draft of November 2011

Topic-strategies and the internal structure of nominal 

arguments in Greek and Italian ∗ 

Theodora Alexopoulou and Raffaella Folli 

Cambridge and Ulster 

ta259@cam.ac.uk and r.folli@ulster.ac.uk 

Draft of November 2011 

Abstract 

The paper investigates investigates how Italian and Greek employ Clitic Left Disloca- 

tion (clld) to encode discourse topics. Greek is sensitive to the definiteness/referentiality 

of the topic, employing clld exclusively for referential topics and resorting to Topi- 

calisation for non-referential/property denoting topics. By contrast, clld is the main 

topic-strategy in Italian including non-referential/property denoting topics. This contrast 

is shown to mirror variation in more general patterns of anaphoric relations in the two 

languages, which, in turn, relate to the structure of nominal arguments: the fact that 

Greek non-referential indefinites systematically involve bare nouns which may be dropped 

rather than picked up by a pronoun in intrasentential anaphora contexts; the fact that 

Italian indefinites always involve a determiner and Italian pronouns can support property 

anaphora. 

The hypothesis is that the crosslignuistic variation in the anaphoric and clld patterns 

is the consequence of structural variation in the syntax of nominal arguments. Greek 

∗ We would like to thank the audiences of the following workshops and conferences: Funny Indefinites, June 

2008, Berlin, LAGB, September 2009, Edinburgh, Bare Nouns, November 2009, Paris, Syntax Workshop of the 

Irish Network on Formal Syntax, February 2010, Belfast, Meditereanean Syntax, October 2010, Athens, On 

Linguistics Interfaces, December 2010, Belfast and Workshop on Current Issues in Semantics and Pragmatics, 

June 2011, York. Special thanks to George Tsoulas for discussion. 

1

nominal arguments lack a D-layer; rather they are Number Phrases. On a par with Italian, 

Greek nouns are predicative; however, while the nominalisor in Italian is D, in Greek it 

is Number. The hypothesis allows for a three-way distinction between Italian, Greek and 

English which explains the properties of bare nouns in the these languages and further 

patterns relating to the availability of Indefinite Argument Drop and Subnominal Deletion. 

It further suggests that D and referentiality are not intrinsically linked. Finally, under this 

analysis, variation in the realisation of topic-structures is not confined to PF (i.e. whether 

the in-situ element is a gap/null epithet or a pronoun); rather the specific properties of 

the pronominal are crucial, in turn interacting with the syntax of nominal arguments in 

each language. 

2

1 Introduction 

Clitic Left Dislocation (clld) is standardly assumed as the main topic-strategy in Italian and 

Greek (Cinque 1990; Anagnostopoulou 1994; Rizzi 1997; Tsimpli 1995). On a par with English 

Topicalisation, the (A ′ ) topic-operator involved in clld is analysed as anaphoric in the sense 

of Lasnik and Stowell (1991); rather than binding a variable (like a quantificational operator), 

is linked anaphorically to the in-situ element of the dependency, through co-reference. The 

pronominal in clld is often analysed as an overt counterpart of the gap element in Topical- 

isation (Rizzi 1997; Tsimpli 1999). The crosslinguistic variation then is confined to PF, the 

choice between a pronominal element and a gap (null epithet for Lasnik and Stowell 1991). 

Under this view, crosslinguistic variation is primarily related to the nature of the operator, 

anaphoric vs. quantificational while variation in the nature of the in-situ element has been 

much less in focus. Current assumptions make the prediction that the range of intepretations 

available for Topicalisation should be available for clld structures; in addition, no variation 

is expected within clld since, ultimately, the involvement of the pronominal is taken as a PF 

realisation of the gap involved in Topicalisation. 1 

Indeed, clld-ed indefinites in Italian allow both the de re (wide scope) reading in (1a) as 

well as a de dicto reading, as indicated by the continuations in (1b) and (1c). If clld involves 

movement just like Topicalisation, then the indefinite in (1a) should reconstruct under the 

scope of the intensional predicate. 

(1) a. una gonna rossa la cerco da un po’ 

a red skirt her.cl look-for-1sg for a while 

A red skirt I’ve been looking for a while... 

b. ma non ne ho trovata nessuna che mi piaccia 

but not of-them.cl have-1sg found none-fem that me please-3sg.subj 

... but have not found anyone that I like. 

c. ma non riesco a ricordarmi dove l’ho 

messa 

but not reach-1sg to remember where her.cl-have-1sg put 

puffle ... but I cannot remember where I’ve put it. 

1 To be precise, Lasnik and Stowell (1991) argue that the gap element in Topicalisation is a null epithet rather 

than a variable. The fact remains that the pronominals in clld should allow the same range of interpretations 

as the null epithet in Topicalisation. 

3

Indeed, this is the analysis proposed by Cecchetto (2001) who discusses cases of clld-ed 

indefinites interpreted in the scope of IP internal quantifiers. For instance, (2) is ambiguous 

between a wide scope reading for the indefinite and a wide scope reading for the universal. 

(2) a. un articolo di Chomsky ogni studente l’ha letto 

an article of Chomsky every student it.cl-has read 

An article of Chomsky, every student has read it. 

However, there are two unexpected facts for the view that clld and Topicalisation are 

different (PF) realisations of the same structure. The first is that Italian clld is rather 

exceptional in allowing ambiguous readings for clld-ed indefinites. For instance, in Greek, 

clld-ed indefinites can only admit wide-scope interpretations (Iatridou 1995; Alexopoulou 

and Kolliakou 2002) as indicated in (3). Mia kokini fusta resists the opaque or de dicto reading, 

as indicated by the infelicity of the continuation in (3b) (Iatridou 1995; Anagnostopoulou 1994; 

Alexopoulou and Kolliakou 2002). 2 Similarly, ena artrho tu Chomsky cannot be interpreted 

under the scope of the universal in (4). 

(3) a. mia kokini fusta tin psahno edho ke meres 

a red skirt it look-for-1sg here and days 

I’ve been looking for a red skirt for a few days ... 

b. =ke de boro na vro kamia pu na m’aresi 

and not can-1sg subj find-1sg none 

... and I cannot find any that I like. 

that subj me-please-3sg 

c. ke de boro na thimitho pu tin eho vali 

and not can-1sg subj remember-1sg where her.cl have-1sg put 

... and cannot remember where I put it. (Alexopoulou and Kolliakou 2002) 

(4) ena artrho tu Chomsky to diavase kathe fititis 

an article the-gen Chomsky it-cl read-3sg each student-nom 

There’s an article of Chomsky that every student read (only wide scope for indefinite). 

Second, Greek employs Topicalisation when a non-referential or de dicto interpretation of the 

indefinite topic is intended. 

2 We mark infelicity with =. 

4

(5) a. Fetos i moda ine apesia; idika i bluzes ine aparadektes 

I hate this year’s fashion; the blouses are especially outrageous. 

b. mia kokini bluza psahno edo ki ena mina ke de boro na vro 

a red blouse her.cl look-for-1sg here and one month and not can subj 

puthena kamia pu na m’aresi 

find-1sg anywhere anyone that subj me like-3sg 

A red blouse I’ve been looking for for a month now and I cannot find one that I 

like. 

(Alexopoulou and Kolliakou 2002, ex.51) 

So, while the hypothesis that clld and Topicalisation are different PF realisations of the 

same structure can elegantly capture the variation between English and Italian, the Greek 

facts are problematic, since this language has two distinct syntactic structures for topics, 

namely Topicalisation and clld, a fact that indicates that the presence of the pronominal 

has interpretative consequences. We turn to the discussion of the differences between these 

two languages next. 

The minimal pairs in Italian (1) and Greek (3)&(5) illustrate a contrast between Italian 

and Greek topic-strategies. Italian employs clld as the main topic-strategy, regardless of the 

referentiality of the dislocated topic. Greek, by contrast, employs clld only for referential top- 

ics; non-referential topics undergo Topicalisation. The present paper investigates the source 

of this contrast. Our analysis builds on the insight of Rizzi (1997),Cinque (1990), Anagnos- 

topoulou (1994) and Tsimpli (1999) according to which clld is characterised by the absence 

of quantifier-variable chain and the presennce of an anaphoric link between the dislocated 

phrase and the pronominal. Indeed we demonstrate that clld mirrors general anaphoric 

possibilities between pronouns and their antecedents in the two languages. We show that 

the contrast regarding clld is not an isolated fact, but rather, is linked to a further set of 

empirical contrasts regarding the availability of Indefinite Argument Drop, bare subnominal 

ellipsis and the availability of bare nouns in the two languages. The emerging patterns indi- 

cate strongly that variation is these contexts is linked to variation in the internal structure of 

the nominals and pronouns involved. Our central claim is that all relevant contrasts can be 

reduced to one: the absence of a D-layer from Greek nominal arguments and the hypothesis 

5

that Greek arguments instantiate Number Phrases. This hypothesis has consequences for the 

structure and interpretation of pronominals, which, in turn, directly affects the interpretative 

possibilities in clld in the two languages. Crucially, the clitic in clld cannot be just an overt 

PF realisation of the epithet assumed in Topicalisation, since its specific properties interact 

direclty with the topic-strategies in the two languages. Variation in topic-structures then can- 

not be confined to PF, but rather, interacts with the structure of nominal arguments in the 

two languages. 3 Further, the hypothesis allows a three way typological distinction between 

English, Italian and Greek in relation to bare nouns. Unlike English, Italian and Greek do not 

have argumental nouns (in the sense of Chierchia 1998). Rather nouns are predicative. But 

while in Italian D acts as the nominalisor turning predicative nouns to arguments, in Greek 

the nominalisor is Number. 

In section 2 we briefly review previous approaches to the interpretations of clld-ed in- 

definites. Section 3 presents a set of facts that correlate with the clld contrasts, drawing 

from contexts of Indefinite Argument Drop, Bare Subnomianal Ellipsis and the distribution 

of bare nominals in the two languages. Our analysis of these facts is presented in section 4. 

2 Indefinite Topics: Previous Analyses 

Though no previous analysis has focused on the crosslinguistic variation between Greek and 

Italian clld, the main facts presented earlier have been discussed for each language. Two 

kinds of analyses have been proposed to explain the wide scope readings of Greek clld-ed 

indefinites and the ambiguity of their Italian counterparts: (i) scope based analyses, where the 

relevant readings are linked to the underlying derivations and (ii) Topichood-based analyses, 

where referential readings are viewed as a consequence of the discourse function of clld-ed 

phrases as topics. We review these analyses briefly below. 

