Expletives as features
- Expletives have always been a central topic of theoretical debate and subject to different analyses within the different stages of the Principles and Parameter theory (see Chomsky 1981, 1986, 1995; Lasnik 1992, 1995; Frampton and Gutman 1997; among others). However, most analyses center on the question how to explain the behavior of expletives in A-chains (such as there in English or Þad in Icelandic). No account relates wh-expletives (as one finds them in so-called partial wh-movement constructions in languages such as Hungarian, Romani, and German) to expletives in Achains. In this paper, I argue that the framework of the Minimalist Program opens up the possibility of accounting for expletive-associate relations in A-/A'-chains in a unified manner. The main idea of the unitary analysis is that an expletive is an overtly realized feature bundle that is (sub)extracted from its associate DP. There in an expletive-associate chain is a moved D-feature which orginates inside the associate DP. Similarily, in A'-chains, the whexpletive originates as a focus-/wh-feature in the wh-phrase with which it is associated. This analysis provides evidence for the feature-checking theory in Chomsky (1995). The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 contains the discussion of expletive there. In section 3 I suggest an analysis for whexpletives, and I also explore whether this analysis can be extended to relations between X°-categories such as auxiliary and participle complexes.
Author: | Joachim Sabel |
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URN: | urn:nbn:de:hebis:30-24858 |
Parent Title (German): | Proceedings of the 19th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL 19), pp. 411-424 |
Document Type: | Conference Proceeding |
Language: | English |
Year of Completion: | 2000 |
Year of first Publication: | 2000 |
Publishing Institution: | Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg |
Release Date: | 2006/03/14 |
First Page: | 411 |
Last Page: | 424 |
Source: | Proceedings of the 19th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL 19), pp. 411-424 |
HeBIS-PPN: | 226065774 |
Institutes: | Neuere Philologien / Neuere Philologien |
Dewey Decimal Classification: | 4 Sprache / 40 Sprache / 400 Sprache |
Sammlungen: | Linguistik |
Licence (German): | Deutsches Urheberrecht |