Relationship preservation

This thesis deals with a number of puzzles related to word order, in which the co-occurence of two elements in the same clause imposes a restriction on the distribution of these elements. I suggest that elements involved in Agree relationships [Chomsky (2000, 2001)] are subject to a requirement that they be aligned with the left or right edge of a prosodic phrase, following work done in Richards (2016). I argue that there is a restriction on the opaque satisfaction of this requirement, and show that this provides a unified solution to these word order puzzles. Chapters 1 and 2 deal with movement phenomena, primarily in left-headed languages. In chapter 1, I show that some languages allow A-movement of subjects across other DPs, whereas others do not. I note that this appears to be determined by which edge of a prosodic phrase they require phrases in Agree relationships to be aligned with, and show that this is a consequence of the proposed restriction on opaque satisfaction of the alignment requirement. Chapter 2 builds on the results of chapter 1. I show that A-movement of a subject may cross another nominal in all languages, but only if there is a phase boundary between the launch site and landing site, and show how this falls out from the proposed restriction on opacity. I show also that languages that do not allow A-movement of subjects across other DPs display a similar restriction in wh-questions, and argue that this too is a result of the proposed restriction on opacity. Chapters 3 and 4 deal with the distribution of wh-phrases in languages that allow them to remain in-situ. Chapter 3 deals with co-occurance restrictions between foci and wh-phrases. I argue that these restrictions emerge as a result of a conflict between a prosodic strategy that languages might use to satisfy the alignment requirement, called Grouping, and the proposed restriction on opaque satisfaction of this requirement. Chapter 4 deals with Grouping more generally. I show that languages with Grouping have a particular prosodic signature which marks phonological phrases that contain wh-phrases, whereas languages that lack Grouping do not, and explore the consequences of this for the architecture developed in this thesis.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2018

Author dc:creator

• Branan, Kenyon Garrett

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Norvin W. Richards.

• Linguistics and Philosophy.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written 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/1721.1/120671

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/120671