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This chapter identifies semantic relations as members of a functional category, functor, like finiteness and determination. Each of these functional categories may be manifested as an independent item, or morphologically, or positionally. They contrast with lexical categories, which are realized as independent items only. A representational system is presented that allows for the diversity in expression of functional categories and provides, in the case of the functor, for the co-occurrence of different representations of the same category (as in Latin In Graeciam pervēnit; ‘In Greece:ACC s/he arrived’ - preposition + case), a problem identified by Kurylowicz. Case and adpositions often express more than a semantic relation but also various dimensionalities, which is illustrated by Hjelmslev’s analysis of the complex case system of Tabassaran, which is paralleled by many adpositional systems, and represented by dimensional nominals as part of the case complex.

This contribution directly builds on the preceding one. On the basis of a detailed empirical investigation of the syntax of adpositional phrases in Dutch, the author refines in various ways the structure and derivation of the lexical and extended functional projections of stative and directional Ps and tries to draw a parallel with the lexical and functional structure of clauses and noun phrases. Among other things, the paper lays out in detail the base structure and syntactic derivation of locative (stative) and directional pre-, post- and circumpositional phrases, discusses the restrictions on movement within and out of the (extended) projections of PLoc and PDir, sheds new light on the relationship between P and case, and analyses the distribution of modifiers in adpositional phrases.

This chapter begins to focus on the motivations for dis-analogy with an examination of discrepancies in categorization between phonology and syntax. A fundamental discrepancy is the absence of a distinction in functional vs. lexical category. The former are crucial to the articulation of the more complex structures required by syntax in the representation of cognitive scenes and their context of speech. Kabardian is discussed as a language not just without phonological transitivity but also without a contrastive category of vowel. This is not paralleled in syntax, where predicators are central to clause structure, but there are languages without adjectives and (possibly) a lexical distinction between noun and verb. This discrepancy reflects the different orientations of the two planes towards the lexicon.

This chapter gives an explicit Minimalist theory of feature structure based on the ideas that (i) Merge is the sole source of structure embedding, (ii) lexical items are composed of features. It follows that features cannot themselves involve structure embedding, contrary to what is assumed in HPSG, LFG, FUG. This is the No Complex Values hypothesis. I show how it restricts the range of analyses available for selectional phenomena.

The notional grammar described here accepts the extralinguistic groundedness of both syntactic categories and the structures that they project in terms of their valency/subcategorization. The structures are built up by the application of re‐representation via the introduction of a structural dimension associated with a particular substance: cognitive salience, perception of temporality, perception of sound. Cognitive salience is grammaticalized in terms of dependency structures involving both adjunction, where head and dependent are separately linearized, and subjunction, where dependency is internal to a particular word. Primary and secondary categories are recognized, and among the former functional vs. lexical. Primary categories determine the basic distribution of a word, and secondary, which are notionally appropriate to the primary they are associated with, and may be morphologically expressed (e.g. tense, gender), give a ‘fine‐tuning’ to this distribution. The functional category functor (adpositions, case) is given a localist interpretation. And it is shown to be crucial to the erection of complex structures, especially those including argument‐sharing in ‘raising’ structures.

This chapter begins with a brief discussion of the term grammaticalization. It explains the theoretical framework of this book. The chapter then discusses functional categories and syntactic change and the minimalist programme. An overview of the subsequent chapters is presented.

This chapter analyzes the minimalist framework for Universal Grammar, with particular emphasis on functional categories and transformations, and revises it step by step in an effort to approach as closely as possible the goals of the Minimalist Program for linguistic theory. The end result is a substantially different conception of the mechanisms of language. The chapter first reviews the guiding ideas of the Minimalist Program, paying attention to a particular language L that determines a set of derivations (computations). It then considers the specificity of language faculty (modularity) and demonstrates that for a particular (I-)language L, the phenomena of sound and meaning for L are determined by pairs. It also discusses the cognitive system of the language faculty; the application of Select or Merge in the course of a derivation; certain assumptions about lexicon; the theory of phrase structure within a minimalist framework; the relation between visibility at the level of Logical Form and accessibility to the computational system; and the theories of movement and economy.

This chapter examines the organization of overt phrasal syntactic representation, the constituent structure or c-structure. Section 3.1 discusses some traditional arguments for constituent structure representation. Many of these arguments prove to be flawed, since the theory of phrase structure has a different status in LFG than in theories in which grammatical functions are defined configurationally and abstract syntactic (and other) relations are represented in phrase structure terms. Valid criteria within LFG for phrase structure determination are proposed in Section 3.2. The inventory of constituent structure categories, both lexical and functional, that are crosslinguistically available and the theory of the organization of words and categories into phrases are explored in Section 3.3. The general theory of constituent structure organization is exemplified in Section 3.4, where we provide more specific discussion of the constituent structure organization of clauses. Section 3.5 discusses the relation between hierarchical constituent structure and surface linear order.

This chapter establishes that not all languages have a grammaticized mass/count distinction and consequently we have to distinguish between ontological properties associated with nouns and categorical properties associated with a functional category dominating these nouns. It is argued that the categorical properties associated with the mass/count distinction are tied to a functional category identified as nominal inner aspect. This category can host the feature responsible for the mass/count distinction (i.e, [± bounded]). It is further shown that languages lacking a categorical mass/count distinction come in at least two varieties. They can lack the functional category which may host the [±bounded] feature (Halkomelem). Alternatively, they can associated a different feature with inner aspect. In particular, it is shown that in Blackfoot [±animate] associates with inner aspect. Consequently, in this language, it is animacy, rather than mass/count which serves as the nominal classification device.

