DEI EX MACHINA: a note on plural/mass indefinite determiners
نویسنده
چکیده
This article argues that the Italian plural indefinite article dei and its French counterpart is a partitive structure without an overt numeral. Unlike a similar proposal in (Chierchia 1998a), the present account crucially holds that the definite DP embedded in these ‘defective partitives’ is a kind-denoting DP. This assumption derives the lack of existence presupposition, the absence of cardinal numerals after dei, the restrictions to certain types of DPs, the failure of ne-extraction and various other properties of this construction.
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