Verbal Projections

Verbal Projections
Author: Hero Janßen
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2011-04-20
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110929929

This collection of articles examines lexical and grammatical aspects of verbal elements and phrases in the context of recent generative research. General questions concern definitions of grammatical categories, classifications of auxiliaries and particles as functional categories, and problems of economy. Lexical matters range from affixation and category change (participles, gerunds) to semantic representations of specific verb classes (possessive, phrasal and intransitive verbs). The syntactic analyses focus on positional arrangements of aspectual and verbal units (V2, Verb Raising). The data are mainly drawn from English; perspectives on other Germanic languages are included.

A Unified Theory of Verbal and Nominal Projections

A Unified Theory of Verbal and Nominal Projections
Author: Yoshiki Ogawa
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2001-11-29
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0195349423

Syntactically speaking, it has long been known that noun phrases are parallel to clauses in many respects. While most syntactic theories incorporate this principle, nouns have generally been regarded as inferior to verbs in terms of their licensing abilities, and nominal projections have been regarded as less complex than verbal projections in terms of the number of functional categories that they contain. Ogawa, however, argues that clauses and noun phrases are perfectly parallel. This book provides a unified theory of clauses and noun phrases, ultimately helping to simplify numerous thorny issues in the syntax/morphology interface.

Projections and Interface Conditions

Projections and Interface Conditions
Author: Anne-Marie Di Sciullo
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 270
Release: 1997
Genre: Generative grammar
ISBN: 0195104145

This collection of previously unpublished papers explores the implications of Chomsky's "Minimalist" framework for the modularity of grammar, which simplifies the "modular" approach he took in his Government and Binding theory of grammar. According to this theory autonomous grammatical components (phonological, syntactic, morphological, and semantic) coexist and interact like building blocks, using a given set of principles at given levels of representation. Chomsky's assertions have sparked a great deal of theoretical debate, especially with regard to the nature and interaction of each of the building blocks. The contributors to this volume join the debate in a series of case studies that compare modularity in English, French, and Italian, among other languages. In the process they address such issues as the autonomy and applications of modules and their distribution in theory, as well as the role of functional projects in their derivations. Projections and Interface Conditions will interest researchers in any of the above mentioned languages, as well as the large number of linguists working in the Chomskyan tradition.

Foundational Issues in Linguistic Theory

Foundational Issues in Linguistic Theory
Author: Robert Freidin
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 425
Release: 2008-05-09
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0262562332

Essays by leading theoretical linguists—including Noam Chomsky, B. Elan Dresher, Richard Kayne, Howard Lasnik, Morris Halle, Norbert Hornstein, Henk van Riemsdijk, and Edwin Williams—reflect on Jean-Roger Vergnaud's influence in the field and discuss current theoretical issues Jean-Roger Vergnaud's work on the foundational issues in linguistics has proved influential over the past three decades. At MIT in 1974, Vergnaud (now holder of the Andrew W. Mellon Professorship in Humanities at the University of Southern California) made a proposal in his Ph.D. thesis that has since become, in somewhat modified form, the standard analysis for the derivation of relative clauses. Vergnaud later integrated the proposal within a broader theory of movement and abstract case. These topics have remained central to theoretical linguistics. In this volume, essays by leading theoretical linguists attest to the importance of Jean-Roger Vergnaud's contributions to linguistics. The essays first discuss issues in syntax, documenting important breakthroughs in the development of the principles and parameters framework and including a famous letter (unpublished until recently) from Vergnaud to Noam Chomsky and Howard Lasnik commenting on the first draft of their 1977 paper “Filters and Controls.” Vergnaud's writings on phonology (which, the editors write, “take a definite syntactic turn”) have also been influential, and the volume concludes with two contributions to that field. The essays, rewarding from both theoretical and empirical perspectives, not only offer insight into Vergnaud's impact on the field but also describe current work on the issues he introduced into the scholarly debate. Contributors Joseph Aoun, Elabbas Benmamoun, Cedric Boeckx, Noam Chomsky, B. Elan Dresher, Robert Freidin, Morris Halle, Norbert Hornstein, Richard S. Kayne, Samuel Jay Keyser, Howard Lasnik, Yen-hui Audrey Li, M. Rita Manzini, Karine Megerdoomian, David Michaels, Henk van Riemsdijk, Alain Rouveret, Leonardo M. Savoia, Jean-Roger Vergnaud, Edwin Williams

Verbal Complement Clauses

Verbal Complement Clauses
Author: Claudia Felser
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 302
Release: 1999-01-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9789027227461

This monograph examines the syntax of bare infinitival and participial complements of perception verbs in English and other European languages, and investigates the general conditions under which verbal complement clauses are licensed. The introductory chapter is followed by an overview of the major syntactic and semantic characteristics of non-finite complements of perception verbs in English. The third chapter presents an analysis within the framework of Chomsky's (1995) Minimalist Program according to which event-denoting complements are minimally realised as projections of an aspectual head. In the next chapter, it is argued that verbs capable of licensing aspectual complement clauses must be able to function as a special type of control predicate, an assumption which is shown to account for a number of seemingly unrelated properties of the constructions under consideration. The final chapter examines syntactically reduced clausal complements from a cross-linguistic perspective, showing that Southern Romance languages differ from Germanic ones with respect to the availability of 'bare' aspectual complement clauses, a difference that is attributed to morphological properties of verbs in these languages.

