Dynamic Antisymmetry (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs): 38 - Softcover

Moro, Andrea; Keyser, Samuel Jay

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0262632012 ISBN 13: 9780262632010

Publisher: MIT Press, 2001

Synopsis

The central idea of Dynamic Antisymmetry is that movement is triggered by the geometry of phrase structure. Assuming a minimalist framework, movement is traced back to the necessity for natural language to organize words in linear order at the interface with the perceptual-articulatory module.

About this title

Synopsis:

The central idea of "Dynamic Antisymmetry" is that movement and phrase structure are not independent properties of grammar; more specifically, that movement is triggered by the geometry of phrase structure. Assuming a minimalist framework, movement is traced back to the necessity for natural language to organize words in linear order at the interface with the perceptual-articulatory module. Andrea Moro uses this innovative perspective to analyze several empirical domains, focusing on small clauses, split "wh"-movement and clitic constructions. In a final speculative chapter, he examines the general consequences for the design of grammar implied by Dynamic Antisymmetry. The book is self-contained, with a synopsis of current theories of movement and a synthetic presentation of the theory of antisymmetry. An appendix presents the essentials of a unified theory of copular sentences, which plays a central role in the argument and has several important consequences for syntax, for example, for expletives and locality.

About the Author:

Andrea Moro is Professor of General Linguistics at the Institute for Advanced Study (IUSS) in Pavia, Italy. He is the author of Dynamic Antisymmetry, Impossible Languages, and The Boundaries of Babel (all published by the MIT Press), and other books, including The Raising of Predicates and I Speak, Therefore I Am.

About this edition

• Publisher: MIT Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0262632012
• ISBN 13: 9780262632010
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 154