Arguing against obligatory feature inheritance: Evidence from French transitive participle agreement

In this article, we accept the view that the relevant type of case/agreement features originate on phase heads, but argue against a strong view of the Percolation Hypothesis on which uninterpretable features obligatorily percolate down from a phase head onto a selected head: on the contrary, we maintain that there are structures in which uninterpretable case/agreement features remain on the phase head throughout the derivation. The main empirical evidence we adduce in support of our claim comes from a novel analysis of French past participle agreement which builds on earlier work by Radford and Vincent (2007) and Vincent (2007). In section 2, we briefly characterise French past participle agreement, and outline the key assumptions which our analysis makes. We show how our analysis handles past participle agreement with a local direct object in section 3, and go on to show how it correctly specifies when (and why) agreement can take place with the subject of an embedded infinitive complement in section 4. In section 5, we present further empirical evidence against the Percolation Hypothesis from a range of independent phenomena, and highlight some theoretical inadequacies of the hypothesis, as well as reconsidering the motivation for feature percolation. Finally, in section 6 we summarize our overall conclusions

On the Acquisition of Universal and Parameterised Goal Accessibility Constraints by Japanese Learners of English

This paper reports on how adult Japanese Learners of English/JLEs acquire universal and parameterised constraints which regulate the accessibility of Goals to Wh-Movement, and which determine whether subordinate or superordinate material is pied-piped or stranded when a wh-word is moved. We present evidence that universal constraints on Goal Accessibility operate in early JLE grammars, and that learners initially transfer setting for parameterised constraints from L1 to L2, concluding that our overall findings are broadly consistent with the Full Transfer Full Access model of L2 acquisition developed in Schwarz and Sprouse (1994, 1996). We show that JLEs are able to reset some parameterised constraints (e.g. the P-Stranding Constraint) but not others (e.g. the Left Branch Condition), and argue that they are only able to re-set learnable parameterised constraints (i.e. those whose setting can be learned solely on the basis of positive evidence from input), not unlearnable parameterised constraints (i.e. those whose settings cannot be learned solely on the basis of positive input)

On past participle agreement in transitive clauses in French

This paper provides a Minimalist analysis of past participle agreement in French in transitive clauses. Our account posits that the head v of vP in such structures carries an (accusativeassigning) structural case feature which may apply (with or without concomitant agreement) to case-mark a clause-mate object, the subject of a defective complement clause, or an intermediate copy of a preposed subject in spec-CP. In structures where a goal is extracted from vP (e.g. via wh-movement) v also carries an edge feature, and may also carry a specificity feature and a set of (number and gender) agreement features. We show how these assumptions account for agreement of a participle with a preposed specific clausemate object or defective-clause subject, and for the absence of agreement with an embedded object, with the complement of an impersonal verb, and with the subject of an embedded (finite or nonfinite) CP complement. We also argue that the absence of agreement marking (in expected contexts) on the participles faitmade and laissélet in infinitive structures is essentially viral in nature. Finally, we claim that obligatory participle agreement with reflexive and reciprocal objects arises because the derivation of reflexives involves A-movement and concomitant agreement

Potential model calculations and predictions for heavy quarkonium

We investigate the spectroscopy and decays of the charmonium and upsilon systems in a potential model consisting of a relativistic kinetic energy term, a linear confining term including its scalar and vector relativistic corrections and the complete perturbative one-loop quantum chromodynamic short distance potential. The masses and wave functions of the various states are obtained using a variational technique, which allows us to compare the results for both perturbative and nonperturbative treatments of the potential. As well as comparing the mass spectra, radiative widths and leptonic widths with the available data, we include a discussion of the errors on the parameters contained in the potential, the effect of mixing on the leptonic widths, the Lorentz nature of the confining potential and the possible $c\bar{c}$ interpretation of recently discovered charmonium-like states.Comment: Physical Review published versio

Concise linkage maps of Neurospora crassa

Concise linkage maps for N. crass

Change in nomenclature of sorbose-resistant mutants

Change in nomenclature of rorbose [sic]-resistant mutant

Post war Japan: study in political geography

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