Scope based analyses Iatridou (1995) and Anagnostopoulou (1994) take the impossibility 

of interpreting clld-ed indefinites within the scope of IP internal operators as evidence for a 

base-generation analysis of Greek clld. Similarly, Cecchetto (2001) takes the Italian facts as 

3 A preliminary discussion and analysis of this set of facts is presented in Alexopoulou and Folli (2011). 

6

evidence of reconstruction, and, therefore proposes a movement analysis for Italian clld-ed 

DPs. Italian and Greek clld then involve distinct derivations, movement and base generation 

respectively. However, there is no independent evidence for this derivational contrast. In 

fact, in both languages the structures display many standard clld properties (no wco, no- 

parasitic gaps, sensitivity to islands, unavailability of clld-ed downward entailing quantifiers 

see Cinque 1990; Anagnostopoulou 1994; Tsimpli 1995; Rizzi 1997; Alexopoulou, Doron, and 

Heycock 2004). 4 

In addition, the ”scope” facts are rather complex, posing a problem for the derivational 

approach. Consider (6a); while the de dicto reading is excluded, this example allows the so- 

called ”3rd-reading” (Fodor 1970; von Fintel and Heim 2009), according to which, I’m looking 

for a specific type of an Armani skirt, e.g. one that I’ve seen in a brochure, but still not for 

a token. 5 Such examples could be taken as evidence that clld may at least allow partial 

reconstruction. 

(6) a. mia fusta tu Armani tin psahno edho ke meres 

a skirt the-gen Armani her.cl look-for-1sg here and days 

An Armani skirt I’ve been looking for for a few days .... 

b. ke de mporo na vro kamia pu na mu kani 

and not can-1sg subj find-1sg none that subj me fit-3sg 

... and I cannot find anyone that fits me. 

In addition, there is evidence from both Greek and Italian, that the properties of the dislocated 

element affect the ”scope” possibilities. For example, the plural clld-ed interrogative in (7) 

allows only a wide scope reading. 6 

(7) ?quanti pazienti ritieni che li debba visitare ogni medico? 

how-many patients think-2pl that them should visit each doctor 

How many patients do you think each doctor should visit? (no wide scope for universal) 

Unlike clld-ed indefinites, Greek definites may be interpreted under the scope of the universal 

4 But see Haegeman (pear) for some differences. 

5 Thanks to S. Iatridou for this observation. 

6 This example is due to Longobardi (1986) cited by Cinque (1990). 

7

quantifier in (8). 

(8) to aftokinito tu to asfalise kathe fititis 

the car his-gen it insured-3sg each student-nom 

Each student insured his car (distributive reading available). 

Finally, clld-ed PPs don’t reconstruct in Italian (Cecchetto 2001). 

In sum, there are at least three factors that may affect reconstruction: the number of the 

dislocated element (7), its definiteness (8) and its category. 7 Under the scope approach, these 

interactions are mysterious. 

Topichood analyses Topics are often taken to necessarily involve well established dis- 

course antecedents and, as a result, be compatible only with referential interpretations (Rein- 

hart 1982; Alexopoulou and Kolliakou 2002; Endriss 2006). This explanation works for Greek 

clld, since clld-ed phrases are necessarily referential topics (Philippaki-Warburton 1985; 

Anagnostopoulou 1994; Tsimpli 1995; Rizzi 1997). However, Italian clld challenges the gen- 

eralisation that topics are exclusively referential as we have seen in (1); the Greek Topicali- 

sation examples in (5b) are equally problematic. 

3 Beyond topics: nominals and anaphoric relations in Italian 

and Greek 

In this section we show that the clld facts mirror more general anaphoric possibilities in the 

two languages, which in turn relate to the make up of the nominals in the two languages. 

In particular, we draw evidence from the availability of Indefinite Argument Drop, Bare 

subnominal deletion and bare nominals. The most important shortcoming of the scope-based 

and topichood analyses reviewed in the previous section is that they could not capture the 

more general patterns discussed below. We begin by looking at the basic contrast between 

clld and Greek Topicalisation in some more detail. 

7 The presence of modal operators further affects readings (Alexopoulou 2009). 

8

3.1 Greek manipulates structure while Italian manipulates Ds 

Let us focus on the non-referential indefinites in some more detail. Consider the minimal pair 

in (9). 

(9) a. Una segrataria *(la)-trovi facilmente/ prima o poi una segretaria *(la)-trovi 

A secretary her.cl-find easily/ sooner or later a secretary her.find 

A secretary, you fill find her easily/ sooner or later you will find her 

b. Gramatea tha (*ti) vrite sigura 

Secretary will her.cl find-2pl certainly 

A secretary you will find her certainly. 

As already seen, Greek employs Topicalisation when a non-referential interpretation is in- 

tended while Italian clld. Thus, the clitic ti is ungrammatical in Greek but la obligatory 

in Italian. However, (9b) points to a further difference between the two languages: the dislo- 

cated phrase in Greek is a bare noun while in Italian the indefinite article is indespensible. 

Example (10), where the bare noun is preceded by mia is possible in Greek, but there is a 

strong preference to read mia as one. 8 

(10) mia grammatea tha vrite sigura 

one-fem secretary will find-2pl certainly 

It seems then that Greek is sensitive to the (in)definiteness of the topic and has two 

distinct topic strategies: indefinite topics are typically bare nominals linked to a gap, while 

definite/referential topics are preceded by an article and linked to a pronominal clitic (11). 

By contrast, Italian indefinite topics as in (9a) are structurally very similar to the clld-ed 

definite topic in (11b); both types involve clld. 

(11) a. ti Maria tha ti vrite sigura sto grafio 

the-acc Maria will her.cl find-2pl certainly at-the office 

Maria you’ll certainly find her at the office. 

b. il libro che cerchi lo trovi sul tavolo 

the book that are-looking-for.2sg it.cl find-2sg on-the table 

8 Greek has no indefinite article distinct from the numeral one. 

9

The book you are looking for you’ll find it on the table. 

The pattern becomes somewhat more complicated in Italian when plurals are considered. 

As can be seen in (12a) and in (7) repeated as (12b), the plural clitic le resists a non-referential 

antecedent, just like the Greek clitics. 

(12) a. *Segretarie le 

trovi facilemente. 

Secretaries them.cl.fem find easily 

Secretaries, you will find them easily. 

b. ?quanti pazienti ritieni che li 

debba visitare ogni medico? 

how-many patients think-2sg that them.cl.msc should visit each doctor 

How many patients do you think each doctor should visit? (no wide scope for 

universal) 

However, unlike Greek, Italian does not resort to an alternative structure (Topicalisation) 

to realise plural indefinite topics. Rather it employs an alternative clitic, namely ne as shown 

in (13). Importantly, while a bare plural is possible in these structures, a DP involving the 

bare partititive construction delle N is also available. 

(13) a. (Delle)-segretarie ne trovi facilemente. 

Secretaries of-them.cl find.easily 

Secretaries, you will find them easily 

b. (Delle)-segretarie se *(ne) trovano facilmente 

Secretaries refl of-them.cl find easily 

Secretaries, can be found easily. 

In sum then, Greek non-referential/indefinite topics are structurally different from their 

definite/referential counterparts; they involve bare nominals linked to a gap. By contrast, 

Italian systematically employs clld as its topic strategy but manipulates the type of D- 

elements (pronominals/articles) involved. 

10

3.2 Indefinite pronominal antecedents and Indefinite Argument Drop 

(IAD) 

The range of available interpretations for an indefinite clld-ed phrase in the two languages 

mirrors the possibilities available in intrasentential anaphora. Compare (9a) with (14). The 

pronoun la in (14a) and lo in (14b) can admit a non-referential antecedent just like the clld 

example in (9a). Notice again that la and lo cannot be ommitted in (14). 

(14) a. A:Maria ha trovato una baby sitter? B:Si, l’ha 

trovata 

A:Maria has-3sg found a baby sitter? B:Yes, her.cl’has-3sg found 

A:Has Maria found a baby sitter? B: yes, she found one 

b. Gianni sta cercando un idraulico ma non lo trova 

Gianni is looking-for a plumber but not him.cl find-3sg 

Gianni is looking-for a plumber but cannot find one. 

Compare now the Greek Topicalisation example in (9b) with (15). The pronouns ti and 

ton are incompatible with the indefinite bare noun antecedents, just as in (9b). In fact, there 

is no pronoun in these examples; rather the (object) argument is dropped; the phenomenon 

was first observed by Dimitriadis (1994) who also drew a correlation between the availability 

of Greek Topicalisation and argument drop in examples like (15). 9 (See also Giannakidou and 

Merchant (1997), Tsimpli and Papadopoulou (2005) and Panagiotidis (2002)): 

(15) a. A:vrike dada I Maria? B:ne, (*ti) vrike 

Q:found-3sg nanny the-nom Maria A:yes, (*her) found-3sg 

Has Maria found a nanny? Yes, she found. 

b. o Yanis psahni idravliko alla dhe (*ton) vriski puthena 

the-nom Yanis look-for-3sg plumber but not (him) find-3sg anywhere 

Yanis is looking for a plumber but cannot nd one anywhere. 

Note that the problem in (15) is not the bare nominal per se, but the necessarily non- 

referential interpretation of bare nouns which bars them as pronominal antecedents. As we 

shall see in the next section, bare nouns can be discourse transparent, i.e. act as pronoun 

antecedents. But in (15) the interpretations are necessarily non-referential/weak. When enan 

9 He refers to what we call Topicalisation as Empty clld. 

11

(=a/one) is involved in (16), ambiguity arises. The presence of the pronominal in (16a) forces 

a referential interpretation for the indefinite, exactly as in the clld case in (3). The indefinite 

interpretation is only available when the object is dropped in the second clause (16b), on a 

par with (5). 

(16) a. o Yanis psahni enan idravliko, ala dhe ton vriski puthena 

the-nom Yanis look-for-3sg one plumber but not him find-3sg anywhere 

Yanis is looking for a plubmer but cannot find him anywhere. ∃ > look-for 

b. o Yanis psahni enan idravliko, ala dhe vriski puthena 

the-nom Yanis look-for-3sg one plumber but not find-3sg anywhere 

Yanis is looking for a plubmer but cannot find one anywhere. look-for > ∃ 

The facts reviewed so far indicate that: (i) the relation between a clld-ed phrase and the clitic 

mirrors intrasentential anaphora in the two languages; (ii) Greek pronouns systematically 

resist non-referential antecedents while Italian clitics can accept such antecedents; (iii) Greek 

allows Indefinite Argument Drop (IAD) where Italian systematically employs pronouns. 

Before moving on it is worth pointing out that IAD is available also with subjects in Greek 

as shown in (17) (and noticed by Giannakidou and Merchant 1997). (17b) can be a felicitous 

exchange in a context where a new helpline is set up at a university, available to faculty, 

students and the general public, but what is of interest is if students specifically use it. 

(17) a. A:irthe kanis? B:ne irthe 

A:came-3sg anyone? B:yes, came-3sg 

A:Did anyone come? B:Yes, someone did. 

b. A:tilefonisan fitites? B:ne tilefonisan 

A:phoned-3pl students? B:yes, phoned-3pl 

A:Did students phone? B:Yes, some did. 

By contrast, such indefinite subjects cannot be dropped in Italian. 

(18) A:Ha telefonato qualcuno B:Si, qualcuno ha telefonato/*Si, ha telefonato 

A:Has phoned someone? B:Yes, someone has phoned/*Yes, has phoned 

A: Has anyone phoned? B: Yes, someone has phoned. 

12

3.3 Bare nouns 

As has become evident, many of the critical examples in Greek involve bare nouns. In fact, bare 

nouns are very widely available in Greek (19), in contrast to Italian, where their distribution 

is restricted (Benincà 1980; Longobardi 1994; Chierchia 1998). Crucially for the present 

discussion, a bare noun is ungrammatical in examples like (20) where Greek naturally prefers 

a bare noun. 

