What’s in a phase label: Toward a formal theory of syntax features at the syntax-semantics interface
Guardado en:
| Publicado en: | LingBuzz (Jan 2018), p. n/a |
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| Autor principal: | |
| Publicado: |
Universitetet i Tromsoe
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| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | Citation/Abstract Full text outside of ProQuest |
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| Resumen: | With the rise of the Minimalist Program (Chomsky, 1995, and following work), the focus of syntactic investigation has shifted toward features and their bundles. Yet, there are still many unanswered questions about feature representations and their bundling throughout the derivation. At the very core of our theorizing, we assume that a larger structure is represented by a label of its maximal projection or a phase (e.g., Chomsky 2013, 2015) but we do not have a good theory of which features form a label and what happens if there is more than one feature of the same type present in the search domain of a label. This paper directly addresses the question of labeling by investigating narrow-syntax features at the syntax-semantics interface. While substantial attention has been paid to features at the syntax-morphology interface, especially within the Distributed Morphology framework (e.g., Halle and Marantz 1993; Embick and Noyer 2007), we know very little about what happens to syntactic features at the syntax-semantics interface. This paper entertains the idea that narrow-syntax features are computed by the syntaxsemantics interface in a manner parallel to the computations of overt syntax features at the syntaxmorphology interface. Specifically, I argue that the syntax-semantics interface forms new feature bundles during spell-out. These interface bundles become part of the label of the spelled-out phase; their primary purpose is to make narrow-syntax features legible to the external interpretive module. Even though the mapping of narrow syntax features onto interface feature bundles is direct, the new bundles are a new type of object, and the mapping operations are parallel to those assumed in the Distributed Morphology framework for morphologized structures. The proposal is firmly rooted in the Y-model. The guiding idea is that only features present in narrow syntax can contribute to the formation of these interface bundles. Thus only syntax builds structures. The role of interfaces is to interpret these structures and make them legible for the purposes of externalization. Importantly, at no point during the interface bundle formation, the grammar can use compositional-semantics input. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that the mapping of narrowsyntax features onto denotations is isomorphic. Thus more than one narrow-syntax feature can form an interface-bundle with an atomic semantic interpretation. The empirical core of the paper concerns syntactic properties of associative constructions in Czech. As we will see, these constructions exhibit unusual correlations among four grammatical properties that do not form an obvious class, namely, variable agreement in the domain that otherwise does not allow a variable agreement, an obviation of biding Condition A in an environment that otherwise displays strict Condition A properties, blocked wh-movement from a domain that otherwise allow wh-extraction, and Person-Case Constraint (PCC) violation in a domain that otherwise does not display sensitivity to PCC. I argue that these unexpected correlations arise via a structural relationship with the hypothesized interface-bundle formation in the label of a phase head. The proposal not only provides a principled explanation of unexpected correlations discussed in the paper, but it also restricts when and where in the derivation such correlations can arise. Specifically, I argue that before spell-out, the label of the phase contains only features projected from narrow syntax. As part of spell-out of a phase, the phase is labeled by the conceptualintentional (CI) interface and the complement of the phase-head is sent to the the sensorymotor (SM) interface (Chomsky, 2013, 2015). The formation of new feature bundles arises during the labeling by CI. Crucially, the edge of the phase including the label, remains accessible to narrow syntax operations of the next phase. Thus, any syntactic operation that takes place after the spellout of the complement of the phase head accesses a phase label that contains both features projected within narrow syntax and newly formed interface bundles. Syntactic operations that take place before the phase is labeled by CI can only refer to narrow-syntax features. |
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| Fuente: | Publicly Available Content Database |