earticle

영어

Since Abney’s (1987) Universal DP hypothesis, much research on a nominal structure has proliferated. For example, Bošković (2005) proposed a parameterized DP hypothesis by providing a list of diagnostics to distinguish DP and NP languages. A DP language (article language) has an article, while an NP language (an articleless language) does not have an article. This paper examines one particular diagnostics, namely adjectival LBE in light of data from Korean, an articleless language. Korean patterns with an article language, English, not allowing adjectival LBE. Nevertheless, it allows relative free word order of prenominal elements within a nominal phrase, similar to Serbo-Croatian, an articleless language. In Serbo-Croatian, adjectival LBE is allowed, and adjectives, demonstratives, and possessives show free word order. These facts are attributed to the lack of an article, and thus no DP projection in the language, in contrast to English that projects a DP. This paper shows that the absence of DP is not necessary in accounting for the free order of prenominal elements in Korean, contra Boskovic (2005). The consequence of this suggests that adjectival LBE may not be valid to distinguish DP and NP languages. This consequence is further supported by data from other articleless languages wherein the adjectival LBE is violated just like Korean.