(19) a. i Maria vrike dada gia ta pedhia 

the-nom Maria found nanny for the children 

Maria found a nanny for the children. 

b. mpikan kleftes ke sikosan ta pada 

broke-in-3pl burglars and lifted-3pl the all 

Burglars broke in and took everything. 

c. diadilotes pirpolisan magazia ke aftokinita stus dromus yiro apo 

demonstrators set-on-fire shops and cars in-the streets around from 

to Politehnio 

the Politehnio 

Demonstrators set on fire shops and cars in the streets around the School of 

Engineering. 

The Italian counterparts of Greek (19a) and (15) resist bare nouns as shown in (20). 

(20) a. Maria ha trovato una baby-sitter/*baby-sitter per i bambini 

Maria has found a nanny/*nanny for the children 

Maria found a nanny for the children. 

b. Gianni sta cercando un idraulico/*idraulico. 

Gianni is looking-for a plumber/*plumber 

Gianni is looking for a plumber. 

3.4 Bare subnominal ellipsis 

The final set of observations comes from another context of intrasentential anaphora which 

gives rise to the deletion of the nominal antecedent. Consider (21). In the answer, the noun 

tavolo is elided; the nominal is headed by uno which consists of the indefinite article and the 

classifier o, followed by the adjective (Alexiadou and Gengel 2008). In addition, the elliptical 

13

nominal is doubled by the pronoun lo, which in this case is non-referential. 10 

(21) A:Vorrei un tavolo grande B:Mi spiace. Non lo abbiamo, uno 

A:would-like-1sg a 

grande 

big 

table big B:Me displeases-3sg. Not it have-1pl, a 

I would like to buy a big table. I’m sorry. We do not have a big one. 

(From Alexiadou and Gengel 2008, attributed to V.Samek-Lodovici) 

Compare now with the Greek counterpart of (21) in (22). As in Italian, the noun can be 

elided, but the adjective alone is enough; there is no element heading the nominal and, in 

addition, there is no doubling. All we have is a bare adjective holding the place of a nominal 

object. 

(22) a. thelo afti ti fusta se kitrino 

want-1sg this the skirt in yellow 

I would like this skirt in yellow. 

b. Distihos dhen eho kitrini. (Mono mavres mu ehun 

unfortunately not 

mini) 

left) 

have-1sg yellow-fem.sg (Ony black-fem.pl me have-3pl 

Unfortunately I don’t have a yellow one. ( Only black ones are left). 

The facts presented in this section are summarised in Table 1. All critical cases involve 

non-referential or weak indefinites. The emerging pattern is that for such nominals, Italian 

10 Belletti and Rizzi (1981) argue on the basis of the examples below where ne is obligatory and uno un- 

grammatical, that ne involves less structure than DP. However, Cardinaletti and Giusti (1990) have argued 

against this position and analyse ne as a head Q, although in their paper they do not take an explicit position 

on whether Q is a functional category different from D or it is the head of D. In the discussion to come we will 

adopt this latter position. 

(i) a. ho letto un lunghissimo libro 

have-1sg read a very-long book 

I have read a very long book. 

b. ne/*uno ho letto uno/*un (lunghissimo) 

14

systematically employs articles and pronouns where Greek resorts to bare structures. The 

analysis then needs to capture the following: (i) Italian nominals are systematically DPs 

where Greek nominals involve less structure; (ii) Italian pronouns are compatible with non- 

referential antecedents where Greek pronouns necessarily involve referential antecedents. 

Structure Italian Greek 

(A) Indefinite Topics clld of an indefinite Bare nominal 

nominal (1) linked to a gap (5,9b) 

(B) CLLD-ed De dicto and de re Only de re (3) 

indefinites available (1) and 3rd reading (6) 

(C) Bare nouns Limited distribution; Productive use 

bare partitive of bare nouns (9b,20) 

construction (12,13) 

(D) Indefinite Unavailable Obligatory with 

Argument Drop (14,19) (some) weak indefinites 

and bare nouns (16,17b) 

(E) Bare Subnominal Unavailable May involve 

Ellipsis always a D element (22) bare adjective (23) 

Table 1: Summary of the crosslinguistic contrasts in the realisation of weak indefinites 

15

4 Analysis 

4.1 Greek nominal arguments are Number Phrases 

Since Horrocks and Stavrou (1987), Greek nominal arguments are assumed to be DPs (see 

also Stavrou 1991). This view remains dominant in the Greek literature to date, modulo 

Kolliakou’s work on Greek definites (Kolliakou 2003) and two proposals for treating some 

cases of Greek bare nouns as NPs by Tomioka (2003) and Tsimpli and Papadopoulou (2005). 

In this section we provide arguments that Greek nominals are Number Phrases without a 

D layer. We begin our discussion with bare nouns in section 4.1.1 and then move to nominals 

with articles and quantifiers in section 4.1.3. 

4.1.1 Bare nouns in Greek 

We hypothesise the structure in (23). We need to show two things: first, that bare nouns are 

arguments and not incorporated properties. Second, that no D layer is needed. 

(23) a. aghorasa vivlia 

bought-1sg books 

I bought books. 

VP 

✟❍ 

✟ 

✟ ❍ 

❍ 

b. V NumP 

aghorasa 

✟ ✟ ❍ 

❍ 

Num NP 

+Pl 

N 

vivlia 

Morphology In terms of their morphology, bare nominals are marked for case, gender 

and number just like any other argument, in contrast to incorporated arguments which, 

crosslinguistically, may show reduced morphology (Farkas and de Swarts 2003). 

16

Syntax They can be left dislocated (24a), undergo (focus-)movement (24b) or be pas- 

sivised (24c) like any other argument. 11 

(24) a. danio, kserume pia trapeza tha mas dosi 

loan, know-1pl which bank will us give-3sg 

A loan, we know which bank will give it to us. 

b. gamo theli, ohi tsilimpurdismata 

marriage want-3sg not affairs 

S/he’s after marriage, not affairs. 

c. plastes taftotites ekdothikan mono stin Katohi (ohi ston 

fake identity-cards were-issued only in-the Occupation (not in-the 

efmilio) 

civil-war) 

Fake identity cards were issued only during the Occupation period (not during 

the Civil war). 

In addition, bare nouns can be modified like their non-bare counterparts. 

(25) a. agorase akrivo aftokinito 

bought-3sg expensive car 

She bought an expensive car. 

b. theli dada me ptihio 

want-3sg baby-sitter with degree 

She wants a babysitter with a degree. 

c. kalos yatros ton exetase (min anisihis) 

good-nom doctor-nom clhim examined-3sg (not 

A good doctor examined him, don’t worry. 

worry-2sg) 

11 Panagiotidis (2003) points out that a predicate like perno tilefono (=take phone) is ambiguous between 

I get(=buy/fetch) a phone and make a phonecall. Interestingly, even under the latter interpretation, where 

tilefono could be taken as semantically incorporated to the meaning of the whole predicate, the bare noun can 

be dislocated as in (i). 

(i) tilefono de mpori na pari i marina; ine mikro pedhi 

phonecall not can subj take-3sg the-nom Marina; is small child 

Marina cannot make phonecall; she’s only a child. 

17

Thus, the morphosyntactic properties of bare nouns provide evidence for an argument analysis 

since there is no evidence of incorporation. 

No number neutrality for bare singulars Semantic evidence also indicates that bare 

nouns are arguments and excludes an incorporation analysis. A characteristic property of 

incorporated bare nouns is number neutrality, even when they are marked with singular 

morphology. Number neutrality entails compatibility with both atomic (singular) and plural 

interpretations (Farkas and de Swarts 2003; Espinal 2010). Greek bare singulars are only 

compatible with an atomic interpretation. Thus, (26a) denotes reading of one newspaper; 

characteristically, (26c) is ungrammatical with the singular, exactly because the predicate 

necessitates a plural interpretation (compare with stamp collector in English). 

(26) a. dhiavase efimeridha 

read-3sg newspaper 

S/he read a newspaper. (reading of one newspaper) 

b. dhiavase efimeridhes 

read-3sg newspapers 

She read newspapers. (reading of more than one newspapers) 

c. mazevi *gramatosim-o/gramatosim-a 

gather-3sg stamp-sg/stamps-pl 

She collects stamps. 

Greek bare singulars cannot license plural interpretations in (27) and (28) (adapted from 

Espinal 2010, ex.4a). The second sentence in (27) is infelicitous; Greek contrasts in this re- 

spect with languages like Catalan, where bare nouns license plural interpretations in contexts 

like (27) (Espinal 2010). 

(27) psahno aftokinito; = ena mikro gia tin poli ki ena fortighaki ya ekdromes 

look-for-1sg car; = one small for the city and one van for trips 

I’m looking for a car. = a small one for the city and a van for trips. 

18

Further, Greek bare nouns have atomic interpretations in contexts like (28), where their 

Catalan counterparts are number neutral and compatible with plural readings. 12 - 13 

12 With focal stress on the verb, we can get the implicature of more flowers, accounts or houses in (28). But, 

this is just the fact that, any indefinite interpreted existentially is true even if more than one such entities 

exist. In other words, the Greek examples in (i) are no different from their English translations in this respect. 

13 Espinal (2010) further notes that bare singulars in Catalan are restricted to predicates that allow an 

interpretation where the predicate (verb+bare singular) denotes a characterising property of the subject. This 

assumption explains the contrast between (ia) and (ib). (ia) involves a characterising property of the external 

argument, that of car-owner, while (ib) does not. Building on Espinal and McNally (2007), Espinal (2010) 

assumes that only ”have”-predicates are compatible with these characterising interpretations. Example (ib), 

then, is bad because it cannot be analysed as a ”have” predicate. 

(i) a. Tengo choche 

have car 

I have a car. (It could be one or more than one; I am a car-owner). 

b. =Limpio choche 

clean car 

I’m cleaning a car. 

(From Espinal 2010, ex.18) 

Greek examples like (ia) can certainly be interpreted as providing a characterising property of the subject. 

Crucially, though, bare singulars can appear as objects of a wider range of predicates, that resist this interpre- 

tation (15) but can also appear as subjects themselves (25c). Further note that while (iib) is not felicitous in 

the minimal context of (iia), it can be felicitous in (iii); suppose that speaker B owns a company which takes 

on cleaning of public buildings such as schools, churches and gyms. Assuming shared knowledge between A 

and B that cleaning a church is the most difficult and time consuming of these jobs, B’s reply is natural, since 

”cleaning a church” is a predicate that is implicitly contrasted with ”cleaning a gym or school”. 

(ii) a. ti kanis? 

what doing-2pl 

What are you doing? 

b. =?katharizo aftokinito 

clean-1sg car 

I am cleaning a car. 

(iii) a. A:pu vriskete o Yanis 

A:where is-3sg 

Where is Yanis? 

the-nom Yanis-nom 

b. B:katharizi eklisia; katalavenis; tha ton dume se kamia bdomada pali 

B:clean-3sg church; understand-2sg; will him see-1pl in a week again 

19

(28) a. i amigdalia ebgale luludi 

the-nom almond-tree made-3sg flower 

The almond tree had a flower. 

b. eho logariasmo stin ethniki 

have-1sg account in-the national 

I have an account in the National Bank. 

c. eho spiti 

have-1sg house 

I have a house. 

