Search results for "Specifier"
showing 2 items of 2 documents
Sandwich EPP hypothesis: Evidence from child Finnish
2010
It is well-known that grammatical movement is somehow linked to functional heads. There is less agreement on the excact nature of this correlation. According to one view, phrases are moved to the specifier positions of functional heads because functional heads attract them. According to another view, movement is not triggered by functional heads alone, but depends on the larger grammatical context. For instance, one such proposal says that T (tense) becomes attractive only when selected by finite C (complementizer), while V becomes attractive when selected byv* (transitivizer). What attracts phrases are therefore the C–T system and thev*–V system as a whole, not the individual functional he…
Defectivitat morfològica i variació sintàctica
2021
This paper discusses a case of parametric variation between Catalan and Spanish that concerns the fronting possibilities within the CP domain (the so-called ÇLeft PeripheryÈ). In particular, attention is paid to Catalan’s weak left peripheral activity, which prevents it from generating sentences that involve a Çmild focalizationÈ pattern very common in Spanish (e.g., «Mucha tontería dice el Gobierno» vs. *«Molta ximpleria diuel Govern»), first noted by Torrego (1980) and further explored by Uriagereka (1988). Interestingly, the same behavior is observed in the v*P domain, which accounts for the fact that VSO sentences (generated through movement of the subject to a specifier position, as Or…