Determiner Phrase

In the determiner phrases below, the determiners are in boldface:

• a little dog, the little dogs (indefinite or definite article)
• my little dog, your little dogs (possessive)
• this little dog, those little dogs (demonstrative)
• every little dog, each little dog, some little dog, either dog, no dog (quantifying)

In linguistics, a determiner phrase (DP) is a syntactic category, a phrase headed by a determiner. The noun phrase is strictly speaking a determiner phrase, and NP designates a constituent of the noun phrase, taken to be the complement of the determiner. This is opposed to the traditional view that determiners are specifiers of the noun phrase. The DP analysis of noun phrases is the majority view in generative grammar today, but it is a minority stance in the study of theoretical syntax in general.

On the DP analysis of noun phrases, determiners govern the referential or quantificational properties of the noun phrases they embed. The idea that noun phrases preceded by determiners are determiner phrases is known as the DP hypothesis. The DP hypothesis is compatible with the theory of generalized quantifiers, which is the prevailing theory of the semantics of determiners.

In some versions of the Minimalist Program the DP is itself the complement of a phase head, n*, from which it inherits the ability to agree with its complement and assign case.

For more information and illustrations, see Noun phrase: Noun phrases with and without determiners.