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Proxy categories in Phrase Structure theory
... This article will show, however, that the empirical data that Chomsky provides in favor of feature inheritance and parallel movement are rather suspect, and that there are both empirical and conceptual reasons to reject this implementation of the idea that the features in C and T originate in a single head position. This does not imply, however, that the idea as such should be completely rejected-I will show that an approach of this sort is possible when we assume that the relevant features all originate in the T-head, and that the C-position comes (or rather: may come) into existence as a result of remerge of this head as a specific instantiation of the formation of extended projections in the sense of Grimshaw (1997); see also Ackema, Neeleman & Weerman (1992) and Nash & Rouveret (1997) for similar ideas. This paper 1 Of course, this presupposes that verb/head movement is a syntactic operation, contrary to what is assumed in Chomsky (2001:37) on the basis of the claim that the "semantic effects of head movement are slight or nonexistent". ...
... An alternative implementation of the idea that the features in C and T originate in a single head position is to assume that T is the actual carrier of these features and that the "C"-head only arises in the course of the derivation as a result of remerge of T; see Ackema, Neeleman & Weerman (1992), Grimshaw (1997), and Nash & Rouveret (1997). The features on T indicated in (18) are the ones that trigger A-and A-movement, but the crucial assumption is that the goals are moved into specifier positions of separate projections. ...
... I argue in Achab (2003) that the head D in (5.15) corresponds to the subject morpheme i-, which subsequently incorporates onto the verb where it shows as a prefix. The reason why the morpheme i-raises to the subject position has to do the Extended Projection Principle (EPP) in the spirit of Nash and Rouveret (1999). The Extended Projection Principle stipulates that constructions involving inflected Tense involve a subject position that needs to be filled by a lexical element or morphological content including expletives. ...
... For this reason, such languages are sometimes pro-drop languages in Government and Binding (see Chomsky 1981). However, while the spirit idea has been maintained, it is reformulated by Nash and Rouveret (1999) in terms of D-feature borne by T which has to be checked for scope reasons. In the case of morphologically rich languages (pro-drop languages in Government and Binding terminology) Nash and Rouveret (1999: 9) argue that "the D-feature of T is exceptionally satisfied by the pronominal / argumental property of the verb inflection." ...
"Internal Structure of Verb meaning: A Study of verbs in Tamazight" (Berber) makes available to a wide audience years of academic research in linguistics. It is written in such a way that it serves as an introduction to the domains of lexical semantics and the organization of grammar for students. The book investigates the internal structure and the predicate-argument structure of verbs of (change of) state, including unaccusatives, verbs of spatial configuration, causatives, and those traditionally referred to as verbs of quality in the linguistic literature on Tamazight. The Tamazight data investigated is so peculiar that it reveals a lot about the construction and derivation of verb meaning from both the ontogenetic and the phylogenetic views. The analysis provided in this book also shows in a parsimonious and most lucid way how lexical semantics interacts with other syntactic approaches including Government and Binding and the Minimalist program. As most of the literature available on Tamazight is written in French, the author also made a pledge to inform the English speaking world about the reality of Tamazight not only as a living language but also as a culture and an identity that is still cherished and defended by its owners across North Africa, from Morocco to Egypt and in some Sub-Saharan countries including Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso in a variety known as Tuareg. Although the language is still spoken by some 40 million people in these two regions, political regimes in these various have had enough of a nerve to even deny its existence (see some quotes p. iv). You will be surprised to find out that Sheshonq, the founder of the 22nd dynasty of Pharaohs in Egypt, was an Amazigh (Berber) from Libya, or how this multi-millennium language has resisted some of the most oppressive tyrants and regimes of our era.
... Sentences with negative subjects, like nobody, no dogs, nothing, are perfectly correct, while NPI subjects (in sentences not containing presentative there) are not. In this section we will suggest a solution to this problem that is based on a view on phrase structure adapted from Grimshaw (1997) and Nash and Rouveret (1997). Consider the examples in (30). ...
... For (30b), we can assume that I has an extended projection in the sense ofGrimshaw (1997): first the [+neg] feature of I is checked by merging the negative adverb not, which derives [ IP not [ [ I was] [VP … anybody…]]]]; after that the still uncheckedcase and φ-features on I will attract the subject anybody, which results in building an additional structural layer above IP, the head and specifier of which are respectively filled by the auxiliary was and anybody, as in (32b). Note that after movement of I, the extended projection is also an IP, for which reason the structure in (32b) contains two IPs instead of one.(32) a. [ IP nobody i [[ I was] [ VP … t i …]]] b. [ IP anybody i [[ I was] [ IP not [ t I [VP … t i …]]]]] ...
This article argues that, contrary to what is claimed by Chomsky (1995), the operation Merge (= external merge) is not inherently more economical than the operation Move (= internal merge), and that the former therefore does not necessarily block the application of the latter. This claim makes it possible to assume that the computational system has free access to the lexicon and thus to eliminate the notion of a numeration. Of course, we need some criterion to decide which derivations are in competition, and we will therefore adopt Grimshaw's (1997) claim that this is simply a matter of meaning. We will show not only that the notion of a numeration is superfluous but also that it actually gives rise to empirically wrong results.
