0100492872

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Adjunction as categorization: On the syntactic quirkiness of word-level modification

English (英語)

Papers from the International Workshop on the Syntax of Predication and Modification 2024

139-158

神戸大学大学院人文学研究科言語学研究室

2025-02-15

2025-01-16

In Minimalism, modification is standardly modeled by adjunction, defined as Pair Merge, but there are alternative approaches to modification and adjunction too. This paper explores a mode of adjunction that is native to the word domain in a single-engine framework like Distributed Morphology. It is not planned but a byproduct of root categorization, more exactly of a co-categorization relation between a defectively categorized modifier and a normally categorized base. This mode of adjunction locks the base or its head in situ without turning the whole construction into an island. Empirically, this is manifested as a quirky phenomenon of head immobility. I explore this scenario with two case studies, respectively on German immobile verbs and Hungarian reduplicated particle verbs, and argue that their quirky behaviors have the same cause: the categorization-based mode of adjunction. The theory in this paper, if on the right track, lends further support to a distinction between word- and phrase-level syntax even in a single-engine framework.

Hungarian

会議発表論文