Volume 12 · Issue 5 · October 2025
On Determiner Phrase Analysis in English and Central Kurdish
Sairan Abdullah Hamad, Salih Ibrahim Ahmed
The paper explores the determiner phrase analysis in English and Central Kurdish from a comparative-generative perspective. It specifically focuses on the structure of determiner phrase within the X-bar theory to examine whether the construction of determiner phrase can be applied in the same way in both languages or not. The X-bar theory deals with the structure and components of different phrase types with determining the right position for each of the components according to the phrase type. Also, one of the aspects of generative grammar is ‘Principles & Parameters’ which suggests that while languages share universal principles, they vary according to specific parameters. In this way, the existence of different phrase types is universal among languages, but the structure and the components of each phrase are parameters as each language have its own construction with respect to have some similarities with another language. On this basis, the research aims to investigate the structure of determiner phrase depending of the Determiner Phrase Analysis (DPA) in English and Central Kurdish in the light of X-bar theory. The data used in the paper is formal written language in both languages. The core question of the research is that whether the determiner phrase analysis is applicable in both languages or not. One of the remarkable conclusions is that the determiner phrase analysis is applicable in both languages with specific constructions and elements according to the form of the phrase in each language. Moreover, the study shows that some phenomena, such as Izafe construction, exist in CK, while it is not found in English.
