TOPICALIZATION AND RELATIVIZATION IN MINIMALIST SYNTAX

The Syntax of Appositive Relativization

Appositive relative clauses differ in some essential respects from restrictives. I argue that appositive relatives and appositions can be put together as a third class of coordination denoting specification. Thus, an appositive is a specifying conjunct to the visible antecedent. It is a semi-free relative with a pronominal head that is normally empty. Therefore, its internal syntax is equivalen...

Parsing in the Minimalist Program: On SOV Languages and Relativization

This paper examines computational issues in the processing of SOV languages in the probe-goal framework, a theory in the Minimalist Program (MP). A generative theory that seeks to minimize search, such as the probe-goal model, provides a strong linguistic basis for the investigation of efficient parsing architecture. For parsing, two main design challenges present themselves: (1) how to limit s...

PHRASE STRUCTURE IN MINIMALIST SYNTAX by

This thesis is a study of clause architecture within a theory of generative grammar. It discusses four major syntactic hypotheses that have crucial bearing on the design of phrase structure: the Agreement-based Case theory, the internal subject hypothesis (ISH), the uniform three-level X-bar theory, and a hypothesis about string vacuous head movement. In Chapter 2 through Chapter 4, I discuss o...

An Experiment in Minimalist Experimental Syntax

How seriously should we take Minimalist syntax?

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