Some Aspects of Determiner Phrase in Bangla and Asamiya

The structure of Determiner Phrase (DP) proposed by Abney 1987 was a new designation for the erstwhile Noun Phrase(NP). The shift of syntactic headship of nominals consolidated the hypothesis that phrasal and clausal architectures are similar. Examination of Determiner Phrases of two languages involves an understanding of the relations between various constituents of a nominal structure. Following Abney, a global discourse was on for re-negotiating the basic principles of determining the fundamental similarities across languages and local differences theoretically known as 'parameters' which distinguish sister languages. In an attempt to participate in that global discourse, this study focused on two Eastern Indic languages, Bangla and Asamiya. The study of the DP in these two languages aimed at exploring different types of DP structures in order to explore slightly overlapping databases and at working out the point of distinction in the DP structures of these two languages. The related issues dealt with here are the syntax of definiteness and quantification in these two languages.