... Sentences with negative subjects, like nobody, no dogs, nothing, are perfectly correct, while NPI subjects (in sentences not containing presentative there) are not. In this section we will suggest a solution to this problem that is based on a view on phrase structure adapted from Grimshaw (1997) and Nash and Rouveret (1997). Consider the examples in (30). ...
... For (30b), we can assume that I has an extended projection in the sense ofGrimshaw (1997): first the [+neg] feature of I is checked by merging the negative adverb not, which derives [ IP not [ [ I was] [VP … anybody…]]]]; after that the still uncheckedcase and φ-features on I will attract the subject anybody, which results in building an additional structural layer above IP, the head and specifier of which are respectively filled by the auxiliary was and anybody, as in (32b). Note that after movement of I, the extended projection is also an IP, for which reason the structure in (32b) contains two IPs instead of one.(32) a. [ IP nobody i [[ I was] [ VP … t i …]]] b. [ IP anybody i [[ I was] [ IP not [ t I [VP … t i …]]]]] ...
... (8) states that Fission may either redistribute features among existing available categories or force the projection of a new category. When a feature fissions, it moves either onto an accessible functional category – generally the next c-commanding one – or onto a specially projected head, which is a copy of the original one and which we will refer to as a «proxy category» or «proxy», following Nash & Rouveret (1997) . These non-contentive heads are not present in the numeration , but are created in the course of the syntactic computation, in order to host unchecked fissioned features and provide them with a checking domain. ...
... (i) *Jean probablement résoudra le problème demain. John probably will-solve the problem to-morrow 'John will probably solve the problem to-morrow.' Nash & Rouveret (1997) propose to view these two characteristics as related and as reflecting the fact that the agreement set incorporated into Infl in French cannot in and of itself achieve the checking of Infl's u-feature because it doesn't correspond to a fully specified phi-set. The person feature in v is weak -person is not distinctively marked on each f ...
The purpose of this article is to provide an explanatory account of the divide between enclisis and proclisis in pronominal clitic constructions in Romance and Semitic languages. The analysis is based on two fundamental assumptions: (i) clitics do not target designated prelabelled positions, but take maximal advantage of the available categorial structure; (ii) cliticization patterns are tightly dependent on the inflectional properties of the language, more specifically, on the feature content of the two functional categories, Infl and v. We show that the various asymmetries in clitic behavior can elegantly be explained in terms of the minimalist theory of movement, combined with certain formal hypotheses about the building of phrase structure and about the relation of morphology to syntax. Relying on certain ideas about uninterpretable features, Attract and Agree, we argue that cliticization patterns can be made to follow from the strategies made available by U.G. to check the uninterpretable feature of the category Infl and from the derivational origin of the tense and person-number features. A principle, the Unselective Attract Principle, is introduced according to which an uninterpretable feature is a potential attractor for all the features which are of the same type as the one which it selectively attracts. In Romance and in Semitic, clitic phi-sets are unselectively attracted by Infl. Two additional principles, the Priority Principle and the Single Licensing Condition, insure that at some point in the derivation a clitic can incorporate into Infl only if Infl doesn�t already host an attracted inflectional morpheme. This idea holds the key for the enclisis/proclisis divide. Enclisis, i.e. clitic incorporation into Infl, is disallowed in Romance finite clauses where the uninterpretable feature of Infl selectively attracts the person-number agreement phi-set; it is legitimate in Semitic and European Portuguese finite clauses in which the same feature is checked through Agree.
... The movement from SpecDP to SpecTP is motivated by feature checking in line with Nash and Rouveret (1997) and Neeleman and Weerman (1999). The cyclic TP is taken as a proxy category, which is used to check up the unchecked feature T in the possessor from SpecDP. ...
In this paper, the pro analysis along with multiple object analysis (Huang 1992, 1999) is used to approach the possessor extraction out of the subject and object positions in a parallel way. This analysis not only simplifies the way to the treatment of the obscure possessor extraction data, but also reveals the unique properties of the (radical) pro-drop parameter and multiple subject/object construction in Mandarin Chinese.
USTWPL 5: 141-158, 2009
... Indeed, (23b) shows that inner Aspect is related to the lower stative V, while T is related to the inchoative v. Remember that it is T that requires its D-feature (or EPP) to be checked by a pronominal / argument property (Nash and Rouveret (1997) In the structure above, the object clitic is generated in the specifier position of Aspect because the specifier position of VP already hosts the operator whose postulation was necessary in order to account for the stative interpretation (see Section 4 above). Having dealt with the Tashelhiyt nominative form in (24b) ...
This study investigates a special class of intransitive verbs in Amazigh occurring with accusative clitics in the perfective aspect. Such a situation goes against the idea that objects of intransitive verbs are not assigned accusative case. Combined with accusative clitics, these verbs yield a simple stative interpretation as opposed to their combination with nominative clitics, which may yield either a simple stative or a resultative interpretation. It is argued that the structure associated with the accusative form contains only one verb corresponding to the abstract BE, while the structure associated with the nominative form contains two abstract verbs, corresponding to the stative BE and the inchoative COME, respectively. On the other hand, it is argued that the accusative clitic is hosted in Spec of Aspect, while the nominative clitic is hosted in Spec of T. Such an analysis provides an account for the different interpretation associated with these forms.
