Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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Item Phasehood and Phi-Intervention(2021) Thivierge, Sigwan; Preminger, Omer; Polinsky, Maria; Linguistics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation investigates the notion of phases in syntactic theory, and offers a reanalysis of certain phases as instances of phi(φ)-intervention. Under the standard view, phases are syntactic structures that, according to the Phase Impenetrability Condition, are opaque to operations originating outside of the phase (Chomsky, 2000; 2001). Phasehood was linked to certain heads such as C and (transitive) v, but several issues arise once the empirical domain is broadened beyond English. As more work has turned to unrelated languages, a less stipulative alternative has presented itself: phases are intervention effects, and are reducible to a more general locality issue. In Rackowski and Richards’ (2005) account of Tagalog wh-movement, for example, CPs act as phases because they constitute the closest goal. In Halpert’s (2019) account of Zulu hyper-raising, CPs do not act as phases due to the cyclic nature of Agree. In Keine’s (2017) account of Hindi long-distance agreement, vPs do not act as phases, which I argue is because v is not a φ-goal. In Georgian, vPs act as phases because v0, in contrast, is a φ-goal (as I will argue in this thesis). These languages show that XPs act as phases only when they are potential goals for a syntactic operation. These languages also illustrate two ways of diagnosing phasehood as φ-intervention: via movement out of the domain, and via agreement into the domain. These results suggest that phasehood is an epiphenomenon, and that the interior of the ‘phase’ is accessible even after the phase is complete. In this dissertation, I argue that certain instances of phasehood derive from the ‘phase’ head bearing a φ-probe: the φ-features on the probe intervene for φ-agreement, which results in phase-like effects. The empirical data in favour this claim comes from the Georgian agreement system. I show that subjects in Georgian are base-generated in different positions, depending on whether they fall under the basic agreement paradigm or the inverse agreement paradigm. In the basic, subjects are introduced above v and are the closest goal for Agree operations that originate outside the vP domain. In the inverse, subjects are introduced below v; in this case, the φ-features that are associated with the φ-probe on v constitute the closest goal for Agree.Item On Formal Feature Licensing in Minimalism: Aspects of Standard Arabic Morphosyntax(2007-08-28) Soltan, Usama; Uriagereka, Juan; Linguistics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation investigates a set of phenomena in Standard Arabic at the syntax-morphology interface, providing an analysis for each within the assumptions of the minimalist program, particularly those related to mechanisms of formal feature licensing. Among the issues discussed are the subject-verb agreement asymmetry, case-assignment, default agreement, nominative Themes, as well as interactions between tense, negation, and modality heads. In this regard, I provide an analysis for word order alternation in the language in terms of left dislocation rather than via movement, showing that the language does not show A-movement effects in SVO orders, passives, raising constructions, or object shift. The same is also shown to hold in what is usually referred to as raising-to-object constructions. The proposed analysis shows that formal features such as case and agreement can be licensed in absence of movement, a conclusion more compatible with the Agree-based approach to formal feature licensing in minimalism than with the Spec-head approach. Finally, I propose to extend Agree to head-head relations in the functional domain, accounting for the interesting, though rather intricate, paradigm of inflecting negatives as well as person-less imperatives in Standard Arabic and languages that exhibit similar behavior.Item (DIS)AGREE: MOVEMENT AND AGREEMENT RECONSIDERED(2007-04-25) Chandra, Pritha; Hornstein, Norbert; Linguistics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines Agree, a narrow syntactic, long-distance operation underlying phi-agreement in the grammar. Taking the strong minimalist thesis (cf. Chomsky 2000) as my point of departure, I question Agree on both conceptual and empirical grounds. On the conceptual side, the operation is suspect first for its language-specific character. Second, it also fails to be justified on the grounds of general architectural constraints and legibility requirements. Further, evidences of various long-distance agreement from across languages examined here question the empirical basis for Agree built throughout the previous literature. As far as this is true, I contend that the faculty of language has nothing beyond Merge and Move/Internal Merge, the first being inevitable in any language-like system and the latter necessitated by interface exigencies. My purpose in this dissertation is to show that these two operations suffice to obtain phi-agreement in natural language.