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This book is volume III of a trilogy which explores the difference between words however defined and structures however constructed. The trilogy sets out to demonstrate that the explanation of linguistic competence should be shifted from lexical entries to syntactic structure, from the memorizing of listed information to the manipulation of grammatical rules. Its reformulation of how grammar and listed items interact has profound implications for linguistic, philosophical, and psychological theories about the human mind and language. The book departs from both constructional approaches to syntax and the long generative tradition that uses the word as the nucleus around which the syntax grows. It argues that the hierarchical, abstract structures of language are universal, not language specific, and that language variation emerges from the morphological and phonological properties of grammatical functors, or more specifically, inflection. This volume applies this approach to the construction of complex words. The book develops a new model of word formation, arguing that the basic building blocks of language are on the one hand rigid semantic and syntactic functions, and on the other hand, roots, which in themselves are but packets of phonological information, and are devoid of both meaning and grammatical properties of any kind. Within such a model, syntactic category, syntactic selection and argument structure are all mediated through syntactic structures projected from rigid functions, or alternatively, constructed through general combinatorial principles of syntax, such as Chomsky's Merge. The meaning of ‘words’, in turn, does not involve the existence of lexemes, but rather the matching of a well-defined and phonologically articulated syntactic domain with conceptual Content, itself outside the domain of language as such. In a departure from most current models of syntax but in line with many philosophical traditions, then, the Exo-Skeletal model partitions ‘meaning’ into formal functions, on the one hand, and Content, on the other hand. While the former are read off syntactico-semantic structures as is usually assumed, Content is crucially read off syntactico-phonological structures.

Many of the phenomena discussed in this paper usually fall under the domain of control and control theory, that is, the module of the grammar which is responsible for the assignment of reference to null subjects in infinitival and gerundive constructions primarily. It is the purpose of this paper, however, to challenge the existence of an independent module of control. Standard accounts of control and control phenomena are challenged in this work in two ways. First, it is proposed that the null element occupying the [NP, S] position in infinitives and gerunds is the same as the null element occupying the [NP, IP] (= [NP, SJ) position in tensed sentences, both being an empty pronominal (so-called small pro). In other words, it is proposed that control effects are not restricted to, or derived from, the status of pronominal anaphors. It is further argued that the distinctions between null subjects in tensed clauses and null subjects in non-tensed clauses follow from independent principles, and not from the properties of the null pronominal itself. Secondly, we propose that control effects, in most accounts taken to involve crucially the fixing of reference of a null element, have, as such, nothing to do with the presence of a null element. Rather, the analysis given here will have the effect of grouping together the reference assignment to null and non-null elements under the same explanation, rendering the motivation for an independent control module rather weak.As a point of departure, we will be assuming the analysis proposed in Borer (1986), according to which the INFL node both in tensed clauses and in non-tensed clauses must be coindexed with an NP in its domain (that NP being the I-Subject). We will consider the implications which such an analysis has for control structures both in infinitives and in gerunds, showing that given the notion I -Subject, control effects may be adequately explained by the binding conditions, assuming that AGR in infinitives and in gerunds is anaphoric in the usual sense, and has to abide by (a somewhat modified version of) binding condition A of Chomsky (1981).The analysis proposed will have the result of eliminating the need for an ungoverned empty pronominal anaphor in the grammar. It will be shown that there is no independent evidence supporting the existence of an element PRO, traditionally assumed to occupy the subject position of infinitives, gerunds, and possibly some small clauses, and that the distribution of that element is indistinct from that of the empty pronominal pro, which does not have to be ungoverned. On the other hand, pro, like 69 O.

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