Determiners and quantifiers in Spanish: types, tests and theories

Abstract

This article provides an overview about the main facts and analytical options in the domain of determiners and quantifiers in Spanish. It covers the main classification of determiners and their basic syntactic and semantic properties (§1), the differences in behaviour between quantifiers and determiners in the strict sense (§2), the notion of definiteness and the contrasts in the use of the definite and indefinite articles (§3), the notion of specificity (§4) and the main types of quantifiers and how they can be identified (§5). In terms of analytical problems, it discusses whether determiners should be considered heads or not (§6), the areas within the determiner and quantifier domain (§7), the nature of the indefinite article as an element that shares properties with existential quantifiers (§8), the problems posed by proper names (§9) and the possible existence of phonologically null determiners in Spanish (§10). Conclusions are presented in §11.