Varieties of clausal complementation

This thesis argues that clausal arguments of mental-state predicates divide into two main types: those that express the content, or "subject matter" of the mental state, and those that express the cause of the mental state. My central theoretical claim is that this dichotomy corresponds to a difference in syntactic structure. I propose that these different structures derive from an operation of promotion to subject position that is constrained by two factors. First, it is constrained by syntactic category: DPs, but crucially not CPs, are eligible for promotion, and I argue that clauses in subject position are in fact DPs. Second, it constrained by locality: even among DPs, only the highest DP is eligible for promotion. I explore a range of cases where this locality constraint is not met-i.e., cases of "argument intervention" in a variety of constructions. Finally, I discuss how these constraints interact to derive the realization of clausal arguments and the syntactic properties of the predicates that select them.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2012

Author dc:creator

• Hartman, Jeremy

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Sabine Iatridou. David Pesetsky and Danny Fox.

• Linguistics and Philosophy.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/77800

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/77800