V, ThemelPatients to the lowest specifier of V', and Agents to a position outside the minimal VP. Again, thematic information is encoded in terms of configurational properties. Addressing the issue of phrase structure in another domain, Margaret Speas investigates the status of null pronominal objects in Navajo. Following Rizzi (1986), she assumes that null pronouns must meet both a licensing and an identification condition. More specifically, she demonstrates that distributional restrictions on null pronominal objects in Navajo can be explained if it is assumed that null objects obey the...
V, ThemelPatients to the lowest specifier of V', and Agents to a position outside the minimal VP. Again, thematic information is encoded in terms of c...
Directionality and Logical Form provides a detailed treatment of the syntax of focusing particles, such as only and even in a cross-linguistic perspective. The derivation of logical forms is shown to be under the control, not only of the ECP and subjacency, but also of directionality of government and the particular word-order parameter that holds in a given language: head-final languages systematically disallow certain derivations or readings that are available in head-initial languages. The reason is that heads that deviate in their selection properties from...
Directionality and Logical Form provides a detailed treatment of the syntax of focusing particles, such as only and even in...
Noun Phrases and Nominalizations: The Syntax of DPs is a theoretical study of nominal expressions which covers central aspects of their syntax that have not been approached with concurrent tools in recent years. The study examines the functional structure, offers a structural definition of syntactic nominalization, and carefully draws the border line between the lexical nominalizing mechanism and its syntactic counterpart. The empirical base of the study is broad and varied: it explores the rich nominal system of Modern Hebrew with constant comparisons to relevant structures of other...
Noun Phrases and Nominalizations: The Syntax of DPs is a theoretical study of nominal expressions which covers central aspects of their synta...
1. 0. V2 AND NULL SUBJECTS IN THE HIS TORY OF FRENCH The prototypical Romance null subject language has certain well known characteristics: verbal inflection is rich, distinguishing six per sonlnumber forms; subject pronouns are generally emphatic; and, when there is no need to emphasize the subject, the pronoun is not expressed at all. Spanish and Italian, for example, fit this description rather weIl. Modem French, however, provides a striking contrast to these lan guages; it does not allow subjects to be missing and, not unexpectedly, it has a verbal agreement system with few overt endings...
1. 0. V2 AND NULL SUBJECTS IN THE HIS TORY OF FRENCH The prototypical Romance null subject language has certain well known characteristics: verbal inf...
Incomplete Category Fronting is a detailed investigation of the syntax of incomplete category fronting in German, carried out from a cross-linguistic perspective. The study presents a wealth of empirical evidence involving unbound traces created by remnant topicalization, wh-movement, scrambling, left dislocation, and extraposition. Four characteristic properties of remnant movement are identified that pose severe problems for a representational movement theory. It is argued that these properties can be fruitfully addressed on the basis of Chomsky's minimalist program, and that they...
Incomplete Category Fronting is a detailed investigation of the syntax of incomplete category fronting in German, carried out from a cross-li...
Here is a unique work of reference. Not only does it unite studies which explore the syntax and semantics of tense or modality, but it is the first book of its kind to embrace the interaction of tense and modality within a coherent generative model.
Here is a unique work of reference. Not only does it unite studies which explore the syntax and semantics of tense or modality, but it is the first bo...
This volume explores the interpretation of indefinites and the constraints on their distribution by paying particular attention to key issues in the interface between syntax and semantics: the relation between the semantic properties of indefinite determiners and the denotation of indefinite DPs, their scope, and their behaviour in generic and conditional sentences. Examples come from French, other Romance languages and English. Central to the proposed analyses is a distinction between two types of entities, individualized entities and amounts. Weak indefinites are analyzed as existential...
This volume explores the interpretation of indefinites and the constraints on their distribution by paying particular attention to key issues in th...
This comprehensive treatment of several phenomena in Distributed Morphology explores a number of topics of high relevance to current linguistic theory. It examines the structure of the syntactic and postsyntactic components of word formation, and the role of hierarchical, featural, and linear restrictions within the auxiliary systems of several varieties of Basque.
The postsyntactic component is modeled as a highly articulated system that accounts for what is shared and what exhibits variation across Basque dialects. The emphasis is on a principled ordering of postsyntactic...
This comprehensive treatment of several phenomena in Distributed Morphology explores a number of topics of high relevance to current linguistic the...
The present volume presents scholarly study into Old French as it is practiced today, in all of its forms, within a variety of theoretical frameworks, from Optimality Theory to Minimalism to Discourse Analysis. Many of the chapters are corpus-based, reflecting a new trend in the field, as more electronic corpora become available. The chapters contribute to our understanding of both the synchronic state and diachronic evolution, not only of Old French, but of language in general. Its breadth is extensive in that contributors pursue research on a wide variety of topics in Old French focusing on...
The present volume presents scholarly study into Old French as it is practiced today, in all of its forms, within a variety of theoretical frameworks,...
t his book applies recently developed tools in strong and weak bidirectional op- mality theory (ot ) as well as an evolutionary modeling of ot in a bidirectional setting to the empirical domain of negation across a wide range of languages. I have long been intrigued by the patterns of semantic variation we find in natural l- guage, and negation has always been one of the topics I was fascinated by. In the past, I have proposed analyses of language-specific observations about not until in English (de swart 1996), Dutch negative polarity items (n PIs) occurring outside the c-command domain of...
t his book applies recently developed tools in strong and weak bidirectional op- mality theory (ot ) as well as an evolutionary modeling of ot in a bi...
