Demonstrative determiners and operators: The case of Greek

This paper offers a new account of the different positions Greek demonstratives can occupy within DP. Building on work by Campbell (1996), Brugé (1996) and Giusti (1997), I assume that while sometimes demonstratives are merged low and subsequently move to SpecDP, they sometimes stay in situ. Departing from views of the above researchers, I furthermore argue that — at least in Greek — demonstratives in SpecDP have clear semantic properties that distinguish them from those in situ and that word order variations of the in-situ position can be independently accounted for, once the option of movement of N to Num is taken into consideration. Moreover, based on additional evidence from Northern Greek, Catalan, Romanian and Macedonian, I distinguish between demonstrative operators and deictic determiners: demonstrative operator movement is parallel to wh-movement, as in Horrocks and Stavrou (1987), triggered by features of deictic determiners; the possibility of a language possessing only deictic determiners (like this and that) is also accommodated. Finally, a correlation between morphological visibility and strength is attempted in the spirit of Thráinssonʹs (1996) Real Minimalist Principle.