Rede ning the weak/strong distinction

Journal of Logic, Language and Information, 2005

2004

Van Geenhoven 1995). The proposal that noun phrases in argument positions might denote properties is perhaps surprising at first. If verbs and similar predicates are assumed to denote functions on individuals, and if the fundamental semantic composition rule available is functor-argument application, NPs would seem to have to be interpreted as either entity-or quantifier-denoting. It is not obvious, under these assumptions, how an NP which denotes a property can compose semantically with the predicate that selects for it.

In this paper, I argue that the subject plays a crucial role in situationally anchoring the predicate of the clause. It is generally assumed that clausal predication is referentially anchored to the speech situation in terms of temporal (and modal) information expressed on the finite verb. While this is certainly correct, there are contexts in which referential anchoring by the verb alone is not sufficient.

Proceedings of the Chicago Linguistic Society (CLS), 1992

In Czech, and in other Slavic languages, the lexical-derivational operators that are applied to a verb can extend their semantic effects over a particular nominal argument. Such effects are often comparable (i) to those of articles and also (ii) to those of determiner quantifers, and various quantifying and measure expressions. This can be best shown with determinerless NPs fiat are headed by common nouns, in particular mass and plural nouns. This analysis of the interaction between verbal and nominal predicates in Czech builds on recent suggestions by Partee, Bach & Kratzer (1987), Partee(1990) and (1991) who explore the use of verbal affxes to express various kinds of quantificational or closely related meanings. Although there are many other contextual factors that determine the interpretation of determinerless NPs with common noun heads in Czech, my analysis focuses on the role played by verbal aspect in connection with incremental Theme role (cf. Krifka 1986; 1987; 1989; Dowty 1988; 1991), a semantic role that motivates the telic/atelic distinction (Aktionsart) of complex verbal expression. I propose that in Czech the lexical derivational operators that are applied to a verb direct their semantic effects at an Incremental Theme argument.

1984

Open Journal of Modern Linguistics, 2013

This short article aims to explicate some of the key arguments for the determiner phrase hypothesis (DP hypothesis). The goal is to show that within the framework of current formal syntactic analysis, the DP hypothesis is not an alternative but a mandatory hypothesis for a consistent valid syntactic analysis of the English sentence. The article builds on an inclusive notion of the category of determiner based on shared distributional features of its sub-categories. Key arguments for the DP hypothesis build around previous ones such as those made by Abney (1987) but mainly focus on new and fresh insights that take into account holistic and logical arguments and focus on the particular case of expletives as a unique type of determiners.

Lingua, 2011

This afterword constructs a working typology of nominalizations, based on but not restricted to the papers collected in this special issue. The typology is based on what we call the Functional Nominalization Thesis (FNT), a version of the model of “mixed projections” proposed in Borsley and Kornfilt (2000) which claims that nominal properties of a nominalization are contributed by a nominal functional projection; above that projection the structure has nominal properties, below it, verbal properties. We argue for four possible levels of nominalization, CP, TP, vP and VP. We show that certain internal syntactic phenomena are characteristic of different levels of nominalization: genitive subjects of nominalization at TP and below, genitive objects of nominalization at vP and below. We suggest that the inventory of categories implicated in nominalization is quite restricted: D, and nominal counterparts of ‘light’ verbal categories. We examine two alternatives to the FNT, the framework of Panagiotidis and Grohmann (2009) and Bresnan's (1997) head-sharing approach, and argue that our treatment is more appropriate under a minimalist approach, as it accommodates the facts within an independently motivated inventory of functional categories, without positing a special type of category limited only to nominalizations. We counter Bresnan's objections against a syntactic derivation of nominalizations by showing that a word's lexical integrity can be successfully violated by “suspended affixation” in syntactically derived nominalizations in Turkish while such integrity has to be respected in lexically derived nominalizations.

Interface Explorations, 2010