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1
Building Phrase Structure from Items and Contexts
by
Katherine S. McKinney-Bock
University of Southern California
Doctoral Dissertation
Object Description
| Title | Building phrase structure from items and contexts |
| Author | McKinney-Bock, Katherine S. |
| Author email | katymck@gmail.com;katymck@gmail.com |
| Degree | Doctor of Philosophy |
| Document type | Dissertation |
| Degree program | Linguistics |
| School | College of Letters, Arts And Sciences |
| Date defended/completed | 2013-05-13 |
| Date submitted | 2013-07-12 |
| Date approved | 2013-07-12 |
| Restricted until | 2013-07-12 |
| Date published | 2013-07-12 |
| Advisor (committee chair) | Pancheva, Roumyana |
| Advisor (committee member) |
Simpson, Andrew Iskarous, Khalil Arratia, Richard |
| Abstract | This dissertation aims to revisit foundational issues in syntactic theory regarding cyclicity and displacement. I take narrow syntax to operate over domains (phases) more local than in current Minimalism. To do this, I define a notion of phase overlap which involves the sharing of grammatical features across two independent phases. Phase overlap applies to phases involved in the construction of argument structure, e.g., linking subject and object phases, in further building clausal structure, as well as in embedding of complement clauses, and phase overlap also plays a role in A-bar constructions, such as relativization. ❧ To overlap phases, I take the idea that generalized binary connectives build phrase structure (Vergnaud forthcoming), and extend it in such a way that it gives rise to phases that involve parallel nominal and verbal domains, rather than treating the verbal domain as ‘privileged’. In this dissertation, both the verbal and nominal domains are implicated at the edges of phases, creating phase overlap and a novel notion of cyclicity: to construct two (consecutive) cycles is to share a pair of features across (both) the nominal and verbal domain. ❧ The definition of sharing across phases, or phase overlap, is grounded in the scientific hypothesis that long-distance grammatical relationships are a by-product of interface requirements such as linearization, rather than a fundamental aspect of the architecture at narrow syntax. This hypothesis is based in part on the Items and Contexts Architecture (ICA, Vergnaud forthcoming), although the ICA remains incomplete in its formalization of embedding. From this type of sharing, I develop a strong hypothesis that the appearance of displacement (of a noun) is a product of how the formal computational system spells out, rather than a movement operation that takes place at narrow syntax. ❧ From this hypothesis, I then set forth a unified analysis of the D-C-T domain, where noun sharing plays a crucial role in the linking – generalized linking – of two (otherwise independent) phases, including Subject/Object phases to build a transitive clause (chapter 3), two CP phases involving embedded and matrix clauses (chapter 4) and relative and matrix clauses (chapter 5). Along with noun sharing, I maintain the idea of verbal sharing – in a certain way following the standard literature, i.e. that v is visible to both the lower (object) phase and higher (subject phase). This plays a key component in phase overlap. However, I extend this idea to all embedding, and hypothesize that all embedding shares (semantically interpretable) features. This is seen empirically, especially in cases of control. |
| Keyword | linguistics; formal linguistic theories; syntax; phrase structure; embedding; case theory; relative clauses |
| Language | English |
| Format (imt) | application/pdf |
| Part of collection | University of Southern California dissertations and theses |
| Publisher (of the original version) | University of Southern California |
| Place of publication (of the original version) | Los Angeles, California |
| Publisher (of the digital version) | University of Southern California. Libraries |
| Provenance | Electronically uploaded by the author |
| Type | texts |
| Legacy record ID | usctheses-m |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Rights | McKinney-Bock, Katherine S. |
| Access conditions | The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the author, as the original true and official version of the work, but does not grant the reader permission to use the work if the desired use is covered by copyright. It is the author, as rights holder, who must provide use permission if such use is covered by copyright. The original signature page accompanying the original submission of the work to the USC Libraries is retained by the USC Libraries and a copy of it may be obtained by authorized requesters contacting the repository e-mail address given. |
| Repository name | University of Southern California Digital Library |
| Repository address | USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 7002, 106 University Village, Los Angeles, California 90089-7002, USA |
| Repository email | cisadmin@usc.edu |
| Filename | etd-McKinneyBo-1764.pdf |
| Archival file | uscthesesreloadpub_Volume7/etd-McKinneyBo-1764.pdf |
Description
| Title | Page 1 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Full text | 1 Building Phrase Structure from Items and Contexts by Katherine S. McKinney-Bock University of Southern California Doctoral Dissertation |
