535 Assignment 10

Bobaljik, Adjacency

Due: Thurs, Feb. 19

1.      What evidence does Bobaljik give to show that 'NegP' may actually be a more general affirmation/negation phrase?

Emphatics elements such as so and too can also disrupt the adjacency between I and V, thus trigger do-support in non-interrogative environment in English.

2.   Does Bobaljik assume that suprasegmental features can be Vocabulary Items in their own right? What such feature does he propose is a VI in English?

Yes. [+ACCENTED]

3.    Bobaljik proposes that non-availability of morphological forms can have the apparent result of blocking an otherwise grammatical syntactic derivation. In which case does he say this situation arises?

When Do-support is not available, Object Shift is prohibited because it will disrupt the adjacency between the INFL and the verb stem.

4.   What prediction with regard to negative polarity licensing would a purely syntactic C-lowering analysis make for Irish? Why does the merger-under-adjacency account fare better?

Negative Polarity Items should be c-commanded by a negative complementiser. Because the topicalised constituent precedes the negative complementiser, a purely syntactic C-lowering analysis will predict that Negative Polarity Items will not be licensed in fronted topics. Nevertheless, in an adjacency view, affixation occurs post-syntactically under adjacency. IP-adjoined topic position is c-commanded at s-structure by the negative complementiser.