The syntax of tenselessness : tense/mood/aspect-agreeing infinitivals / by Anna-Lena Wiklund.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wiklund, Anna-Lena.

Series:

Studies in generative grammar ; 92.

Studies in generative grammar, 0167-4331 ; 92

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Swedish language--Verb.

Swedish language.

Swedish language--Tense.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 226 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berlin ; New York : Mouton de Gruyter, c2007.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Tense/Mood/Aspect-agreeing Infinitivals is an in-depth investigation of the syntax of verb-verb agreement phenomena in Swedish, including pseudocoordinations of the form John started and wrote 'John started writing' and double participles of the form John had been-able written 'John had been able to write'. Providing evidence from facts concerning extraction, locality, selection, and interpretation, the book argues that the relevant construction types all involve surface variants of "infinitives in disguise"; infinitivals that agree with the matrix clause in tense/mood/aspect. Arguments are presented in favour of taking the dependencies underlying the agreement to be instances of Agree between functional heads of the same label, a configuration that yields restructuring/clause-union. The main theoretical contributions of the book are two: (i) Agreement is proportional to functional structure: The possibility of "copying" a particular morphosyntactic form is contingent on the presence of the corresponding functional projection in the agreeing XP. (ii) Size constancy between restructuring/non-restructuring infinitivals: The category selected by a verb may remain constant between restructuring and non-restructuring configurations. It is suggested that an important aspect of restructuring may be alternation between unmarked (negatively specified) features and unvalued varieties of the same features, capturing properties such as "tenselessness", "finitelessness", etc. of restructuring infinitivals. The book is an important contribution to the syntax of infinitival clauses, the syntax of clause-union/restructuring, and more generally to the syntax of agreement phenomena in natural language. In addition, it provides a general reference source for anyone interested in the syntax of Swedish and other Scandinavian languages.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction

Chapter 2 Properties of TMA-copying and participle copying

Chapter 3 Copying and tense

Chapter 4 Copying as a restructuring effect

Chapter 5 Pseudocoordination is TMA-copying

Chapter 6 Pseudocoordinating verbs are light verbs

Chapter 7 Copying

Chapter 8 The syntax of tenselessness

Backmatter

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [213]-222) and index.

ISBN:

9786612194191

9781282194199

1282194194

9783110197839

3110197839

OCLC:

290492777