Comparisons and Contrasts

by Kayne, Richard S.

• ISBN13: 9780199732524
• ISBN10: 0199732523
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-08-19
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Comparisons and Contrasts collects eleven of Richard Kayne's recent articles in theoretical syntax, with an emphasis on comparative syntax, which uses syntactic differences among languages to probe the properties of the human language faculty. Kayne attaches particular importance to uncovering the primitives of syntax/semantics, demonstrating the existence of silent elements that are syntactically and semantically active, and showing their distribution and limitations. He attempts to derive the very existence of the noun-verb distinction-and to account for the sharp differences between nouns and verbs and for the lack of parallelism between them-from the antisymmetric character of syntax. The common theme is an exploration of how wide a range of questions the field of syntax can reasonably attempt to ask and then answer. Comparisons and Contrasts will appeal to scholars and graduate students interested in syntax, semantics, and their effects on other areas of linguistics.

Author Biography

Richard S.Kayne is Silver Professor of Linguistics, New York University

Table of Contents

Some Preliminary Comparative Remarks on French and Italian Definite Articles	p. 3
Interrogatives	p. 3
Superlatives	p. 6
Greek	p. 7
French postnominal superlatives	p. 9
French superlatives vs. Italian superlatives	p. 16
French vs. Italian bare arguments	p. 17
Back to lequel and quale	p. 23
A digression to English possessors	p. 24
Conclusion	p. 27
Several, Few, and Many	p. 29
Introduction	p. 29
Few and many	p. 29
UG and the syntax/semantics mapping	p. 31
every and a and NUMBER	p. 33
A small(little)/large(big) number	p. 38
Several vs. many and few	p. 40
Several and numerals	p. 42
More on every	p. 43
Several vs. numerals (and a proposal for ordinals)	p. 46
Possible analyses of several	p. 47
A more likely analysis for several	p. 50
Toward spelling out the analysis	p. 53
Conclusion	p. 56
A Note on the Syntax of Numerical Bases	p. 57
Introduction (English)	p. 57
French	p. 59
English and French	p. 61
Similarities between approximatives and multiplicative numerals	p. 62
Romanian	p. 64
UG and numerical bases	p. 66
Prepositions	p. 67
More on NSFX	p. 67
Constituent structure	p. 69
Why is NSFX needed?	p. 71
Conclusion	p. 72
On Parameters and on Principles of Pronunciation	p. 73
On parameters	p. 73
Intralanguage parametric variation	p. 74
Back to lexical vs. functional	p. 76
More on enough	p. 77
On principles of pronunciation	p. 78
Further types of non-pronunciation	p. 80
Back again to enough	p. 81
Conclusion	p. 81
A Short Note on where vs. place	p. 82
Introduction	p. 82
where vs. place	p. 84
R-pronouns and licensing	p. 88
place vs. place	p. 92
Expletives, Datives, and the Tension between Morphology and Syntax	p. 95
Introduction	p. 95
North Italian ghe	p. 96
There and ghe as deictics	p. 97
Silent DATCL	p. 100
Expletive there and expletive ghe as deictics	p. 102
Deictics, demonstratives, and indefinites	p. 107
The definiteness effect	p. 108
Agreement	p. 110
Why is there the expletive?	p. 110
Expletive ghe and ci in possessive sentences	p. 114
Comparative syntax of possessives and existentials	p. 117
Other languages and no languages	p. 122
Existentials and causers	p. 124
Limitations on deictic there as expletive	p. 126
Datives	p. 127
Conclusion	p. 129
Some Silent First-Person Plurals	p. 130
Introduction	p. 130
Silent nous	p. 132
NOUS/nous and agreement	p. 134
Italian si	p. 136
The privileged status of first-person plural	p. 137
Reflexive si/se and first-person plural	p. 138
The extra object clitic in reflexive sentences	p. 139
Silent se/si	p. 140
The role of se/si/sa	p. 140
Third-person reflexive sentences	p. 141
Italian ci and the question of syncretism	p. 142
Conclusion	p. 145
A Note on Auxiliary Alternations and Silent Causation	p. 146
Introduction	p. 146
The class of verbs in question	p. 147
Beyond auxiliary selection	p. 148
A proposal	p. 149
More on past participle agreement	p. 151
Impersonals, leading to a further revised proposal	p. 151
The beginning of an analysis	p. 153
An aside on past participles	p. 156
Past participles and v.	p. 157
Back to auxiliaries and past participle agreement	p. 158
Other Romance languages	p. 160
Past participle agreement in full causatives (and anticausatives)	p. 161
Other unaccusatives	p. 162
Conclusion	p. 164
Antisymmetry and the Lexicon	p. 165
Recursion	p. 165
Antisymmetry	p. 166
Antisymmetry and antioptionality	p. 167
Antisymmetry of projection	p. 168
The closed class vs. open class distinction	p. 169
Nouns and verbs	p. 170
Other categories	p. 172
Lexical specialization	p. 173
Nouns do not project	p. 174
A consequence of nouns not projecting: the fact that...	p. 175
Derived nominals	p. 179
Restrictions on derived nominals	p. 181
More on the absence of complements to nouns	p. 184
More on possessives	p. 186
Sentential complements	p. 188
Conclusion	p. 189
Why Isn't This a Complementizer?	p. 190
Introduction	p. 190
Diachrony	p. 190
Sentential that and relative that	p. 192
Relative that is less different from other relative pronouns that it seems: Possessors	p. 193
The preposition restriction	p. 195
Sensitivity of that to +/-human	p. 196
The impossibility of agreement with English relative that	p. 199
The impossibility of agreement with Romance relative che/que	p. 203
More on non-agreement with that	p. 207
Non-agreement with French demonstrative ce	p. 209
The absence of relative this	p. 211
The fact that/*this...	p. 212
Factives	p. 216
Non-factives	p. 216
Relatives with resumptive pronouns	p. 219
Which vs. that	p. 220
Determiners that cannot serve as relative pronouns	p. 221
Doubly-filled comps	p. 223
Conclusion	p. 226
Toward an Analysis of French Hyper-Complex Inversion (with Jean-Yves Pollock)	p. 228
HCI	p. 228
HCI as clitic doubling	p. 229
Person and-l-	p. 232
Voilà	p. 233
An SCL restriction	p. 234
The-t-morpheme	p. 235
Remnant movement and -t-	p. 237
Missing persons	p. 238
The demonstrative SCL ce	p. 241
A link to gerunds and to 'stylistic inversion'	p. 242
Conclusion	p. 243
Bibliography	p. 245
Index	p. 261
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