earticle

영어

Although traditional grammar has treated determinatives as a type of adjective, many descriptive grammar books such as Quirk et al.(1985) accepted them as a word class independent of adjectives. Huddleston and Pullum(2002) and Chomsky(1995) have established the determinative as the head of Determinative Phrase(DP). In spite of these scholars' treatment of so-called ‘post-determiners’ such as many, little, three, and second as determinatives, most of the post-determiners still behave like adjectives in their morphemic formation of comparative/superlative degrees or their appearance in the predicative position. This study aims to propose the semantic and functional criteria for determinatives compared to adjectives and treat or reconsider the ambivalent usage of the post-determiners as the gradience in categories suggested in Aarts (2007). The proposal suggests allowing those criteria to naturally explain the reoccurrence of determinatives in DP.