Interpreting agreement
This dissertation is an investigation of the formal status of agreement morphology and its relationship to null arguments. Rejecting Chomskyâs (2000, 2001) claim that valuedness is the formal correlate of interpretability, it is suggested that a more elegant account of the data follows if Ï-features of verbal affixes are taken to be valued in the lexicon. Interpretability is argued to be determined in the syntax, according to whether the affix is in a position to receive a Óš-role or not and as such the proposal diverges from that of Pesetsky and Torrego (2005a, 2005b), who also argue for the separation of interpretability and valuedness, but consider both to be lexical properties of a given category. Positing the existence of verbal affixes with valued interpretable Ï-features is uncontroversial and this is the analysis adopted for environments such as the participial clause in Finnish, object and complementiser agreement in Modem Standard Arabic and a range of contexts in Modem Irish in which 'pronominal agreement' and full NP or free pronominal arguments are in strictly complementary distribution. It is shown that valued uninterruptible features, while not present in the lexicon according to the Chomskyan
Johns, Christopher Stephen Rowland
Interpreting agreement. This dissertation is an investigation of the formal status of agreement morphology and its relationship to null arguments. Rejecting Chomskyâs (2000, 2001) claim that valuedness is the formal correlate of interpretability, it is suggested that a more elegant account of the data follows if Ï-features of verbal affixes are taken to be valued in the lexicon. Interpretability is argued to be determined in the syntax, according to whether the affix is in a position to receive a Óš-role or not and as such the proposal diverges from that of Pesetsky and Torrego (2005a, 2005b), who also argue for the separation of interpretability and valuedness, but consider both to be lexical properties of a given category. Positing the existence of verbal affixes with valued interpretable Ï-features is uncontroversial and this is the analysis adopted for environments such as the participial clause in Finnish, object and complementiser agreement in Modem Standard Arabic and a range of contexts in Modem Irish in which 'pronominal agreement' and full NP or free pronominal arguments are in strictly complementary distribution. It is shown that valued uninterruptible features, while not present in the lexicon according to the Chomskyan
interpreting agreement investigation formal status agreement morphology relationship null argument rejecting chomsky claim formal correlate suggest account_data follow features verbal affix take valued lexicon argue determined syntax accord whether affix position receive role proposal diverge also_argue separation consider lexical property give category existence verbal affix value interpretable features uncontroversial analysis adopt environment participial clause finnish object agreement modem standard_arabic range context modem irish agreement full free pronominal argument strictly complementary distribution show value feature present lexicon accord chomskyan