Abstract for Benjamin Bruening's talk

Discrepancies between projection and selection: Split coordination and raising to object in Passamaquoddy
Benjamin Bruening (University of Delaware)
September 7, 2006 (Thursday)
4:15 PM - 6:00 PM; Room 6417, The CUNY Graduate Center

In this talk, I illustrate two phenomena in Passamaquoddy that might fruitfully be analyzed as cases where selection and projection do not match. In the first, what I call ``split coordination,'' an NP is projected in the canonical object position, as sister to the verb, but it is not interpreted there; instead it is interpreted as a subject. In the second, raising to object, a verb semantically selects an NP object and a property as its arguments, but what is actually projected in the syntax is only an embedded CP. Consequently, an NP within the lower CP must move, abstracting over the CP to create a property; this property composes with the selecting verb, and then the moved NP composes with the verb.

If correct, these analyses have important implications for syntactic theory. First, syntactic operations are driven by the need to fix syntax-semantics mismatches, in this case between selection and projection (not by purely syntactic features). Second, these two analyses require giving up the idea behind the Projection Principle of the Government-Binding Theory, namely, that the position of sister to a verb is reserved for selected arguments. Instead, a looser principle, like the Principle of Full Interpretation of Chomsky's Minimalist writings, is more likely to be correct.