Head Movement and the Minimalist Program

Some Theoretical Consequences of Case-marking in Japanese

Andrew Radford has acquired an unrivalled reputation over the past thirty years for writing syntax textbooks in which difficult concepts are clearly explained without the excessive use of technical jargon. Analysing English Sentences continues in this tradition, offering a well-structured introduction to English syntax and contemporary syntactic theory which is supported throughout with learning aids such as summaries, lists of key hypotheses and principles, extensive references, handy hints and exercises. Instructors will also benefit from the book's free online resources, which include PowerPoint slides of chapter key points and analyses of exercise material, as well as an answer key for all the in-book exercises. This second edition has been thoroughly revised and updated throughout, including additional exercises and an entirely new chapter on exclamative and relative clauses. Assuming no prior knowledge of grammar, this is an approachable introduction to the subject for undergraduate and graduate students.

Analysing English Sentences

Starting from the observation that the constraints on VP-ellipsis (VPE) closely match those on VP-topicalization (VPT), Johnson (2001) proposes a movement account for VPE: in order for a VP to be deleted, it must first undergo topicalization. We show that although this proposal is attractive, making VPE dependent on VPT is problematic because VPE and VPT are not distributionally equivalent. While VPT targets the left periphery and consequently is subject to constraints on movement, VPE is not so restricted. We outline some alternatives for capturing the observed parallelism in the licensing of VPT and VPE.

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VP-Ellipsis Is Not Licensed by VP-Topicalization

One of the central issues in the current Minimalist Program is the exact definition of phases. This article argues for a specific interpretation of phases, based on an account of a scope puzzle in the Nominative/Accusative conversion in Japanese. I show that the puzzle is best accounted for by postulating QR, which is bound by domains of Case-valuation. Based on an observation that scope of QR is phase-bound, I conclude that phases are determined via Case-valuation. This suggests that phases are not determined intrinsically, but contextually. The analysis has an implication for the landing site of short scrambling.

Case, Phases, and Nominative/Accusative Conversion in Japanese

This article investigates spoken productions of complex questions with long-distance wh-movement in the L2 English of speakers whose first language is (Canadian) French or Bulgarian. Long-distance wh-movement is of interest as it can be argued that it poses difficulty in acquisition due to its syntactic complexity and related high processing load. Adopting the derivational complexity hypothesis, which has so far been applied to long-distance (LD) wh-movement in L1 acquisition and child second language acquisition, I argue that adult L2 learners also show evidence that questions with LD wh-movement are often replaced by alternative utterances with lower derivational complexity. I propose that such utterances, which are sometimes of equivalent length and with similar meaning to the targeted LD wh-structures, are avoidance strategies used by the learners as an intermediate acquisition resource. That is, such strategies are used as an escape-hatch from the derivational complexity of LD wh-movement. Overall, t...

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0267658314554939

Head Movement and the Minimalist Program

Citations

Some Theoretical Consequences of Case-marking in Japanese

Analysing English Sentences

VP-Ellipsis Is Not Licensed by VP-Topicalization

Case, Phases, and Nominative/Accusative Conversion in Japanese

Long-Distance Wh-Movement and Long-Distance Wh-Movement Avoidance in L2 English: Evidence from French and Bulgarian Speakers.

Related Papers (5)

The Minimalist Program

Derivation by phase

The antisymmetry of syntax

The Fine Structure of the Left Periphery

Parameters and effects of word order variation