Abstract for Marcel den Dikken's talk

Topic... Comment!
Marcel den Dikken (CUNY Graduate Center)
November 7, 2006 (Tuesday)
6:30 PM - ; Room 7102, The CUNY Graduate Center

Minimalism does away with D-structure as a level of representation, yet holds on to the idea that at least the thematic portion of lexical information is saturated early (i.e., low in the tree). The abolition of D-structure in conjunction with the movement of lexical heads up into the functional structure opens up the possibility of late discharge of lexical information. Late discharge of lexical (esp. thematic) information, once allowed, could reduce the need for movement chains to a significant extent, thereby potentially bringing about a rapprochement of the Chomskyan strand of generative syntax and offshoots like Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar and Categorial Grammar. Questions that can be discussed under the rubric of this topic are: (a) what is the evidence for early, "D-structure" discharge of lexical information, and its concomitant postulation of movement chains? (b) are there any other "ghosts" of D-structure in present-day syntactic theory that should be brought more clearly into the spotlight? (c) is evidence for multiple structural positions for a given grammatical function (for instance, the subject) (anti)correlated with evidence for multiple structural positions for lexical heads, and if so, how does this allow us to decide in favour of or against movement-based approaches?

(Discussion of the alternative topic "Subject positions" that was circulated earlier can be integrated the discussion of the above, as indicated under (c).)