... Dit probleem kan echter opgelost worden wanneer we in navolging van bijvoorbeeld Ackema e.a. (1992), Grimshaw (1997) en Nash en Rouveret (1997) aannemen dat in dergelijke gevallen een nieuwe projectie kan worden gevormd door verplaatsing van zowel het werkwoord als het object, als in (11c). De nieuw gevormde projectie, waarvoor ik de door Nash en Rouveret geïntroduceerde naam proxi-projectie zal gebruiken (Grimshaw gebruikt de term " uitgebreide " projectie), is weer een VP omdat hij het verplaatste werkwoord als hoofd heeft dat opnieuw projecteert. ...
This article argues that certain forms of scrambling of nominal objects should be analyzed in a similar way as so-called object shift in the Scandinavian languages. The differences between the intended form of scrambling and object shift (as well as the differences concerning object
shift between the individual Scandinavian languages) will be accounted for by appealing to an optimality-theoretic evaluation of the output representations of the computational system postulated by the minimalist program.
... Dit probleem kan echter opgelost worden wanneer we in navolging van bijvoorbeeld Ackema e.a. (1992), Grimshaw (1997) en Nash en Rouveret (1997) aannemen dat in dergelijke gevallen een nieuwe projectie kan worden gevormd door verplaatsing van zowel het werkwoord als het object, als in (11c). De nieuw gevormde projectie, waarvoor ik de door Nash en Rouveret geïntroduceerde naam proxi-projectie zal gebruiken (Grimshaw gebruikt de term " uitgebreide " projectie), is weer een VP omdat hij het verplaatste werkwoord als hoofd heeft dat opnieuw projecteert. ...
This article argues that certain forms of scrambling of nominal objects should be analyzed in a similar way as so-called object shift in the Scandinavian languages. The differences between the intended form of scrambling and object shift (as well as the differences concerning object shift between the individual Scandinavian languages) will be accounted for by appealing to an optimality-theoretic evaluation of the output representations of the computational system postulated by the minimalist program.
... This movement is due to a morpho-phonological requirement of weak pronominal forms to be spelled-out in the vicinity of designated functional heads. In the Romance languages discussed, this designated head is T. For a formalization of clitic placement compatible with the current minimalist representation of movement as attraction, see Nash and Rouveret (1997, 2002). ...
The Romance pro-N clitic (Fr., Cat.) en / (It.) ne is problematic for most theories of cliticization, because some phenomena support a movement analysis, while others seem to speak against movement. Endorsing the view that the pro-N clitic is the result of movement, this paper 1 argues that the problems of this analysis can be solved by assuming that this clitic does not represent an N or NP, but rather a functional head intermediate between D/Q and N (probably Num), whose complement is empty after the DP-phase is completed. Consequently, I propose that the theory of cliticization should be modified in order to allow "dynamic minimality": only minimal elements may cliticize, but non-minimal elements may become minimal in the course of the derivation, if their complement has a null spell-out.
... One way to integrate such elements into the system proposed here would be to propose that they start out as features on categories which are defined in terms of the inventory of categorial features assumed so far, i.e. for example on V or T in the case of functional categories in the clausal domain. As for the realization of specific projections, I will assume, along the lines of a proposal made by Nash and Rouveret (1997), that such projections are created through proxy categories, i.e. functional heads which have no features of their own and which are created only in the course of the syntactic derivation. Thus, the general idea would be that categorial feature matrices define the necessary "backbone" of the clause structure (e.g., as traditionally assumed, VP-IP-CP 11 The feature matrix [+D, +T; +N, +V] will be relevant in particular for the analysis of the highest C-projection in embedded CPs. ...
... An additional result of this approach is that there can be only one strong feature per head, with unclear consequences (though see Nash and Rouveret 1997 for just such a proposal in a different framework). ...
In this article, I address the issue of head movement in current linguistic theory. I propose a new view of the nature of heads and head movement that reveals that head movement is totally compliant with the standardly suggested properties of grammar. To do so, I suggest that head movement is not a single syntactic operation, but a combination of two operations: a syntactic one (movement) and a morphological one (m-merger). I then provide independent motivation for m-merger, arguing that it can be attested in environments where no head movement took place
... An additional result of this approach is that there can be only one strong feature per head, with unclear consequences (though see Nash and Rouveret 1997 for just such a proposal in a different framework). ...
Dans la theorie des principes et parametres, la categorie des structures formees par mouvement et la correspondance de statut phrastique entre les elements deplaces et les cibles du mouvement sont determines par la theorie X-barre et l'hypothese de preservation de structure (Edmond, 1976). Ce dispositif theorique a ete en partie abandonne dans le Programme minimaliste (1995), qui redonne vie aux transformations generalisees et developpe une theorie X-barre minimale. Cette approche pose le probleme de la determination de l'etiquette d'une structure syntagmatique minimale formee par mouvement et le probleme de la derivation des effets de l'hypothese de preservation de structure. L'A. montre ici que la condition d'uniformite phrastique pour les liens de chaines, postulee par Chomsky (1995) pour resoudre ces problemes, n'est pas necessaire. Les considerations d'optimalite associees a la condition standard de c-commande sur les liens de chaines suffisent en effet a deriver les resultats corrects
... Once expletive-associate chains are set aside, only the EPP forces the existence of an empty expletive. Several authors have proposed that the EPP does not necessarily require the filling of the designated subject position (Nash andRouveret 1996, Speas 1995). I will follow essentially a proposal in Holmberg and Platzack (1995), and assume that the EPP-requirement can be met in two ways: (i) either by insertion of a lexical expletive in the designated subject position, or (ii) by V-movement to I°. ...
