The Informational Component Enric Vallduv Supervisor: Ellen F. Prince Even though the relevance of non-truth-conditional notions like `topic' and `focus' in sentence structure and interpretation has long been recognized, there is little agreement on the exact nature of these notions and their role in a model of linguistic competence. Following the information-packaging approach (Chafe 1976, Prince 1986), this study argues that these notions are primitive elements in the informational component of language. This component, informatics, is responsible for the articulation of sentences qua information, where information is de ned as that part of propositional content which constitutes a contribution of knowledge to the hearer's knowledge-store. Informational primitives combine into four possible distinct information-packaging instructions, which direct hearers to retrieve the information of a sentence and enter it into their knowledge-store in a speci c way. After a discussion of previous approaches to the informational articulation of the sentence, a hierarchical articulation is proposed: sentences are divided into the focus, which is the only information of the sentence, and the ground, which speci es how that information ts in the hearer's knowledge-store. The ground is further divided into the link, which denotes an address in the hearer's knowledge-store under which s/he is instructed to enter the information, and the tail, which provides further directions on how the information must be entered under a given address. Empirical support for this representation of information packaging comes especially from the surface encoding of instructions in Catalan, which is then contrasted with that of English. Using a multistratal syntactic theory, it is then proposed that information packaging is structurally and purely represented at the abstract level of IS, which acts as an interface with informatics. Finally, in order to further argue for informatics as an autonomous linguistic component, some proposals that attempt to include informational notions under logical semantics are reviewed and countered. This study is an e ort to gain insight into one subdomain of pragmatics by integrating it into the larger process of language understanding. This is done by giving otherwise elusive informational notions a speci c role in the component responsible for the entry of information into the hearer's knowledge-store. v

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The Informational Component

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T-to-C Movement: Causes and Consequences

Contributors. Introduction. Part I: Derivation Versus Representation:. 1. Explaining Morphosyntactic Competition: Joan Bresnan (Stanford University). 2. Economy Conditions in Syntax: Chris Collins (Cornell University). 3. Derivation and Representation in Modern Transformational Syntax: Howard Lasnik (University of Connecticut). 4. Relativized Minimality Effects: Luigi Rizzi (Universite de Geneve). Part II: Movement:. 5. Head Movement: Ian Roberts (University of Stuttgart). 6. Object Shift and Scrambling: Hoskuldur Thrainsson (University of Iceland). 7. Wh--in--situ Languages: Akira Watanabe (University of Tokyo). 8. A--Movements: Mark Baltin (New York University). Part III: Argument Structure and Phrase Structure:. 9. Thematic Relations in Syntax: Jeffrey S. Gruber (independent scholar). 10. Predication: John Bowers (Cornell University). 11. Case: Hiroyuki Ura. 12. Phrase Structure: Naoki Fukui (University of California). 13. The Natures of Nonconfigurationality: Mark C. Baker (McGill University). 14. What VP Ellipsis Can Do, and What it Can't, but not Why: Kyle Johnson (University of Massachusetts at Amherst). Part IV: Functional Projections:. 15. Agreement Projections: Adriana Belletti (Universita di Siena). 16. Sentential Negation: Raffaella Zanuttini (Georgetown University). 17. The DP Hypothesis: Identifying Clausal Properties in the Nominal Domain: Judy B. Bernstein (Syracuse University). 18. The Structure of DPs: Some Principles, Parameters and Problems: Giuseppe Longobardi (University of Trieste). Part V: Interface With Interpretation:. 19. The Syntax of Scope: Anna Szabolcsi (New York University). 20. Deconstructing Binding: Eric Reuland and Martin Everaert (both Utrecht Institute of Linguistics). 21. Syntactic Reconstruction Effects: Andrew Barss (University of Arizona). Part VI: External Evaluation of Syntax:. 22. Syntactic Change: Anthony S. Kroch (University of Pennsylvania). 23. Setting Syntactic Parameters: Janet Dean Fodor (City University of New York). Bibliography. Index.

