An HPSG Account of Danish Pre-nominals

This article addresses the issue of selection restrictions for noun phrase specifiers. Danish data is presented which shows that definiteness plays an important role in this respect. It is pointed out that an analysis is required in which the specifier, when present, leaves a mark on the projected phrase. This is achieved by assuming that specifiers are syntactic heads of noun phrase constructions. Further an elaborate classification of specifiers is also needed in terms of which selection restrictions may be formulated, rJong with a cross-categorial definiteness feature. These properties are part of the analysis proposed in this analysis. Introduction When investigating empirical data it becomes clear that noun phrases often have multiple specifiers appearing before the noun. An important goal of noun phrase analysis is the specification of selection restrictions for noun phrase specifiers and pre-nominals in general to account for combinations of specifiers. It is this goal that is pursued in this article. In section 1 a set of Danish noun phrases are presented which form the basis of a discussion of what properties determine the restrictions on combinations of pre-nominals. In section 2 a number of previous HPSG analyses of noun phrases and pre-nominals are discussed. In section 3 the proposed analysis is introduced and sample analyses are shown. The proposed analysis has been implemented in the LKB system (Copestake 1999). A test suite consisting of the data in section 1 has been run and the results are presented in section 4. The article is concluded in section 5. 1 Some data To narrow the focus of this article two sets of noun phrases have been selected which illustrate the importance of the feature of definiteness in the account of selec­ tion restrictions. One set consists of noun phrases with multiple definite specifiers, Proceedings of NODALIDA 1999, pages 133-142