30.2183, Diss: Syntax: Daniel Milway: ''Explaining the Resultative Parameter''

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-30-2183. Fri May 24 2019. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 30.2183, Diss: Syntax: Daniel Milway: ''Explaining the Resultative Parameter''

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Date: Fri, 24 May 2019 17:50:11
From: Daniel Milway [dan.milway at mail.utoronto.ca]
Subject: Explaining the Resultative Parameter

 
Institution: University of Toronto 
Program: Department of Linguistics 
Dissertation Status: Completed 
Degree Date: 2019 

Author: Daniel Milway

Dissertation Title: Explaining the Resultative Parameter 

Dissertation URL:  https://damilway.files.wordpress.com/2019/05/milwaythesis.pdf

Linguistic Field(s): Syntax


Dissertation Director(s):
Elizabeth Cowper

Dissertation Abstract:

This thesis proposes an explanatory account for the fact that some, but not
all languages exhibit adjectival resultatives. It does so by synthesizing a
number of earlier proposals. From Snyder (1995, 2016), I adopt the proposal
that the setting of the resultative parameter must be acquired indirectly,
being inferred from the presence or absence of bare stem compounding in the
primary linguistic data. From Kratzer (2005), I adopt a small clause analysis
of resultatives and the proposal that Snyder's parameter is related to in
ectional features on adjectives. Finally, from Son and Svenonius (2008), I
adopt the proposal that adjectival resultatives involve a single syntactic
argument being shared by the primary and secondary predicates.

These proposals, combined with minimalist assumptions, yield: (i) a structural
analysis of resultatives, in which they are represented by a resP adjoined to
a VP, with a DP argument undergoing sideward movement between them, and (ii)
an analysis of the parameter, according to which languages generate adjectival
resultatives only if their lexicon contains uninflected categorizing heads. I
then show that, under Chomsky's (2013, 2015) label theory, with some
modifications, an adjectival resultative can be derived only if the result
adjective is categorized by an uninflected adj head (e.g., {adj_∅ ,√flat})
This demonstration concludes the theoretical explanation of the resultative
parameter.

The remainder of the thesis addresses some consequences of the explanation.
First I address the appearance that my theory seems to wrongly rule out
copular clauses and depictives in, for example, French. I argue that this
stems from our conception of Agree, and present a theory of postsyntactic
Agree that gives the right empirical results. Next, I address the previously
unrecognized generalization that sideward movement from adjuncts is always
necessary when possible. Using Cinque's (1996) analysis for ACC-ing clauses, I
show that this can be explained by a novel theory of adjunction synthesizing
the pair-merge (Chomsky 2004) and late adjunction (Stepanov 2001) theories.
Finally, I discuss the semantics that follows from my syntactic analysis.
Although the semantic analysis seems implausible, I present corroborating
evidence in its favour and argue that is more plausible than the alternatives.




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