Minimalist Syntax

Cambridge University Press
052154274X - Minimalist Syntax: Exploring the Structure of English - Andrew Radford

Frontmatter
More information
Minimalist Syntax
Exploring the Structure of English
Andrew Radford’s latest textbook, Minimalist Syntax:

Exploring the Structure of English, provides a clear and acces-
sible introduction to current work in syntactic theory, draw-
ing on the key concepts of Chomsky’s Minimalist Program.
Assuming little or no prior knowledge of syntactic theory,
Radford takes students through a diverse range of topics in
English syntax – such as categories and features, merger, null
constituents, movement, case, split projections and phases –
and shows how the ‘computational component’ works within
the minimalist framework. Beginning at an elementary level,
the book introduces grammatical concepts and sets out the
theoretical foundations of Principles and Parameters and Uni-
versal Grammar, before progressing in stages towards more
complex phenomena. Each chapter contains a workbook sec-
tion, in which students are encouraged to make their own
analyses of English phrases and sentences through exercises,
model answers and ‘helpful hints’. There is also an extensive
glossary of terms.
Although designed primarily for courses on syntactic the-
ory or English syntax, this book also provides an up-to-date,
clear and straightforward introduction to the field.
andrew radford is Professor of Linguistics at the Uni-

versity of Essex. He has published six books on syntax with
Cambridge University Press: Italian Syntax (1977); Transfor-
mational Syntax (1981); Transformational Grammar (1988);
Syntactic Theory and the Structure of English (1997); Syntax:
a Minimalist Introduction (1997) and Linguistics: an Intro-
duction (co-authored with a group of his Essex colleagues,
1999). He has also published a book on Syntactic Theory
and the Acquisition of English Syntax (Blackwell, Oxford,
1990) and numerous articles on syntax and the acquisition of
syntax.
© Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org

Frontmatter
More information
CAMBRIDGE TEXTBOOKS IN LINGUISTICS
General editors: s . r . a n d e r s o n, j. b r e s na n, b. c o m r i e , w. d r e s s l e r ,
c. ewen, r . huddleston, r . l ass, d. lightfoot, j. lyons,
p. h. matthews, r. posner, s. romaine, n. v. smith, n. vincent
Minimalist Syntax: Exploring the Structure of English

Frontmatter
More information
In this series:
p. h. matthews Morphology Second edition

b. comrie Aspect
r . m . k e m p s o n Semantic Theory
t. bynon Historical Linguistics
j. allwo od, l.-g. anderson and ö. dahl Logic in Linguistics
d. b. fr y The Physics of Speech
r. a. hudson Sociolinguistics Second edition
a . j. e l l i o t Child Language
p. h. matthews Syntax
a. radford Transformational Syntax
l . b au e r English Word-Formation
s. c. levinson Pragmatics
g. brown and g. yule Discourse Analysis
r . h u d d l e s t o n Introduction to the Grammar of English
r . l a s s Phonology
a. comrie Tense
w. k l e i n Second Language Acquisition
a. j. wo ods, p. fletcher and a. hughes Statistics in Language Studies
d. a. cruse Lexical Semantics
a. radford Transformational Grammar
m . g a r m a n Psycholinguistics
g . g . c o r b e t t Gender
h. j. giegerich English Phonology
r . c a n n Formal Semantics
j. laver Principles of Phonetics
f. r . pal m e r Grammatical Roles and Relations
m. a. jones Foundations of French Syntax
a. radford Syntactic Theory and the Structure of English: a Minimalist Approach
r . d. van va l i n, jr , and r . j. l a p o l l a Syntax: Structure, Meaning and Function
a. duranti Linguistic Anthropology
a . c r u t t e n d e n Intonation Second edition
j. k . c h a m b e r s and p. trudgill Dialectology Second edition
c. lyons Definiteness
r . k ag e r Optimality Theory
j. a. holm An Introduction to Pidgins and Creoles
c . g . c o r b e t t Number
c . j. e w e n and h. van der hulst The Phonological Structure of Words
f. r . pal m e r Mood and Modality Second edition
b. j. b l a k e Case Second edition
e . g u s s m a n Phonology: Analysis and Theory
m. yip Tone
w. croft Typology and Universals Second edition
f. c o u l m a s Writing Systems: an Introduction to their Linguistic Analysis
p. j. hopper and e . c . t r au g o t t Grammaticalization Second edition
l. white Second Language Acquisition and Universal Grammar
i. plag Word-Formation in English
w. croft and a. cruse Cognitive Linguistics
a. siewierska Person
d. b üring Binding Theory
a. radford Minimalist Syntax: Exploring the Structure of English

