Kleanthes Grohmann

University of Cyprus


Maryland Linguistics Colloquium

* special time and place *

.......Wednesday, March 31st, 2004 
.......4:00 PM

.......Room 1114, Woods Hall [next to Marie Mount, towards McKeldin] 

University of Maryland, College Park


 

"Structuring Structure: Enter Prolific Domains"


Much work on the clausal architecture since Chomsky (1986) has tacitly assumed a tripartition of sorts. Within X'-Theory, Chomsky suggested the clause structure to consist of [Comp [Infl [VP ]]] and a whole range of research has been dedicated to finer articulate these three players. Take, for example, Larson (1988) and Hale & Keyser (1993) on VP-shells, the period from Pollock (1989) to Cinque (1999) on split Infl, or Rizzi (1997) and subsequent work on split Comp.

The general picture that emerges will be the base of my talk. Clausal architecture, aside from finer details, is made up of three Prolific Domain: the Thematic Domain, the Agreement Domain, and the Discourse Domain. I want to present the general idea of such a tripartition (see also Platzack 2001) and explore some theoretical as well as empirical consequences. On the theoretical side, there will be an exposition of the Anti-Locality Hypothesis, the suggestion that movement is not only constrained by an upper bound, but also by a lower bound on a given dependency. Empirically, I will address new ways of viewing resumption within the Anti-Locality Hypothesis construed as Copy Spell Out of an anti-locally moved element. Besides clausal concerns, the approach will be shown to hold more generally. Against the background of the Clausal DP-Hypothesis (e.g. Abney 1987, Ritter 1991, Bernstein 2001), I will demonstrate how the framework offers itself rather naturally to be implemented into the nominal domain in all respects: Prolific Domains, Anti-Locality, and Copy Spell Out.

 


If you are interested in meeting with the speaker, please contact Kaori Ozawa.
 
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