Projection and Inflection: A study of Persian phrase structure (1996)

This thesis is based on the following pivotal assumptions about morphology and syntax: (a) that monosemy is desirable in grammar; (b) only inflectional and not derivational affixes can correspond to syntactic projections; (c) projection is driven by the features borne by lexical and functional categories; and (d) base-generated X0-adjunction is possible in the syntax. Starting with the distinction between inflectional and derivational affixes, the thesis is organized around the inflectional affixes of Persian and the range of constructions they occur in. First, in looking at the Ezafe vowel -e, it is argued that the distribution of this vowel is best accounted for if nouns do not project structure in Persian. This explains why no phrasal material occurs below the DP (Determiner Phrase). It is proposed that modifiers to the head noun occur in an X0-adjoined structure and that the Ezafe vowel is inserted at PF to identify potentially non-projecting heads as belonging to a single constituent. Turning to agreement in Persian, it is shown that the differences in the distribution of the pronominal enclitics and the agreement suffixes follow from morphological properties of these affixes. For example, the fact that the enclitics can only cooccur with null, definite, arguments while the subject agreement affixes can appear with any noun phrase is accounted for by subcategorization and case requirements of the affixes themselves. This analysis also explains the fact that the enclitics must occur outside subject agreement, even though they refer to the direct object. Further, the proposal that the pronominal enclitics identify pro in an argument position is shown to explain binding facts in Persian. Among the other inflectional morphemes considered in the thesis is the marker-ra which is shown to case-mark presupposed DPs in VP-adjoined position. It is argued that these DPs are construed as VP-level topics and a licensing condition is given to account for their occurrence. In general each of the language-particular constructions in Persian are shown to be accounted for by the morphological properties of the lexical items and inflectional morphemes involved

Contrastive focus reduplication in English (the salad-salad paper).

ABSTRACT. This paper presents a phenomenon of colloquial English that we call Contrastive Reduplication (CR), involving the copying of words and sometimes phrases as in It's tuna salad, not SALAD-salad, or Do you LIKE-HIM-like him? Drawing on a corpus of examples gathered from natural speech, written texts, and television scripts, we show that CR restricts the interpretation of the copied element to a 'real' or prototypical reading. Turning to the structural properties of the construction, we show that CR is unusual among reduplication phenomena in that whole idioms can be copied, object pronouns are often copied (as in the second example above), and inflectional morphology need not be copied. Thus the 'scope' of CR cannot be defined in purely phonological terms; rather, a combination of phonological, morphosyntactic, syntactic, and lexical factors is involved. We develop an analysis within the parallel architecture framework of Jackendoff (1997, 2002), whereby CR is treated as a lexical item with syntactic and semantic content and reduplicative phonology. We then sketch an alternative analysis, based on current assumptions within the Minimalist Program, which involves movement into a focus-like position with both the head and the tail of the resulting chain spelled out

Determiners: Universals and Variation

This volume brings together recent work on the formal and interpretational properties of determiners across a variety of typologically and geographically unrelated languages. It seeks to answer the core question of modern linguistic theory: Which properties of languages are universal and which are variable? In recent theorizing, much of language variation is argued to stem from differences in the properties of features associated with functional heads. As such, this volume can be viewed as a case study of one such category: the determiner (D). The contributions all investigate the status of D as a language universal by examining the language-specific syntactic and semantic properties associated with this category. This volume will appeal to researchers and students in syntax and semantics, as well as to those who have more a specific interest in determiners and noun phrases