23.3641, Diss: Goidelic/ Linguistic Theories/ Semantics/ Syntax/ Irish: Oda: 'Issues in the Left Periphery of Modern Irish'

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LINGUIST List: Vol-23-3641. Fri Aug 31 2012. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 23.3641, Diss: Goidelic/ Linguistic Theories/ Semantics/ Syntax/ Irish: Oda: 'Issues in the Left Periphery of Modern Irish'

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Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2012 11:04:25
From: Kenji Oda [kenji.oda at mail.utoronto.ca]
Subject: Issues in the Left Periphery of Modern Irish

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Institution: University of Toronto 
Program: Department of Linguistics 
Dissertation Status: Completed 
Degree Date: 2012 

Author: Kenji Oda

Dissertation Title: Issues in the Left Periphery of Modern Irish 

Linguistic Field(s): Linguistic Theories
                     Semantics
                     Syntax

Subject Language(s): Irish (gle)

Language Family(ies): Goidelic


Dissertation Director(s):
James McCloskey
Michela Ippolito
Diane Massam
Elizabeth Cowper
Daphna Heller

Dissertation Abstract:

Although the syntax of the left periphery of the Irish clausal architecture 
has been the subject of considerable research within the generative 
paradigm, many questions remain unresolved. The general goal of this 
thesis is to explore some of these understudied territories. Specifically, 
I consider two distinct, but ultimately related phenomena: headless 
relative clauses and dependent verbal morphology.


I will make four major claims: The first two concern the syntax (and 
semantics) of the headless relative clause. First, despite the fact that 
the particles that appear in resumptive relative clauses and in headless 
relative clauses are morphophonologically identical as aN, headless 
relative clauses are derived by movement, not by means of resumption, 
and thus the particles in these two constructions are not the same. 
Second, headless relative clauses are amount relative clauses, in the 
sense of Carlson (1977); and thus I claim, adopting Grosu and 
Landman's (1998) notion of complex degree, that the element that 
undergoes A′-movement in a headless relative clause is a complex 
degree, causing degree-abstraction in the semantics. The 
maximalization operator then applies to the degree-abstracted relative 
CP. I argue that it is this operator that triggers the appearance of the 
particle aN in the headless relative construction.


The latter two claims concern the morphosyntax of the left periphery of 
Irish syntax: First, I claim that there are two tense features in a single 
finite clause domain of Irish, and that the so-called dependent forms of 
irregular verbs are the surface realization of the two tense features. 
This account provides a stepping stone to my final claim that a feature 
agreeing with the maximalization operator, but not the operator itself, is 
realized in the headless relative particle aN and that the particles found 
in resumptive relative clauses and in headless relative clauses are in 
fact distinct Vocabulary Items and thus they are homophonous.


This thesis thus fills a gap in the descriptive account of Irish syntax, 
and provides new insights to the theory of relativization. 






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