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T-to-C movement: causes and consequences
, 2001
"... The research of the last four decades suggests strongly that abstract laws of significant generality underlie much of the superficial complexity of human language. Evidence in favor of this conjecture comes from two different types of facts. First, there are cross-linguistic facts. Investigation of ..."
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Cited by 157 (4 self)
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The research of the last four decades suggests strongly that abstract laws of significant generality underlie much of the superficial complexity of human language. Evidence in favor of this conjecture comes from two different types of facts. First, there are cross-linguistic facts. Investigation of unfamiliar and typologically diverse languages is regularly illuminated by what we already know about other
Resource logics and minimalist grammars
- Proceedings ESSLLI’99 workshop (Special issue Language and Computation
, 2002
"... This ESSLLI workshop is devoted to connecting the linguistic use of resource logics and categorial grammar to minimalist grammars and related generative grammars. Minimalist grammars are relatively recent, and although they stem from a long tradition of work in transformational grammar, they are lar ..."
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Cited by 5 (0 self)
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This ESSLLI workshop is devoted to connecting the linguistic use of resource logics and categorial grammar to minimalist grammars and related generative grammars. Minimalist grammars are relatively recent, and although they stem from a long tradition of work in transformational grammar, they are largely informal apart from a few research papers. The study of resource logics, on the other hand, is formal and stems naturally from a long logical tradition. So although there appear to be promising connections between these traditions, there is at this point a rather thin intersection between them. The papers in this workshop are consequently rather diverse, some addressing general similarities between the two traditions, and others concentrating on a thorough study of a particular point. Nevertheless they succeed in convincing us of the continuing interest of studying and developing the relationship between the minimalist program and resource logics. This introduction reviews some of the basic issues and prior literature. 1 The interest of a convergence What would be the interest of a convergence between resource logical investigations of
2012): Argument Licensing and Agreement in Zulu
"... In this thesis, I examine some core grammatical phenomena – case licensing, agreement, the EPP – through the lens of the Bantu language Zulu. Zulu has a number of remarkable and puzzling properties whose analysis affords us new insight on the interaction between these components. Despite a number of ..."
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In this thesis, I examine some core grammatical phenomena – case licensing, agreement, the EPP – through the lens of the Bantu language Zulu. Zulu has a number of remarkable and puzzling properties whose analysis affords us new insight on the interaction between these components. Despite a number of unusual-looking properties in the domain of nom-inal distribution, I propose that Zulu has a both a system of abstract structural case and a system of morphological case. This conclusion is notable because it has long been assumed that Bantu languages lack both of these types of case (e.g. Harford Perez, 1985). Though the type of case system that I propose for Zulu is at its core similar to our current under-standing of case, there are a number of differences between the case system I argue for in Zulu and more familiar case systems. In particular, I demonstrate that the positions in which structural licensing occur in Zulu are not the familiar positions of structural licensing: none of the heads that function as structural licensers in a language like English – To, vo, and
On the Integration of Cumulative Effects into Optimality Theory
- Competition in Syntax, pages 151–173. Mouton de Gruyter
, 2001
"... The goal of this paper is to discuss the question of whether cumulative theories are indispensable, because they are needed in order to cap-ture certain linguistic phenomena, or whether cumulative effects can be expressed equally well in an optimality-theoretic framework. If so, ..."
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Cited by 4 (0 self)
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The goal of this paper is to discuss the question of whether cumulative theories are indispensable, because they are needed in order to cap-ture certain linguistic phenomena, or whether cumulative effects can be expressed equally well in an optimality-theoretic framework. If so,
Non-specific objects in the pseudopassive: The syntax and semantics of english pseudo-incorporated pseudopassives
- Masters thesis, MIT
"... This thesis introduces a special form of pseudopassive that differs from previously discussed forms in that it includes a direct object adjacent to the verb. It is shown that the direct object position in this construction is restricted to NPs that lack D(eterminer)-level projections. As a result, t ..."
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This thesis introduces a special form of pseudopassive that differs from previously discussed forms in that it includes a direct object adjacent to the verb. It is shown that the direct object position in this construction is restricted to NPs that lack D(eterminer)-level projections. As a result, the direct object can only receive a non-specific interpretation, resists certain types of modification, extraction, and scope interactions. Due to its lack of D-level, I argue, the direct object also cannot check the EPP feature on T and therefore cannot raise to subject of the passive sentence. T, then, must probe instead into the PP, agreeing with the PP-object and raising it to its specifier. I posit that the syntactic machinery which allows pseudopassivization is the availability in English of selecting prepositions from the lexicon that are unvalued for tense- as such, these prepositions must depend on the c-commanding verb to value their tense features and in turn assign case to their objects. When the verb itself is unvalued for tense, the PP's nominal object must raise to a higher project to value its tense features (i.e., to be case-licensed); this is the situation in passives, namely in pseudopassives. The solution I argue for draws heavily from the
On partial control and parasitic PC effects
- SKASE Journal of Theoretical Linguistics
, 2008
"... This paper deals with the issue of Partial Control (PC), a phenomenon widely discussed in syntactic literature since (Landau 2000). PC constitutes a case of mismatch in semantic number between the controller (singular) and PRO (plural, including the reference set of the controller). We present a num ..."
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This paper deals with the issue of Partial Control (PC), a phenomenon widely discussed in syntactic literature since (Landau 2000). PC constitutes a case of mismatch in semantic number between the controller (singular) and PRO (plural, including the reference set of the controller). We present a number of current proposals concerning the mechanics of PC set against the background of competition between the movement-based and Agree-based theories of control. In final sections we present new data from English and Polish showing Parasitic Partial Control (PPC), where a PC reading within the adjunct infinitive is conditioned by a PC reading in the complement infinitive clause. We believe that it is less problematic for movement-base control to obtain the PPC effect.
Ranking the LCA
"... The overarching question addressed in this article is how syntactic structures based on constituency (dominance, c-command) are going to be mapped onto linear phonetic strings. The article presents an argument that both prosodic principles and narrow-syntactic principles play a role in the lineari ..."
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The overarching question addressed in this article is how syntactic structures based on constituency (dominance, c-command) are going to be mapped onto linear phonetic strings. The article presents an argument that both prosodic principles and narrow-syntactic principles play a role in the linearization of syntactic structures. I take Richard Kayne’s (1994) Linear Correspondence Axiom as a starting point: (asymmetric) c-command maps onto precedence relations. Two wide-ranging consequences of Kayne’s theory are that specs precede their heads and that a head can only have one spec or adjunct. Although there is abundant evidence to support these predictions, there is nonetheless a well-known class of apparent counterexamples: dislocations in the Romance languages can be rightward and multiple. I take the LCA to be a soft constraint, overruled by a constraint of the WRAP family that seeks to phrase together a verb and its extended projection in one intonational phrase. Apparent rightward movement is the outcome of right linearization forced by WRAP. The possibility of having multiple dislocations is shown to be compatible with the LCA within the assumptions made in this article.
