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WELSH SYNTAX Pagethis Intentionally Left Blank WELSH SYNTAX a Government-Binding Approach ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITION: SYNTAX Volume 22 WELSH SYNTAX This page intentionally left blank WELSH SYNTAX A Government-Binding Approach LOUISA SADLER First published in 1988 by Croom Helm Ltd This edition first published in 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 1988 Louisa Sadler All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-138-21859-8 (Set) ISBN: 978-1-315-43729-3 (Set) (ebk) ISBN: 978-1-138-69853-6 (Volume 22) (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-69854-3 (Volume 22) (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-51873-2 (Volume 22) (ebk) Publisher’s Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent. Disclaimer The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace. Welsh Syntax A Govenunent - BiJJdiug Approach LOUISA SADLER CROOM HELM London • New York. Sydney CE> 1988 Louisa Sadler Croom Helm Ud. Provident House. Burrell Row. Beckenham, Kern, BRJ tAT Croom Helm Australia, 44-50 Waterloo Road. North Ryde, 2113. New South Wales Published in the USA by Croom Helm in associatton with Methuen. Inc. 29 West 3Sth Street. New York, NY tOOOt British Library Cataloguing in Publicatton Data Sadler. Louisa Welsh syntax: 8 government-binding opprooch. I. Welsh language - Syntax I. TitJe 491.6'65 PB2171 ISBN ~7099-4483-7 Libnry 01 <:.oaa:re- C.......... PDbIkItbl OMa Sadler, Louisa. Welsh syntax: 8 govemment-binding approach lLouisa Sadler. p. cm. - (Croom Helm linguistics series) Bibliography: p. lDcludes indexes. ISBN ~1099-4483-7 I. WeJsb lanJuage - Syntax. 2. Welsh languaae - Grammar. Generative. 3. Government-binding theory (Linguistics) I. TrtJc. D. Series. PB2171.S23 1988 491.6'65 - dc: 19 87-21728 PriDtcd ud bouad in Oreat Britain by_.SOOO .......... W_. CONTENTS INTRODUCfION 1 1. WORD ORDER AND BASE RULES 4 1.1 Basic Word Order 4 1.2 Derivation of Surface Word Order 10 1.2.1 Tense and Aspect 10 1.2.2 V-Fronting 15 1.3 Status of the VP Node 17 1.4 The Internal Structure of the VP 24 1.5 Complement Clauses 31 1.5.1 Finite Embeddings 32 1.5.2 Infinitival Embeddings 34 1.5.3 Disgwyl and Dweud 40 2. TRE NULL SUBJECf CONSTRUCfION 45 2.1 The Null Subject Parameter 45 2.2 The Null Subject Construction in 49 Welsh 2.3 The Not ion of Agreement Context 56 3. CLITICISATION PROCESSES 69 3.1 Pronominals and Pronoun Doubling 69 3.1.1 Verbal Environments 73 3.1.2 Prepositional Environments 76 3.1.3 Nominal Environments 78 3.1.4 INFL Environments 79 3.2. The Analysis of Clitic BO Constructions 3.3 Welsh Cliticisation 88 3.3.1 Clitics, Case Theory, Government 88 and Pronominality 3.3.2 The Domain of Cliticisation 94 3.3.3 A Unified Account 103 3.3.4 VSO Objects 106 4. RELATIVE CLAUSES 109 4.1 Relative Clause Formation 109 Strategies 4.2 Some Analyses 117 4.3 Two Strategies 133 4.4 The Distribution of Trace and Pro 144 4.4.1 Reformulating the ECP 144 4.4.2 Welsh Relative Clauses 148 4.4.3 Negative Relative Clauses 156 5. QUESTIONS. TOPICS AND RELATIVE 162 CLAUSES 5.1 Basic Data 163 5.2 Constraints 171 5.3 Long Distance Dependencies 175 5.4 The Binding of Pronominals 193 5.5 The Distribution of Resumptive 199 Pronouns 6. PASSIVE AND IMPERSONAL CONSTRUCTIONS 208 6.1 The Cael Passive 208 6.1.1 Basic Data 208 6.1.2 Passive and Theta Theory 213 6.1.3 Pronominal Binding 223 6.2 The Impersonal Passive 226 NOTES 238 APPENDIX 259 BI BLI OGRAPHY 263 INDEX 273 INDEX OF AUTHORS 285 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS A Awbery AD Agreement Domain Ao Aoun B Borsley C Chomsky CAP Condition on Arbitrary Pronominals CECP Conjunctive Empty Category Principle CNPC Complex Noun Phrase Constraint condit conditional conj conjunctive demon demonstrative EC empty category ECP Empty Category Principle emph emphatic EPP Extended Projection Principle FMA Feature Matching Analysis F Fife fut future GB Government - Binding H Harlow Hi Higginbotham habit habitual IDD Immediate Dominance Dependency imp impersonal imper imperative imperf imperfective J & T Jones and Thomas Ja Jaeggli Jo Jones K Keenan L & S Lasnik and Saito M Montalbetti M-J Morris - Jones M&Z Maling and Zaenan McC McCloskey McC & H McCloskey and HaIe MFMR Maximal Feature Matching Requirement MXP Maximal Projection neg negative Abbreviations OPC Overt Pronoun Constraint perf perfective pperf punctual perfective pprog punctual progressive pres present prog progressive Q interrogative