initial that clauses. The proposed analysis of that construction can easily be carried over to that of to infinitives.
In this section, I have shown that the (revised) base-generation analysis makes it easy to analyze the scope relations in the that construction. I have also demonstrated that the analysis can straightforwardly be carried over into the it-that construction.
Notes to Chapter 4
*This chapter is a revised and extended version of Sato (2018). Some of the data here come from Sato (to appear).
1 Based on observations such as (ix) below, Koster (1978) argues that that clauses are CPs appearing in Spec CP of matrix clauses (in recent terms).
(ix) *Did that John showed up please you?
(Koster (1978: 53), italic in original)
Davies and Dubinsky (2009) claim that the ungrammaticality should be attributed to other factors such as parsing.
2 In Delahunty’s (1983: 385) original example, (181a) is represented as in (x), which would be incorrect.
(x) *To whom, a book will give you for Christmas?
(Delahunty (1983: 385))
I modify the example so that it illustrates what Delahunty intends to show.
3 I use the terms “move/movement” rather than “internal Merge” simply for convenience.
4 Although details are different, such a structure as (189) is independently proposed in Koster (1978) and Alrenga (2005), based upon the observations mentioned in Note 1.
5 Moulton’s original notation, which is represented in (xi), would be incorrect. The incorrect part is shaded in (xi).
(xi) a. (That he is too old for Mrs. Brown) every boy’s father believes.
b. 𝜆𝑃. 𝜆𝑤. ∀𝑥[boy(𝑥)(𝑤) → believe(𝑃)(𝑝𝑟𝑜R)(𝑥’s father)(𝑤)
OPP 𝜆𝑤. ∀𝑥[boy(𝑥)(𝑤) → believe(𝑃)(𝑥)(𝑥’s father)(w)]
DP 𝜆𝑥. 𝜆𝑤.believe(𝑃)(𝑝𝑟𝑜Y)(𝑥)(𝑤)
Every boy1’s father DP 𝜆𝑦. 𝜆𝑥. 𝜆𝑤.believe(𝑃)(𝑦)(𝑥)(𝑤)
𝑝𝑟𝑜Y believe P
Therefore, I modified the notation to reflect Moulton’s intention.
6 Whether likely selects CP or TP does not change the main thesis here. I simply assume throughout the dissertation that likely selects TP for convenience.
7 The idea “equidistance” is not related to Chomsky’s (1995: 185) notion.
8 The same explanation holds true of sentence initial to infinitives and the corresponding it-for-to construction discussed in Section 4.5.
9 I also examined whether to infinitives show similar behavior to that clauses with respect to topicalization and wh questions ((181)-(184)). However, my informants judged the attested grammatical that construction to be unacceptable, so that I cannot examine the behavior of to infinitives concomitantly.
Chapter 5
Conclusion
Chapter 1 has observed how generative grammar has tried to capture the similarities and differences between noun phrases and sentences. To capture the parallelism between the two, Chomsky (1970) proposed the X-bar theory, which is confronted with a problem concerning gerunds. To solve this problem, Abney (1987) proposed the DP hypothesis, and analyzed the three types of gerunds in detail. However, Abney’s analysis also faces some problems concerning ellipsis. In addition, it is unclear what kind of categories D can select. I have solved these problems throughout the thesis.
In Chapter 2, first, I have introduced the framework of Distributed Morphology, and shown how it captures the formation of “words.” Second, I have briefly considered the structure of deverbal nominals proposed in Alexiadou (2001, 2009). Then, I have pointed out that deverbal nominals can behave as an antecedent of verb phrase ellipsis, while the reversing the relation makes sentences ungrammatical. To wit, verb phrases cannot behave as an antecedent of ellipsis of deverbal nominals. This fact cannot simply be attributed morphological mismatches and should be explained in terms of the syntactic identity condition on ellipsis. I have also demonstrated that the analysis can easily be carried over to deadjectival nominals and their ellipsis. In addition, the importance of the syntactic identity condition on ellipsis has been further confirmed by gapping in deverbal nominals.
In Chapter 3, after pointing out the problems with Abney’s (1987) analysis, I have proposed the structures of three types of gerunds in terms of the Labeling Algorithm in Chomsky (2013, 2015): nominal, genitive, and clausal gerunds. Concretely, I have
argued that the labels of nominal and genitive gerunds are determined to be DP by the standard Agreement while the label of clausal gerunds are specified as NP by nominal feature sharing. The proposed analysis can not only account for the facts observed in the previous studies but also explain the reason why clausal gerunds and their subject can be assigned the same Case (accusative Case in most cases) from a matrix element thanks to the nominal feature sharing. They are equidistant from NP. Coupled with the licensing condition on ellipsis in Saito and Murasugi (1990) and Lobeck (1995), the proposed analysis can also explain the fact that nominal and genitive gerunds allow ellipsis whereas clausal gerunds do not.
Chapter 4 has been dedicated to the analysis of sentence initial clauses. Some researchers argued that sentence initial that clauses are moved to the Spec of TP, while binding data led other researchers to conclude that they are base-generated in the Spec of CP. Interestingly, sentence initial that clauses behave as if they were normal subjects in terms of, for instance, Subject Auxiliary Inversion at first glance, whereas they show the Condition C bleeding effects. To solve this paradoxical behavior, I have proposed that sentence initial that clauses are base-generated in the (outer) Spec of TP, and binding facts are captured by the mechanism in Moulton (2013). Then, I have demonstrated that the proposed analysis can easily be carried over to the analyses of the corresponding it-that construction and to infinitives.
Although some of the analyses in this thesis may be rather crude and should be refined, I hope that the present analyses contribute to the empirical studies of nominal expressions.
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