The Dependencies of Objects: Volume 34 (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs, 34) - Softcover

Torrego, Esther; Keyser, Samuel Jay

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0262700689 ISBN 13: 9780262700689

Publisher: MIT Press, 1998

Synopsis

This monograph investigates the nature, properties, and consequences of the grammatical constraints that yield overt marking of objects in a variety of languages. The author, working within the Minimalist Program, concentrates on the syntactic and semantic behaviors of a particular class of objects: objects morphologically marked by the dative preposition in Romance languages, especially in several Spanish dialects, with consideration of similar phenomena in other languages.

The central questions addressed revolve around the syntactic derivations that have accusative and dative complements and the role played by doubling clitics in these derivations. The analysis, concerned primarily with Case theory, unifies syntactic phenomena by isolating the grammatical factors that yield structures with accusative and dative objects. The monograph also includes an extended discussion of some classical themes of syntactic theory in the Romance languages, including asymmetries in the wh-movement of objects with clitics, and causatives.

Linguistic Inquiry Monograph 34

About this title

About the Author

Samuel Jay Keyser is Professor Emeritus in MIT's Department of Linguistics and Philosophy and Special Assistant to the Chancellor. Head of the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy from 1977 to 1998, he also held the positions of Director of the Center for Cognitive Science and Associate Provost.

Edition details

• Publisher: MIT Press
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0262700689
• ISBN 13: 9780262700689
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208