Syntax without functional categories

This paper argues against the notion 'functional category' (a kind of word-class) while accepting that individual words may be described as 'function' words or 'content' words. It focuses on the two least controversial examples of functional categories — 'determiner' and 'complementiser' — and argues that neither of these categories is needed; and if this conclusion is correct, there is even less independent support for the more abstract functional categories like 'Inflection' and its subtypes. There is no word-class of 'determiners', because determiners are simply 'transitive' pronouns; nor do 'complementisers' comprise a word-class because the standard complementisers are all different from each other. 1 Overview and terminology Do functional categories really exist? In this paper I shall suggest that they do not, so I should start with a little historical background. Recent Chomskian theory assumes a fundamental distinction between two kinds of syntactic categories, 'substantive' and 'functional', which plays a central role both in the theory and in the practice of transformational grammar: Virtually all items of the lexicon belong to the substantive categories, which we will take to be noun, verb, adjective and particle, ... The other categories we will call functional (tense, complementizer, etc.), ... (Chomsky 1995:6). This division continues a long historical tradition. For at least decades, and maybe