Frontmatter
More information
Minimalist Syntax
Exploring the Structure of English
ANDREW RADFORD
University of Essex

Frontmatter
More information
published by the press syndicate of the university of cambridge

The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom
cambridge university press

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge, CB2 2RU, UK
40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011–4211, USA
477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia
Ruiz de Alarcón 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain
Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa
http://www.cambridge.org

C Andrew Radford 2004
This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2004
Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge
Typefaces Times 10.5/13 pt. and Formata System LATEX 2ε [tb]
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data

Radford, Andrew.
Minimalist syntax: exploring the structure of English / Andrew Radford.
p. cm. – (Cambridge textbooks in linguistics)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0 521 83497 X (hardback) – ISBN 0 521 54274 X (paperback)
1. English language – Syntax. 2. Grammar, Comparative and general – Syntax. I. Title.
II. Series.
PE1361.R335 2004
425 – dc22 2003055385
ISBN 0 521 83497 X hardback

ISBN 0 521 54274 X paperback

Frontmatter
More information
Contents
Preface page xi
1 Grammar 1
1.1 Overview 1
1.2 Traditional grammar 1
1.3 Universal Grammar 6
1.4 The Language Faculty 10
1.5 Principles of Universal Grammar 13
1.6 Parameters 16
1.7 Parameter-setting 21
1.8 Evidence used to set parameters 23
1.9 Summary 25
Workbook section 26
2 Words 33
2.1 Overview 33
2.2 Grammatical categories 33
2.3 Categorising words 38
2.4 Functional categories 40
2.5 Determiners and quantifiers 41
2.6 Pronouns 44
2.7 Auxiliaries 47
2.8 Infinitival to 49
2.9 Complementisers 52
2.10 Labelled bracketing 57
2.11 Grammatical features 58
2.12 Summary 60
Workbook section 62
3 Structure 66
3.1 Overview 66
3.2 Phrases 66
3.3 Clauses 71
3.4 Specifiers 76
3.5 Intermediate and maximal projections 80
3.6 Testing structure 84
3.7 Syntactic relations 90
3.8 Bare phrase structure 94
vii

Frontmatter
More information
viii Contents
3.9 Summary 96
Workbook section 98
4 Null constituents 106

4.1 Overview 106
4.2 Null subjects 106
4.3 Null auxiliaries 111
4.4 Null T in auxiliariless finite clauses 115
4.5 Null T in bare infinitive clauses 121
4.6 Null C in finite clauses 124
4.7 Null C in non-finite clauses 128
4.8 Defective clauses 131
4.9 Case properties of subjects 134
4.10 Null determiners 140
4.11 Summary 145
Workbook section 146
5 Head movement 151

5.1 Overview 151
5.2 T-to-C movement 151
5.3 Movement as copying and deletion 154
5.4 V-to-T movement 158
5.5 Head movement 162
5.6 Auxiliary raising 166
5.7 Another look at negation 170
5.8 do-support 173
5.9 Head movement in nominals 178
5.10 Summary 181
6 Wh-movement 188
6.1 Overview 188
6.2 Wh-questions 188
6.3 Wh-movement as a copying operation 190
6.4 Wh-movement, EPP and the Attract Closest Principle 197
6.5 Explaining what moves where 202
6.6 Wh-subject questions 206
6.7 Pied-piping 211
6.8 Yes–no questions 220
6.9 Wh-exclamatives 222
6.10 Relative clauses 223
6.11 That-relatives 228
6.12 Summary 234
7 A-movement 241
7.1 Overview 241
7.2 Subjects in Belfast English 241

