This monograph explores several complex questions concerning the theories of government and bounding, including, in particular, the possibility of a unified approach to these topics. Starting with the intuitive idea that certain categories in certain configurations are barriers to government and movement, it considers whether the same categories are barriers in the two instances or whether one barrier suffices to block government (a stricter and "more local" relation) while more than one barrier inhibits movement, perhaps in a graded manner.Any proposal concerning the formulation of the...
This monograph explores several complex questions concerning the theories of government and bounding, including, in particular, the possibility of ...
Unaccusativity is an extended investigation into a set of linguistic phenomena that have received much attention over the last fifteen years. Besides providing extensive support for David Perlmutter's hypothesis that unaccusativity is syntactically represented but semantically determined, this monograph contributes significantly to the development of a theory of lexical semantic representation and to the elucidation of the mapping from lexical semantics to syntax.Perlmutter's Unaccusative Hypothesis proposes that there are two classes of intransitive verbs - unergatives and unaccusatives -...
Unaccusativity is an extended investigation into a set of linguistic phenomena that have received much attention over the last fifteen years. Besid...
Argument Structure is a contribution to linguistics at the interface between lexical syntax and lexical semantics. It formulates an original and highly predictive theory of argument structure that accounts for a large number of syntactic phenomena. The main analytical focus is on passives, nominals, psychological predicates, and the theory of external arguments.In the course of Argument Structure, Jane Grimshaw suggests that, contrary to the prevailing view, argument structure is in fact structured; it encodes prominence relations among arguments which reflect both their thematic and their...
Argument Structure is a contribution to linguistics at the interface between lexical syntax and lexical semantics. It formulates an original and hi...
Impossible Persons, Daniel Harbour's comprehensive and groundbreaking formal theory of grammatical person, upends understanding of a universal and ubiquitous grammatical category. Breaking with much past work, Harbour establishes three core theses, one empirical, one theoretical, and one metatheoretical. Together, these redefine the data subsumed under the rubric of "person," simplify the feature inventory that a theory of person must posit, and restructure the metatheory in which feature theory as a whole resides.
At its heart, Impossible Persons poses a simple...
Impossible Persons, Daniel Harbour's comprehensive and groundbreaking formal theory of grammatical person, upends understanding of a univer...
A new theory of the syntax-semantics interface that relies on hierarchical orderings in language, with the English auxiliary system as its empirical ground.
A new theory of the syntax-semantics interface that relies on hierarchical orderings in language, with the English auxiliary system as its empirical g...