There seems to be no general consensus over the question whether this is the only configuration leading to the spell-out of agreement or not. Chomsky1995 argues that the standard view is incorrect: agreement should be captured not by Spec head, but by Agree, which basically requires local c-command between the agreement bearing head and the triggering DP. In this paper, I push what I will call the "strong agreement" hypothesis: the Spec head agreement configuration in (1) is the only configuration leading to the spell-out of agreement. If the presence of agreement signals a local Spec head relation in the course of the derivation, agreement provides important clues as to the history of the derivation, and therefore provides valuable theoretical insights. Section 2 discusses why Spec head should not be abandoned in favor of Agree. In section 3, I will apply the strong agreement hypothesis to probe the syntax of the DP in (Kisongo) Maasai, an Eastern Nilotic language, with rich, asymmetric DP internal agreement patterns,. This leads to new insights into the building blocks of DPs, DP internal derivations, and the treatment of agreement asymmetries in structural terms. Gender, number and Case, must be merged low in the structure of the DP. I will reach the conclusion that "simple" common nouns in Maasai or rather the DPs that contain them, are not of the general form D NP, but of the form D CP in Maasai. This will probably be true universally by extension. D never combines with a NP complement directly, but always with a CP complement that embeds the head noun, a NP predicate. This proposal likens simple DPs in Maasai to relative clauses with a nominal predicate ("the boy", = the x such that he is a boy, or " who is a boy"), and generalizes Kayne's 1994 proposal for the structure of relative clause structures, and possessive/genitive constructions to all DPs.
... As a result the first candidate violates this contraint twice (the DP in focus is followed by the verb and the predicative PP), whereas the third candidate violates it only once (the DP is followed only by the PP). Nash and Rouveret's (1997) theory of proxi-heads in (12), but nothing crucially hinges on that; one may equally well assume that the object is moved into an inner or outer spec-position of V/v. ...
The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.
... One possible approach would be to consider the 'focus' feature that results in DP-movement in the English construction 'Bagels I like' to be a proxy category, in the sense of Nash and Rouveret (1997). ...
In ASL questions, the wh-phrase may appear either in situ or in a CP-final position (in which non wh-phrases do not appear). Overt wh-movement correlates with a reading on which the wh-phrase is in focus. In ASL, there is a projection on the left periphery above TP that houses not only focused DPs but, more generally, `if', `when', and relative clauses. It is argued that focused wh-phrases move to the specifier of this projection; they then undergo wh-movement to the clause-final SpecCP. Relativized Minimality explains why non-focused wh-phrases remain in situ. This account provides an explanation for the syntactic and semantic differences between the two types of question constructions. Further support for this analysis comes from the distribution of an indefinite focus particle.
... One way to integrate such elements into the system proposed here would be to propose that they start out as features on categories which are defined in terms of the inventory of categorial features assumed so far, i.e. for example on V or T in the case of functional categories in the clausal domain. As for the realization of specific projections, I will assume, along the lines of a proposal made by Nash and Rouveret (1997), that such projections are created through proxy categories, i.e. functional heads which have no features of their own and which are created only in the course of the syntactic derivation. Thus, the general idea would be that categorial feature matrices define the necessary "backbone" of the clause structure (e.g., as traditionally assumed, VP-IP-CP in the clausal domain) and that additional projections, realized as proxy projections, have their origin as features on these basic categories. ...
... The two views just sketched survive in current work. Starting from Borer (1986), it has been suggested by various authors that, since person-number specification of the subject can be exhaustively computed from the verbal inflection, the preverbal subject is effectively optional and when it appears it acts as a clitic left-dislocated (CLLD) element occupying an A -position with the verbal inflection functioning analogously to a clitic (see Alexiadou and Anagnostopoulou 1998;Barbosa 1995Barbosa , 2006Manzini and Savoia 2005;Nash and Rouveret 1997;Ordóñez 1997;Platzack 2004;Pollock 1997). In terms of current theory this view can be articulated by postulating either that the ϕ-features of T are interpretable and there is no EPP feature (and hence no requirement to fill SpecTP), or that there is an interpretable D-feature associated with T which is able to satisfy the EPP without the need for anything to fill SpecTP. ...
In this paper, we present an analysis of the “person-driven” auxiliary-selection system of one variety of the Upper Southern
Italo-Romance dialect Abruzzese, along with an account of the pattern of past participle agreement in this variety, which
differs somewhat from what is found in more familiar Romance languages. Our account relies on the technical mechanisms of
agreement as outlined in Chomsky (1995, 2001), in particular a variant of Chomsky’s (2008) proposal regarding feature inheritance by non-phase heads of features belonging to phase heads, combined with Gallego’s
(2006) notion of phase-sliding. We also utilise some aspects of Müller’s (2004) analysis of ergativity, and propose an account of a typological generalisation regarding the absence of person-driven auxiliary
selection first put forward in Kayne (2000:127) in the Germanic languages. To the extent that the analyses proposed successfully apply the mechanisms put forward in
the recent versions of the minimalist program, the postulation of these mechanisms is supported by our analysis with evidence
from a new empirical domain. We also offer some general speculations regarding auxiliary selection in general.
