Syntactic Modularity

Syntactic Modularity

Modularity in Syntax

This book clarifies some of the central issues in Japanese syntax, pointing the wayto solving several long-standing problems. It presents an alternative to the Standard Theory, amodel which has dominated Japanese linguistics for a number of years.Following the study of thesyntactic and lexical levels of representation in Japanese, the book brings the same theoreticalperspective to bear on English. Although Japanese, a so-called nonconfigurational language, istypologically far removed from Indo-European languages, Farmer shows that Modular Grammar, which wasprimarily developed to account for an "exotic" language, yields insights into English as well, Inparticular, she examines the status of pronouns and anaphors. Aspects of Government Binding theoryare adapted for both Japanese and English, providing significant evidence that still-evolvingtheories have wide and possibly universal validity.Modularity in Syntax concludes by comparingJapanese and English, speculating on the extent to which the typological differences between themare a function of the nature of the rules and principles that mediate between the syntax and thelexical structure of the two languages.Ann Farmer is an Assistant Professor in the Department ofLinguistics, at the University of Arizona. This book is the ninth in the series, Current Studies inLinguistics, edited by Samuel Jay Keyser.

Phi-features and the Modular Architecture of Language

This monograph investigates the modular architecture of language through the nature of "uninterpretable" phi-features: person, number, gender, and Case. It provides new tools and evidence for the modular architecture of the human language faculty, a foundational topic of linguistic research. At the same time it develops a new theory for one of the core issues posed by the Minimalist Program: the relationship of syntax to its interfaces and the nature of uninterpretable features. The work sets out to establish a new cross-linguistic phenomenon to study the foregoing, person-governed last-resort repairs, which provides new insights into the nature of ergative/accusative Case and of Case licensing itself. This is the first monograph that explicitly addresses the syntactic vs. morphological status of uninterpretable phi-features and their relationship to interface systems in a similar way, drawing on person-based interactions among arguments as key data-base.