Bøger i Linguistic Inquiry Monographs serien

"A syntactic analysis of and solution to the semantic problem: how can speakers convey the same meaning using different speech acts?"--

A novel, systematic theory of adjunct control, explaining how and why adjuncts shift between obligatory and nonobligatory control.Control in adjuncts involves a complex interaction of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, which so far has resisted systematic analysis. In this book, Idan Landau offers the first comprehensive account of adjunct control. Extending the framework developed in his earlier book, A Two-Tiered Theory of Control, Landau analyzes ten different types of adjuncts and shows that they fall into two categories: those displaying strict obligatory control (OC) and those alternating between OC and nonobligatory control (NOC). He explains how and why adjuncts shift between OC and NOC, unifying their syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic properties.Landau shows that the split between the two types of adjuncts reflects a fundamental distinction in the semantic type of the adjunct: property (OC) or proposition (NOC), a distinction independently detectable by the adjunct''s tolerance to a lexical subject. After presenting a fully compositional account of controlled adjuncts, Landau tests and confirms the specific configurational predictions for each type of adjunct. He describes the interplay between OC and NOC in terms of general principles of competition--both within the grammar and outside of it, in the pragmatics and in the processing module--shedding new light on classical puzzles in the acquisition of adjunct control by children. Along the way, he addresses a range of empirical phenomena, including implicit arguments, event control, logophoricity, and topicality.

A comprehensive theory of selective opacity effects-configurations in which syntactic domains are opaque to some processes but transparent to others-within a Minimalist framework.

An investigation of the syntax and semantics of wh-questions through the lens of intervention effects, offering a new proposal on overt and covert wh-movement.

A new theory of the syntax-semantics interface that relies on hierarchical orderings in language, with the English auxiliary system as its empirical ground.

An examination of the evidence for and the theoretical implications of a universal word order constraint, with data from a wide range of languages.

An argument that agreement and agreementless languages are unified under an expanded view of grammatical features including both phi-features and certain discourse configurational features.

A groundbreaking, comprehensive formal theory of grammatical person that recasts its empirical foundations and re-envisions its theoretical core.

An argument that the word order of a given language is largely predictable from independently observable facts about its phonology and morphology.

A systematic exposition of Reinhart's Theta System, with extensive annotations and essays that capture subsequent developments.

An investigation of the syntactic structure of voice and v, using Acehnese (Malayo-Polynesian) as the empirical starting point.

An extended argument for a syntactic view of NEG raising with consequences for the syntax of negation and negative polarity items.

A proposal for a radical new view of case morphology, supported by a detailed investigation of some of the thorniest topics in Russian grammar.

A proposal for a compositional semantics for subjunctive (or would) conditionals in English.

An argument for the universal syntactic nature of the composition of manner and motion in human languages; with a wealth of empirical evidence from Germanic, Korean, and Romance languages.

The first book-length treatment of Japanese phonology from the perspective of Optimality Theory.

A study of indefinites in Maori and Chamorro and their relevance to the interaction of compositional semantic interpretation and syntactic structure.

A theory of control, equally grounded in syntax and semantics, that argues that obligatory control is achieved either through predication or through logophoric anchoring.

A new theory of labeling that sheds light on such syntactic phenomena as relativization, successive cyclicity, island phenomena, and Minimality effects.

A view of the locality conditions on vowel harmony, aligning empirical phenomena within phonology with the principles of the Minimalist program.

A new analysis of adjectives, supported by comparative evidence.

A radically new approach to argument structure in the minimalist program.

This minimalist study proposes that the computational system of human language must consist of strictly local operations.

An argument that complex cardinals are not extra-linguistic but built using standard syntax and standard principles of semantic composition.

A proposal that person features do not have inherent content but are used to navigate a "person space" at the heart of every pronominal expression.

An argument that complex cardinals are not extra-linguistic but built using standard syntax and standard principles of semantic composition.

A proposal that person features do not have inherent content but are used to navigate a "person space" at the heart of every pronominal expression.

A version of the copy theory of movement within the Minimalist Program according to which movement is an interaction among Copy, Merge, Form Chain, and Chain Reduction.