Frontmatter
More information
Contents ix
7.3 Quotatives and idioms 244

7.4 Argument structure 248
7.5 Thematic roles 250
7.6 Unaccusative predicates 254
7.7 Passive predicates 260
7.8 Long-distance passivisation 264
7.9 Raising 266
7.10 Comparing raising and control predicates 268
7.11 Summary 274
8 Agreement, case and movement 281

8.1 Overview 281
8.2 Agreement 281
8.3 Feature valuation 284
8.4 Uninterpretable features and feature-deletion 287
8.5 Expletive it subjects 291
8.6 Expletive there subjects 298
8.7 Agreement and A-movement 307
8.8 EPP in control infinitives 309
8.9 EPP in other infinitives 313
8.10 Summary 322
9 Split projections 327

9.1 Overview 327
9.2 Split CP: Force, Topic and Focus projections 327
9.3 Split CP: Finiteness projection 332
9.4 Split VPs: VP shells in ergative structures 336
9.5 VP shells in resultative, double-object and object-control
structures 344
9.6 VP shells in transitive, unergative, unaccusative, raising
and locative inversion structures 348
9.7 Transitive light verbs and accusative case assignment 356
9.8 Evidence for a further projection in transitive verb phrases 362
9.9 Extending the shell analysis to nominals 367
9.10 Summary 372
10 Phases 381
10.1 Overview 381
10.2 Phases 381
10.3 Intransitive and defective clauses 385
10.4 Wh-movement through spec-CP 388
10.5 Wh-movement through spec-vP in transitive clauses 391
10.6 Evidence for successive-cyclic wh-movement through
spec-CP 394

Frontmatter
More information
x Contents
10.7 Evidence for wh-movement through spec-vP in transitive

clauses 401
10.8 The role of phases in lexical selection 407
10.9 Questions about phases 409
10.10 The nature of A-bar movement 419
10.11 Summary 426
Glossary 432
References 485
Index 498

Frontmatter
More information
Preface
Aims
This book has two main aims, reflected in its title and subtitle. The first
is to provide an intensive introduction to recent work in syntactic theory (more
particularly to how the computational component operates within the model of
grammar assumed in recent work within the framework of Chomsky’s Minimalist
Program). The second is to provide a description of a range of phenomena in
English syntax, making use of minimalist concepts and assumptions wherever
possible. The book can be seen as a successor to (or updated version of) my
(1997a) book Syntactic Theory and the Structure of English. There is quite a
lot of duplication of material between the earlier book and this one (particularly
in the first few chapters), though the present book also contains substantial new
material (e.g. on agreement, case, split projections and phases), and the analysis
of many phenomena presented in this book differs from that in its predecessor
(agreement being handled in terms of a feature-matching rather than a feature-
checking framework, for example).
Key features
The book is intended to be suitable both for people with only minimal
grammatical knowledge, and for people who have already done quite a bit of
syntax but want to know something (more) about Minimalism. It is not historicist
or comparative in orientation, and hence does not presuppose knowledge of earlier
or alternative models of grammar. It is written in an approachable style, avoiding
unnecessary complexity. I’ve taught earlier versions of the book to more than 200
students over the past three years, and greatly benefited from their mutterings
and mystification, as well as their assignments (which told me a lot about what
they didn’t understand, and about what I needed to explain more carefully). I’ve
worked through (and refined) the exercise material with the students, and the
helpful hints which the exercises contain have been developed in order to try and
eliminate some of the commonest errors students make. The book is intensive
and progressive in nature, which means that it starts at an elementary level but
gets progressively harder as you get further into it. A group of students I taught
xi

