synthetic/periphrastic alternation

[John Frampton]

Martha wrote:

>  Ah, I see. Obviously the more restricted the locality domain, the better
> -- but I don't think there's any deep assumption about the DM framework
> at stake. Maybe it'll turn out to be small, maybe big... 

If you get far enough away, it is a not a deep assumption.  Up close, it
seems to be of more significance.  The facts seem to be that sensitivity
to nonlocal syntactic context seems to be at most fairly rare.  So my
instinct is to say that it is impossible, and to explain the instances
that appear to be nonlocal as nontransparent locality.  Otherwise DM
would face the problem of explaining why something that is permitted,
but very rarely occurs.

> One question:
> by 'restricted to the syntactic word' are you meaning something like
> 'restricted to sister X° terminal nodes (mother a single X°)' (like
> those created in the usualish idea of how head-movement works, and
> maybe also by Merger Under Adjacency)? 

That's it.  Although personally I am suspicious of "merger under
adjacency" being syntactic.  But maybe.

- John

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