KeywordsItalo-Romance-Participles-Agreement-Person-Split-ergativity-Auxiliaries
... me difference between I and V. First, consider the examples in (36), which contain the dyadic unaccusative verb overkomen 'to happen', and in which the definite subject 11 The movement of V in (34b) follows from the assumption that heads do not have multiple specifiers but may create an additional phrase structure layer when attracting some XP (cf. Nash and Rouveret 1997; Grimshaw 1997). I assume that moving the object into the empty specifier position of (34a) is blocked by Chomsky's (2000) version of h-theory according to which ''pure merge in theta position is required of (and restricted to) arguments''. The combination of these assumptions has the effect that movement is allowed only when we create a ...
Adopting the hypothesis that both NP-movement of subjects and scrambling of objects are instances of A-movement, this article
aims at accounting for the similarities and differences between these movements within the so-called derivation-and-evaluation
framework, which combines certain aspects from the minimalist program and optimality theory.
... What is more, much current literature argues in favor of the elimination of pro even from the null subject configurations for which it was originally introduced by Chomsky (1982). In particular, Pollock (1996), Nash and Rouveret (1997), Alexiadou and Anagnostopoulou (1997) argue that V is sufficient to check the strong feature of I in null subject languages, while Platzack (1995), Manzini and Savoia (forthcoming) treat null subject languages as having a weak (non-lexicalized) D feature in I. For the reasons advanced by all of these authors, we conclude that pro is best abandoned; in this perspective the pro analysis of arbitrary control, and therefore the standard DP-movement approach to obligatory control that forces it, are undesirable. ...
In this article, we point out some problems in the theory of A-movement and control within Principles and Parameters models, and specifically within the minimalist approach of Chomsky (1995). In order to overcome these problems, we motivate a departure from the standard transformational theory of A-movement. In particular, we argue that DPs are merged in the position where they surface, and from there they attract (an aspectual feature of) a predicate. On this basis, control can simply be construed as the special case in which the same DP attracts more than one predicate. Arbitrary control reduces to the attraction of a predicate by an operator in C. We show that the basic locality properties of control follow from an appropriate Scopal version of Chomsky's (1995) Minimal Link Condition and from Kayne's (1984) Connectedness, phrased as conditions on the Attract operation. Our approach has considerable advantages in standard cases of A-movement as well, deriving the distribution of reconstruction effects at LF as well as the blocking effects on phonosyntactic rules at PF.
... ' 8 . I assume that this empty functional head lacks relevant features and has to lexicalise at some point in the derivation ( Nash and Rouveret 1997 ) . See Section 10 for discussion . ...
A focused constituent contains the most prominent stress of the clause (Selkirk 1984, Reinhart 1995). Reinhart accounts for this by a PF/LF mapping rule. I extend this view to Hungarian, a language with contrastive focus movement, and show that a range of data, some of which pose a problem for a featuredriven approach, can be accounted for straightforwardly. Among these are the uniqueness of focus movement and the fact that verb-focusing does not strand the particle of particle-verbs (verb-movement generally strands it). The analysis extends to blocking effects between focusing and a phenomenon called particle climbing. It is concluded that the [+Focus]-feature is unnecessary to account for the data. Finally, it is shown that the alleged identificational focus vs. new information focus distinction of É.Kiss (1998b) is not supported by Hungarian data.
This article develops the idea that the doubling of Mandarin verbs arises as the result of an interaction between VP fronting and the way copy deletion and realisation work in such derivations. The proposal accounts for previously unnoticed properties, such as anti-adjacency effects and the obligatory presence of postverbal adverbials, among others, while lending further support to anti-locality, vP phasehood, the specifier view of Mandarin postverbal adverbials, and Saab’s (2008, 2017) theory of pronunciation.
This dissertation investigates the theory of phrase structure in the field of generative grammar. In chapter 1, I propose a new model of phrase structure representations and argue for its conceptual advantages over alternative models, in chapters 2 to 4, I discuss the advantages of this model for the analyses of various empirical phenomena. Chapter 5 is the conclusion. The proposal is based on two central claims. First, I argue that a moved verb can be the head of its clause, and hence that verb movement can extend a structure (Ackema, Neeleman and Weerman 1993). (This is a rejection of the widely held view that it is always the target of movement that projects; cf. Chomsky 1995.) Since verb movement is not universal, it then follows that syntactic representations are not identical for all languages. This means that the clause structure of a particular language must be learnable, i.e. that the availability of categories without overt realization is highly restricted. In particular, there can be no phonetically empty categories that are not licensed configurationally and that do not receive a semantic interpretation. Second, I argue that phrase structure should not be thought of in terms of tree diagrams but rather in terms of sets that express dominance relations between categories. This is a radical implementation of the widely held view that linear order is not a property of syntax proper ("the computation of LF") but of the mapping of syntactic structures to the phonological level of representation PF. One result of this approach to phrase structure is that there is no need for categorial projection (cf. Brody 2000). Chapter 2 analyses the phenomenon of complementizer optionality and its relation to verb movement and adjunction, as well as related problems from English, Italian, and German (e.g. "embedded verb-second"). Chapter 3 investigates subject-verb inversion in verb-second languages and verb-first languages. This involves a discussion of Breton, Modern Welsh, and German, and of the change from verb-second in Middle Welsh to verb-first in Modem Welsh. Chapter 4 investigates free relative clauses in English and (dialects of) German.
