This paper sketches a grammar of English relative clause constructions (including infinitival and reduced relatives) based on the notions of construction type and type constraints. Generalizations about dependency relations and clausal functions are factored into distinct dimensions contributing constraints to specific construction types in a multiple inheritance type hierarchy. The grammar presented here provides an account of extraction, pied piping and relative clause `stacking' without appeal to transformational operations, transderivational competition, or invisible (`empty') categories of any kind.

Abstract. In this paper, we present a unified feature-based theory of complement, adjunct, and subject extraction, in which there is no need either for valence reducing lexical rules or for phonologically null traces. Our analysis rests on the assumption that the mapping between argument structure and valence is defined by realization constraints which are satisfied by all lexical heads. Arguments can be realized as local dependents, in which case they are selected via the head’s valence features. Alternatively, arguments may be realized in a long-distance dependency construction, in which case they are selected via the head’s SLASH features. Furthermore, we argue that in English post-verbal adjuncts, as well as complements, are syntactic dependents selected by the verb, thus providing a uniform analysis of complement and adjunct extraction. Finally, we provide an alternative treatment of subject extraction which is subsumed by our general analysis and offer a new account of the that-trace effect. 1.

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This paper is concerned with how information structure should be optimally integrated into grammar. It proposes an analysis with the following characteristics: (1) information structure is an integral part of grammar since it interacts in principled ways with both syntax and phonology, (2) the representation of information structure in the grammar is independent of its particular structural realisation in different languages, and (3) there is a direct analogous implementation of the relationship between information structure and prosody in English-type languages and between information structure and the word-order dimension in Catalan-type languages. The framework utilised is HPSG. HPSG's multidimensional constraint-based architecture lends itself very well to expressing the mutual constraints on interpretation, syntax, and phonology that so diversely characterise focus-ground in different languages. The study of information structure, we argue, is essential in addressing fundamental questions regarding grammar architecture. Our point of departure is the assumption, expressed in e.g. Chafe 1976, Prince 1986, that what underlies the focus-ground distinction is a need to `package' the information conveyed by a sentence so that hearers can easily identify which part of the sentence represents an actual contribution to their information state at the time of utterance, and which part represents material that is already subsumed by this information state. In particular, we adopt the proposal in Vallduví 1992, 1994 that these `ways of packaging' can be viewed as updating instructions or, equivalently, as types of transitions between information states. The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 provides a brief overview of information packaging. Section 3 discusses the st...

The grammatical status of Romance pronominal clitics has long been the object of intense debate. Are they syntactically-independent arguments or are they affixal agreement markers? This dissertation addresses this question with respect to Québec Colloquial French (QCF). It treats the morphophonological and morphosyntactic dimensions as two independent dimensions, thus allowing either for affixes to have argument status and prohibiting them from cooccurring with an overt, lexical argument, or for non-affixal elements to behave like agreement markers and not count as syntactic arguments. The analysis reveals that all the clitics of QCF are affixes at the morphological level, since they demonstrate numerous patterns which are too idiosyncratic to be handled by syntactic rules. Only subject clitics, however, function as agreement markers, since they occur in all...

Making linguistic theory is like specifying a programming language...

this paper. We thank Michal Biran, Mali Gil, Aviah Gvion, and Dafna Wenkert-Olenik for their help in discussions and testing, and the participants for their patient participation. Address correspondence to Naama Friedmann, School of Education, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel. E-mail: naamafr@post.tau.ac.il, http://www.tau.ac.il/~naamafr

There can be little doubt that the verb second character of Dutch and other Germanic languages is among the most intriguing phenomena to be explained by the theory of syntax. On a descriptive level, we understand ’verb second ’ to mean that the finite verb is in the second position in all types of main clauses, where we understand ’second ’ to mean ’immediately following the first constituent’. The types of main clauses that display verb second in Dutch are the neutral word order subject initial main clauses, topicalizations (where a constituent other than the subject precedes the finite verb), and questions introduced by a wh-word ((1)-(3), respectively). 1 (1) Ik heb een huis met een tuintje gehuurd I have a house with a garden-DIM rented ’I rented a house with a little garden.’ (2) a. [Een huis met een tuintje] heb ik gehuurd a house with a little garden have I rented b. Gisteren heb ik een huis met een tuintje gehuurd

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 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 properties of control follow from an appropriate Scopal version of Chomsky's (1995) Last Resort and MLC and from Kayne's (1984) Connectedness, phrased as conditions on the attraction operation, or technically ATTRACT. Our approach has considerable advantages in standard cases of A-movement as well, deriving the distribution of reconstruction effects at LF and of blocking effects on phonosyntactic rules at PF.

this paper is twofold. In section 2, I will show that the two constructions exhibit radically dierent properties. In section 3, I will argue that a unied analysis is possible despite these dierences if we assume that shape conservation (Williams (1999)) can be a trigger for movement, in addition to feature checking (Chomsky (1995)). In particular, we will see that whereas primary remnant movement is featuredriven, secondary remnant movement is a repair strategy that is triggered by shape conservation. This latter idea will be implemented in a restrictive model of optimality theory (\local optimization"), for which I will present empirical support.