An Exoskeletal Analysis of Persian Classifier and Quantifier Projections Focusing on Partitive Construction

Generative grammarians have been paying attention to the presence of classifier and quantifier projections in DP or partitive construction since the 1980s after the assignment of clausal features to DP. However, it is still controversial to consider them as projection or not in many languages, including Persian. In this regard, the current study examines the classifier and quantifier projections in Persian, while focusing on partitive construction based on Borer's (2005) exoskeletal approach. The fundamental issue of this approach is Borer's (2005) belief in the absence of any syntactic information such as grammatical categories in lexicon. The results of the exoskeletal analysis of Persian Classifier Phrase showed that the data of the present research support the existence of this projection in Persian and also, the range assigner of the open value of this phrase (DIV) in Persian are the abstract head feature and classifiers. On the other hand, the findings of this study verified the existence of the quantifier projection and determined the assigning range of its open value in Persian DP and partitive construction by cardinals, quantifiers, and some demonstratives.