THE STRUCTURE OF THE ICELANDIC NP + NOUN-PHRASE

Abstract. This paper develops a (QP and a) DP analysis of the Icelandic NP, dealing primarily with prenominal modifiers and postnominal genitives. The paper argues that prenominal quantifiers and determiners head their own projections (QP and DP), whereas attributive adjectives are head‐adjoined to nouns. In addition, it is suggested that the minimal NP in morphological case languages, such as Icelandic and German, is a complement of a functional head, K, that hosts an m‐case feature, and attracts nouns, either in LF, as in German, or in ‘overt syntax’, as in Icelandic. Thus, the general noun‐genitive order in Icelandic possessive constructions is derived by overt N‐movement to K. © 1993 Editorial Board