Specifiers Minimalist Approaches

by Adger, David; Pintzuk, Susan; Plunkett, Bernadette; Tsoulas, George

• ISBN13: 9780198238140
• ISBN10: 0198238142
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-05-27
• Publisher: Clarendon Press

Summary

By the late 1980s, Government and Binding Theory - which was central to almost all research in generative grammar - threatened to become as large and as intricate as the language it described. To counter this, Noam Chomsky introduced a minimalist program with the aim of making explanations oflanguage as simple and general as possible. It has since gained widespread (if not quite universal) acceptance, to the extent that the most recent first-year textbook in syntax (Radford, CUP, 1997) is based on it. One of the areas subjected to this minimalist scrutiny has been phrase structure, the fundamental basis of grammar. This book focuses on the most controversial area of phrase structure, the notion of specifier - a notion encompassing the traditional categories of subjects, possessors, determiners,auxiliaries, and adjuncts. It examines what place the notion has in the new theory and how the projection of specifiers is to be eliminated or extended. The contributors (prominent American, British, and European scholars) draw on empirical, theoretical research in cross-linguistic phenomena and first and second language acquisition. The substantial introductory chapter provides an up-to-date account of minimalist syntactic theory and a criticalevaluation of the notion of specifier within it.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	ix
List of Tables	x
List of Contributors	xi
1. Specifiers in Generative Grammar
David Adger, Bernadette Plunkett, George Tsoulas, and Susan Pintzuk
PART I. THE NATURE OF SPECIFIERS
2. Specifiers as Secondary Heads	21	(25)
Ronnie Cann
3. Without Specifiers	46	(23)
Annabel Cormack
4. Filling and Licensing Multiple Specifiers	69	(24)
Edit Doron and Caroline Heycock
PART II. SPECIFIERS, MOVEMENT, AND FEATURE CHECKING
5. EPP without Spec, IP	93	(17)
Artemis Alexiadou and Elena Anagnostopoulou
6. Spec-Head Agreement and Overt Case in Arabic	110	(16)
Elabbas Benmamoun
7. Adjectival Modifiers and the Specifier-Adjunct Distinction	126	(20)
Nigel Duffield
8. The Additional-wh Effect and Multiple Wh-Fronting	146	(17)
Günther Grewendorf
9. Parallels between Nominal and Verbal Projections	163	(25)
Teun Hoekstra
10. Dependencies, Phrase Structure, and Extractions	188	(18)
M. Rita Manzini
11. Movement to Specifiers	206	(25)
Lynn Nichols
12. Wh-Movement, Licensing, and the Locality of Feature Checking	231	(20)
Andrew Simpson
PART III. SPECIFIERS AND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
13. The Role of the Specifier and Finiteness in Early Grammar	251	(20)
Teun Hoekstra, Nina Hyams, and Misha Becker
14. The Acquisition of Verb Movement and Spec-Head Relationships in Child Swedish	271	(28)
Lynn Santelmann
15. Some Specs on Specs in L2 Acquisition	299	(40)
Bonnie D. Schwartz
Index	339