Volume 31, Issue 1

The article discusses the interpretation and structure of those durative and frame adverbials in English which contain partitive or pseudopartitive constructions (e.g. for 18 months of my life and in 18 months of repairs ). In addition to the oft-discussed for and in -adverbials, the paper considers adverbials headed by through(out) and within as well. Building on the observation that these adverbials contain a measure phrase, an adverbial structure is proposed which parallels the structure of other measure phrase expressions. It is shown that some durative and frame adverbials have the expected partitive and pseudopartitive interpretation; this permits a treatment that relies on nominal counterparts such as 18 pounds of (the) sand , with a nominal projection serving as the (pseudo)partitive structure. However, some in -adverbials and all within -adverbials are interpreted differently. These adverbials have a boundary interpretation, which is shown in the example We knew within five minutes of talking to her / within five minutes of her arrival that her story was true . It is suggested that the boundary interpretation arises because the of -phrase is a PP, with a structure reminiscent of a locative PP rather than a nominal projection.

This paper recasts Chomsky's (2007, 2008) Feature Inheritance , arguing that the syntactic relation between phase heads and non-phase heads must be regarded as that of identity : Non-phase heads are (copies of) phase heads. From this perspective, e.g., C and T are one and the very same unit in the lexicon, a unit that can (and sometimes must) undergo a process of Internal Merge (IM) during the derivation, creating a discontinuous object (i.e., a non-trivial chain) that gives rise to the – apparent – non-phase head / phase head distinction. The analysis has several consequences. Firstly, it provides an explanation for the fact that the features of phases heads are inherited by non-phase heads (under a copy-based approach, this is simply automatic). Secondly, it accounts for the functioning of phase and non-phase heads `as a unit' in the Case-agreement systems (as argued by Chomsky 2004, Epstein et al. 2012). Thirdly, since non-phase heads are copies of phase heads, it also follows that they need not be seen as feature-less elements in the lexicon (as mere feature receptacles, cf. Richards 2007). Fourthly, this approach allows us to dispense with the idea that either C and T trigger simultaneous operations (Chomsky 2008), or that the operations triggered by T are actually driven by C (derivatively); this is welcome, since both alternatives involve a restricted (phase-based) margin of countercyclicity. Finally, the present analysis makes it possible to dispense with Feature Inheritance , understood as a brandnew, UG enriching, feature-depriving mechanism. Rejecting this commonly accepted view of Feature Inheritance takes into account the problems attributed to feature-movement in the syntax (Chomsky's 1995 Move F ).

Chomsky (1973) attributes the island status of nominal subjects to the Subject Condition , a constraint specific to subjects. English and Spanish are interesting languages for the comparative study of extraction from subjects, because subjects in English are predominantly preverbal, whereas in Spanish they can be either preverbal or postverbal. In this paper we argue that the islandhood of subject DPs in both English and Spanish is not categorical. The degradation associated with extraction from subjects must be attributed to the interplay of a range of more general constraints which are not specific to subjects. We argue that the interaction of these constraints has a cumulative effect whereby the more constraints that are violated, the higher the degree of degradation that results. We also argue that some speakers have a greater tolerance for constraint violations than others, which would account for widespread inter-speaker judgment variability.

This article argues that language cannot be a recursive-embedding system in the terms of Chomsky (1965 et seq.) but must simply be a discrete combinatorial system , basically in the sense of dependency grammar. It argues that the recursive-embedding model is a misconception that has had some severe consequences for the explanatory value of generative grammar, especially during the last fifteen years, leaving the theory with essentially only one syntactic relation (that between a head and its complement, including everything that the complement contains). Crucially, it is shown that the recursive-embedding model in its present form, working from the bottom up and, as in the case of English, from right to left, cannot handle discrete infinity, as it entails that the derivation does not have a beginning (it is the starting point that is pushed back into infinity, not the end result). Moreover, it cannot manage external arguments. Furthermore, it is pointed out that the model is not compatible with the way in which sentence production and processing work. Instead, the paper offers a simpler model, namely that lexical items are atomic units that combine , rather than merge, to form syntactic structures similar to that of chemical compounds, more or less in the same fashion as in Hudson's (2007, 2010) Word Grammar. One of the many advantages of the discrete combinatorial model is that it permits discrete infinity; another that it allows for the selection of the external argument (the latter declared impossible in Chomsky 2004). Moreover, it offers a minimalist account of the mechanisms behind head raising and affixation, without having to assume any head-movement operation (declared impossible in Chomsky 2001). Lastly, it is demonstrated that the discrete combinatorial model is much more local and economical and that it, like sentence production and comprehension, can derive structures from left to right, and, as in the case of English, top down.