Vicki Carstens

Concord in minimalist theory

Concord within DP argues that movement is driven by uninterpretable features of either the target or the moved item, contra Chomsky 1995. The uninterpretable f-features of which concord consists must be eliminated by LF, to satisfy Full Interpretation. But raising of inflected APs and KPs into checking relations with N0 cannot be motivated, in Chomskys system, since N0 has no uninterpretable features that these items can check. Assuming Kaynes (1994, 1998) proposal for APs, the problem can be partially overcome, but inflected of constructions still lack an account. Chomskys (1998) probe-goal approach applied to concord also encounters difficulties, avoided under revision of the (1995) system: if the f-features of APs and KPs drive them to raise for checking, correct results are obtained.

Rethinking Complementizer Agreement: Agree with a Case-Checked Goal

Agree(X, Subj) accounts for all agreement in West Germanic: complementizer agreement (CA) results from an Agree relation between uninterpretable -features of Fin0 (Rizzi 1997) and -features of the subject; subject-verb agreement (SA) spells out uninterpretable -features of T0 on V0 raised to T0, even in OV clauses (Haegeman 2000). Although DPs need Case to participate in Agree relations (Chomsky 2000), deletion-marked Case remains syntactically accessible until the next strong phase (Pesetsky and Torrego 2001), allowing CA and SA to cooccur. In Frisian, that cannot agree in embedded VO clauses because it is in Force; the verb is in Fin0, bearing CA (contra Zwart 1997).

Multiple Agreement and Case Deletion: Against φ-incompleteness

I argue against Chomsky’s (1999, 2000) proposal that Case deletion correlates with the φ-completeness of probes, based on (i) the omission of gender in subject agreement in, for example, Romance languages; and (ii) the inclusion of full φ-features in subject agreement in Bantu, repeated on all verbal heads within a clause. I propose instead a return to the traditional view that certain categories are Case “assigners,” such that Agree deletes the goal’s Case only if the probe has an intrinsic structural Case value. Finally, I show that Agree so modified accounts for concord in noun phrases, including concord on ‘of’ in African languages, reflecting φ-features of head nouns. Crucial to this account is a structural analysis in which ‘of’ is merged with a nominal constituent that includes the head noun but excludes the surface ‘of’ object, be it possessor, agent, or theme.

Empty nouns in Bantu locatives

This paper presents an analysis of Chichewa locatives and their theoretical implications. Locative phrases exhibit contradictory properties, distributing with DPs but seeming to have preposition-like heads (ku, pa, and mu). I argue that they are DPs whose head nouns are silent. ku, pa, and mu are Case-markers, projecting KP complements to the null nouns and agreeing with them in gender. Word order shows that each KP loc raises to Spec of its containing DP; I propose that null N is licensed thereby. I analyze gaps within Romance DPs as empty Ns also, licensed by agreeing material in Spec positions. Conditions on noun gaps closely resembling those on DP-level pro, I propose a unitary requirement for null [+interpretable] Φ-features in terms of feature-checking relations (Chomsky 1995). This accounts for null nominal elements of all sizes and categories

Radical Defectivity: Implications of Xhosa Expletive Constructions

In Xhosa VSO clauses, subject agreement exhibits default features, objects cannot be pronominalized, a subject focus reading is obligatory, and experiencer verbs with two DP arguments are precluded. We argue that impoverished versions of T and v* in VSO clauses lack the probe features involved in subject agreement, EPP, object shift, and nominative/accusative valuation within Xhosa SVO sentences. Only an unusual focus-linked strategy can Case-license full DPs in VSO clauses, but this is incompatible with inherent Cases borne by arguments of experiencer verbs. We show that CPs and augmentless NPs appear in positions where DPs cannot surface because uCase is a feature of D. Given the striking evidence for abstract Case in Xhosa, we propose Case-friendly analyses for Bantu Case-theoretic anomalies that Xhosa shares.

Agreeing How? Implications for Theories of Agreement and Locality

In Lubukusu and Lusaamia, the wh-expression ‘how’ agrees in φ-features with the subject of its clause. We show that agreement on ‘how’ is not always identical to subject agreement on the verb: the two diverge in certain locative inversion and subject extraction environments. On the basis of these facts, we argue that ‘how’ is a vP adjunct with downward-probing uφ independent of the uφ that underlies subject agreement. We also explore locality paradoxes that arise in connection with agreeing ‘how’ in locative inversion constructions. These present challenges to the traditional notion of equidistance from a probe as an explanation for inversion, show that operators may have ‘‘active’’ φ-features even while they are Ā-opaque, and offer insight into the mechanisms making locative inversion possible.

Head-head relations in Problems of projection

Abstract Chomsky 2013 argues that D of an external argument in Spec TP is in principle as close to C as T is. Assuming that “inversion depends upon locality independent of category,” T and D should therefore compete with each other as candidates for raising to C in English questions, yet only T so raises. Chomsky takes this to indicate that the external argument is in its base position, Spec, vP, when C is merged. Our paper argues that this approach cannot generalize to account for why only V+v and not D of an external argument can raise to T in V-v-to-T languages. It also has major difficulties accounting for a well-known asymmetry: T raises to C only in English non-subject questions. We conclude that head-movement is sensitive to categorial and other features of lexical items, contra the claims of Chomsky 2013.