Free adjectival modification Bare singulars in Catalan can only combine with classifying 

modifiers as in (29a) but resist qualitative and descriptive adjectives is in (29b) an (29c). 

Llarga, escocesa and de quadres denote a subtype of skirt while alta in (29c) can only modify 

individual entities. This contrast indicates that in Catalan bare singulars denote properties 

and cannot denote individuals. 

(29) a. Per a aquest espectecle necessitareu faldilla llarga/escocesa/ de quadres 

for to this event need-fut skirt long/kilt/plaid 

For this event you will need a long skirt/a kilt/ a plaid skirt. 

b. *Necessiten 

need 

faldilla 

skirt 

c. *Té parella alta/malalta 

has parner tall/ill 

feta a Singapur/neta 

made in Singapore/clean 

(From Espinal 2010, ex.8,9) 

Again, Greek bare singulars exhibit properties of arguments denoting individuals, as in- 

dicated by the availability of the descriptive and qualititative adjectives in (30b) and (30c). 

(30) a. tha hriastite makria/skotzesiki/plise fusta 

will need-2pl long/scotish/plaid skirt 

You will need a long skirt/a kilt/a plaid skirt. 

b. tha hriastite fusta rameni stin India/kathari fusta 

will need-2pl skirt sewn in-the India/clean skirt 

He’s cleaning a church. You know; we won’t see him for a week. 

20

You will need a skirt sewn in India/ a clean skirt. 

c. ehi arosto pedhi/ehi psilo gkomeno 

has ill child/has tall boyfriend 

S/he has an ill child/a tall boyfriend. 

Discourse transparency Finally, bare nouns can introduce discourse referents (31), that 

is, they can be discourse transparent (Farkas and de Swarts 2003), a fact which, as pointed out 

by Kolliakou (2003), indicates that D is not necessary in Greek for referential interpretations. 

(31) telika vrike dada; ti gnorisame htes sto parti tis 

finally found-3sg nanny; her.cl met-1pl 

Yotas 

Yota-gen 

yesterday at-the party the-gen 

He finally found a nanny; we met her yesterday at Yota’s party. 

The facts reviewed so far indicate that bare nouns in Greek are fully fledged arguments 

both in terms of their morphosyntax as well as their semantic interpretations. In addition, 

the contrasts with Catalan, clearly indicate that not only plurals, but singular bare nouns 

have Number. We have to assume then that these nominals are minimally Number Phrases 

(alternatively, they can be Noun Phrases necessarily marked for Number). 

The next question is whether we should assume a null D head above NumP. Our answer 

is negative. The first set of facts arguing against a null D comes from scope. 

Scopal inertia Greek bare nouns exhibit the scopal inertia standardly exhibited by their 

crosslinguistic counterparts (Chierchia 1998; Farkas and de Swarts 2003). 

Examples involving the indefinite article like (32b) and (33b) are ambiguous: the former 

allows a transparent or de re reading and an opaque or de dicto reading while (33b) additionally 

allows the 3rd reading according to which Maria is looking for a specific type of Armani skirt. 

On the other hand, the bare nouns in the (a) examples allow only the opaque readings. 

(32) a. i Maria theli na padrefti Italo 

the-nom Maria want-3sg subj marry-3sg Italian 

Maria wants to marry an Italian. (only opaque reading) 

21

. i Maria theli na padrefti enan 

the-nom Maria want-3sg subj marry-3sg one-acc 

Maria wants to marry an Italian. (ambiguous) 

(33) a. i Maria theli n’agorasi fusta tu 

the-nom Maria wants subj-buy-3sg skirt the-gen 

Maria wants to buy an Armani skirt. only opaque 

Italo 

Italian 

Armani 

Armani 

b. i Maria theli n’agorasi mia fusta tu 

the-nom Maria wants subj-buy-3sg one skirt the-gen 

Maria wants to buy an Armani skirt. 3-way ambiguous 

Armani 

Armani 

If the bare nouns involved a null D, we would expect exactly the same range of interpre- 

tations as in the case where the purported D element is overtly present since, the overt/null 

alternation should be a PF alternation and should not affect LF interpretations, as is the 

case in Italian. But (33) and (32) indicate that this is not so. This is then our first argument 

against postulating a null D for Greek bare nouns. 

The contrast between bare and non-bare nouns extends beyond the above intensional 

contexts to interactions with the universal quantifer (34) and with negation (35). Bare nomi- 

nals cannot take scope over the universal quantifier (34a) (see Farkas and de Swarts 2001 for 

similar facts in Hungarian) or over negation (35a) (Chierchia 1998). 

(34) a. kathe episkeptis diavase efimeridha/efimeridhes 

each visitor read-3sg newspaper-sg/newspapers-pl 

Each visitor read a newspaper/newspapers. Only ∀ > ∃ 

b. kathe episkeptis diavase mia efimeridha/kapies efimeridhes 

each visitor read one newspaper-sg/some newspapers-pl 

Each visitor read a newspaper/some newspaper. ∀ > ∃ or ∃ > ∀ 

(35) a. dhen idhe rogmes sto tavani 

not saw-3sg cracks in-the ceiling 

S/he didn’t see cracks in the ceiling. Only ¬ > ∃ 

b. den idhe mia lakuva sto dromo 

not saw-3sg a hole in-the street 

S/he didn’t see a hole in the street. ∃ > ¬ or ?¬ > ∃ 

c. den idhe lakuva sto dromo 

not saw-3sg hole in-the street 

S/he didn’t see a hole in the street. Only ¬ > ∃ 

22

4.1.2 Towards a crosslinguistic typology of bare nouns 

In his seminal paper on kinds, Chierchia (1998) proposes a semantic parameter according to 

which languages vary in the way their nouns may be allowed to function as arguments or 

not. Accordingly, there is variation across languages in the denotation of nominal categories: 

nouns may be classified by means of two features, [+/-pred] and [+/-arg]. In Italian, for 

instance (and Romance more generally), noun phrases are [+pred],[-arg], hence are always 

headed by a determiner head D to turn into arguments. By contrast, English nouns are 

optionally [+pred] or [+arg]. Thus, a D often heads a predicative noun to form an argument, 

but English allows nouns to function as arguments without D, as in the case of bare plurals. 

The hypothesis accounts for a number of contrasts between Italian and English. Where English 

allows bare plurals as in (36), Italian necessarily involves a definite article (37a), or some 

indefinite determiner (37b) or the bare-partitive construction (37c). Bare nouns in Italian are 

assumed to involve a null D (Longobardi 1986,1994, Chierchia 1998) and are restricted to 

some special governed positions, a syntactic condition necessary for licensing the null D head. 

(36) a. Lions are wild animals. 

b. Dogs are barking in the courtyard. 

c. Water is dripping from the faucet. 

(37) a. i leoni sono animali selvaggi 

the lions are animals of wild 

Lions are wild animals. 

b. alcuni cani stavano giocando nel giardino 

some dogs were playing in-the garden 

Some dogs were playing in the garden. 

c. Del vino si e’ 

of-the wine refl past 

Some wine got spilled. 

rovesciato 

spill 

23 

(Chierchia 1998) 

(Adapted from Chierchia 1998)

So how does Greek fit into this typology? Unlike Italian, Greek bare nouns are much more 

productive. 14 However, unlike English, Greek bare nouns exclude kind interpretations, since, 

as pointed out by Roussou and Tsimpli (1994), established kinds as in (38) are necessarily 

definite. 

(38) a. i/*∅ dinosavri ehun eksafanisti 

the-nom/*∅ dinosaurs-nom have-3pl disappeared 

Dinosaurs are extinct. (bare nominal ungrammatical under the kind reading) 

b. ta/*∅ skilia ine katikidhia zoa 

the/*∅ dogs are domestic animals 

Dogs are domestic animals. 

c. ?dinosavri ehun eksafanisti 

dinosaurs-nom have-3pl disappeared 

Dinosaurs have disappeared (bare nominal possible only under the existential 

reading). 

In addition, bare nominals in Greek may be singular as well as plural. 

In sum, we need a three-way distinction between Italian, Greek and English. We propose 

that Italian and Greek nouns are both [+pred], [-arg]. The difference lies in the element that 

turns the predicative noun into an argument, i.e. on the ”nominalisor”; we propose that it 

is D in Italian but Number in Greek. The first consequence of this difference is the wider 

availability of bare nouns in Greek. If number is enough to turn a predicative noun into an 

argument in the absence of D, bare nouns are expected to be more widespread. In addition, 

if number is the nominalisor, both singular and plural bare nouns are also expected. Finally, 

since Greek nouns are not [+arg] they cannot freely shift to kinds and, thus, established kinds 

cannot be bare nouns (38), in contrast to English. 

The strength of this view lies in the fact that it allows us to give a three way varia- 

tion relying on existing analytical tools: Chierchia’s semantic parameter and the possibility 

that different individuating heads (D or Num) may act as nominalisors crosslinguistically. 

Of course, it raises a host of questions: why number in Greek but D in Italian? What is the 

14 To give a quantitative perspective, according to Marinis (2003), around 45% of target like child Greek 

involves bare nouns. 

24

semantics of Greek Number? We will provide some speculative answers to these questions in 

our concluding section. 

The crosslinguistic variation provides our second counter argument to the hypoethesis 

that Greek bare nouns involve a null D. Quite apart from the Greek internal facts reviewed 

in section 4.1.1, it is hard to see how the variation between Italian and Greek is to be accounted 

for if in both languages bare nouns are DPs with a null D. At this point, it is worth considering 

one argument presented in favor of the null D hypothesis in Greek. Sioupi (2001) notes that 

bare nominals are excluded from subject positions as in (39). She takes such examples to 

indicate that there are special structural conditions licensing bare nominals, namely that the 

bare nominal be governed. Such structural restrictions are evidence for a null D, which, as in 

Italian, is not freely available, but needs to be structurally licensed. 

(39) *pedia efagan to psari 

children ate the fish 

Children ate the fish. (From Sioupi 2001, ex.4a) 

However, as we have seen already, bare nouns can appear in subject (non-governed) posi- 

tions; this is further illustrated by the examples below. 

(40) a. itan enas hamos; yinekes epsahnan ta pedia tus mes ta 

was a disaster; women were-looking-for the children their in the 

halasmata; pedia kitazan yiro tus sastismena 

ruins; children were-looking around them startled 

It was a mess; women were looking for their children in the ruins; children were 

looking around startled. 

b. ton gratzunisan gates tu dromu 

him.cl scratched-3pl cats the-gen street-gen 

Street cats scratched him.(Kolliakou 2003) 

c. ta hronia ta palia, varia fortia fevgan ya tin America 

the years the old, heavy loads were-leaving for the America 

In old times heavy loads (of immigrants) were leaving for Americal (popular song 

by D.Papakonstantinou). 

d. alepudes irthan ke perisi 

foxes came-3pl and last-year 

Foxes appeared last year as well. 

