Silent Heads

This chapter deals with a basic problem of the cartographic approach, namely whether functional projections are always present inter- and intra-linguistically. The analysis reconciles the cartographic approach with a more minimalist perspective. Following Cinque’s (1999) generalization, and analyzing data from Icelandic and English, it suggests that grammatical categories, (i.e., features and/or heads) are present and syntactically active even in those languages in which such features and/or heads are not grammatically signaled. Therefore, these grammatical categories, which build up the clause structure, enter in syntax as interpretable but unvalued features, and their value is subsequently assigned in the course of the derivation. In those languages in which categories like Tense, Person, etc., are signaled by overt morphemes, these morphemes should be considered as uninterpretable, and the corresponding categories should be considered categories that reflect combinations of “atomic” syntactic relations.

Generalization · Linguistics · Morpheme · Natural language processing · Perspective (graphical) · Syntax · Verb · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Linguistics and language evolution · Mathematics · Philosophy · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation

• The Syntax of the Sequence of Tenses

  Open Access•Alexandra Cornilescu•The Wiley Blackwell Companion to…•2017

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• Counter-cyclic merge as a last resort for adjuncts

  Youssef A Haddad•Brill's Journal of Afroasiatic…•2019

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• On the status of functional categories (heads and phrases)

  Open Access•Guglielmo Cinque•Language and Linguistics 語言暨語言學•2022

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