The handbook of contemporary syntactic theory

任何一种描写语法都是以某种描写框架为基础的,不管这种框架如何不够完善,但它总是反映了描写的目标和作者的理论倾向.在《当代英语语法》(A Grammar of Contemporary English,以下简称GCE)中,Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech和Jan Svartvik等四位作者的目标是试图系统地、综合性地描写英语的表层结构,分析结构的语义及其在情境里的用法.通读全书后我们感到,这个目标并不依傍于任何一种语言理论,因为迄今为止每

谈谈A Grammar of Contemporary English对于分句与句子问题的若干处理

Minimalist Syntax Exploring the Structure of English provides a concise, clear and accessible introduction to current work in syntactic theory, drawing on the key concepts of Chomsky's Minimalist Program.

Minimalist Syntax: Exploring the Structure of English

We began with the premise that doubling with DO- and IO-CLs requires that both elements of the chain agree in features. With IOs, doubling is universal because the features of the IO argument are practically irrelevant (section 1.1). However, since DO-CLs are inherently specific, this feature is crucial for DO-doubling to be grammatical. Animacy is the second feature necessary in most contexts. However, as pointed out in section 1.3.1, doubling may operate even in the absence of the latter. The same matching of features required of doubling constructions is required under extraction (a subset of doubling structures), hence, no special mechanisms are needed to reject ill-formed sentences. What causes ungrammaticality in extractions from CL-D DOs is a clash between the specific referential CL and a nonspecific interpreted object argument, a violation of the Matching Principle. Since lexical partitives and unagreement phenomena are productive ways to signal the specificity of the DO, extractions at LF and in the syntax proper can produce well-formed sentences (section 2.2). Moreover, the Matching Principle follows directly from the unique indexing peculiar to chain coindexing and Spec-head agreement. These results have two main consequences: (a) the hypothesis that CLs are agreement morphemes which do not absorb Case becomes viable. This claim is supported by the doubling of inanimates (section 1.3.1) and even of some animates (17) in the absence of a, by facts about Case with IOs (section 1.3.2), and by weak cross-over effects (section 3.1) where CLs-as-agreement serve to identify the relevant empty category. (b) Since extractions of both CL-D IOs (section 2.1) and CL-D DOs (section 2.2) are possible, it follows that CLs are not theta-role absorbers, because the doubled constituent must be in an argument position. The moral is that the absence of extraction does not itself show that the double is in an A' position. Rather one must look deeper to discover whether independent principles in the language can account for lack of extraction in such contexts.
 For extensions of our main hypothesis to other Spanish dialects see Suner (1986).
 Finally, the assumption that datives in a CL-chain are NPs and not PPs (see Appendix) makes possible the generalization that contemporary Spanish CLs — whether direct or indirect — enter only into nominal chains, a generalization confirmed by their parallel behavior with respect to weak crossover and scope (sections 3.1–3.2). This conclusion brings the analysis of Spanish in line with those of French and Rumanian (Steriade 1980/81) where datives have been argued to be NPs, and it opens the door for the possibility that datives in all the Romance languages might be nominal in nature.
 Interestingly, datives are also NPs in Hebrew (Borer and Grodzinsky 1986).

The role of agreement in clitic-doubled constructions

Although verbs in Spanish obligatorily raise through the functional projections of IP, they do not continue to C0. Support is given for this idea based on sluicing, left-dislocated structures, the position of adverbs, and the constituent order in adjunct Wh-questions. The issue then is how to account for the mandatory Wh-V-subject order when the Wh-phrase is argumental. The proposal is that both argumental and adjunct Wh-phrases obey the universal licensing mechanism known as the Wh-Criterion, but that only the former subtype must also comply with a language specific condition: Argumental Agreement Licensing.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/4047796.pdf

V-movement and the licensing of argumental WH-phrases in Spanish

Free relatives and the matching parameter

About indirect questions and semi-questions

L'A. demontre que les items de polarite negative, comme any en anglais, et les elements negatifs en espagnol, partagent le meme type de legitimeurs dans plusieurs contextes. Il explique que les elements negatifs en espagnol sont des items de polarite negative et que cela est tres probablement vrai pour toutes les langues

Margarita Suñer

Papers

The role of agreement in clitic-doubled constructions

V-movement and the licensing of argumental WH-phrases in Spanish

Free relatives and the matching parameter

About indirect questions and semi-questions

Negative elements, island effects and resumptive no