A Feature-Based Syntax Of Functional Categories

by Hegarty, Michael

• ISBN13: 9783110184136
• ISBN10: 3110184133
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-06-30
• Publisher: Mouton De Gruyter

Summary

This book develops a construction of functional categories in human language and applies it to the analysis of a variety of syntactic facts in Modern Germanic and Romance languages, as well as the history of English and Modern English. The construction accounts for previously unnoticed aspects of the development of the functional category system in child language acquisition, and for aspects of the developmental lag in functional categories by children with specific language impairment. The book presents a novel, tightly integrated approach to problems in syntactic theory and psycholinguistics, which will also be of interest to specialists in Germanic and Romance languages and the history of English.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction	1	(13)
1. Aims and approach	1	(3)
2. Elements of Minimalist syntax	4	(4)
3. Feature-based projection of functional categories	8	(6)
Chapter 2: A feature-based derivation of functional heads	14	(33)
1. The syntactic utility of functional heads	14	(11)
2. Derived functional heads	25	(19)
2.1. Derived functional heads in the literature	25	(5)
2.2. Feature matrices and constraints	30	(12)
2.3. Conclusion	42	(2)
Notes	44	(3)
Chapter 3: Germanic verb-second and expletive subjects	47	(55)
1. Patterns of Germanic verb-second	48	(19)
2. Expletive subjects	67	(11)
3. Verb-second and the Top domain in Old English and Middle English	78	(19)
3.1. Early English verb-second	78	(5)
3.2. A feature-based account of Old and Middle English verb-second	83	(8)
3.3. Middle English dialects and language change	91	(1)
3.4. Streamlining accounts of Old English word order below the TOPIC domain	92	(5)
Notes	97	(5)
Chapter 4: Aspects of clitic placement and clitic climbing	102	(62)
1. Head movement accounts of clitic placement	102	(9)
2. Verb and clitic movement	111	(23)
2.1. Mechanics of clitic placement in Italian and Spanish	111	(7)
2.2. Clitic placement in French	118	(5)
2.3. Imperatives	123	(6)
2.4. The orders of multiple object clitics in Modern Greek	129	(5)
3. Problems with clitic climbing in a feature-based syntax	134	(5)
4. A feature-based approach to clitic climbing	139	(16)
4.1. Restructuring	139	(5)
4.2. Mechanics of clitic climbing with feature-derived functional categories	144	(4)
4.3. Some properties of clitic climbing	148	(3)
4.4. Other accounts of clitic climbing	151	(2)
4.5. Clitic climbing out of finite clauses in Salentino	153	(2)
5. Conclusion	155	(2)
Notes	157	(7)
Chapter 5: Tenseless clauses and coordination	164	(33)
1. Accusative subject conjuncts	164	(23)
1.1. Properties of the accusative subject conjunct construction	164	(12)
1.2. The structure of coordination in the ASC construction	176	(8)
1.3. The internal structure of the ASC clause	184	(3)
2. Small clause complements of perception verbs	187	(8)
2.1. The ASC-like structure of "Bare Infinitive" complements	187	(5)
2.2. Higginbotham's (1983) account	192	(3)
Notes	195	(2)
Chapter 6: The acquisition of functional features	197	(16)
1. Introduction	197	(2)
2. Preliminaries	199	(2)
2.1. Feature projection versus functional category adjunction	199	(2)
2.2. The present study	201	(1)
3. Results	201	(8)
3.1. Peter	201	(5)
3.2. Nina	206	(2)
3.3. Naomi	208	(1)
4. Discussion and conclusion	209	(3)
Notes	212	(1)
Chapter 7: The acquisition of adult functional categories	213	(67)
1. Theories and predictions	216	(12)
1.1. Strong continuity accounts	216	(2)
1.2. Radford's maturational theory	218	(1)
1.3. Induction	219	(2)
1.4. Bottom-up structure building accounts	221	(3)
1.5. Feature-based theory of functional categories	224	(2)
1.6. Processing capacity, working memory, and phrase structure complexity	226	(2)
2. Procedures	228	(10)
2.1. Counting functional categories	228	(5)
2.2. Size normalization and nominative subject filtering	233	(2)
2.3. A measure of phrase structure complexity	235	(2)
2.4 Reliability	237	(1)
3. Results	238	(13)
3.1. Peter	238	(5)
3.2. Nina	243	(3)
3.3. Naomi	246	(3)
3.4. Summary	249	(2)
4. Discussion of results	251	(9)
4.1. The development of the adult functional category system	251	(4)
4.2. Non-adult feature matrices	255	(5)
5. Structure building approaches to the acquisition of functional categories	260	(5)
5.1. Guilfoyle and Noonan	261	(2)
5.2. Vainikka	263	(1)
5.3. Summary	264	(1)
6. A new picture of maturation	265	(4)
6.1. On the maturation of representational resources	265	(2)
6.2. Minimal functional projection and the maturation of minimal functional structure	267	(2)
7. Results of studies of functional category acquisition in other languages	269	(8)
7.1. The growth of functional categories	269	(5)
7.2. Feature ordering and feature co-occurrence restrictions	274	(3)
Notes	277	(3)
Chapter 8: The representation of functional categories as a factor in Specific Language Impairment	280	(32)
1. Theories and predictions	282	(7)
1.1. Deficits in agreement	283	(1)
1.2. Extended optional infinitives	284	(1)
1.3. Deficits in implicit rules	285	(1)
1.4. Impoverished inventories of functional elements	286	(1)
1.5. Feature-based theory	287	(2)
2. Method	289	(3)
3. Results	292	(11)
3.1. Results for children with SLI	292	(9)
3.2. Comparison with language-matched ND children	301	(2)
4. Discussion	303	(7)
5. Conclusion	310	(1)
Notes	311	(1)
Chapter 9: Conclusion	312	(3)
Appendix	315	(6)
References	321	(20)
Index of names	341	(3)
Index of subjects	344