Demonstratives and definiteness: Multiple determination in Balkan Slavic

Colloquial Bulgarian and Macedonian possess a nominal construction containing both a demonstrative and a definite article. This multiple determination (MD) structure is a single phrase with demonstrative heading DemP (spelling out features of the Dem head) and the article spelling out features of D, realized as a suffix on the next phrasal head: PossP, QP, AP, or in Macedonian NP. The affective interpretation of MD phrases derives from the interaction of demonstratives and the definite article: since the D head is independently spelled out by the article, the demonstrative spells out only relational features of Dem and has no definiteness features. Independent spell-out of D alongside Dem is made possible by the non-adjacency of the article suffix and the demonstrative. The emotive quality of MD accounts for its preference for colloquial and proximate demonstratives and articles.