The focus of this study is the so-called verb-copy construction(s) of Mandarin Chinese, where two (or even more) copies of the same verb surface in a single clause, without any semantic consequence of this multiplicity. This family of constructions has received various analyses in the generative tradition (e.g., Tsao 1987; Huang 1988; Li 1990; Shi 1996; Paul 2002a, Gouguet 2005; Cheng 2007), each with its strengths and weaknesses. In recent years, there emerged some partially converging proposals that build on the minimalist framework of Chomsky (1995, 2000, 2001), and fundamentally agree that in these constructions both VP-level and V-level operations are involved (V-copy is not one construction, but a group of surface lookalikes, with different underlying structures), and syntactic effects are heavily interspersed with semantic/pragmatic and phonetic considerations in a proper account; see: Gouguet (2005), Bartos (2008), Cheng (2007), Tieu (2009). On the other hand, some other recent contributions (Fang & Sells 2007; Hsu 2008) seem to call several assumptions of the earlier analyses into question, and present data neglected by those proposals. The present paper briefly reviews the earlier accounts, examines and mostly refutes the new potential counterarguments, and refines Bartos's earlier analysis to cater for the full range of structural variation involved, by incorporating certain compatible components of Gouguet's (2005) and Tieu's (2009) proposals into it.
In this article I would like to revisit one aspect of the structure of the functional sequence of the clause in light of certain recent developments, in particular Kayne’s (2016) proposal that all heads are necessarily silent. I will also discuss the possibility that (certain) silent heads may be endowed with single features that denote complex notions taking progressive aspect as a case in point.
1995 - An anaylysis of Czech language in late Principles and Parameters Framework. PhD dissesrtation. In two Volumes.
1. Introduction Il est courant d'opposer les propositions finies aux propositions non finies, typiquement representees par les in-fini-tives. Divers auteurs, parmi lesquels Benveniste (1950/1966) puis Renault (1991) et Nash & Rouveret (1996), ont tente de preciser le contenu de la notion de finitude (anglais : finiteness). Deux ingredients sont, par hypothese, presents dans une proposition finie et absents d'une proposition non finie - la flexion personnelle, et le temps : (1) a. Pierre pense...
Problematika klitik a jejich analýza v generativní syntaxi." In Habilitační práce UP Olomouc. pp 33-56. (Komentář k přiloženému textu Vos, Riet & Veselovská, Ludmila (1999) 'Clitic Questionnaire.' In Henk van Rijemsdijk (ed.) Clitics in the Languages of Europe. Mouton de Gruyter , The Hague. (891-1010) ============================================================= Problematika klitik a jejich analýza v generativní syntaxi Úvod Clitic Questionnaire je souborem konkrétních dat týkajících se úzce vymezeného tématu a otázky pokládané informantům byly formulovány z hlediska specifického teoretického rámce. Přes omezení zmíněné podrobně v úvodu dotazníku, data shromážděná v Clitic Questionnaire (CQ) dokazují, že klitiky jsou fenoménem rozšířeným ve všech evropských jazycích do té míry, že je nelze odsunout z centra pozornosti jako výjimečný, idiosynkratický a v podstatě deviantní jev. Jejich společné vlastnosti svědčí o tom, že reprezentují některou z obecných zásad gramatického systému, a vyžadují tudíž analýzu v rámci každého modelu jazykového systému. 1 Klitika je příkladem jazykové jednotky, která při svém zařazení vyžaduje komplexní definici na základě všech jazykových plánů, tzn. jejíž charakteristika je specifická jak v oblasti fonetiky, morfologie a syntaxe, tak i sémantiky a pragmatiky. V této práci se zaměřím na pojetí fenoménu klitik v rámci generativní gramatiky, kde je jejich podrobnějšímu studium věnována značná pozornost již od poloviny 70. let. Jednotlivé analýzy klitik se liší podle toho, zda autoři definují jejich podstatu jako odraz jevů fonologických, morfologických, nebo syntaktických. Ve všech oblastech se 1
In this paper, I explore the possibility accounting for constructions that appear to instantiate Long-Distance Agreementwithout appealing to a formal operation of agreement-at-a-distance. The viability of such an account is particularly important in light of recent theoretical developments that suggest a move away from Probe-Goal oriented approaches to movement, and towards viewing movement as a response to formal needs of the moving element itself. Broadly speaking, I consider two possible approaches: (i) agreement is established in a purely local configuration, followed by the agreeing head (and whatever material ends up intervening between this head and the target noun-phrase) moving away, giving the impression of Long-Distance Agreement; and (ii) apparent Long-Distance Agreement is actually an instance of syntactic movement in which the phonological component chooses to pronounce the moved element in its lower position. It is shown that the latter approach fares better with respect to the scopal properties of several constructions, including English expletive-associate construc tions, and so-called Long-Distance Agreement in Hindi-Urdu and in Basque.
Dit artikel is het laatste in een serie van vijf, waarin recente ontwikkelingen binnen de generatieve grammatica worden besproken. Het laat zien hoe het probleem dat 'Scrambling' oplevert voor de zgn. Holmberg Generalisatie opgelost kan worden door in navolging van Hale en Keyser (1993) aan te nemen dat werkwoorden geen atomaire categorieen zijn, maar dat zij zijn samengesteld uit een betekenisdragend element V en een betekenisloos element v (een zgn. licht werkwoord) dat verantwoordelijk is voor de formele eigenschappen van het werkwoord als geheel.
