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Title:
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Syntax Unchained
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Author:
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Hirohisa Kiguchi
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Email:
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click here to access email
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Degree Awarded:
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University of Maryland
, Department of Linguistics
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Degree Date:
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2002
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Linguistic Subfield(s):
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Syntax
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Director(s):
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Norbert Hornstein
Cedric Boeckx
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Abstract:
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This thesis is concerned with chains. Chains have been conventionally defined as follows: '(a1,..., an) is a chain only if, for 1≤ i < n, ai and ai+1 are nondistinct, and ai c-commands ai+1' (cf. Chomsky 1986a, Rizzi 1990, Brody 1995 and many others). As Hornstein (1998) points out, though chains were originally not real grammatical objects but mere notation to track the history of movement, they were promoted to a legitimate syntactic tool in no time. This thesis questions chains: Are chains really necessary? What would we lose if we did not have chains as a primitive of the theory of Universal Grammar (=UG)? This thesis especially investigates what we would gain if UG were free from the notion of the chains. The claim of the thesis is that there are good empirical reasons for eliminating chains.
The Minimalist Program, Chomsky's recent revision of the view of UG (cf. Chomsky 1993, 1995), at least enables one to propose syntactic operations free from chains. Nunes (1995) claims that an element can move to a place, which does NOT c-command its base position. Nunes (1995) calls this operation 'Sideward movement'. Then, Hornstein (2000) further extends Nunes' (1995) proposal. He applies sideward movement to various constructions, as I will show in the following chapters. This thesis develops this line of thought. Here I attempt to provide some instances where chains as defined above cannot effectively license movement. More specifically, I will deal with some cases of obviation of weak crossover-effects, PRO gate phenomena discovered by Higginbotham (1980) and weakest crossover-phenomena first observed by Lasnik and Stowell (1991).
In a nutshell, this thesis is an investigation of syntax without chains, or as I put it, syntax unchained.
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