A Syntactic Study On Agreement In English DP

Nouns select different determiners and modifiers to constitute DP. In English DP, there are some restrictions on the combination of determiners, modifiers and nouns, and it reflects the related morphological features, such as "this book" and "these books". In these two phrases,"this" can only combine with singular nouns but "these" can only combine with plural ones. Then, in what aspects these restrictions express? What are these syntactic restrictive conditions? Based on these questions, this thesis mainly does research on the internal structure of English DP and the syntactic relation of constructive elements.Through adequately observation and description of the construction of English DP, this thesis has the following foundings. Firstly, determiners and nouns agree in number. Besides, part of nominal modifiers and nouns have gender agreement, and sometimes they agree in both number and gender.The number and gender agreement among determiners, modifiers and nouns reflect in the change of their forms. The form agreement is the reflection of meaning agreement, restrained by the construction of DP and the syntactic mechanism. In view of general linguistics, this thesis assumes that there is AgrP in DP structure based on Syntax.AgrP is not only the interface of DP and TP, but also the charge of DP internal agreement. At last, the syntactic status of agreement has been established.