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Chapter 4 - From the External Argument Onward

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2022

Yafei Li
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Madison
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Summary

Multiple aspects of the external argument ArgE need better understanding. First, no principle of UG explains why ArgE must stay structurally outside any lexical verbal projection. This fact is argued to result from the USM requiring an isomorphic mapping between semantics and structure while UG itself cannot guarantee such a result via X'-theory. The solution is iconicity of independence, which matches ArgE’s conceptual “independent existence” (Dowty 1991) from an event with its structural separation from the projection of the event-denoting V. Second, the grammatical properties of ArgE, especially given the iconicity account, must be compared with those of oblique arguments, eventually leading to a theory of the morphology–syntax interface which allows a uniform account of several types of cross-linguistic fact. Third, regarding word order, moved constituents exhibit the earlier-iff-structurally-higher correlation while in situ constituents don’t, with ArgE typologically in both groups. This property, together with the unique word orders produced by linear iconicity in previous chapters, prompts the hypothesis that linearization results from computational cost and the 2nd law of thermodynamics, which further identifies a new locality phenomenon: the functional domain island.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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  • From the External Argument Onward
  • Yafei Li, University of Wisconsin, Madison
  • Book: Universal Grammar and Iconicity
  • Online publication: 03 February 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108885935.005
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  • From the External Argument Onward
  • Yafei Li, University of Wisconsin, Madison
  • Book: Universal Grammar and Iconicity
  • Online publication: 03 February 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108885935.005
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • From the External Argument Onward
  • Yafei Li, University of Wisconsin, Madison
  • Book: Universal Grammar and Iconicity
  • Online publication: 03 February 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108885935.005
Available formats
×