Minimalist Essays on Brazilian Portuguese Syntax

Minimalist Essays on Brazilian Portuguese Syntax
Author: Jairo Nunes
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2009
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027255253

This collection of papers discusses some of the major syntactic properties of Brazilian Portuguese from a minimalist perspective. The volume focuses on movement and empty category issues and brings new empirical material on a variety of topics (null subjects and finite control, possessive and existential constructions, factive constructions, relative clauses, null objects and stress shift, preposition duplication, VP topicalization, and ellipsis). The book is of interest to a wide spectrum of linguists working on theoretical and comparative syntax.

The Syntax of Verbal Affixation

The Syntax of Verbal Affixation
Author: Frank Drijkoningen
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2011-04-20
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3111594734

Over the past few decades, the book series Linguistische Arbeiten [Linguistic Studies], comprising over 500 volumes, has made a significant contribution to the development of linguistic theory both in Germany and internationally. The series will continue to deliver new impulses for research and maintain the central insight of linguistics that progress can only be made in acquiring new knowledge about human languages both synchronically and diachronically by closely combining empirical and theoretical analyses. To this end, we invite submission of high-quality linguistic studies from all the central areas of general linguistics and the linguistics of individual languages which address topical questions, discuss new data and advance the development of linguistic theory.

The Verbal Domain

The Verbal Domain
Author: Roberta D'Alessandro
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 343
Release: 2017
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0198767889

This volume features cutting-edge research from leading authorities on the nature and structure of the verbal domain and the complexity of the Verb Phrase (VP). The book is divided into three parts, representing the areas in which contemporary debate on the verbal domain is most active. The first part focuses on the V head, and includes four chapters discussing the setup of verbal roots, their syntax, and their interaction with other functional heads such as Voice and v. Chapters in the second part discuss the need to postulate a Voice head in the structure of a clause, and whether Voice is different from v. Voice was originally intended as the head hosting the external argument in its specifier, as well as transitivity. This section explores its relationship with "syntactic" voice, i.e. the alternation between actives and passives. Part three is dedicated to event structure, inner aspect, and Aktionsart. It tackles issues such as the one-to-one relation between argument structure and event structure, and whether there can be minimal structural units at the basis of the derivation of any sort of XP, including the VP.

Particles and Projections in Irish Syntax

Particles and Projections in Irish Syntax
Author: N. Duffield
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9401101558

Chapter 5: Irish Noun Phrases ... . . 266 5. 0 Introduction 266 5. 0. 1 Irish Nominal Paradigms. ... 269 5. 0. 2 Prepositional Phrases: Two Types of Mutation Context ... ... 273 5. 1 Construct State Nominals and DP Projections. ... 282 5. 1. 1 Rightward Specifiers 286 5. 1. 2 Adjective Placement. ... 288 5. 1. 3 Possessive Particles 305 5. 1. 4 Demonstrative Licensing and Interpretation. ... 311 5. 1. 5 Head-movement and ICM Effects 315 5. 2 Summary 322 Appendix ... ... 323 References 342 Index of Names and Subjects 359 PREFACE This bookis based on my 1991 USCdissertation. Since thattime, there have been two major theoretical developments that bear directly on the analysesoriginallydevelopedin the dissertation. These aretheinceptionof the 'Minimalist Program' of Chomsky (1992, 1993), and the recent 'Antisymmetry' proposals presented in Kayne (1993). Taken in conjunction with the many criticisms and suggestions ofreviewers, these proposals have prompted significant revisions ofthe earlier work:. Every chapter has been substantially revised, the introductory chapter has been replaced, and Chapters 2, 3 and 5 offer completely new analyses of the originalmaterial. The book comprises a set of theoretical studies of aspects of Modern Irish syntax. I have tried to present a coherent and consistent treatmentof the Irishfacts; abookin which the particularsofIrish syntax- which are in many cases quiteeccentric from an Englishperspective- are shown to inform more general theoreticalissues. I also hope to have offered to the non-Celticist a reasonably complete overview of the major syntactic structures ofIrish, with some indication and analysisofthe more importantdialectdifferences.

Optimality Theory

Optimality Theory
Author: Rene Kager
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 468
Release: 1999-06-28
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1139425366

This is an introduction to Optimality Theory, whose central idea is that surface forms of language reflect resolutions of conflicts between competing constraints. A surface form is 'optimal' if it incurs the least serious violations of a set of constraints, taking into account their hierarchical ranking. Languages differ in the ranking of constraints; and any violations must be minimal. The book does not limit its empirical scope to phonological phenomena, but also contains chapters on the learnability of OT grammars; OT's implications for syntax; and other issues such as opacity. It also reviews in detail a selection of the considerable research output which OT has already produced. Exercises accompany chapters 1-7, and there are sections on further reading. Optimality Theory will be welcomed by any linguist with a basic knowledge of derivational Generative Phonology.