Frontmatter
More information
xii Preface
an earlier version of the book to gave the following mean degree-of-difficulty

score to each chapter on a five-point scale ranging from 1 = very easy to 5 =
very hard: chapter 1 = 1.6; chapter 2 = 1.8; chapter 3 = 2.2; chapter 4 = 2.7;
chapter 5 = 2.9; chapter 6 = 3.2; chapter 7 = 3.4; chapter 8 = 3.7; chapter 9 =
4.2; chapter 10 = 4.4. Successive chapters become cumulatively more complex,
in that each chapter presupposes material covered in previous chapters as well
as introducing new material: hence it is helpful to go back and read material
from earlier chapters every so often. In some cases, analyses presented in earlier
chapters are subsequently refined or revised in the light of new assumptions made
in later chapters.
Organisation
Each of the ten chapters in the book contains a detailed text discus-
sion of a particular topic (divided into sections to facilitate reading), together
with an integral workbook section at the end of the chapter, containing exercise
material (to be done as classwork or homework) with model answers and helpful
hints provided. Although the book contains numerous references to (often highly
technical) primary research works, the exercises are designed in such a way that
they can be tackled on the basis of the coursebook material alone. The book
also includes an extensive glossary which provides simple illustrations of how
key technical terms are used (both theory-specific terms like EPP and traditional
terms like subject): technical terms are written in bold print in the main text
(italics being used for highlighting particular expressions – e.g. a key word appear-
ing in an example sentence). The glossary contains entries for key technical terms
in syntax which are used in a number of different places in the text (though not
for terms which appear in only one part of the main text, and which are glossed
in the text where they appear). The glossary also includes an integrated list of
abbreviations.
Companion volume
This book is being published in parallel with an abridged version

entitled English Syntax: an Introduction. In this longer version of the text, the
main text (particularly in the later chapters) is generally 30–50 per cent longer
than the main text in the abridged version. This longer version is aimed primarily
at students with (near-) native command of English who are taking syntax as
a major rather than a minor course. The two books have an essentially parallel
organisation into chapters and sections (though additional sections and technical
discussion have been added in this longer version), and contain much the same
exercise material (though with exercise material based on additional sections

Frontmatter
More information
Preface xiii
of text included in the longer version). In keeping the two books parallel in
structure and organisation as far as possible, I am mindful of the comment made
in a review of two earlier books which I produced in parallel longer and shorter
versions (Radford 1997a,b) that some readers may wish to read the short version
of a given chapter first, and then look at the longer version afterwards, and that
this ‘is not facilitated by an annoyingly large number of non-correspondences’
(Ten Hacken 2001, p. 2). Accordingly, I have tried to maximise correspondence
between the ‘long’ and ‘short’ versions of these two new books.
Acknowledgments
Particular thanks are due to three brave Musketeers (Hajime Hattori,

Cris Lozano and Peter Evans) for shooting down some of the more inane parts of
an earlier draft of the book when they had it inflicted on them as students. I’d also
like to thank Cambridge University Press’s series editor (Neil Smith) for patiently
wading through and commenting on two drafts of the longer version and one of
the shorter one, and managing to make his comments challenging and good-
humoured at the same time. Thanks also go to Bob Borsley and Martin Atkinson
for helpful thoughts on particular issues. And above all to my wife Khadija, for
putting up with extended periods of authorial autism during the gestation period
for the book.
Dedication
This book (like my 1981 Transformational Syntax book) is dedicated

to Joe Cremona, who sadly died shortly before it went to press. Joe was my tutor
at Cambridge for three of my undergraduate courses (History of Italian, History
of Romanian, Vulgar Latin and Romance Philology). As I wrote in the preface
to my 1981 book, Joe ‘did more than anyone to awaken my interest in language,
and to persuade me that just maybe linguistic theory wasn’t quite as pointless as
it seemed at the time’ (when linguistics seemed to most students to be designed
solely to inflict taxonomic torture on them). Thanks for everything, Joe – you will
be sorely missed by the many people you helped go on to successful academic
careers.

Minimalist Syntax

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Minimalist Syntax

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Minimalist Syntax

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Cambridge University Press

052154274X - Minimalist Syntax: Exploring the Structure of English - Andrew Radford

Andrew Radford’s latest textbook, Minimalist Syntax:

andrew radford is Professor of Linguistics at the Uni-

© Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org

CAMBRIDGE TEXTBOOKS IN LINGUISTICS