25

(41) a. karharias ehi na emfanisti s’afti tin periohi apo to 2002 

shark-nom has subj appear-3sg in-this the region 

A shark has not appeared in this area since 2002. 

since the 2002 

b. ton exetase yatros 

him.cl examined-3sg doctor-nom 

A doctor examined him.(Kolliakou 2003) 

c. kleftis de spai tetia klidaria me tipota 

thieve-nom not break-3sg such lock with nothing 

There’s no way a thieve can break such a lock. 

Why then the badness of (39)? Preverbal subjects in Greek are standardly viewed as topics 

(Philippaki-Warburton 1985; Alexiadou and Anagnostopoulou 1998). 15 The problem with (39) 

is that it is hard to see how a bare indefinite which normally is interpreted as a weak indefinite 

can be a topic in a sentence where the subject/topic has eaten a specific/definite fish. Consider 

now the contrast between (39) and (40a); what is their difference? Intuitively, yinekes and 

pedhia are felicitous topics because what is at issue is not specific sets of women or kids, 

but some representatives of each kind. By contrast, in (39) the reading that the bare noun 

forces, some representatives of the kind of kids ate the fish is an odd one. The more natural 

interpretation which is some (specific) kids ate the fish would necessitate an explicit determiner 

like kati (=some or other) or kapia (=some). Importantly the fact that these overt elements 

are necessary here in order to obtain the right interpretation is evidence that bare nouns 

cannot involve a null D since they always appear to have distinct interpretations from their 

counterparts with overt prenominal determiners. 

This explanation may appear in contradiction with the fact that in examples like (31) 

the bare noun introduces a discourse referent whereas in (39) this seems not possible. The 

difference lies in the topic interpretation such examples elicit. Bare nouns in subject positions 

can introduce discourse referents as shown by yatros in (41b) and (25c), where kalos yatros 

is preverbal. The contrasts between (39) and (41b) require a systematic investigation of the 

interaction between the semantics of bare nouns and topichood which is beyond the scope of 

this paper. However, the data presented here indicate clearly that preverbal bare nouns can 

15 See though Roussou and Tsimpli (2006), who by and large accept the view that preverbal subjects are 

predominately topics but also argue for a preverbal subject position. 

26

e felicitous subjects, even under referential interpretations. 

Returning to our original set of questions, we have shown so far that the indefinite nominals 

that are involved as topics in clld and Topicalisation have a different internal syntax in the 

two languages. In Italian they systematically involve DPs while in Greek they surface as bare 

nouns which we analyse as Number Phrases. We now turn to the properties of the pronominal 

element resuming the clld-ed phrase so as to understand how the structural difference in 

the indefinite antecedents involved in clld and topicalisation interact with the pronominal 

clitic. The properties of the Greek pronominal clitic are inseparable from the properties of the 

definite article since the two elements are morphologically identical (in all genders, numbers 

and cases) and the pronominal is standardly assumed to be of the same categorical status 

with the article (see Alexiadou, Haegeman, and Stavrou (2007) and references therein). We 

therefore turn to the analysis of Greek definites next. 

4.1.3 Greek definites 

We have established so far that Greek arguments need not be DPs. The question is whether 

Greek nominals are ever DPs and the obvious case to be considered is definites. The analysis 

of the definite article has been a matter of controversy in the Greek literature, not the least 

because it does not exhibit standard properties of a determiner head. First of all, the arti- 

cle is not in complementary distribution with demonstratives; in fact, it is obligatory with 

demonstratives (42), a fact which has been accounted for by assuming that the article realises 

a distinct head, Def (Definiteness), selected by D (determiner) which hosts the demonstra- 

tive in an example like (42) Androutsopoulou 1994, 1995. (Alternatively, the article has been 

viewed as agreement—Karanassios 1992, Stavrou 1996, Mathieu and Sitaridou 2002). 

(42) afto *∅/to vivlio 

this the 

this book 

book 

In addition, the article can co-exist with weak possessive pronouns that are attached to the 

right of nouns or adjectives (Alexiadou and Stavrou 2000). 

27

(43) a. to vivlio mu 

the book 

my book 

my 

b. to palio mu aftokinito 

the old my car 

my old car 

Perhaps most problematically for a head analysis of the article, Greek licenses polydefinites 

or determiner spreading structures like (44a) along the monadic ones (44b) (for detailed 

discussions of polydefinite structures see Androutsopoulou 1994; Alexiadou and Wilder 1998; 

Kolliakou 2003,2004, Lekakou and Szendröi 2010 among others and Alexiadou, Haegeman, 

and Stavrou 2007 for an overview). 

(44) a. to kokino to podhilato to kenurjio 

the red the bike the new 

the red new bike 

b. to kokino kenurjio podhilato 



Both the monadic and polydefinite above refer uniquely to one bike; thus, the polydefinite 

structures are not multiple definite phrases, as a head analysis would predict. To account for 

this, many analyses stipulate that the article can be expletive, following Androutsopoulou 

(1994). However, such analyses do not clarify when the article is expletive and when not, as 

pointed out by Kolliakou (2003). Crucially, this view is misguided. The main piece of evidence 

provided in support of the expletive analysis of the Greek article is its obligatoriness with 

proper nouns as in (45). 

(45) mu aresi o Messi/*Messi ala protimo to 

me-gen like-3sg the-nom Messi 

Maradona/*Maradona 

Maradona 

I like Messi but I prefer Maradona. 

but prefer-1sg the-acc 

28

However, the data below indicate that the article is not expletive even with proper names. 

Consider the contrast in (46) and (47). Examples (46a) and (47a) are specificational sen- 

tences whereas (46b) and (47b) are equatives. (46a) means Messi does not have properties of 

Maradona, e.g. he is not as good a player. Similarly, (47a) means that Greece does not have 

properties of European countries while (47b) means that the referent of Europe is not the 

same as the referent of Germany (there are more countries in Europe). The only difference 

between these minimal pairs is the definite article preceding the proper names Maradona and 

Evropi. 

(46) a. o Messi dhen ine Maradona 

the-nom Messi not is Maradhona 

Messi is not a Maradona/like Maradona. 

b. aftos dhen ine o Messi; ine o Maradona; tus 

this-nom not 

mperdhepses 

mixed-up-2sg 

is the-nom Messi: is the-nom Maradona; them.cl 

He is not Messi; he is Maradona; you mixed them up. 

(47) a. i Eladha dhen ine Evropi 

the-nom not is Europe 

Greece is not (like) Europe. 

b. i Germania dhen ine i Evropi 

the-nom Germany not is the Europe 

Germany is not the whole of Europe. 

The contrast extends beyond predicative structures. Example (48a) means that someone 

with the properties of Judas (e.g. a traitor) advised the subject of the verb (him) while 

(48b) means that the object of the verb (him) was examined by someone with properties of 

Kassandra (e.g. someone who only makes negative predictions for the future). If these proper 

nouns were accompanied by a definite article, they would refer to individuals. 

(48) a. ton simvulepse Iudas 

him.cl advised-3sg Judas 

He was advised by someone like Judas. 

b. ton exetase Kassandra 

him.cl examined-3sg Kassandra 

29

He was examined by someone like Kassandra. 

The above examples indicate that even with proper names the use of the definite article is not 

expletive. If the article is not expletive, it is hard to see how it can be a head in polydefinite 

structures. Note also that the additional article in polydefinites is not expletive. As discussed 

in detail by Kolliakou (2003), the ”second” definite in a polydefinite restricts the range of 

the first one, even when proper names are involved. Thus, (49a) presupposes more than one 

Christinas and the polydefinite in (49b) picks the one with the surname Sevdali. 

(49) a. Pia 

Christina tha erthi; 

who-fem.nom Christina will come-3sg? 

Which Christina will come? 

b. i Christina i Sevdali 

the-nom Christina the-nom Sevdali 

Christina Sevdali. 

When such restrictive modification is not possible for pragmatic reasons, the polydefinites are 

infelicitous as shown by (50). 

(50) a. Taksidhepse ston plati Iriniko 

travelled-3sg in-the wide Pacific 

She travelled in the wide Pacific. 

b. =Taksidhepse 

travelled-3sg 

ston Iriniko ton plati 

in-the Pacific the wide 

(From Kolliakou 2003, ex.14) 

Research from a different vein indicates that Greek definite phrases behave like noun phrases in 

articless languages rather than DPs in languages with articles. In particular, Bo˘sković (2008) 

proposes that nominals in languages without articles show properties that systematically 

distinguish them from nominals in languages with articles. The contrast can only be explained 

if the former instantiate Noun Phrases rather than DPs with null Ds. Interestingly, Greek 

nominals exhibit some of the properties of noun phrases in articless languages. 16 The first 

16 Boscovic is aware of the fact that Greek is a potential exception to his generalisations,ibid, fn.3. 

30

generalisation is that only languages without articles, allow Left Branch Extraction (LBE); 

thus, LBE is ungrammatical in English (51a), but available in Serbo Croatian (51b). 

(51) a. *Expensive/*ThatI he saw [ti car] 

b. Skupa/Tai je vidio [ti kola] (Serbo Croatian) 

expensive/that is seen car 

(From Bo˘sković 2008, ex.3-4) 

Greek does allow LBE (as also noted by Boskovic). The grammaticality of (52a) is not 

surprising, given that we are analysing bare nominals like akrivo aftokinito as NumPs. 17 The 

crucial assumption is that there is no DP layer, which, according to Bo˘sković (2008) is a phase 

blocking extraction. 

(52) akrivo aghorase aftokinito 

expensive baught-3sg car 

He bought an expensive car. 

Cases with a demonstrative are more interesting since, as we’ve seen, a demonstrative like 

afto (=this) necessarily involves the definite article. As can be seen in (53), the demonstrative 

can be extracted out of the nominal, indicating that afto to aftokinito is in fact a noun phrase. 

(53) afto aghorase to aftokinito 

this bought-3sg the car 

She bought this car. 

The crucial fact here is that the presence of the article does not affect the extraction possibili- 

ties. So if we consider a nominal involving a demonstrative and an adjective like afto to akrivo 

aftokinito (=this the expensive car) we see in (54) that the demonstrative+article+adjective 

can undergo left extraction. 

(54) afto to akrivo aghorase aftokinito 

this the expensive bought car 

17 All LBE examples are pragmatically marked; here we assume that at least one element of the extracted 

phrase bears the sentential stress as indicated by the small caps. 

31

Note further that the pattern is exactly the same if the nominal involves a numeral+adjective 

as in (55). 

(55) a. ena kalo thelo krayon 

one/a good want-1sg lipstick 

b. dhio 

two 

kala 

good 

thelo paradighmata 

want-1sg examples 

In sum, not only Greek allows LBE despite the fact that it has articles, but, in addition, 

definite and indefinite phrases behave alike, indicating that what is of relevance to Boskovic’s 

generalisation is not whether a language has a definite article but whether this article is a D 

head. The evidence so far indicates that Greek definites are not DPs, but, rather behave like 

NPs. 

Bo˘skovi˘c’s second generalisation is that languages without articles allow adjunct extraction 

as in (56a) while languages with articles disallow it (56b). 18 

(56) a. *From which cityi did Peter meet [NP girls ti ]? 

b. Iz kojeg gradai je Ivan sreo [NP djevojke ti] (Serbo Croatian) 

From which city did Ivan meet girls? 

