Quelques-uns, celui, chacun : pronoms ou déterminants ?

Abstract

The goal of the paper is to show that morphologically complex pronouns such as quelques-uns, celui and chacun are in fact determiners within a DP that contains an empty noun. This claim is supported by several arguments. First, several syntactic phenomena, such as the use of dislocated nouns introduced by de or the combination with the quantitative pronoun en, suggest that pronouns such as quelques-uns, celui and chacun are in fact determiners within a DP in which the noun can be dislocated or can be replaced by the pronoun en. Second, to respect Kayne's (1994) Antisymmetry theory, for the partitive construction (the first part of which can be one of the pronouns quelques-uns, celui or chacun) a structure is proposed that necessarily contains an (empty) noun, which can account for agreement facts. Finally, the noun position containing an empty category is also required to account for restrictions on nounless DPs. It is proposed that the empty category pro is only licensed in the nominal position by determiners or adjectives with a partitive meaning and only if it can be interpreted as a topic.