The Minimalist Syntax of Defective Domains
Gerunds and infinitives
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 | pp. xi–xii
-
Abbreviations and symbols | pp. xiii–xiv
-
Introduction | pp. 1–14
-
1. The minimalist syntax of clausal gerunds | pp. 15–69
-
2. Clausal versus TP-defective gerunds: Control without tense | pp. 70–90
-
3. Agreement, case, control and movement in infinitives | pp. 91–124
-
4. Syntactic change: The development of inflected and non-inflected infinitives | pp. 125–165
-
Conclusion | pp. 166–167
-
References | pp. 168–179
-
Index | pp. 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 (38)
Cited by 38 other publications
Fong, Suzana
Santos, Ana Lúcia
Brodahl, Kristin Klubbo
KE, ALAN HEZAO & ACRISIO PIRES
Resende, Maurício Sartori & Roberta Pires de Oliveira
Barbosa, Pilar P.
2021. Alleged obligatorily controlled inflected infinitives. In Non-canonical Control in a Cross-linguistic Perspective [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 270], ► pp. 35 ff.
Jędrzejowski, Łukasz
Martins, Ana Maria & Jairo Nunes
2021. Chapter 9. Brazilian and European Portuguese and Holmberg’s 2005 typology of null subject languages. In Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2018 [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 357], ► pp. 172 ff.
Meir, Natalia & Maria Polinsky
Benedetti, Marina & Chiara Gianollo
2020. Criteria for subjecthood and non-canonical subjects in Classical Greek. In Historical Linguistics 2017 [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 350], ► pp. 30 ff.
Iordăchioaia, Gianina
LOWE, JOHN J.
Mitrović, Moreno & Phoevos Panagiotidis
Lohndal, Terje, Jason Rothman, Tanja Kupisch & Marit Westergaard
Rissman, Lilia, Amanda Woodward & Susan Goldin-Meadow
Arregi, Karlos & Andrew Nevins
Hyams, Nina
2018. Comments on the acquisition of complementation in Portuguese. In Complement Clauses in Portuguese [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 17], ► pp. 393 ff.
Madeira, Ana
2018. Inflected infinitives in L2 Portuguese. In Complement Clauses in Portuguese [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 17], ► pp. 321 ff.
Modesto, Marcello
2018. Inflected infinitives in Brazilian Portuguese and the theory of Control. In Complement Clauses in Portuguese [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 17], ► pp. 59 ff.
Pires, Acrisio & Will Nediger
2018. (Hyper)-raising in Brazilian Portuguese and Spanish. In Complement Clauses in Portuguese [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 17], ► pp. 187 ff.
Sheehan, Michelle
2018. Control of inflected infinitives in European Portuguese. In Complement Clauses in Portuguese [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 17], ► pp. 27 ff.
Fiéis, Alexandra & Ana Madeira
2017. Chapter 12. The Portuguese inflected infinitive across varieties. In Studies on Variation in Portuguese [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 14], ► pp. 280 ff.
Pires, Acrisio & Gary Milsark
Santos, Ana Lúcia, Anabela Gonçalves & Nina Hyams
HEGGELUND, ØYSTEIN
Silva, Gláucia
Bošković, Željko
CAMPOS-DINTRANS, GONZALO, ACRISIO PIRES & JASON ROTHMAN
Flores, Cristina & Pilar Barbosa
HIRATA, ICHIRO
Eslami, Moharram & Moslem Ahmadvand
Pires, Acrisio & Jason Rothman
Rothman, Jason
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 15 september 2024. 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
Main BIC Subject
CF: Linguistics
Main BISAC Subject
LAN009000: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General