The development of the minimalist program and optimality theory has considerably changed the format of generative syntax. This article sketches some possible consequences of these changes for the description of a number of phenomena that are characteristic for Dutch (and German) and have traditionally been the focus of much attention: the predominant OV order, Extraposition of clauses and PPs, Verb second, Scrambling and, finally, the preverbal placement of small clause predicates. The minimalist program in particular emphasises explanatory adequacy and it is well known that this normally complicates actual language description. The exercise in this paper aims at showing that the complications arising in describing the phenomena mentioned above remain within reason.
Jouitteau's 2005 generalization that absolute V1 is not allowed introduces an interesting perspective on the possible structural relatedness between V1 and V2 grammatical systems. This article examines whether Celtic and Germanic display additional convergences beyond those that involve the left periphery. The verb–subject order in finite declarative clauses is one of them. It is shown that, once certain assumptions are made concerning the syntax of formal features (they “fission” when unsatisfied) and the featural endowment of Tense (the phi-requirement should carefully be distinguished from the EPP-requirement), some of the characteristics of the Celtic and Germanic peripheries straightforwardly follow from the properties of the inflectional domains. As far as the latter are concerned, three dimensions of variation are isolated, which decisively contribute to shaping clausal structure and determining word order: the inflectional richness of verbal forms, whether tense has a featural/morphemic representation within vP, and the presence/absence/optionality of T's [EPP].
The thesis offers a description and analysis of the DP in the Eastern Indo-Aryan language Bangla (Bengali). In particular, it re-establishes the dominant theme in the DP literature of showing the syntactic equivalence between the structure of the clause and that of the DP. This is done on the one hand by investigating various clause-like syntactic phenomena like specificity, deixis and aspect inside the DP and on the other by working out NP movement inside the DP -- the common theme
across chapters 2-4.
Chapter 1 provides an outline of the thesis and introduces relevant parts of the minimalist and the antisymmetry framework adopted for this study. In addition, it suggests a trigger for Merge and proposes that a condition governing XP movements to multiple specifiers in clauses is operative in DPs as well.
The second chapter discusses a three layered structure of the DP structure for Bangla where the layer intermediate between DP and NP is the Quantifier Phrase. The proposed structure accounts for the DP-internal specificity in Bangla and suggests that specific NPs move out of the deepest NP-shell by LF. This is identified as the DP-internal ‘Object’ Shift and constitutes the first instance of DP-internal NP movement.
In the following chapter, the three-layered DP structure is re-examined on the basis of data from kinship terms. Specifically, it is shown that the possessive is generated in the nP shell of the DP but moves up to its derived position of [Spec,DP] for reasons of feature checking. It is proposed that the demonstrative is an XP and is the specifier of a ‘focus-related’ head F, located between the D and the Q heads.
NP movement proposed in this chapter is identified as Kinship Inversion and is shown to be triggered by the same feature of specificity explored in chapter 2. The analysis exploits two different types of NP movement within the DP which accounts for DP-internal deixis.
The last chapter discusses the structure of the gerund phrase and proposes that it too has the structure of a DP. Both the external and the internal distribution of the gerund is investigated which show that they exhibit both nominal and verbal properties. This is reflected in the proposed derivation of gerunds which involve leftward NP movement out of a VP embedded inside an Aspect Phrase. The presence of aspectual features like [±PERFECT] and [±DELIMITED] drive this movement. This final evidence for DP-internal NP movement leads us towards the
conclusion that NP movement inside the DP is a pervasive phenomenon in Bangla.
Current generative grammar predicts a larger set of transitive structures than the six types normally mentioned in the typological handbooks (SVO, SOV, VSO, etc). The main cause of this discrepancy is that, whereas generative grammar investigates the hierarchical positions of the verb and its arguments, most typological research is concerned with their relative surface order. In order to bring together these two lines of research, we have to translate the predictions of generative grammar into a more sophisticated typology in linear terms that can be taken as the point of departure for future typological research. This programmatic article is written in the hope that the generative grammar may help typologists to find certain so far unknown typological differences between languages, and that typologists, in turn, may help generative grammar by providing the relevant typological data that are needed to evaluate the competing theoretical proposals and to improve the most successful ones. Keywords:
word order typology, phrase structure theory, verb movement, adverb placement.
Important characteristics of the Arabic adjectival system are investigated, in view of the question of how the DP system is organized. A first series of issues include: (a) how adjective serialization observes quasi-universal hierarchical ordering restrictions (or their mirror image order), (b) how adjectives and other modifiers and determiners alternate in postnominal and prenominal positions, and (c) how distributional classes of adjectives relate to attributive/predicative, or head/modifier uses. A second series concerns (d) inflectional properties of adjectives (including Case, Definiteness, and Number and Gender features), and their Head/Spec dependent status. Such questions are approached through postulating an articulated (fissioned) DP structure. Structural grounds are provided for checking various inflectional features in hierarchically ordered, but autonomous DP domains. AP (or A) movement, as well as N and Possessor raisings, are independently motivated. Cross-linguistic variation follows, depending on whether all, some, or none of these processes are involved, to yield convergent derivations. APs (along with NPs) are treated as DPs, taking into account their inflectional and interpretational behaviours. Definiteness inheritance and Genitive checking are reanalyzed in view of new empirical and theoretical considerations of synthetic possessive structures.
