On the locality of left branch extraction and the structure of NP*

Abstract

bstract. The paper considers several accounts of crosslinguistic variation regarding left branch extraction (LBE), focusing on adjectival LBE, and explores consequences of a proper analysis of LBE for the internal structure of NP. Two lines of research are pursued, both of which are based on the claim that languages that allow adjectival LBE do not have DP. One is based on the phase-based locality system, extending the phase system from clauses to NPs, and the other one is based on the existence of crosslinguistic variation regarding the position of adjectives in the traditional NP, with some languages having the traditional NP-over-AP structure, others having Abney's AP-over-NP structure. Which structure a language has is argued to depend on the presence/absence of DP in the language, the lack of DP leading to the NP-over-AP structure. Under this analysis, the ban on AP LBE in English-type languages follows from the ban on movement of non-constituents, a problem that does not arise in languages that allow AP LBE. The impossibility of LBE of AP in the presence of another AP in languages that in principle allow such extraction is argued to provide evidence that adjectives are located in multiple specifiers of the same head. This paper examines the phenomenon of left branch extraction (LBE), focusing on adjectival LBE, and explores consequences of a proper analysis of LBE for the internal structure of NP, in particular, the structural position of AP. I pursue two lines of research, both of which are based on the claim that languages that allow LBE of adjectives do not have DP. One is based on the phase-based locality system, extending the phase-based locality system from clauses to NPs, and the other one is based on the existence of crosslinguistic variation regarding the position of adjectives in the traditional NP, with some languages having the traditional NP-over-AP structure, others having Abney's (1987) AP-over-NP structure. Although there are reasons to favor the latter analysis, ultimately I will not be able to provide a completely conclusive way of teasing apart the alternative analyses. In this respect, the paper reflects our present understanding of the phenomenon of LBE, which is currently too rudimentary to put us in a *This material was presented at the

On the <small>DP</small>/<small>NP</small> status of nominal projections in Bangla: Consequences for the theory of phases

“…This consequently suggests a bi-phasal architecture of nominal constituents similar to the occurrence of two phasal levels within clauses. Bošković (2008) presents a range of generalizations that distinguish languages with and without articles, and accounts for them by positing a fundamental difference in the structure of nominal projections in language with and without articles, claiming that nominal phrases in languages without articles do not project to any dp layer whereas those with articles do. From among his set of generalizations, we will show that although Bangla does not have articles, it patterns like languages with articles in terms of three generalizations that we discuss below: (a) neg raising, (b) the availability of a majority reading in a language for equivalents to English 'most', and (c) adnominal genitives.…”

“…More recently, in an interesting and influential series of works on this topic, Bošković (2008Bošković ( , 2009) and Bošković and Gajewski (2011) have suggested that languages which do not have (definite) articles are "np languages" and nominal constituents in such languages have no level of dp structure, and that these languages display a number of common syntactic characteristics, which may all be attributed to the absence of d/dp. The present paper approaches this debate with a focus on the potential dp status of (definite) nominal projections in Bangla, a language which has no definite or indefinite articles, but which has special word order alternations in the encoding of definiteness (shortly to be reviewed below) that have been taken to suggest a dp level of structure.…”

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This paper examines the status of nominal projections in Bangla from the point of view of Bošković's (2008Bošković's ( , 2009) generalizations on np vs. dp languages, and argues that although Bangla is an article-less language, it is not an np language and projects a range of functional categories above np, including a dp level. Such a conclusion is shown to have an important consequence for cross-linguistic assumptions relating to the phasal architecture of nominal projections, building on work on nominal-internal phases initiated in Simpson and Syed (2016): it is suggested that the extended projection of noun phrases may contain two separate phases, in a way that resembles the occurrence of two phasal levels within clauses.

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On the Locus of Asymmetry in UG

“…sluicing]) correspond precisely to phasecomplements is, from this perspective, very encouraging. 13 One could perhaps even turn the argument around and claim that because NP-ellipsis is well-attested, D ought to be regarded as a phase (as some authors have independently argued; see Svenonius (2004), Bošković (2005), Chomsky (2008), Ott (2008), Samuels (2009), among others). 14 Irurtzun (2007) cites island effects as another context where appeal to labels appears to be necessary, since under most accounts, only certain domains bearing specific labels are opaque (cf.…”

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“…What is crucial for us is that nominals in Polish cannot be bare NPs with modifiers in the adjunct positions (contra Bošković 2005). Whether the nominal projection is actually a DP or any other XP (cf.…”