We argue that the distributional properties of modifiers, classifiers and demonstratives with respect to nouns in Mandarin Chinese motivate a head-functor approach(Van Eynde 2006), where numeral-classifier-noun sequences are analyzed as leftbranching structures with the noun as the head. This approach explains the distributional similarities between all prenominal categories by unifying their combinatorial properties under a single phrasal schema while also accounting for theirdifferences by means of selectional constraints and a hierarchy of marking values. We also analyze classifiers themselves as special kinds of noun. All in all, ouranalysis entails that nominal complexes in Mandarin Chinese are fundamentallydifferent from those found in languages with dedicated specifiers (e.g. determinersin a language like English), suggesting a two-way typology that is parallel to theNP/DP parameter proposed in the minimalist tradition (Bošković 2007, i.a.).

This book is an interdisciplinary project at the intersection of linguistics (semantics/pragmatics), experimental literature and art

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