Again, Greek nominals pattern with an articleless language like Serbo Croatian rather than 

English since they allow adjunct extraction as in (57). 

(57) apo pia poli gnorise koritsia o Petros? 

from who-fem city met-3sg girls 

Petros met girls from which city? 

the-nom Petros-nom 

Note that, as shown by Horrocks and Stavrou (1987) , Greek allows possessor extraction; if 

DPs are phases and Boskovic’s argumentation is valid, then the extraction in (58) indicates 

18 Though both English and Serbo Croatian involve a NP here and, therefore there is no DP phase, only 

the SC NP allows AP extraction because AP is heading the NP in English while in SC it sits on Spec,NP. 

This difference derives from the fact that English has DPs and SC NPs as arguments. If he is right, then the 

evidence indicates that in Greek as well APs are at Spec,NumP; this is exactly the assumption we’ll be making 

in the next section when we consider IAD and bare subnominal ellipisis. 

32

that the definite is a noun phrase. 19 

(58) pianu martira arnithikan na eksetasun tin katathesi 

who-gen witness-gen refused-3pl subj examine-3pl the-acc testimony 

Whose witness testimony did they refuse to examine? 

The facts reviewed in this section 20 indicate strongly that the Greek article does not behave 

like a D head while there is evidence that definite nominals allow extraction possibilities typical 

of noun phrases that are not DPs. 21 We will, therefore, assume that the article is not a D 

head, but rather a prenominal modifier and that Greek nominals, definite and indefinite, are 

uniformingly Number Phrases. 22 Definites then are just definite Number Phrases. Further, 

19 Horrocks and Stavrou (1987) in fact use this type of evidence to argue for a DP; they link long possessor 

extraction as in (58) with focus movement within the nominal as in (i). They argue that tu protu martira 

in (i) moves to a position internal to the nominal exactly like the wh-phrase in (58) moves to CP. They take 

the article to be a D head allowing focus-movement to its Spec. While examples like (i) necessitate movement 

internal to the nominal, it is not necessary that this is to Spec,DP as we will see shortly. 

(i) arnithikan na eksetasun tu protu martira tin katathesi 

refused-3pl subj examine-3pl the-gen first-gen the-acc testimony 

They refused to examine the first witness’s testimony. 

20 We note that, unsurprisingly, Italian patterns with English and DP languages with regard to the diagnostics 

proposed by Bo˘sković (2008). 

21 Bo˘sković (2008) discusses some further generalisations which are either not relevant for Greek (e.g. supe- 

riority effects for multiple wh-fronting) or are trivially relevant: for instance, Greek most is i perissoteri (=the 

most), that is it implicates the definite article and has the expected reading of more than half; in addition, 

Greek allows clitic doubling since it has articles. Boskovic links clitic doubling to the existence of DPs and, 

indeed takes the referentiality of clitic doubling structures as a consequence of the involvement of D. The 

facts discussed in this paper are a counter example to these correlations. Firstly, Italian, which clearly has 

DPs allows non-referential readings, whereas Greek, which certainly allows NPs does not allow non-referential 

readings in doubling structures. 

22 This is not too far from Kolliakou (2003) who takes the definite to be an argument of a noun appearing at 

its Spec. Further, she assumes that definite and indefinite nominals are all noun phrases; in her HPSG analysis, 

any lexical category specified for the head feature nom (in turn specified for number, gender and case) can 

project a nominal; apart from nouns, articles, numerals and adjective share this head feature reflecting the 

fact that any of these categories can project a nominal argument on its own. 

33

following Giannakidou and Merchant (1997), we assume that numerals including ena are also 

prenominal adjectives. This analysis correctly predicts that, bar semantic anomaly, more than 

one of these elements may appear prenominally as in (59). 

(59) a. afto to ena aftokinito 

this the one car 

this one car 

b. afta ta dhio kokina aftokinita 

these the two red cars 

these two red cars 

Further, the noun can be elided from all these structures as in (60) (Kolliakou 2003; Gian- 

nakidou and Merchant 1997; Giannakidou and Stavrou 1999). We see below that an adjective 

alone (60a) or a numeral and an adjective (60d) may be the only (overt) part of a NumP. 

The definite article is no different in (60b) and (60c), except for the fact that in these uses 

it is, descriptively a pronoun. In other words, the pronominal clitic involved in clld is an 

elliptical NumP. 23 

(60) a. tu klepsane to aftokinito ke pire kenurjio 

his.cl stole-3pl the car and bought new 

His car was stolen and he baught a new one. 

b. ta dhio prota vivlia ine tis Marias; fer’ta mu se parakalo 

the two first books are the-gen Maria-gen; bring them.cl you beg 

The first two books belong to Maria. Bring them to me please. 

c. aghorase kenurjio aftokinito ke to efere na to dhume 

bought-3sg new car and it.cl brought subj it.cl see 

d. psahname ya kero mathimatiko ya ti desmi alla kataferame ke 

looking-for-1pl for time mathematician for the ”a-levels” for 

vrikame enan ekseretiko 

quite a 

bit of time, but managed-1pl and found-1pl an excellent 

We were looking for a mathematician for A-levels but we managed to find an 

23 Of course, a definite NumP is very different from a ”red” NumP both in semantic terms but also in PF 

terms, since the article/pronoun always cliticises on a host adjective/noun or verb. The point though is that 

there is no structural difference between a definite NP and any other NumP either in terms of extraction 

possibilities or the distribution of the article against all other prenominal elements. 

34

excellent one (so the time we took looking was well spent). 

We can now return to our original set of questions 24 and see how the assumption that 

Greek nominals involve NumPs can account for the facts presented in section 3, summarised 

on table (22). We should point out that, even though we advocate here the total absence 

of DPs from Greek, a mixed analysis which would assume that bare and indefinite nominals 

are NumPs but definite nominals are DPs would also account for the anaphoric patterns and 

the clld/topicalisation facts; we will point this out where relevant in the coming sections. 

Before we turn to our original set of questions though, we’ll briefly discuss the crosslinguistic 

implications of our hypothesis for the nominal system in Italian and Greek. 

4.1.4 Definites in Italian and Greek 

The main consequence of our analysis so far is that Number is the main nominalisor in 

Greek (including definites) while it is D in Italian that plays this role. In fact, this conclusion 

can shed light to a further set of crosslinguistic differences between the two languages. First 

and foremost, the systematic need of D in Italian to construct a nominal explains the wide 

range of D elements available in the language; the article and the pronouns retain distinct 

morphology; there is a distinction between a range of definite D elements (il, lo/la, gli/li...) 

and indefinite ones (un, bare partitive construction, ne) as we’ve seen bare nouns are very 

restricted, while the partitive construction is systematically employed for indefinites and mass 

nouns. By contrast, Greek has only one definite element which has both article and pronominal 

use; it characteristically lacks a separate indefinite article or pronoun. 

24 Examples like (i), where the definite article is involved in CP nominalisation may support the view that 

the article is a head afterall. We speculate that the article contributes nominal phi-features to C but still is 

not heading the structure. 

(i) (to) pios tha kerdisi tis ekloyes tha eksartithi apo to pos tha pai i 

the who-nom will winn-3sg the-acc elections will depend-3sg from the how will go-3sg the-nom 

ikonomia 

economy 

Who will win the elections will depend on how things go with the economy. 

35

Secondly, the Greek article has strong definite and referential interpretations, relevant 

even in the case of proper names. By contrast, the Italian, article appears to have weaker 

definite semantics. For instance, non referential nouns like gli occhiali in (61) or l’orologio and 

la macchina in (62) are definite in Italian. 

(61) A:Porti gli occhiali? B:Si, li porto 

A:wear the glasses? B:Yes, them.cl wear 

Do you wear glasses? Yes, I do. 

(62) a. Porti l’orologio? 

wear-2sg the 

Do you wear watch? 

watch? 

b. Guida la macchina? 

drive-3sg the machine 

Does he drive a car? 

Unsurprisingly, the Greek countrparts of these examples involve bare nouns. 

(63) foras (*ta) yialia/ (*ti) vera/ (*ta) takunia 

wear-2sg (*the) glasses/ (*the) wedding-ring/ (*the) high-heels 

Do you wear glasses/a wedding ring/high heels? 

(64) odhigis aftokinito 

drive-2sg car 

Do you/can you drive a car? 

Further, as pointed out by Giusti (2010), the definite article is preferred in cases like (65) 

where the interpretation is an indefinite one. 

(65) Scommetto che non troverai mai la/?una segretaria di un onorevole che 

bet-1sg that not will-find never the/a secretary of a depute who 

sia disposta a testimoniare contro di lui 

can-subj submit-subj a testimony against of him 

I bet you’ll never find the secratary of a depute who can testify against him. (Giusti 

2010) 

Again, the definite article is banned from such environments in Greek, since it cannot head 

relatives rendered in subjanctive. 

36

(66) *den prokite na vri ti yineka pu na tu kani ola ta 

not going-to-3sg subj find-3sg the-acc woman that subj him.cl do-3sg all 

hatiria 

favours 

He’s not going to find the woman that will satisfy every whim of his. 

the 

This set of contrasts can be understood, if, as proposed by Giusti (1993, 1997, 2002, 2010), 

the main role of the Italian article is that of a syntactic/grammatical morpheme acting as the 

nominalisor of a predicative noun, building a DP argument. By contrast, in Greek the article 

appears only when needed for semantic/pragmatic reasons, since Number is the nominalisor, 

hence the stronger definite interpretations when the article is involved. 

The crosslinguistic contrast also indicates that the more referential/definite interpreta- 

tions arise in the language where the nominal has less structure and, indeed, is not a D head, 

i.e. Greek. This is expected since the definite article is implicated for interpretation. By con- 

trast, in Italian, D is syntactically necessary as the nominalisor, and, therefore, weaker/less 

referential readings arise when D is needed as a nominalisor in contexts which are not clearly 

definite/referential like (65) or under the de dicto reading of (67) or even the use of lo in the 

predicative structures in (68). It is worth pointing out that our view departs from the propos- 

als of Longobardi (1994) and Déchaine and Wiltschko (2002) in one crucial respect. What 

these two proposals share is that D and referentiality are intrinsically linked. Both analyses 

assume a structural ambiguity for articles and pronouns, depending on their interpretation. 

For instance, lo under the de dicto reading in (67) and in the predicative structure in (68) 

lacks a D layer, and is just a NP. 25 We will discuss these examples in more detail in the next 

section. 

(67) Gianni sta cercando un idraulico ma non lo trova 

Gianni is looking-for a plumber but not him.cl find-3sg 


(68) a. Bella la/lo e’ 

beautiful it.cl is 

Beautiful she is. 

25 Longobardi pc after related talk of his at Cambridge University, 2011. 

37

. belle lo sono? 

beautiful it are 

Beautiful they are. 

In sum then, the hypothesis that D is the nominalisor in Italian while Greek nominals 

are NumPs can account for the rich inventory of D elements in Italian as well as the weaker 

definite semantics of D elements in this language. 