Among the Germanic languages, variation can be found with respect to the occurrence of a constituent in a position immediately preceding a definite subject. Whereas 'XP-subject' orders are possible in some languages, they are ruled out in other languages. Focusing on the West Germanic languages, this paper proposes that cross-linguistic variation with respect to 'XP-subject' orders can be related to other grammatical properties which vary among the different languages. Based on proposals made within the Minimalist framework, it will be argued that the presence or absence of the word order 'XP-subject' in the West Germanic languages follows from independent properties such as subject-verb agreement morphology and the licensing of non-overt expletives.
This paper evaluates syntactic models of Jespersen’s Cycle (Jespersen, 1917). Two types of model are examined: Neg-criterion based approaches, and morphosyntactic feature-based approaches. These two types of analysis characterise the parameters involved in Jespersen’s Cycle in different ways. Different morphosyntactic options are in competition within the two syntactic models. So the two analyses make different predictions concerning the patterns of variation and change we ought to find in historical data. Detailed quantitative study of diachronic data from Middle English tests these predictions, and provides an empirical basis to evaluate different structural analyses. The Middle English data provide evidence that two forms of ne should be distinguished within Jespersen’s Cycle. I argue that a morphosyntactic feature-based analysis makes the required distinction, and propose an account of Jespersen’s Cycle based on morphosyntactic features.
Since the seminal work by Cinque [Paths Towards Universal Grammar, Georgetown University Press, Washington, DC, 85], it has been widely assumed that nouns in the Romance languages, as opposed to nouns in English, raise to an intermediate projection between DP and NP thus deriving the word order difference between the English construction and the Spanish equivalent . In this paper, I compare two Balkan Romance languages: Romanian and Arvantovlaxika, a dialect of Aromanian spoken in Thessaly, Greece. Arvantovlaxika, probably because of its contact with Greek, seems to have lost its ability to move the noun. The purpose of this paper is to study the consequences of such a loss with regards to modification by different types of adjectives and to the different realizations of the definite article in both languages. Because of the syntactic similarity that exists between Arvantovlaxika and Romanian, these two languages offer fertile ground for the study of microvariation. Different types of adjectives will be considered: descriptive adjectives, cardinal adjectives, demonstratives, ordinal adjectives and, finally, superlative adjectives. Following Giusti [Functional Structure in DP and IP, Oxford University Press, New York, 54] and the minimalist framework of Chomsky [Step by Step: Essays on Minimalist Syntax in Honor of Howard Lasnik, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 89; Ken Hale: A Life in Language, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1], it will be argued that the realization of the enclitic definite article both in Arvantovlaxika and in Romanian as well as the realization of in Romanian are last resort operations, necessary to carry out the checking of a φ-features and an EPP feature on D. Some further consequences regarding the generation of ordinal adjectives and the hierarchy of adjectives proposed by Cinque [Paths Towards Universal Grammar, Georgetown University Press, Washington, DC, 85] and Brugè [Categorie Funzionali del Nome Nelle Lingue Romanze, Cisalpino, Milano] will be explored.
La tesis se ubica entre los estudios teóricos del campo lingüístico generativo siguiendo las pautas proporcionadas por sucesivos trabajos de Chomsky cuya misión ha sido delinear un programa de perspectiva minimalista en la concepción de la Facultad del Lenguaje. Procuramos mostrar, en primer lugar, que los procesos tratados se someten plenamente al Principio de Economía, por lo que se da un paso firme en la reducción de la complejidad computacional. En segundo lugar, dados los mecanismos de la teoría, fundamentalmente los que se aplican en la Derivación por Fase (Chomsky, 1999), se quiere consolidar la definición de estos mecanismos del Sistema Computacional construyendo un aparato único y simple. Y, en tercer lugar, tratamos de hacer una aportación, aunque sólo sea parcial, en relación con un problema candente, como es el diseño de los instrumentos utilizados en la construcción de oraciones: la necesidad de una descripción completa de la arquitectura interna de rasgos de los elementos que intervienen en una derivación, principalmente de aquellos que son los responsables de la buena formación de las oraciones: los elementos funcionales. El centro de nuestro interés es definir la forma concreta de satisfacer las necesidades de cotejo, con especial interés en los llamados centrales.Llegamos a la conclusión de que, en ciertos casos, un elemento funcional delegado (proxy) puede prestarse también para la función de alojar operadores, dependiendo de cada lengua. Para la lexicalización de un sintagma delegado es necesario que se cumplan dos condiciones simultáneas. Por un lado, la Condición Necesaria, que exige la presencia de un operador activo en el núcleo y, por otro, la Condición Satisfactoria, que requiere el movimiento explícito del verbo para su adjunción al núcleo de la proyección delegada.
This article argues in favor of the hypothesis that computational complexity determines order of acquisition of functional categories by normal children and patterns of impairment vs. relative preservation of these categories in children with Specific Language Impairment. Complexity is defined in terms of the properties of functional categories of the language the (ab)normal child is acquiring. The results of a study on present/past tense production and comprehension, carried out with children with and without Specific Language Impairment confirm the predictions of the computational complexity hypothesis. It is shown that it is easier to compute kernel functional categories than those that introduce further semantic modifications in the sentence.
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