draft of November 2011

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).
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