4.2 Indefinite Argument Drop and Bare Subnominal Ellipsis 

As Giannakidou and Merchant (1997) show, Greek Indefintie Argument Drop (IAD) in- 

volves recycling of the descriptive content of the antecedent (or property anaphora in terms 

of Tomioka 2003).Crucially, it does not pick the discourse referent of the antecedent. 26 Con- 

sider (69). Example (69a) does not allow a reading in which Nafsika dried the dishes Napoleo- 

das washed, a reading available in (69b) where the pronoun is used. On the basis of the 

obligatoriness of the disjoint reading in (69a), Giannakidou and Merchant (1997) conclude 

that an empty pro analysis, proposed by Dimitriadis (1994) is not possible, since it would 

predict the co-referential reading in (69b). What IAD involves in (69a) is the recycling of 

the descriptive content of the antecedent, i.e. piata but not the specific set introduced by the 

antecedent. 

(69) a. o Napoleodas epline piata ke i Nafsika skupise 

the-nom Napoleodas-nom washed-3sg dishes and the-nom Nafsika dried-sg 

Napoleon washed dishes and Nafsika dried dishes. (Disjoint reading) 

26 See Giannakidou and Merchant (1997) for a detailed discussion of the properties of IAD. Panagiotidis 

(2002) excludes a VP-ellips analysis of the phenomenon; his main argument is that all restrictions relevant to 

IAD involve the nominal antecedent and never any verbal element. Further, examples like (i), where only the 

object is dropped but other parts of the VP are overt indicate that what is dropped is just the object. 

(i) ti mia mera vrike dulia o Yorgos stu Zografu ke to epomeno proi 

the one day found-3sg job the-nom Yorgos-nom at-the Zografu and the next morning 

vrike i Maria stin Kesariani 

found-3sg the-nom Maria at-the Kesariani 

One day Yorgos found a job at Zografu and the next morning Maria found one at Kesariani. 

38

. o Napoleodas epline (ta) piatai ke i Nafsika tai 

the-nom Napoleodas-nom washed the 

skupise 

dried-3sg 

dishes and the-nom Nafsika them 

Napoleon washed (the) dishes and Nafsika dried them. 

That these cases involve property anaphora is further confirmed by the fact that adjec- 

tives like tetios/tetia/tetio standardly used for concept or property anaphora (Kolliakou 2003) 

license argument drop. 

(70) a. vrikes teties 

(melitzanes)? 

found-2sg such-acc.fem.pl (aubergines) 

Did you find such ones/aubergines? 

b. ne, vrika 

yes, found-1sg 

Yes, I found. 

Further, Giannakidou and Merchant (1997) establish that IAD is licensed by weak indefinite 

quantifiers while strong quantifiers necessitate a pronoun. 

(71) a. Q:Efere o Adreas ola ta/ke ta dio/ta perisotera vivila 

Q:Brought-3sg the-nom Adreas all the/and the two/the most books 

Did Adread bring all/both/most books? 

b. A:Ne, *(ta) efere 

A:Yes, *(them) brought-3sg 

Yes, he brought them. 

(Giannakidou:Merchant:1997) 

(72) a. Efere o Adreas merika/kapja/liga/deka/tulahiston 

brought-3sg the-nom Adreas several/some/a-few/ten/at-least 

tria/parapano apo tria/tipota/∅ vivlia 

three/more from three/any/∅ books 

Did Andreas bring several/some/a few/at least three/more than three/any/∅ 

books? 

b. Ne, (*ta) efere e. 

Yes, (them) brought-3sg e 

Yes he brought several/some/a few/ten/at least three/more than three/some/∅ 

books. 

39

(Giannakidou:Merchant:1997) 

Returning to our analysis, we argue that the weak indefinites in (72) are NumPs; we, then, 

analyse IAD as a case of NumP ellipsis (Tomioka 2003). 27 A NumP ellipsis analysis of IAD 

accounts for the availability of IAD with subjects in Greek—see (17) repeated as (73). We 

also explain why IAD is unavailable in Italian, since there are no NumP arguments in the 

language. 

(73) a. A:irthe kanis? B:ne irthe 

A:came-3sg anyone? B:yes, came-3sg 

A:Did anyone come? B:Yes, someone did. 

b. A:tilefonisan fitites? B:ne tilefonisan 

A:phoned-3pl students? B:yes, phoned-3pl 

A:Did students phone? B:Yes, some did. 

One question is why the whole NumP cannot be elided with definites as in (71). The 

reason is interpretative. Absence of definite marking gives rise to indefinite interpretations. 

Consider for instance (74). The answer in (74b) involves a weak indefinite with an elided noun 

despite the definite antecedent; a definite is not appropriate in this case. 

(74) a. tis eferes tis valitses 

them.cl brought-2sg the-acc suitcases 

Did you bring the suitcases? 

b. efera (kamposes); mu ehun mini tris teseris akoma 

brought-1sg (many); me have-3pl left three four still 

I brought quite a few; but still have three or four left. 

Let us now reconsider examples like (75), discussed earlier. Following Zimmermann (1993) 

let us assume that idravliko and dada in (75) denote properties. The examples indicate that 

Greek pronouns resist property anaphora; the pronominal requires a referential antecedent. 28 

The property anaphora effect is achieved through IAD, i.e. recycling the antecedent noun. 

27 The ellipsis analysis preserves the basic intution of Giannakidou and Merchant (1997) who also propose 

that IAD involves NP deletion; however, they assume that the elided NP is headed by a null D. 

28 Greek pronouns can take natural functions as their antecedents as shown in examples like (i) discussed in 

Alexopoulou and Heycock (2003). Such antecedents though are still extensional. 

40

(75) a. o Yanis psahni idravliko alla dhe (*ton) vriski puthena 

the-nom Yanis-nom look-for-3sg plumber but not (him) find-3sg anywhere 

Yanis is looking for a plumber but cannot nd one anywhere. 

b. i Maria epsahne 

dada ena hrono ke telika (*ti) 

the-nom Maria was-looking-for-3sg nanny one year and finally (*her) 

vrike meso mias gnostis 

found-3sg through an acquaintance 

Maria was looking for a nanny for a year and in the end she found one through 

an acquaintance. 

As noted earlier and illustrated again in (76), the pronoun can take an indefinite an- 

tecedent (76a), including a bare noun (76b), as long as the antecedent is interpreted referen- 

tially. 

(76) a. o Yanis psahni enan idravliko, ala dhe ton vriski puthena 

the-nom Yanis look-for-3sg one plumber but not him find-3sg anywhere 

Yanis is looking for a plubmer but cannot find him anywhere. ∃ > look-for 

b. o Napoleodas epline (ta) piatai ke i Nafsika tai 

the-nom Napoleodas-nom washed the 

skupise 

dried-3sg 

dishes and the-nom Nafsika them 

Napoleon washed (the) dishes and Nafsika dried them. 

By contrast, lo and la in Italian admit property-denoting antecedents (77). Under our 

analysis, the crosslinguistic contrast in property anaphora is a consequence of the structural 

contrast between DPs and NumPs. The obligatoriness of a D element in (77) means a weak- 

ening of the definite/referential interpretation of the pronominal. Note that we do not predict 

that every language that has DPs will allow a ”definite” D in examples like (77); an indefinite 

D element may be used instead and it remains an open question how property anaphora is 

(i) a. i yineka pu misi kathe adrasi ine i pethera tui 

the-nom woman that hates-3sg each man is the-nom mother-in-law his 

The woman every man hates is his mother in law. 

b. tin kopela pu efere kathe fititis tii valame na katsi dipla tui 

the-acc girl that brought-3sg each student-nom her.cl put-1pl subj sit-3sg next his 

The girl each student brought, we put her to sit next to him. 

41

dealt with in a language. The point we are making here is that the weakening of the definite 

semantics of the Italian lo/la is due to the obligatoriness of DPs in Italian. Note further that 

these non-referential uses involve clear verbal arguments, arguing against an intrinsic link 

between D, argumenthood and referentiality in Italian as proposed by Longobardi (1994). If 

lo were to be analysed as involving less structure, e.g. as a np, the immediate question is why 

an NP argument is possible at all in Italian all of a sudden and how it is different from Greek. 

(77) Gianni sta cercando un idraulico ma non lo trova 


Note that even Italian, does not universally allow ”definite” pronouns to support property 

anaphora. For instance, when the object is plural, as in (78), the plural of lo/la, is not 

acceptable. Instead, the clitic ne needs to be used. 29 

(78) a. Q: Maria ha trovato delle aiutanti? 

Q: Maria has found of helpers? 

Has Maria found helpers? 

b. A: No, ?le/ne ha trovate 

A: No, them.cl/ne has found 

No she has not found. 

(79) Gianni sta cercando degli aiutanti per l’ufficio ma non ?li/ne 

Gianni has-been looking-for of 

trova 

find-3sg 

helpers for the-office but not them.cl/ne 

Gianni has been looking for assistants for the office but cannot find any. 

We will speculate in section 4.4. on the effect of number, but, for the moment, suffice to say 

that Italian systematically involves a D element even for arguments that are not referential. 

This D element may even be an apparently definite D like lo/la or an indefinite one like 

ne. Greek pronouns do not support property anaphora. Instead, the relevant readings are 

obtained through IAD which involves NP ellipsis. 

29 Notice that the plural le can be used in (78) if the answer is positive, but it forces a discourse transparent 

reading,which is not the relevant one here. 

42

Let us now turn to subnominal ellipsis; the relevant examples are repeated below. The 

crosslinguistic pattern follows staightforwardly from the contrast between DPs and NumPs. 

Despite the non-referential antecedent, Italian obligatorily requires a D element, uno in the 

elliptical structure (note that uno grande is doubled by lo). By contrast, in Greek the bare 

adjective is enough. 30 

(80) A:Vorrei un tavolo grande B:Mi spiace. Non lo abbiamo, uno 

A:would-like-1sg a 

grande 

big 

table big B:Me displeases-3sg. Not it have-1pl, a 

I would like to buy a big table. I’m sorry. We do not have a big one. 

(From Alexiadou and Gengel 2008, attributed to V.Samek-Lodovici) 

(81) a. thelo afti ti fusta se kitrino 

want-1sg this the skirt in yellow 

I would like this skirt in yellow. 

b. Distihos dhen eho kitrini. (Mono mavres mu ehun 

unfortunately not 

mini) 

left) 

have-1sg yellow-fem.sg (Ony black-fem.pl me have-3pl 

Unfortunately I don’t have a yellow one. ( Only black ones are left). 

Before we move on, note that the essence of the analysis presented here does not rely critically 

on the assumption that the Greek article and pronominal do not project DPs. The critical 

element of the analysis is that weak indefinites, the ones that license IAD and bare subnominal 

ellipsis are NumPs. The incompatibility of pronouns with property-denoting antecedents is 

orthogonal to the categorical status of these elements, since a pronoun can accept a bare 

nominal antecedent (i.e. a NumP), as long as it is referential (76b) or indeed a non-bare 

one (76a). 

30 We do not discuss here the conditions of such subnominal ellipsis; for a detailed discussion see Giannakidou 

and Stavrou (1999). The point is that such subnominal ellipsis can take place within a bare nominal in Greek. 