partic1e QR Quantifier Raising redup reduplicated reflex reflexive RP resumptive pronoun Sa Safir Se SeIls Sp Sproat St Stump Step Stephens W Williams ZEM Zaenan, Engdahl and Maling Person, Number and Gender: lS first singular 2S second singular 3SM third singular masculine 3SF third singular feminine IPL first plural 2PL second plural 3PL third plural INTRODUCrION This book attempts to provide an analysis of a number of different constructions in Welsh within the Government and Binding theory of Chomsky (1981) and subsequent work. In recent years, the Celtic languages have provided a fruitful area of research in particular with regard to the typological adequacy of a number of fundamental proposals in GB theory. The specific focus of this book is the role of agreement phenomena and the specification of empty categories. For the most part, I have assumed 'standard' GB analyses, providing discussion and definitions where I have made alternative proposals. For this reason, the book contains no overview of the basic components of GB. In many cases, my analyses build on those proposed elswhere in the literature for the Celtic languages, and I discuss a number of these in some detail for completeness. The book is organised as follows. Chapter One lays the basis for subsequent investigation of a number of interrelated phenomena by providing a detailed discussion of the basic clause structure of Welsh. I argue that despite the surface VSO characteristics of Welsh, the structure of clauses involves a VP node at both D- and S-structure. Chapter One also proposes a rule of V-fronting to INFL, the application of which is conditioned by the feature specification of INFL. Later chapters investigate the properties of the associated V-trace with respect to government. In Chapter Two I present an analysis of the null 1 Introduction subject construction in Welsh, arguing that the null subject is pro, and showing how a theory of [AGR] must be developed to account for the various surface forms of subject-verb agreement. In common with the other Celtic languages, Welsh may be characterised as a language with a rich inflectional agreement system. Chapter Two therefore pays dose attention to the observed complementarity of full agreement and a full lexical NP subject. In Chapter Three I show that the specification of [AGR] as [+pronominal] is correct for Welsh (and probably the Celtic languages in general). Agreement is treated as a syntactic process, crucially involved in the syntax of pronominal forms in Welsh. I propose a very general agreement mechanism in Welsh, formulated as the Maximal Feature Matching Requirement. Chapter Three also reviews a number of proposals made by Borer (1983) and Jaeggli (1982) for the analysis of clitic constructions, and situates Welsh cliticisation within the general grammar of clitics made available in the theory. Chapters Four and Five investigate the role of wh -movement in a language with a rich inflectional system. I show that the distribution of the two relative clause and question formation strategies follows from the MFMR and a reformulated version of the ECP. The MFMR is based on the notion of Agreement Domain, which is basic to the grammar of Welsh. Following much recent work, I interpret the ECP as a conjunctive condition, requiring both lexical and antecedent government. In Chapter Five it is shown that the definition of locality relevant to antecedent government is derived from the notion of Agreement Domain. I argue that the antecedent government requirement may not be reduced to the Binding Theory. Chapter Five also makes some proposals regarding the Binding Conditions for A'-bound resumptive pronouns, discussing recent work by Sells (1985) in the grammar of resumptive pronouns. In addition, some variant of the Overt Pronoun Constraint is shown to hold in the grammar of Welsh. 2 Introduction FinaIly, Chapter Six turns to the role of NP-movement in Welsh, with a number of very tentative proposals for the analysis of the passive and impersonal constructions in Welsh. It is suggested that these constructions are not derived via NP - movement. In the course of this discussion, the binding conditions for pronominals are reformulated in terms of 0- and 0' - binding. Particular thanks are due to Dafydd and Rhys Jenkins for help with the data, and to my thesis supervisor, David Kilby, for his detailed comments and criticisms as weIl as his patient encouragement and support.
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