This study addresses the problems scrambling langauges provide for the existing syntactic theories by analyzing the interaction of semantic and discourse functional factors with syntactic properties of word order in this type of languages, and by discussing the implications of this interaction for Universal Grammar. Three interrelated goals are carefully followed in this work. The first is to analyze the syntactic structure of Persian, a language which exhibits free word order. With this analysis, the author has accounted for the relative order of categorized expressions, the motivation for their possible rearrangements, and the grammatical results of those reorderings. In this respect, a broad range of major syntactic phenomena, including object shift, Case, Extended Projection Principle (EPP), binding, and scope interpretation of quantifiers, interrogative phrases, adverbial phrases, and negative elements are examined. This monograph is the first major theoretical work ever published on Persian, and therefore fills the existing gap by providing insight into the syntactic structure of this language. The second goal is to connect these insights to similar linguistic properties in languages in which scrambling occurs (e.g. German, Dutch, Hindi, Russian, Japanese, and Korean), and to provide a deeper understanding of this group of genetically diverse, but typologically related languages. The final and principal goal is to situate the results of this work within the framework of the Minimalist Program (MP). The investigations in this study indicate that scrambling is not an optional rule, and that certain principles of MP, such as the Minimal Link Condition, are only seemingly violated in these languages. Furthermore, it is shown that careful analysis of scrambling with respect to binding and scope relations, and a reanalysis of the properties of A and A' movements, cast some doubts on the relevance of a typology of movement in natural language.
Author(s): Simin Karimi
Series: Studies in Generative Grammar 76
Publisher: Mouton de Gruyter
Year: 2005
Language: English
Pages: 265
Acknowledgements......Page 8
Table of Contents......Page 10
1. The goal of the project......Page 16
2. Persian syntax: an overview......Page 18
3. Scrambling in Persian......Page 31
4. Theoretical assumptions......Page 35
5. The outline of the monograph......Page 43
1. Introduction......Page 48
2. Base-generation approach......Page 49
3. Scrambling as syntactic movement......Page 60
4. Why does Lx, but not Ly, allow scrambling?......Page 76
5. Conclusion......Page 81
1. Introduction......Page 84
2. Subject in Persian......Page 86
3. Objects in Persian......Page 119
4. Persian as a topic-prominent language......Page 126
5. The role of T......Page 128
6. Local scrambling: A-movement?......Page 130
7. Conclusion......Page 131
1. Introduction......Page 137
2. Adverbs......Page 139
3. Topic positions......Page 143
4. Focus......Page 146
5. Restrictions on scrambling......Page 173
6. Conclusion......Page 176
1. Introduction......Page 179
2. Scope marking......Page 180
3. Binding......Page 188
4. Conclusion......Page 206
1. Introduction......Page 210
2. Island conditions......Page 211
3. Scrambling and island effects......Page 216
4. Processing effects......Page 224
5. Argument/adjunct structure effects......Page 228
6. Representation versus derivation......Page 234
7. Conclusion......Page 238
1. Introduction......Page 240
2. Is typology of movement a myth?......Page 241
3. Syntactic positions and interpretation......Page 246
4. Derivational versus representational syntax......Page 256
5. Further research......Page 258
References......Page 261
Subject Index......Page 274
Author Index......Page 278
