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This article argues for the presence of an implicit projected argument in Spec,Voice in Spanish impersonal- and passive- se constructions. The main empirical support comes from an available inalienable-possession interpretation of the sole overt DP when it is a body part in both constructions. This interpretation is only possible in the presence of a syntactically present c-commanding possessor. I argue that the implicit projected external argument serves as the inalienable possessor of the body part. Neither the periphrastic passive nor the anticausative- se construction in Spanish allows an inalienable-possession interpretation of the sole overt DP when it is a body part. In these instances, I claim, no implicit argument projects in Spec,Voice. I discuss how the presence of a projected argument in Spec,Voice is responsible for by-phrase restrictions in impersonal- and passive- se constructions and person restrictions in passive- se constructions; the lack of a projected implicit argument in Spec,Voice of both the periphrastic passive and the anticausative- se construction is responsible for the lack of the person restrictions in both, and the lack of by-phrase restrictions in the periphrastic passive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

. 'GSGM' builds no syntactic structures; rather, semantics and morphosyntax are both generative and run in parallel, and so have no need of mediating syntactic structure. In this environment, positing different modes of embedding for NPs and clauses, as in Williams 2003, affords new minimal accounts of movement, scope, agreement, and the bounds on them. Syntax/morphosyntax is instantiated as a single parameterized function ('Combine'). Combine derives both mirroring and nonmirroring structure, as any theory must, but in distinctive 'size-relative' patterns determined by its parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports a series of formal acceptability-judgment experiments designed to investigate the syntactic properties of a relatively understudied type of wh-dependency: multiple wh-questions in English. By using a factorial definition of island effects made available only by formal experiments, we report an unpredicted pattern of acceptability that suggests the existence of reverse island effects for whether and adjunct islands inside of multiple wh-questions, but not for subject and CNPC islands. We argue that this unpredicted effect can best be analyzed by taking into account the parsing processes that are necessary for real-time comprehension of multiple wh-questions in English. We propose that multiple wh-questions require a backward search for an antecedent that is in many ways similar to the forward search for a gap site that occurs in single wh-questions in English (). We then present additional acceptability-judgment experiments in both English and Japanese to test the predictions of the backward-search analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the main tenets of transformational grammar is that movement processes affect heads and phrases in different ways. In this article, I argue against this claim and propose that heads should be allowed to move in the same way as phrases. Conceptually, this proposal is the logical consequence of a common set of assumptions about syntax in general and movement in particular. Empirically, it finds support in the Spanish predicate cleft construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the relegation of the binding theory to the C-I interface (LF) is theoretically undesirable and empirically unwarranted. Recent minimalist research has sought to eliminate the binding theory from UG by reducing its conditions to narrow-syntactic operations ( Hornstein 2000, 2006 ; Reuland 2001, 2006 ; Kayne 2002 ; Zwart 2002, 2006 ; Hicks 2006 ). This approach remains controversial since the canonical minimalist binding theory ( Chomsky 1993 ; Chomsky & Lasnik 1993 ) views the binding conditions as interpretive rules applying at LF, supported by evidence that condition A interacts with other interpretive phenomena assumed to be determined at LF ( Lebeaux 1998 ; Fox & Nissenbaum 2004 ). While the interaction of anaphor binding and scope relations in particular is not disputed, I show that it is attributable to factors outside the binding theory, namely the requirement that variables (including anaphors) must be c-commanded by their binders at LF. Deprived of its strongest empirical argument, the LF binding theory can then be picked apart. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper is concerned with the internal structure of Germanic what for phrases. A comparative look at what for across Dutch, German, Norwegian, Swedish, and Swiss German leads to a drastic revision of the traditional view on what for. The proposal recognizes an (often silent) functional nominal SORT as a constitutive part of the what for construction. For is analyzed as a prepositional complementizer whose complement contains the (silent) nominal and the trace of what, to which for assigns accusative Case. The projection of for, forP, is argued to sit in a specifier position in the extended projection of the head noun, similar to adjectival modifiers on a Cinquean view. What moves out of forP into the left periphery of the noun phrase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emphatic verb doubling, developed as a diagnostic of T-to-C movement in Classical Hebrew, demonstrates that discontinuous agreement is not a consequence of movement to between hypothetical Person and Number phrases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that clause union/restructuring constructions such as verb clusters in German do not involve head clustering in the form of (lexical or derived) complex head formation. I provide several arguments showing that clause union properties are licensed in the absence of complex head formation and that complex head formation hence cannot be seen as a condition on clause union/restructuring. Complex head approaches are compared to syntactic complementation approaches—in particular, to an approach where the verbs of a restructuring construction project independent VPs that include all the internal arguments associated with the particular verbs. A series of empirical facts are considered (constituency, word order, modification, event structure properties, and nominalizations) that all point to the conclusion that these constructions involve regular VPs rather than complex V-V heads. Although it is not excluded that complex head approaches could be adjusted to accommodate these facts, the main advantage of the VP-complementation approach is that the sum of the properties discussed follows without additional assumptions from the structure suggested and that this approach also correctly predicts which constructions are excluded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the syntax of clausal gerunds—a class of gerunds that can have either a null subject or an overt DP Case-marked with accusative or nominative. First, it addresses the difficulty of accounting for gerunds that allow both null and overt subjects in principles and parameters/minimalist approaches to Case and control. Second, the paper explores the existence of a common structure for the two clausal gerunds, supported by the absence of empirical distinctions in their feature specification, especially regarding tense. Third, the paper introduces new observations about the distribution of clausal gerunds and argues that the complex alternations and restrictions on their distribution results from the interaction between Case and Agreement valuation, the limited possibility of A-movement out of a clausal gerund, and convergence considerations resulting from the existence of distinct numerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the grammatical constructions referred to as raising and control. Raising and control have been central concerns of generative syntax since the 1960s. Peter Rosenbaum's book "The grammar of English predicate complement constructions," proposed the seminal generative account of raising and control constructions.

