Complex left branches, spellout, and prefixes
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2018 |
| Type | Chapter of a book |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | Higher-function words such as complementizers, negation, functional prepositions, definiteness particles, comparative markers, and so forth, occurring to the left of their lexical category, are argued to be base-generated as complex left branches, rather than spelling out the main functional sequence. This is generalized to all (base-generated) pre-asymmetries and post-asymmetries and derived from the structure of the lexical entries of the function words, dispensing with idiosyncratic notational devices equivalent to [+ suffix] or [+ needs-to-move]. These complex left branches require a merge-XP operation, and the place of this operation in the algorithm of spellout-driven movement is discussed. |