The minimalist syntax of defective domains : gerunds and infinitives
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Bibliographic Information
The minimalist syntax of defective domains : gerunds and infinitives
（Linguistik aktuell, v. 98）
John Benjamins Pub. Co., c2006
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [168]-179) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
This book unifies the analysis of certain non-finite domains, focusing on subject licensing, agreement, and Case and control. It proposes a minimalist analysis of English gerunds which allows only a null subject PRO (TP-defective gerunds), a lexical subject (gerunds as complements of perception verbs), or both types of subjects (clausal gerunds). It then analyzes Portuguese infinitives, showing that the morphosyntactic properties of non-inflected and inflected infinitives correlate with distinct treatments of obligatory and non-obligatory control. It explores these and other phenomena to show that tense and event binding do not correlate with the contrast between control and raising/exceptional case marking (ECM), against null Case theories of control. A Probe-Goal approach to Case and agreement is adopted in combination with a movement analysis of control. The book then investigates diachronic morphosyntactic phenomena involving infinitives, verb movement and cliticization in Portuguese, exploring a cue-based theory of syntactic change grounded in language acquisition.
Table of Contents
- 1. Acknowledgments
- 2. Abbreviations and symbols
- 3. Introduction
- 4. 1. The minimalist syntax of clausal gerunds
- 5. 2. Clausal versus TP-defective gerunds: Control without tense
- 6. 3. Agreement, case, control and movement in infinitives
- 7. 4. Syntactic change: The development of inflected and non-inflected infinitives
- 8. Conclusion
- 9. References
- 10. Index
by "Nielsen BookData"