From Discourse to Logic

The article proposes a new theory of successive-cyclic movement that reconciles the early and the current minimalist approaches to it. As in the early approach, there is no feature checking in intermediate positions of successive-cyclic movement. However, as in the current approach and unlike in early minimalism, successive-cyclic movement starts before the final target of movement enters the structure, and Form Chain is eliminated. The locality of Move and the locality of Agree are shown to be radically different, Agree being free from several mechanisms that constrain Move, namely, phases and the Activation Condition. However, there is no need to take phases to define locality domains of syntax or to posit the Activation Condition as an independent principle. They still hold empirically for Move as theorems. The Generalized EPP (the “I need a Spec” property of attracting heads) and the Inverse Case Filter are also dispensable. The traditional Case Filter, stated as a checking requirement, is the sole dr...

On the Locality and Motivation of Move and Agree: An Even More Minimal Theory

On language and consciousness

A tenet of any version of phrase structure theory is that a lexical item can transmit its label when merged with another category. We assume that if it is internally merged, a lexical item can turn a clause into a nominal phrase. If the relabeling lexical item is a wh-word, a free relative results; if it is an N, a full relative results; if it is a non-wh D, a pseudorelative results. It follows that the head of a relative construction cannot be more complex than a lexical item. We show massive evidence that when it is otherwise (e.g., the book about Obama that you bought), the modifier is late-merged after the noun has moved and relabeled the structure.

/pdf/relabeling-heads-a-unified-account-for-relativization-143vk8jprg.pdf

Relabeling Heads: A Unified Account for Relativization Structures

The article demonstrates that the rescue-by-PF-deletion account of the amelioration effect of island violations under ellipsis, originally noted by Ross (1969), can be extended to account for the that-trace effect, including the adverb amelioration effect, and the lack of intervention effects with certain null arguments that are otherwise found with their overt counterparts, as well as to deduce the generalizations that traces do not count as interveners for relativized minimality effects and that traces void islandhood. The fact that the rescue-by-PF-deletion analysis makes it possible to unify a number of previously unrelated phenomena should be taken as a strong argument in its favor. The current extension of the rescue-by-PF-deletion approach, on which the rescue can arise not only through the deletion process involved in ellipsis but also through regular copy deletion, also accounts for the different behavior of the Superiority Condition and the Wh-Island Condition with respect to the amelioration ef...

Rescue by PF Deletion, Traces as (Non)interveners, and the That-Trace Effect

http://ny01.nytud.hu/~suranyi/suranyi_NCfocus_LINGUA3.pdf

Quantification and focus in Negative Concord

This paper investigates the basic syntax of verbal particles in Hungarian, proposing a two-stage syntactic derivation involving phrasal movement. The verbal particle first comes to occupy a verb phrase medial position, a stage that is followed by phrasal movement to a verb phrase external landing site. Here—in neutral clauses—the verbal particle immediately precedes the verb, which is also shown to leave the vP at surface structure. The verb phrase medial position of the verbal particle is identified as the specifier of a PredP flanked between vP and VP, while the verb phrase external landing site is analyzed as the specifier of TP. The adjacency of the particle and the verb is argued to be reducible to the specifier-head configuration they appear in, rather than to syntactic incorporation or to a PF-merger operation.

/pdf/verbal-particles-inside-and-outside-v-p-56z4bjgc7z.pdf

Verbal particles inside and outside v P

Scrambling in Hungarian

This paper offers a purely interface-based account of the syntax of identificational focus in Hungarian, which eliminates all syntax-internal artifacts from the grammar of ‘focus movement.’ The analysis is based on two inescapable interface properties of id-focus: its prosodic prominence, and its interpretation as an identificational predicate. The overt or covert realization of any id-focus movement and the actual landing sites it may target are determined by the interaction of independent factors: (1) general properties of the grammar (economy, Stress–Focus Correspondence, and the general theory of syntactic movement), and (2) parametric properties of Hungarian that are independent of the grammar of focus, including syntactic and prosodic features (notably, the “EPP” property of T, and the left-headedness of intonational phrases).

Balázs Surányi

Papers

Quantification and focus in Negative Concord

Verbal particles inside and outside v P

Scrambling in Hungarian

An interface account of identificational focus movement

The Left Periphery and Cyclic Spellout: The Case of Hungarian