On Feature Strength: Three Minimalist Approaches to Overt Movement

Lasnik, Howard

doi:10.1162/002438999554039

Cited by 182 publications

(55 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…For auxiliary forms of to be and to do, it is assumed that in English these are basegenerated in I (Lasnik, 1999). The same holds for all modal verbs.…”

Section: Cross-linguistic Differences Between Dutch and Englishmentioning

confidence: 99%

Verb and auxiliary movement in agrammatic Broca’s aphasia

Bastiaanse

Thompson

2003

Brain and Language

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Verb production in agrammatic BrocaÕs aphasia has repeatedly been shown to be impaired by a number of investigators. Not only is the number of verbs produced often significantly reduced, but verb inflections and auxiliaries are often omitted as well (e.g., Bastiaanse, Jonkers, & Moltmaker-Osinga, 1996;Saffran, Berndt, & Schwartz, 1989;Thompson, Shapiro, Li, & Schendel, 1994. It has been suggested that these problems are, in part, caused by the fact that finite verbs need to be moved from their base-generated position to inflectional nodes in the syntactic tree (e.g., Bastiaanse & Van Zonneveld, 1998). Others have suggested that production deficits in agrammatism can be predicted based on the position that certain structures take in the syntactic tree (Friedmann & Grodzinsky, 1997;Hagiwara, 1995). If the former theory is correct, several predictions can be made. First of all, the discrepancy between production of finite verbs in the matrix and embedded clause that has been found for Dutch (Bastiaanse & Van Zonneveld, 1998) should not be observed in English, since the word order of the matrix and embedded clause are the same in the latter language. Second, if verb movement (including movement of auxiliaries) is problematic for speakers with agrammatic aphasia, then a hierarchy in the production of auxiliaries in yes/no questions, auxiliaries, and finite verbs in declarative sentences in English would be expected, since the former has been moved and the two latter are in base-generated position. In the present paper, these hypotheses were tested in a cross-linguistic study of Dutch and English. Results showed the position in the syntactic tree does not predict deficit patterns; rather the critical factor appears to relate to whether or not verb or auxiliary movement is required.

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“…For auxiliary forms of to be and to do, it is assumed that in English these are basegenerated in I (Lasnik, 1999). The same holds for all modal verbs.…”

Section: Cross-linguistic Differences Between Dutch and Englishmentioning

confidence: 99%

Verb and auxiliary movement in agrammatic Broca’s aphasia

Bastiaanse

Thompson

2003

Brain and Language

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“…I take this fact as a signal of an underlying variation that concerns the feature specification of the CP domain. More specifically, I assume that V-to-C is productive in grammars where the lowest C-head, Fin 0 (Rizzi 1997), encodes a strong (*) feature (in the sense of Chomsky 1993, Lasnik 1999, Biberauer & Richards 2006, and is thus Fin*. FinP encodes [finiteness], which permits the interpretation of temporal/locative coordinates and nominal deixis (Bianchi 2003, cf.…”

Section: 1mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…context, and thus, interpreted, by checking [finiteness] on Fin*P. Along the lines of Chomsky (1993Chomsky ( , 1995, Lasnik (1999), and Biberauer & Richards (2006), I assume that in systems where a functional head bears a strong feature, checking requires overt Merge on that head.…”

Section: 1mentioning

confidence: 99%

Phase-edge properties and complementizer omission

Franco

2015

isogloss

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This paper deals with the diachrony of complementizer omission (C-omission) in some Italian clauses. C-omission is restricted to clauses with [-realis] mood in Old as well as in Modern Italian, and to some types of declarative clauses in Modern Florentine (Cocchi & Poletto, 2005). This phenomenon is instead much more pervasive in the Renaissance period (Wanner 1981, Scorretti 1991 and invests basically all types of subordinate clauses. The present study concentrates on C-omission in Renaissance Italian relative clauses, which is attested in both subject and non-subject extractions. There is a subject/non-subject asymmetry in the frequency of C-omission in relative clauses, which is claimed to result from the combination of an active vs. inactive distinction that characterizes both Old and Renaissance Italian, and the loss of V-to-C. The active vs. inactive distinction is attributed to the presence of a strong (*) feature on the low-phase head, v*, in both Old and Renaissance Italian, while the loss of (*) in CP determines the loss of V-to-C in Renaissance Italian only. The argument is corroborated by further comparative facts from Old Occitan and Old French, as well as by a contrast with Old Portuguese and Old Spanish.

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“…Boeckx & Stjepanović (2001) argue that pseudogapping constructions support the idea that heads move at PF. Lasnik (1999) observes that in English non-elliptical sentences the verb has to raise, but in pseudogapping constructions the verb may either raise or stay put and be part of the elided constituent. In Boeckx & Stejepanović' interpretation, this means that ellipsis can apply before HM, and since ellipsis takes place at PF, it follows that so must HM.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Approaches to head movement: A critical assessment

Dékány

2018

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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Heads can be spelled out higher than their merge-in position. The operation that the transformationalist generative literature uses to model this is called head movement. Government and Binding posited that the operation in question involves adjunction of a lower head to a higher head in narrow syntax. It has been noted early on, however, that this approach is highly problematic because head-adjunction violates several well-motivated constraints on syntactic structures.This overview article surveys the problems raised by the adjunction approach as well as the recent alternative analyses that were suggested in its stead in the Minimalist program. It evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of the alternatives, discusses to what extent they are able to eliminate the problems raised by the adjunction analysis, and also points out the new problems that they give rise to.

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On Feature Strength: Three Minimalist Approaches to Overt Movement

Cited by 182 publications

References 6 publications

Verb and auxiliary movement in agrammatic Broca’s aphasia

Verb and auxiliary movement in agrammatic Broca’s aphasia

Phase-edge properties and complementizer omission

Approaches to head movement: A critical assessment

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