Abstract
This paper attempts to clarify the development of the determiner system by examining the distribution of elements within noun phrases in the history of English, arguing that their word order patterns are basically the same in Present-day English and early English, except possessive pronouns, which have been grammaticalized into a central determiner. The unique behavior of possessive pronouns was responsible for a variety of word order patterns and the cooccurrence of articles/demonstratives and possessive pronouns in early English: the base-generated position of possessive pronouns was Spec-NumP in Old English and the head of NumP in Middle English and Early Modern English. Finally, grammaticalization of possessive pronouns in Late Modern English led to the establishment of the determiner system as in Present-day English.
