Suffixation under adjacency: the case of Icelandic the-support

This paper argues in favor of the hypothesis that there are two definite articles in natural language, a weak article which expresses uniqueness and a strong article which expresses anaphoricity. The study is based on the distribution of definite articles in Icelandic, and they are found to alternate along the same empirical dimension as weak and strong articles in German. Furthermore, the Icelandic pattern manifests a structural interaction which is similar to English do-support, and we refer to it as the-support. We argue that the similarities between do-support and the-support suggest that studies of the two phenomena can benefit from considering them to be related at a deep abstract level. Thus, consequences ensue for the theory of suffixation under adjecency.