Theoretical Linguistics, 33, 65-74 1. Introduction Den Dikken’s paper (henceforth DD) explores an interesting alternative to Chomsky’s conception of Phase Theory to account for different phenomena involving Predicate Inversion (PI). In particular, DD concentrates on cases of so-called copular, locative, and dative inversion (the respective instances in (1)): a. The #1 best-seller in the country is this […]

Alternatives to Cartography Goals: argue for the existence of a defective version of C; explore the connectivity effects of subjunctive dependents; provide an Agree-based account of long-distance obviation

Biolinguistic Investigations and the Formal Language Hierarchy This chapter reflects on parameters or, more generally, linguistic variation, which seems hardly a unified phenomenon. It suggests that there are three progressively deeper forms of variation to configure an I-language. The chapter argues that there are three sorts of systemic variations and also that Sub-case parameters must […]

Prospects for Dualism, W. Hinzen (ed.), special issue of Erkenntnis Mind–body dualism has rarely been an issue in the generative study of mind; Chomsky himself has long claimed it to be incoherent and unformulable. We first present and defend this negative argument but then suggest that the generative enterprise may license a rather novel and […]

The paper is divided as follows. In section 2 we pose various questions that arise when attempting to rationalize islands. We begin to address some of these questions in section 3, where the basic LCA line is presented. In sections 4 and 5 we explore a variety of consequences that this approach has for conditions […]