Feature Geometry and Predictions of Locality

This paper deals with a number issues having to do with locality in natural language. Locality of selection is the problem of delimiting what syntactic and semantic information lexical items select. Related issues include the proper analysis of idiomatic expressions, control of overt pronominals, and cross-linguistic variation in lexical sensitivity to filler-gap dependencies. Closely related to selectional locality is the issue of locality of construction – the problem of delimiting the syntactic and semantic information accessible to grammar rules. These issues have considerable history in the field, though matters of locality are sometimes left implicit in theoretical discussions. After providing some necessary background, I will propose a version of gramamtical theory that embodies a particular hypothesis about locality. In the general theory I outline, the feature geometry serves to delimit the grammatical information accessible for lexical selection or constructional constraints.