The Minimalist Syntax of Defective Domains
Gerunds and infinitives
| University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
This book unifies the analysis of certain non-finite domains, focusing on subject licensing, agreement, and Case and control. It proposes a minimalist analysis of English gerunds which allows only a null subject PRO (TP-defective gerunds), a lexical subject (gerunds as complements of perception verbs), or both types of subjects (clausal gerunds). It then analyzes Portuguese infinitives, showing that the morphosyntactic properties of non-inflected and inflected infinitives correlate with distinct treatments of obligatory and non-obligatory control. It explores these and other phenomena to show that tense and event binding do not correlate with the contrast between control and raising/exceptional case marking (ECM), against null Case theories of control. A Probe-Goal approach to Case and agreement is adopted in combination with a movement analysis of control. The book then investigates diachronic morphosyntactic phenomena involving infinitives, verb movement and cliticization in Portuguese, exploring a cue-based theory of syntactic change grounded in language acquisition.
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 98] 2006. xiv, 188 pp.
Publishing status: Available
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Table of Contents
|
Acknowledgments
|
xi–xii
|
|
Abbreviations and symbols
|
xiii–xiv
|
|
Introduction
|
1–14
|
|
1. The minimalist syntax of clausal gerunds
|
15–69
|
|
2. Clausal versus TP-defective gerunds: Control without tense
|
70–90
|
|
3. Agreement, case, control and movement in infinitives
|
91–124
|
|
4. Syntactic change: The development of inflected and non-inflected infinitives
|
125–165
|
|
Conclusion
|
166–167
|
|
References
|
168–179
|
|
Index
|
181–188
|
“Acrisio Pires's new study is an important contribution to our understanding of deficient clausal domains as manifested in gerunds and (inflected) infinitives, with many original insights into the structural analysis and historical development of this elusive syntactic category.”
Jan-Wouter Zwart,
University of Groningen
“Pires offers an insightful analysis of an old problem area, gerunds, which uses the central concepts of the Minimalist Program in productive fashion. In so doing, it yields understanding of gerunds and of the Minimalist Program. Another striking feature of the book is that it unifies syntactic analysis with questions of acquisition and of the triggering experience for the proposed analysis in young children. ALL syntactic analysis should discuss acquisitional triggers these days, but this is a rare book in doing it so well.”
David W. Lightfoot, National Science Foundation
Cited by
Cited by 29 other publications
Arregi, Karlos & Andrew Nevins
2018. Beware Occam’s Syntactic Razor: Morphotactic Analysis and Spanish Mesoclisis.
Linguistic Inquiry 49:4 ► pp. 625 ff. 
Barbosa, Pilar P.
2021.
In Non-canonical Control in a Cross-linguistic Perspective [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 270],
► pp. 35 ff.
Benedetti, Marina & Chiara Gianollo
2020.
In Historical Linguistics 2017 [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 350],
► pp. 30 ff.
Bošković, Željko
2014. Now I’m a Phase, Now I’m Not a Phase: On the Variability of Phases with Extraction and Ellipsis.
Linguistic Inquiry 45:1 ► pp. 27 ff.
CAMPOS-DINTRANS, GONZALO, ACRISIO PIRES & JASON ROTHMAN
2014. Subject-to-subject raising and the syntax of tense in L2 Spanish: A Full Access approach.
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 17:1 ► pp. 38 ff.
Eslami, Moharram & Moslem Ahmadvand
2012. A biolinguistic approach to clausal gerunds and TP-defective gerunds in second language syntax.
Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 32 ► pp. 246 ff.
Fiéis, Alexandra & Ana Madeira
2017.
In Studies on Variation in Portuguese [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 14],
► pp. 280 ff.
Flores, Cristina & Pilar Barbosa
2014. When reduced input leads to delayed acquisition: A study on the acquisition of clitic placement by Portuguese heritage speakers.
International Journal of Bilingualism 18:3 ► pp. 304 ff.
Halpert, Claire
2019. Raising, unphased.
Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 37:1 ► pp. 123 ff.
HEGGELUND, ØYSTEIN
2015. On the use of data in historical linguistics: word order in early English subordinate clauses.
English Language and Linguistics 19:1 ► pp. 83 ff.
HIRATA, ICHIRO
2014. SUPPORT FOR FEATURE INHERITANCE IN ENGLISH.
ENGLISH LINGUISTICS 31:2 ► pp. 583 ff.
Hyams, Nina
2018.
In Complement Clauses in Portuguese [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 17],
► pp. 393 ff.
KE, ALAN HEZAO & ACRISIO PIRES
2021. Local versus long-distance bound implicit arguments of inalienable relational nouns in Chinese.
Journal of Linguistics ► pp. 1 ff.
Lohndal, Terje, Jason Rothman, Tanja Kupisch & Marit Westergaard
2019. Heritage language acquisition: What it reveals and why it is important for formal linguistic theories.
Language and Linguistics Compass 13:12
LOWE, JOHN J.
2020. Mixed projections and syntactic categories.
Journal of Linguistics 56:2 ► pp. 315 ff.
Madeira, Ana
2018.
In Complement Clauses in Portuguese [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 17],
► pp. 321 ff.
Meir, Natalia & Maria Polinsky
2021. Restructuring in heritage grammars.
Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 11:2 ► pp. 222 ff.
Modesto, Marcello
2018.
In Complement Clauses in Portuguese [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 17],
► pp. 59 ff.
Pires, Acrisio
2007. The Derivation of Clausal Gerunds.
Syntax 10:2 ► pp. 165 ff.
Pires, Acrisio & Gary Milsark
2017.
In The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Syntax, Second Edition,
► pp. 1 ff.
Pires, Acrisio & Will Nediger
2018.
In Complement Clauses in Portuguese [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 17],
► pp. 187 ff.
Pires, Acrisio & Jason Rothman
2009. Disentangling sources of incomplete acquisition: An explanation for competence divergence across heritage grammars.
International Journal of Bilingualism 13:2 ► pp. 211 ff.
Rissman, Lilia, Amanda Woodward & Susan Goldin-Meadow
2019. Occluding the face diminishes the conceptual accessibility of an animate agent.
Language, Cognition and Neuroscience 34:3 ► pp. 273 ff.
Rothman, Jason
2007. Heritage speaker competence differences, language change, and input type: Inflected infinitives in Heritage Brazilian Portuguese.
International Journal of Bilingualism 11:4 ► pp. 359 ff.
Rothman, Jason
2009. Knowledge of A/A'-dependencies on subject extraction with two types of infinitives in non-native Portuguese adult bilingualism.
International Journal of Bilingualism 13:1 ► pp. 111 ff.
Santos, Ana Lúcia, Anabela Gonçalves & Nina Hyams
2016. Aspects of the acquisition of object control and ECM-Type verbs in European Portuguese.
Language Acquisition 23:3 ► pp. 199 ff.
Sheehan, Michelle
2018.
In Complement Clauses in Portuguese [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 17],
► pp. 27 ff.
SHIMOKARIYA, SHO
2017. ON THE NATURE OF ENGLISH GERUNDS.
ENGLISH LINGUISTICS 33:2 ► pp. 415 ff.
Silva, Gláucia
2015. Features of Portuguese as a heritage language: Morphosyntax and beyond.
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 8:2 ► pp. 415 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 12 september 2021. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.
Subjects & Metadata
BIC Subject: CF – Linguistics
BISAC Subject: LAN009000 – LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General