The Nominative Puzzle and the Low Nominative Hypothesis
Författare
Summary, in English
Under the view of nominative Case taken by Chomsky (2000, 2001), one would expect nominative to be the marked or complex Case, being merged after accusative. In fact, however, it is the other way around, nominative preconditioning accusative and also being the Case of simple
structures (unaccusative, etc.). The article argues that this Nominative Puzzle is not real, the nominative argument in fact being the first argument merged, raised across the accusative later in the derivation for independent reasons. This approach not only accounts for the dependency
correlation between accusative and nominative (Burzio’s
Generalization), but also offers a derivational account of Condition A correlations (anaphors being merged higher than their ‘‘antecedents’’). Importantly, it also makes it possible to explain Icelandic quirky constructions
in terms of a general matching theory. In addition, the article develops a novel approach to Move as applying for the purpose of successful feature matching.
structures (unaccusative, etc.). The article argues that this Nominative Puzzle is not real, the nominative argument in fact being the first argument merged, raised across the accusative later in the derivation for independent reasons. This approach not only accounts for the dependency
correlation between accusative and nominative (Burzio’s
Generalization), but also offers a derivational account of Condition A correlations (anaphors being merged higher than their ‘‘antecedents’’). Importantly, it also makes it possible to explain Icelandic quirky constructions
in terms of a general matching theory. In addition, the article develops a novel approach to Move as applying for the purpose of successful feature matching.
Avdelning/ar
Publiceringsår
2006
Språk
Engelska
Sidor
289-308
Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie
Linguistic Inquiry
Volym
37
Issue
2
Fulltext
- Available as PDF - 153 kB
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Dokumenttyp
Artikel i tidskrift
Förlag
MIT Press
Ämne
- Languages and Literature
Nyckelord
- quirky Case
- Move
- Condition A
- structural Case
- Burzio’s Generalization
- intervention
Status
Published
Forskningsgrupp
- GRIMM
ISBN/ISSN/Övrigt
- ISSN: 1530-9150