Noun phrases without nouns

Abstract

In this paper, I investigate the theoretical status of noun phrases without nouns, i.e. noun phrases that do not contain a noun or pronoun, but only words that otherwise occur as modifiers of nouns. I investigate six possible analyses for such noun phrases: (1) that they are elliptical, (2) that the apparent modifiers are nouns, (3) that the apparent modifiers are heads, (4) that the determiner is the head, (5) that they are headless, (6) that all noun phrases are headless. Although the answers vary depending on the language investigated, I argue that the last hypothesis is generally the most plausible one.