Person:
Clemens, Lauren Eby

Profile Picture

Email Address

AA Acceptance Date

Birth Date

Research Projects

Organizational Units

Job Title

Last Name

Clemens

First Name

Lauren Eby

Name

Clemens, Lauren Eby

Filters

20141

Settings

Author's Publications: search.filters.isAuthorOfPublication.4f3868d0-1168-4142-8f5b-f054af0bbeb3

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
  • Thumbnail Image
    Publication
    Prosodic Noun Incorporation and Verb-Initial Syntax
    (2014-10-21) Clemens, Lauren Eby; Polinsky, Maria; Ryan, Kevin; Richards, Norvin; Bennett, Ryan
    To date, no real consensus has emerged among syntacticians about how to derive verb-initial order (V1); but the two main approaches, \(V^0\)-raising and VP-raising, receive particularly widespread support in the literature. The syntax of Niuean pseudo noun incorporation (PNI) has played an important role in the propagation of the VP-raising analysis (Massam 2001), especially for VSO languages and languages with a VSO option. In this thesis, I present an analysis of the prosody of Niuean PNI and show that the PNI verb and incorporated argument form a prosodic constituent. While this result is consistent with the syntactic analysis of Massam (2001), it is also consistent with a prosodic restructuring analysis that explains the VOS order of PNI by appealing to prosodic well-formedness. I take the second approach. Specifically, the principle behind Selkirk's (1984) Sense Unit Condition requires that the verb and its internal argument(s) form a unique phonological phrase. In order to satisfy this requirement, the incorporated argument moves into a position adjacent to the verb at PF. Positionally motivated categorical feature sharing (Adger and Svenonius 2011; Pesetsky and Torrego 2007) allows PF to reference the head-argument relationship between the verb and its internal argument, even though they are not sent to PF in structurally adjacent positions. The main result for the syntactic analysis of Niuean is that \(V^0\)-raising replaces VP-raising. The benefits of the \(V^0\)-raising approach include i) less phonologically vacuous structure in places where Niuean has overt morphology, e.g., a perpetually null \(T^0\) in the face of overt tense markers; and ii) observance of the idea that thematic roles are correlated to structural positions. Thus, the prosodic analysis of Niuean PNI has a number of positive outcomes for Niuean syntax, as well as the potential to simplify the derivation of VSO cross-linguistically.