43

4.3 Back to CLLD and Topicalisation 

Let us now turn to our very first question, why Italian but not Greek clld-ed elements can 

be ambiguous between a referential and non-referential reading. It has now become clear that 

the clld facts mirror the anaphoric possibilities in the two languages. Our original example 

in (1) repeated in (82) is as ambiguous as the example in (77). The available interpretations 

are exactly those allowed in Italian between an indefinite antecedent and lo/la. 

(82) a. una gonna rossa la cerco da un po’ 

a red skirt her.cl look-for-1sg for a while 

A red skirt I’ve been looking for a while... 

b. ma non ne ho trovata nessuna che mi piaccia 

but not of-them.cl have-1sg found none-fem that me please-3sg.subj 

... but have not found anyone that I like. 

c. ma non riesco a ricordarmi dove l’ho 

messa 

but not reach-1sg to remember where her.cl-have-1sg put 

puffle ... but I cannot remember where I’ve put it. 

Similarly, Greek (3) repeated in (83), is compatible only with the referential interpretation 

since, as we have seen, the Greek pronoun resists property anaphora. 

(83) a. mia kokini fusta tin psahno edho ke meres 

a red skirt it look-for-1sg here and days 

I’ve been looking for a red skirt for a few days ... 

b. =ke de boro na vro kamia pu na m’aresi 

and not can-1sg subj find-1sg none 

... and I cannot find any that I like. 

that subj me-please-3sg 

c. ke de boro na thimitho pu tin eho vali 

and not can-1sg subj remember-1sg where her.cl have-1sg put 

... and cannot remember where I put it. 

The possibility of property anaphora in Italian further allows clld examples where the dis- 

located element is not an indefinite, but a predicate like bella in (84). Unsurprisingly, this 

possibility is not available in Greek. 

(84) a. Bella lo é 

beautiful it.cl is 

44

Beautiful she is. 

b. belle lo sono? 



While clld mirrors the anaphoric possibilities in the two languages; but Topicalisation 

does not, at least not directly. The interpretative possiblities in Topicalisation are the ones 

predicted by a movement derivation. Thus, the Topicalisation example in (85) is ambiguous 

like the corresponding example involving Focus-movement (86). In this, (85) contrasts with 

examples like (16b), repeated as (87), where IAD forces a de dicto interpretation of the 

antecedent. 31 

(85) enan idravliko psahni o yanis 

one-acc plumber look-for-3sg the-nom Yanis-nom 

A plumber Yanis is looking for. look-for > ∃, ∃ > look-for 

(86) enan idravliko psahni o yanis 

one-acc plumber look-for-3sg the-nom Yanis-nom 

A plumber Yanis is looking for. look-for > ∃, ∃ > look-for 

(87) o Yanis psahni enan idravliko, ala dhe vriski puthena 

the-nom Yanis look-for-3sg one plumber but not find-3sg anywhere 

Yanis is looking for a plubmer but cannot find one anywhere. look-for > ∃ 

These facts point to the following conclusions. First, they reinforce the anaphoric nature 

of clld. At the same time they indicate that the properties of the pronominal system of 

languages is a crucial element in the crosslinguistic variation of anaphoric chains like clld 

and Topicalisation. 32 Second, Topicalisation, at least in Greek, involves a proper copy/trace 

rather than some null pronominal element. Taken together, these conclusions indicate that 

the the variation in the topic strategies adopted crosslinguistically cannot be understood just 

31 This contrast between IAD and Topicalisation argues against the proposal by Dimitriadis (1994) to assume 

that the Topicalisation example is in fact a case of Empty Clitic Left Dislocation involving the same pro element 

implicated in IAD. 

32 This is unlike non-anaphoric or true resumption where a line of research systematically relates crosslin- 

guistic variation to the properties of C rather than the pronominal (Sells 1984; McCloskey 1990; McCloskey 

2002; Shlonsky 1992; Rouveret 2002; Alexopoulou 2006). 

45

as PF variation, since these topic strategies interact with deeper aspects of the grammars of 

languages, in this case the structure of nominals and pronouns. 

4.4 Why D in Italian but Number in Greek? 

Our main claim is that the variation in the topic-strategies of Greek and Italian interacts 

with the structure of nominals. As shown, the relevant structures reflect the anaphoric pos- 

sibilities in the two languages which, crucially, are governed by the structure of the relevant 

nominal antecedents and pronouns. However, once we move away from topic-strategies and 

anaphoric relations to the nominals themselves, the question is whether the variation in nom- 

inals correlates with further contrasts in the two languages, or, to put the question somewhat 

differently, what enables Number to be a nominalisor in Greek while D is necessary in Italian? 

Our speculation is that the morphological and featural make up of nominal categories in the 

two languages plays a role in this respect. Greek nominal elements such as nouns, adjectives, 

numerals, quantifiers and the definite article show morphological case, gender and number. 

Any of these elements then can project a NumPhrase. Additionally, while number is crosscat- 

egorial in the sense that both verbal and nominal categories have number, case and gender 

are only nominal. Thus, case and gender morphology provide categorical marking crucial for 

the identification of syntactic complements, 33 while Number provides relevant individuating 

semantics that apply to predicative nouns to turn them into arguments. These three features 

then appear to work in tandem to provide syntactic marking and semantics for a nominal 

argument. By contrast, Italian nominals are not marked for case. Number marking in Italian 

is not as systematic since some D elements like ne and the bare partitive construction do not 

bear morphological number marking. It then seems that what Italian lacks in case (and possi- 

bly number) morphology, it makes up in the range of D elements that are central to building 

arguments; 34 Greek on the other hand, relies on the features carried by nominal elements 

which are crucial for the projection of nominal arguments. The definite article/pronoun are 

33 Indeed, Lekakou and Szendröi (2010) propose that Greek arguments are headed by a Kase head. 

34 This again echoes Giusti’s position that the primary role of the definite article as a functional head is 

syntactic, to assign case to its complement NP (Giusti 1993,1997, 2002). 

46

just semantically definite elements but do not act as D-heads. 

A further question is whether the different role of Number in the two languages means that 

Number has different semantics/interpretation in the two languages. Greek number indeed 

has some unexpected properties; first, as seen already,Greek allows bare singular arguments. 

In addition, mass nouns in Greek may show plural morphology as demonstrated by Tsoulas 

(2008) (see also Alexiadou 2010). In some intuitive sense then, number appears to be ”active” 

in every instance of nominal arguments (e.g. including mass nouns), a fact which can be linked 

to its nominalisor role of number. 

(88) a. trehun nera apo to tavani 

drip-3pl water-pl from the-sg ceiling-sg 

Water is dripping from the ceiling. 

b. to patoma itan gemato nera 

the-sg floor-sg was full 

The floor was full of water. 

waters-pl 

(From Tsoulas 2008, ex.9,10) 

By contrast, bare singular arguments or plural mass nouns are not available in Italian. In 

addition, Italian seems to have at its disposal a set of clitic pronouns which are number 

neutral (lo, la (in some varieties), si, ne). For instance, when these pronouns take predicates 

as antecedents, they are not sensitive to number as seen in (89). 

(89) belle lo sono? 



The same number neutrality shows up with mass nouns and reflexive predicates as in (90). 

(90) a. di carne ne mangia 

of meat ne eats 

b. Gianni e Maria si lavano spesso 

Gianni e Maria self wash often 

Finally, Italian allows some of the number neutral singular bare nouns like Catalan as in (91). 

47

(91) il pero e’ in fiore 

the pear-tree is in flower 

The pear tree is blossoming. 

A systematic investigation of these facts is beyond the scope of this paper. Note though that 

if Italian does allow number neutral DPs and this were to be captured by an absent Num 

head in the internal structure of the DP, then our analysis would entail less structure for non- 

referential uses of la/lo, just as proposed by Longobardi (1994) and Déchaine and Wiltschko 

(2002) do. However, the optional head would be Num in our analysis, not D. 

Finally, an understanding of the precise semantic contribution of Greek number may lead 

to an even simpler structure for Greek nominals where they are just Noun Phrases with a 

Number feature that allows them to be interpreted as arguments. 

5 Conclusion 

clld has been assumed to be the main topic-strategy in Greek and Italian; the topic oper- 

ator assumed in these structures is linked anaphorically to the in-situ element of the A-bar 

dependency (rather than through binding as is the case in quantificational A-bar chains). 

clld and Topicalisation have been viewed as distinct PF realisations of topic-operator struc- 

tures, with the pronominal in clld analysed as an overt realisation of the gap/null epithet 

involved in Topicalisation. We showed that the relation between the clld-ed phrase and the 

pronominal clitic mirror general anaphoric patterns in the two languages, therefore, reinforc- 

ing the view of these structures as involving an anaphoric operator. But, at the same time, 

we showed that the properties of the prononimal are crucial since they affect the anaphoric 

possibilities in each language and, as a result, the range of available readings in clld. Cru- 

cially, the properties of the pronominal have consequences for interpretation indicating that 

the crosslinguistic variation in the realisation of topic-operator structures is not confined to 

PF variation regarding the overtness of the in-situ element. Indeed, our main claim is that 

the variation in topic-structures interacts with the internal structures of nominal arguments 

in the two languages. 

We focused on the realisation of indefinite topics which is where the contrast in the 

48

topic-strategies between the two languages surfaces; Italian allows property denoting phrases 

(indefinite DPs or indeed adjectives) to be clld-ed and resumed by a clitic, while Greek 

clld is restricted to referential topics; non-referential/property denoting topics are necessarily 

topicalised. We showed that this contrast reflects a more general pattern according to which 

Greek pronouns resist property anaphora where Italian systematically allows a pronominal to 

take a non-referential antecedent. We argued that the contrast stems from the fact that Greek 

nominal arguments lack a D-layer and are instead NumPs. As a result, property denoting 

indefinites in the relevant contexts systematically involve bare nouns in Greek but DPs in 

Italian. These non-referential DPs can be antecedents of D-pronouns in Italian while in Greek 

the effect of property anaphora is achieved through NumP ellipsis (IAD) which allows the 

”recycling of the descriptive content of the antecedent”. 

The variation in the topic-strategies then is reduced to variation in the syntax of nominal 

arguments in the two languages. We argued that nouns are [+pred] and [-arg] in both Greek 

and Italian, but the two languages differ in the nominalising head, D for Italian and Num 

for Greek. We linked this hypothesis to the rich morphological make up of Greek nominals 

and the poor inventory of D-elements—-indeed we argued that even the Greek definite article 

is not a D head— which contrasts with the poorer case and number morphology of Italian 

nominal elements but the wider range of D elements. In addition, we linked the D/Num 

contrast to the ”weaker” semantics of the Italian definite Ds and the stronger readings of the 

Greek definite clitic. 

A number of questions remain open. How do the Italian facts compare with other Ro- 

mance languages? Do other Romance languages allow weaker readings of definite Ds and 

property anaphora? Does availability of NP arguments predict IAD? English is a potential 

counterexample here since NP ellipsis is ungrammatical in the English *John is looking for 

dinosaurs but cannot find, though dinosaurs is a NP. While these answers await a systematic 

investigation, our stronger prediction is that the finer variation in the interpretative possi- 

bilities of clld and topicalisation structures across Romance should reflect variation in the 

nominal structure. 

49

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