Morphosemantic mismatches, structural economy, and licensing

Roni Katzir*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Agreement and concord involve mismatches between the position where a syntactic or semantic contribution is made and where it is expressed morphologically. Such mismatches are often taken to involve either movement or the spreading and realization of features. I examine a number of superficially different instances of this kind of mismatch that seem to resist an account based on realization and movement alone. I argue that the patterns involved should receive a unified account in terms of licensors, elements subject to a condition of structural economy that associate indirectly with semantically contentful heads through features that those heads spread and that require a c-commanding licensor.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)45-82
Number of pages38
JournalLinguistic Inquiry
Volume42
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - 2011

Keywords

  • Agreement
  • Concord
  • Definiteness marking
  • Determiner spreading
  • Economy
  • Morphosemantic mismatches

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Morphosemantic mismatches, structural economy, and licensing'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this