Séminaire de Recherche en Linguistique

In this presentation I outline an approach to the Rizzi’s (1997 et seq.) Left Periphery from the perspective of Hale & Keyser’s (1993) configurational approach to argument structure. In particular, I explore what I call Configurational Thesis:

(1)       Configurational Thesis

Criterial interpretations (topic, focus, wh-, relative, etc.) in the CP are analogous to thematic interpretations (agent, theme, experiencer, goal, etc.) in the vP: emergent properties of configurations

In order to develop (1) I refer to criterial interpretations as criterial roles (for analogy with theta roles). My starting point is Kenneth Hale and Samuel Jay Keyser’s Lexicon Project,which aimed at outlining a theory of argument structure that sticks to Inclusiveness and the Strong Minimalist Thesis, with no need of dedicated formatives or mechanisms apart from those used by syntax (lexical items and Merge). More precisely, these authors aimed at showing that “argument structure can be properly viewed as a syntax and, accordingly, subject to the laws of syntax, as known generally […] If so, there are no linguistic mechanisms that are specific to argument structure. For example, there is no process of “thematic role assignment” […] there are no “thematic roles” […]” (Hale & Keyser 1993:93).

In their programmatic paper, Hale and Keyser asked three key questions:

(2)       a. Why are there so few thematic roles?

            b. Why the UTAH?

            c. Why are the lexical categories just V, N, A, P?

The first question concerns the observation that there are only 4 or 5 robust theta-roles, but not 20 or 137. The second question in turn focuses on why identical thematic relationships (the theta-roles) are assigned in identical structural positions (Baker’s 1997 UTAH). Finally, the third question is nothing but a variant of the first one, though asked from a morphological perspective. If the Configurational Thesis is to be proved correct or wrong, then we should ask the questions in (3), which merely replicate those in (2):

(3)       a. Why are there so many criterial roles?

            b. Why the hierarchy of functional projections?

            c. Why are the functional categories (Top, Foc, etc.) so large in number?

I first discuss the assumptions made both by the Cartographic Project (Rizzi 1997 et seq.) and some recent alternatives to it (Newmeyer 2006, Fortuny 2008, López 2009, and Abels 2010). I then address the questions in (3) from the point of view of (1). Builing on Hale & Keyser (1993 et seq.), I argue that there are two robust criterial roles, associated to the two configurations that the CP can give rise to. The first one is associated to clause typing effects (focus, wh-movement, relative operators, and the like), while the other one has no typing effects (i.e. topicalization, taking Rizzi’s modifiers to fall within this category). I argue that clause typing Internal Merge takes place as indicated in (4), where the typing element XP undergoes direct merger with C, becoming its complement.

(4)       {{C, XP}, { . . . <XP> }}

For such cases, I assume that C is lexically marked as either declarative, interrogative, exclamative, imperative, or relative. Taking { . . . <XP> } (i.e. the TP) to be invisible (developing ideas of Chomsky 2011), this results in {C, XP} being the only SO valid for labeling purposes. This has two interesting consequences. Firstly, the C head, endowed with the relevant typing instruction, will have XP in its complement domain (not in the specifier). Secondly, the label of {{C, XP},  { . . . <XP>}}  will be C.

As for topicalization, I contend that this operation is formally equivalent to adjunction—Chomsky’s (2004) Pair-Merge. More specifically, I propose that topicalization involves Internal Pair-Merge to the SPEC-C position. Notice that, by invoking Pair-Merge, we can capture different properties of topics: they can appear in different positions, they do not type (they adjoin to α, which retains all its properties), they do not create island effects, etc. In addition, the inherently asymmetric nature of Pair-Merge correctly predicts that no labeling conflict will ensue. That is to say, topicalization to SPEC-C can be distinguised from IM to SPEC-C, for only the latter gives rise to an unlabeled structure.

Such a limited scenario is precisely what one expects in a purely configurational approach. In such system, there are only three configurations that can be created in the CP: (5a), which is related to clause typing movement; (5b), which is related to non-clause typing movement; and 5c), which is related to successive cyclic movement (Chomsky 2011).

(5)       a. {{C, XP}, { . . . <XP> }}             clause typing

            b. <XP, {C, { . . . <XP> }}>             non clause typing

            c. {XP, {C, { . . . <XP> }}               succ. cyclic movement

REFERENCES

Abels, K. 2012. “The Italian Left Periphery: A View From Locality”. Linguistic Inquiry 43: 229–254.

Baker, M. 1997. “Thematic roles and syntactic structure”. In L. Haegeman (ed.), Elements of Grammar, 73-137, Kluwer Academic Publishers

Chomsky, N. 2004. “Beyond explanatory adequacy”. In Structures and beyond. The cartography of syntactic structures (vol. 3), A. Belletti (ed.), 104-131. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press.

Chomsky, N. 2011. “Problems of Projection”. Invited talk, University of Leiden.

Fortuny, J. 2008. The emergence of order in syntax. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Hale, K. and S. Keyser. 1993. “On the argument structure and the lexical expression of syntactic relations”. In The view from building 20: Essays in linguistics in honor of Sylvain Bromberger, K. Hale and S. Keyser (eds.), 53-109. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

López, L. 2009. A Derivational Syntax for Information Structure. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Newmeyer, F. 2006. “Toward a More Minimalist Left-Periphery: A Critique of the Cartography Program for CP”. Talk given at Edges in Syntax, Cyprus College, Nicosia (Cyprus), May 2006.

Rizzi, L. 1997. “The Fine Structure of The Left Periphery”. In L. Haegeman (ed.), Elements ofGrammar. Handbook in Generative Syntax, Dordrecht: Kluwer: 281-337.