This compositional theory of verbal argument structures explores how 'noncore' arguments (i.e. arguments that are not introduced by verbal roots themselves) are introduced into argument structure, and examines cross-linguistic variation in introducing arguments.OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.
"This book provides a semantic and syntactic analysis of nominal expressions containing complex cardinals (e.g., two hundred and thirty-five books), and shows that this analysis accounts for the internal composition of cardinal-containing expressions cross-linguistically, as well as a range of related phenomena. While there is much prior linguistic literature on numerals, this literature has no…
An examination of the evidence for and the theoretical implications of a universal word order constraint, with data from a wide range of languages. This book presents evidence for a universal word order constraint, the Final-over-Final Condition (FOFC), and discusses the theoretical implications of this phenomenon. FOFC is a syntactic condition that disallows structures where a head-initial phr…
This monograph shows that the typically obligatory nature of predicate-argument agreement in phi-features (phi-agreement) cannot be captured through 'derivational time-bombs' - elements of the initial representation that cannot be part of a well-formed, end-of-the-derivation structure, and which are eliminated by the application of phi-agreement itself. This includes, but is not limited to, the…
Ippolito proposes a compositional semantics for subjunctive (or would) conditionals in English that accounts for their felicity conditions and the constraints on the satisfaction of their presuppositions by capitalizing on the occurrence of past tense morphology in both antecedent and consequent clauses.OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.
This book can be read on two levels: as a novel empirical study of wh- interrogatives and relative constructions in a variety of languages and as a theoretical investigation of chain formation in grammar.The book is divided into two parts. Part I investigates the distribution and interpretation of multiple wh- interrogative constructions, focusing on the workings of Superiority. Part II investi…
An investigation of the logical flexibility principles needed for a formal semantic account of coordination, plurality, and scope in natural language.Since the early work of Montague, Boolean semantics and its subfield of generalized quantifier theory have become the model-theoretic foundation for the study of meaning in natural languages. This book uses this framework to develop a new semantic…
This book offers a significant reconceptualization of the person system in natural language. The authors, leading scholars in syntax and its interfaces, propose that person features do not have inherent content but are used to navigate a "person space" at the heart of every pronominal expression. They map the journey of person features in grammar, from semantics through syntax to the system of …
"This book revives and reinterprets a persistent intuition running through much of the classical work: that the unitary appearance of Obligatory Control into complements conceals an underlying duality of structure and mechanism. Idan Landau argues that control complements divide into two types: In attitude contexts, control is established by logophoric anchoring, while non-attitude contexts it …
A comprehensive theory of selective opacity effects--configurations in which syntactic domains are opaque to some processes but transparent to others--within a Minimalist framework. In this book, Stefan Keine investigates in detail "selective opacity"-- configurations in which syntactic domains are opaque to some processes but transparent to others--and develops a comprehensive theory of these …