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The Syntax of Tenselessness : Tense/Mood/Aspect-agreeing Infinitivals / Anna-Lena Wiklund.

By: Material type: TextTextSeries: Studies in Generative Grammar [SGG] ; 92Publisher: Berlin ; Boston : De Gruyter Mouton, [2008]Copyright date: ©2007Description: 1 online resource (226 p.)Content type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9783110190434
  • 9783110197839
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 439.75/62 22
LOC classification:
  • PD5301 .W55 2007eb
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources: Available additional physical forms:
  • Issued also in print.
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Chapter 1 Introduction -- Chapter 2 Properties of TMA-copying and participle -- copying -- Chapter 3 Copying and tense -- Chapter 4 Copying as a restructuring effect -- Chapter 5 Pseudocoordination is TMA-copying -- Chapter 6 Pseudocoordinating verbs are light -- verbs -- Chapter 7 Copying -- Chapter 8 The syntax of tenselessness -- Backmatter
Summary: Tense/Mood/Aspect-agreeing Infinitivals is an in-depth investigation of the syntax of verb-verb agreement phenomena in Swedish, including pseudocoordinations of the form John started and wrote 'John started writing' and double participles of the form John had been-able written 'John had been able to write'. Providing evidence from facts concerning extraction, locality, selection, and interpretation, the book argues that the relevant construction types all involve surface variants of "infinitives in disguise"; infinitivals that agree with the matrix clause in tense/mood/aspect. Arguments are presented in favour of taking the dependencies underlying the agreement to be instances of Agree between functional heads of the same label, a configuration that yields restructuring/clause-union. The main theoretical contributions of the book are two: (i) Agreement is proportional to functional structure: The possibility of "copying" a particular morphosyntactic form is contingent on the presence of the corresponding functional projection in the agreeing XP. (ii) Size constancy between restructuring/non-restructuring infinitivals: The category selected by a verb may remain constant between restructuring and non-restructuring configurations. It is suggested that an important aspect of restructuring may be alternation between unmarked (negatively specified) features and unvalued varieties of the same features, capturing properties such as "tenselessness", "finitelessness", etc. of restructuring infinitivals. The book is an important contribution to the syntax of infinitival clauses, the syntax of clause-union/restructuring, and more generally to the syntax of agreement phenomena in natural language. In addition, it provides a general reference source for anyone interested in the syntax of Swedish and other Scandinavian languages.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9783110197839

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Chapter 1 Introduction -- Chapter 2 Properties of TMA-copying and participle -- copying -- Chapter 3 Copying and tense -- Chapter 4 Copying as a restructuring effect -- Chapter 5 Pseudocoordination is TMA-copying -- Chapter 6 Pseudocoordinating verbs are light -- verbs -- Chapter 7 Copying -- Chapter 8 The syntax of tenselessness -- Backmatter

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

Tense/Mood/Aspect-agreeing Infinitivals is an in-depth investigation of the syntax of verb-verb agreement phenomena in Swedish, including pseudocoordinations of the form John started and wrote 'John started writing' and double participles of the form John had been-able written 'John had been able to write'. Providing evidence from facts concerning extraction, locality, selection, and interpretation, the book argues that the relevant construction types all involve surface variants of "infinitives in disguise"; infinitivals that agree with the matrix clause in tense/mood/aspect. Arguments are presented in favour of taking the dependencies underlying the agreement to be instances of Agree between functional heads of the same label, a configuration that yields restructuring/clause-union. The main theoretical contributions of the book are two: (i) Agreement is proportional to functional structure: The possibility of "copying" a particular morphosyntactic form is contingent on the presence of the corresponding functional projection in the agreeing XP. (ii) Size constancy between restructuring/non-restructuring infinitivals: The category selected by a verb may remain constant between restructuring and non-restructuring configurations. It is suggested that an important aspect of restructuring may be alternation between unmarked (negatively specified) features and unvalued varieties of the same features, capturing properties such as "tenselessness", "finitelessness", etc. of restructuring infinitivals. The book is an important contribution to the syntax of infinitival clauses, the syntax of clause-union/restructuring, and more generally to the syntax of agreement phenomena in natural language. In addition, it provides a general reference source for anyone interested in the syntax of Swedish and other Scandinavian languages.

Issued also in print.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 28. Feb 2023)