37.3498, Diss: General Linguistics, Syntax, Typology: Emanuele Bernardi: "Typologically-Driven Parallels between Nominal Modifiers and Arguments in the Clause. A Formal Account"

Sat Oct 24 01:05:02 UTC 2026

LINGUIST List: Vol-37-3498. Fri 23 Oct 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.3498, Diss: General Linguistics, Syntax, Typology: Emanuele Bernardi: "Typologically-Driven Parallels between Nominal Modifiers and Arguments in the Clause. A Formal Account"

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Date: 23-Oct-2026
From: Emanuele Bernardi [emanuele.bernardi at pec.it]
Subject: Typologically-Driven Parallels between Nominal Modifiers and Arguments in the Clause. A Formal Account

Institution: Universities of Verona and Bozen
Degree Date: 2025
Level: PhD

Author: Emanuele Bernardi

Dissertation Title: Typologically-Driven Parallels between Nominal
Modifiers and Arguments in the Clause. A Formal Account

Dissertation URL: https://hdl.handle.net/11562/1172870

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics
                     Syntax
                     Typology

Dissertation Director(s): Andrea Padovan

Dissertation Abstract:

Greenberg’s (1966) Universal 20 is a widely discussed typological
statement that is concerned with the crosslinguistic syntactic
variation of demonstratives, cardinal numerals and adjectives
modifying the noun. The exact formulation of this universal hinges on
the collection of data from the widest range of natural languages
possible. The theoretical explanation of the observed patterns is
guided instead by the presence of two extremes. First, there are many
unattested permutations. Second, a fistful of highly frequent orders
manage to cover a large part of the observed crosslinguistic
variation. Moreover, the theoretical debate on Greenberg’s U20 turns
out to be related to the variability among languages with respect to
the order of the verb and its arguments in mono-transitive clauses. In
fact, the existence and the nature of correlations between the nominal
and the clausal domains are relevant to both syntacticians and
typologists who argue that natural languages are ruled by some
universal principles. In particular, the generative tradition
addresses the relation between the nominal and the clausal domains as
a debate on the NP- vs. DP-hypothesis (Blümel & Holler 2021). The
present work will however follow Corver (2013) in arguing that such a
debate can be better termed as an argument on the Lexical vs.
Functional Head Hypothesis for the nominal domain (LHH vs. FHH). The
present dissertation tackles Greenberg’s U20 and the potential
parallels with the clausal domain by crossreferencing data that are
publicly available. The generalizations that can be subsequently
observed suggest that many theoretical assumptions previously made in
the literature must be recast. Although the nominal and the clausal
domains appear to affect the word order of one another, they do not
show the parallel syntactic behaviors predicted by either the DP-/FH
hypothesis or the Consistent Head Serialization stated by Primus
(2001: 855). In this respect, the analysis of U20 proposed by Roberts
(2017b) has a twofold merit. On the one hand, it provides some
insights that set the stage for the data collection presented in this
work, while on the other hand it suggests that the correlations
between the nominal and the clausal domains can be captured by means
of some macroparameters à la M. C. Baker (2008a). However, neither
Roberts (2017b) nor any other syntactic analysis presently available
manages to account for all the facts. To provide a better analysis of
Greenberg’s U20, the present dissertation follows Chiang & Scheffler
(2008) in adopting a computationally empowered version of Tree
Adjoining Grammars (TAGs). The 2-delayed 2-Multi-Component TAG
subsequently proposed manages to overcome the limits that Longenbaugh
(2014) and Georgi (2019) point out with respect to the alternate TAG
approach formulated by Frank (2002) et seq. By virtue of the adopted
formalism, the present work not only provides an adequate account of
Greenberg’s U20 that supports the FHH, but it also solves theoretical
issues related to TAGs, like the missing link problem (Kallmeyer &
Kuhlmann 2012, Chen-Main & Joshi 2014). By providing many insights on
syntactic matters related to both the nominal and the clausal domains,
2-delayed 2-Multi-Component TAGs finally allow to set a rich research
agenda for the future.

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