This article argues for a minimalist approach to the variation between Romance languages with respect to the generic interpretation associated with infinitival complements of epistemic verbs. It is proposed that epistemic verbs have inherent temporal features and that they assign a tense feature to their complement. These features are checked under a Spec-head relation through two temporal projections, related either to the object position or the subject position. The variation observed between Portuguese and French, Italian and Spanish with respect to the event interpretation of infinitives is formulated in terms of the strong/weak status of the [+specific] feature of Tense. The difference in the temporal interpretation of the inflected infinitives with respect to the presence or absence of the have + past participle sequence is derived from the hypothesis that the tense of the participle raises to the TP projection that c-commands it when it is morphologically invisible, the indicative present being visible in Portuguese, but not in the other languages.

This article deals with morphosyntactic variation. Focusing on subject doubling in Québec Colloquial French (QCF), the author argues in favor of a conception of linguistic competence which allows for variation. Various analyses which exclude variation from linguistic competence are considered and rejected, and it is concluded that the alternation between doubled and non-doubled constructions is an integral part of the linguistic competence of QCF speakers. The author then raises the question of the plausibility of an analysis which posits variable subject-verb agreement. She demonstrates that variable agreement systems are common crosslinguistically and that the analysis proposed for QCF is in consequence a quite reasonable one. Finally, an analysis is sketched within Chomsky’s Minimalist Program, showing that current linguistic theory is equipped for handling language-internal morphosyntactic variation.

This article argues for a very restrictive theory of feature checking whereby only formal features of functional heads need to be checked for convergence. This theory, which enables us to dispense with most of the economy conditions assumed within the minimalist program (Chomsky 1995), is empirically supported by two syntactically and semantically related constructions in Kirundi: the Subject-Object Reversal and the Transitive Expletive Constructions. On parametric grounds, we argue that such constructions derive from the existence in Kirundi of a TP-internal focus projection whose [+focus] feature must be checked for convergence.

The analysis of the syntactic and interpretive properties of Spanish temporal adjectives poses an interesting problem for the theory of syntax since [+temporal] interpretation and Noun-Adjective linearizations are not univocal. The minimalist account of the position of temporal adjectives argued for here is based on the hypothesis that DPs contain a TP projection in which the feature [+temp] is checked: the TP within DP hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, all nouns are associated with an optional temporal feature when entering the computational component. When they enter into a syntactic relation with a term carrying a [+temp] value, the temporal feature they are associated with must be checked. Attraction of the adjective can take place overtly or covertly. In the first case, the adjective is in prenominal position checking the [+temp] feature at Spell-Out and, in the second case, it appears postnominally checking the [+temp] feature at the LF interface.

The aim of this article is to argue that the similarities and differences in the interpretation of n-words (personne, rien, etc.) in two closely related dialects of French can be explained by considerations linked to lexical properties as well as to properties of contrastive stress in Universal Grammar. The minor lexical differences in the two systems are related to the fact that only in Standard French is a single negation reading ruled out when an adverbial negative marker bearing [+neg, −T, −Asp] features, i.e., pas, appears in the scope of an unstressed n-word. A general principle is proposed to account for the fact that a contrastively focused n-word always blocks the local relation which seems necessary for a negative concord reading. It is observed that the presence of an intervening quantifier between the negative quantifier and the n-word always induces a Double Negation reading.