Explaining article-possessor complementarity: Economic motivation in noun phrase syntax

In many languages the definite article cannot occur when a possessive phras e is present in the NP (e.g. English *the my book, *John's the book). I arg ue that these patterns can be understood in terms of economic motivation be cause possessed NPs are very likely to be definite. A structural explanatio n in terms of a unique determiner position is insufficient to account for t he full range of attested crosslinguistic patterns, and the universal gener alizations that do seem to be valid can be derived from the economy-based e xplanation. Finally I show how the performance motivation of economy create s the competence pattern in diachronic change.*