one of three values, empty, full or one. A number of simple language-specific rules govern the combination of signs in terms of their LP values. For example, determiners such as none or mine are restricted to combining with N̄ constituents whose left periphery is empty [LP empty] while no and my require [LP full]. The feature provides a simple general explanation of a number of related phenomena wherein determiners or adjectives appear to “carry the weight” of DPs, including a variety of German DP constructions, certain possessive constructions in both English and German, and generics. The broad descriptive power of this feature argues that it is not an ad hoc solution. In order to justify it further, we investigate alternate explanations for the same phenomena, without using the LP feature, and argue that these approaches introduce unnecessary ambiguity and other complications.