Historically, control in generative grammar has fallen within the province of syntactic theory. One primary reason for this is that Mainstream Generative Grammar (MGG) has imposed a strong uniformity criterion on analyses as a measure of their explanatory adequacy. One aspect of this uniformity criterion, which we call Interface Uniformity, holds that the syntax-semantics interface is maximally simple, in that meaning maps transparently into syntactic structure, and that it is maximally uniform, so that the same meaning always maps into the same syntactic structure. It follows from Interface Uniformity that a nonfinite VP has a syntactic subject that is assigned its external θ-role. We argue that this view is most sustainable if one does not take into account the full richness and complexity of control phenomena, but treats control strictly in terms of complementation. When a fuller range of phenomena is taken into account, it appears that it is preferable to "turn over control" to the semantics, which is better equipped to capture the facts. We outline how to formulate the syntax-semantics interface so as to get the semantic facts to line up properly with the syntactic facts. This analysis of the interface extends naturally to raising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Control has played an important role in theoretical debates within the Minimalist Program. This is so because control implicates notions such as module, θ-role, the Last Resort nature of syntactic operations, movement, binding, chains, Case, complementation, and more. Hornstein (1999) has controversially claimed that control is a subspecies of movement. That is, control is just like familiar instances of raising, except that it involves movement into an additional θ-position. If correct, the movement analysis has important conceptual and empirical repercussions, some of which are examined here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article extends Howard Lasnik's commentary inSyntactic Structures Revisited(2000) on Chomsky's transformational analyses of the verbal morphology system. It reviews Lasnik's critique of the transformational machinery inSyntactic Structuresand shows how the problems he identifies are resolved under a more minimal theory of transformations that developed circa 1980. Considering the three central topics in the analysis of this system—the order and form of verbal elements, the main verb movement parameter, and the distribution of periphrasticdo—it discusses some problems that arise in Lasnik's hybrid account and proposes a lexicalist alternative that eliminates the rules of affix hopping anddo-support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper defends three interconnected claims: (a) selection is the only licensing procedure available to UG, specifically, checking is an instance of selection; (b) selection obtains in the mutual c-command configuration; and (c) though a head does not mutually c-command its own specifier, it mutually c-commands the specifier of its complement. A head may therefore license the specifier of its complement (as well as its complement) but not its own specifier (it is not local enough). This effectively eliminates the spec-head configuration from the repertoire of syntactic configurations, in favor of a unified notion of locality strictly identifiable with mutual c-command, a symmetric configuration. The discussion shows that a theory that collapses these distinctions remains empirically discriminating. The resulting theory is therefore genuinely reductionist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract. We construct a completely cyclic Minimalist theory of syntactic derivations. A derivation consists of a sequence of cycles. Each cycle starts with the introduction of a new head and merger of the head's selected arguments, followed by satisfaction (via checking) of the head's removable features. The theory includes no acyclic devices such as lexical arrays or comparison of derivations. Satisfaction of features is accompanied by full category movement whenever it is not blocked by morphology or constraints barring multiple specifiers. The Minimal Link Condition is viewed computationally and is naturally incorporated into Satisfy. Our precise notion of checking involves sets of features interacting in the same checking relation, and yields an account of successive cyclic movement, the distribution of expletives, EPP, and quirky case phenomena. The paper can be read as empirical evidence that the core syntactic algorithm is computationally efficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]