The standard approach to argument structure has many empirical deficiencies, is not general enough to incorporate well-known descriptive generalizations, and, furthermore, fails to take into account languages in which argument structure is expressed via grammatical function changing morphology on the verbal root. This book proposes a radically different approach to argument structure whereby functional categories merge in bottom-to-top fashion with a predicate or with the output of previous Merge operations in conjunction with a fixed Universal Order of Merge. The approach involves three primary argument types—Agent, Theme, and Affectee—whose hierarchical structures are exactly the opposite of what is normally expected. There are also various kinds of secondary arguments, including Instrument, Benefactive, Source, and Goal.

This argues against the common grouping of names with nouns, and presents previous alternative views. Names have been characterized as one of the three types of definite referring phrases: names, personal pronouns, definite determiner phrases. A revised characterization in notional dependency grammar groups names with pronouns and determiners as determinatives. But names differ from other determinatives by being inherently nondefinite: they do not always refer (cf. vocative and nominations). This grouping has the major drawback (addressed in Chapter 4) that, while determiners govern nouns, the remaining names and pronouns do not govern. The argument distinguishes lexical (or typically ‘contentful’) and functional primary categories. Secondary categories reflect the prototypical notional character of a primary category. They have a role in allowing referentiality to names. They can play a part in conversion of lexical items from one primary category to another.

This chapter focuses on research dealing with syntactic phenomena as well as the biological foundations and origin of syntax. It first outlines the main building blocks of syntax, starting with lexical categories and functional categories. It then considers hierarchical structure and recursion and discusses a typology of dependencies between syntactic elements, along with the relationship between such dependencies and the needs of the human parser. It also describes various kinds of syntactic universals, their treatment within different grammatical traditions, and possible responses to exceptional constructions. The chapter also explores the development of creoles from pidgins, the diachronic processes involved in language change, and the ontogenetic development of language in infants.

This chapter explores from both synchronic and diachronic perspectives the categorial status of words like English of and equivalent items in other languages. It evaluates, and ultimately comes down in favour of, the arguments for continuing to treat such items as prepositions and heads of PP even when they have lost independent semantic content and serve instead a purely grammatical function. This analysis is contrasted both with the proposal to assign them to the functional category K(ase), as favoured within current nanosyntactic work, and with an account in which they retain prepositional status but as non-projecting members of that class. In broader theoretical terms, the chapter argues that one of the benefits of LFG’s parallel architecture is the consequential economy in its postulated inventory of functional categories.

The main goal of this chapter is critically to address from a comparative perspective some of the most important issues in the syntax of Romance functional categories, including the emergence of articles, pronominal clitics, auxiliaries, and complementizers; recurrent grammaticalization pathways; the interaction of inflection and periphrasis (including typological distinctions between syntheticity and analyticity, configurationality and non-configurationality, dependent-marking and head-marking); parallels and differences in the range of functional categories available to the nominal (DP), sentential (IP), and clausal (CP) domains; positions and co-occurrence possibilities. Specific topics dealt with include: rise of analyticity; rise of configurationality; Romance functional categories; nominal group (articles; other determiners); verbal group (Romance auxiliaries; Romance synthetic future(-in-the-past); clitic pronouns); the sentence; grammaticalized word orders.

This book proposes a syntactic system that totally separates structure building from the labeling of structure, and explores its theoretical and empirical, consequences. There are a number of possible approaches for choosing the label, but none is entirely satisfactory—all of them have problems in providing a unified labeling algorithm, especially when specifier-head structures are taken into account. The book shows that syntactic structures are always built from lexical roots via Self Merge or standard binary Merge, and argues that bound morphemes are just pronunciations of functional categories attached to roots via extended projections. It also considers the syntax of relational nominals, and provides evidence for a base-generation approach over a roll-up movement approach to the ordering and hierarchy of the constituents of the noun phrase.

In Germanic and Romance, finite complementizers are nominal, suggesting that the complementizer is not a functional category of an embedded verb, but rather an independent nominal head satisfying an argument slot of the matrix verb and taking the embedded sentence as complement. In this chapter, syncretism patterns of complementizers are compared across Romance varieties (especially Italian dialects). Only the nominal analysis of the complementizer allows for a transparent account of the observed variation. First, the overlapping of Romance complementizers with the wh-system follows precise patterns, which exclude the possibility that homophony is simply at stake. Second, the complementizer introduces a propositional variable—which is natural only if it is a nominal head. Finally, selectional patterns do not support a verbal analysis, and are consistent with the nominal analysis.

This introduction deals with the status of syntactic change: whether it exists at all, and what current syntactic theory has to say about it. It contextualizes the contributions in this volume around three broad themes: the relationship between syntax and the lexicon, the relationship between syntax and morphology, and the relationship between syntax, prosody, and information structure. Important questions are raised and discussed, such as: Can fine-grained categorial distinctions be used to yield a better picture of grammaticalization? Does morphology always drive syntactic change, or are there other possibilities? What are the theoretical primitives of information structure, and how can they be investigated in historical texts? An overview of recent theorizing in each of these areas is provided, as well as a summary of the individual findings of each chapter and interesting questions they raise.

This paper deals with specific properties of the left periphery in Bavarian, a Southern dialect of German that allows doubly filled COMP in embedded clauses. It investigates the phenomenon of double fronting, which represents a specific kind of extraction from an embedded clause (“Bavarian extraction” [BE]) that is only licensed if the clause has undergone fronting to the left periphery. In addition to the gap in the fronted embedded clause, a further gap may be licensed in this construction that represents a position in the matrix clause. The paper provides answers to the following questions: (1) Is the target position of BE in the embedded or in the matrix clause? (2) What motivates BE and why is clausal fronting required? (3) What are the properties of the gap in the matrix clause and how is this gap licensed? (4) Why is BE from wh-clauses with complex wh-elements disallowed?