A Minimalist Approach to to-Infinitival Complements in Belfast English

This article explores the distribution of to-infinitival complements (to-ICs) in Belfast English (BE) on the basis of Henry's (1992) data in order to capture two generalizations about Standard English (SE) to-ICs: the complementizer for is incompatible with PRO, and complementizerless to-ICs are TPs. Importantly, these generalizations cannot be drawn from Henry's CP analysis of BE to-ICs constructed within a representational approach. Thus, I advance a new analysis within the current minimalist framework (Chomsky (2000, 2001a, b)) on the basis of the idea that BE to-ICs have for which merges in T as a part of infinitival morphology and raises to C in the same way as V raises to v. I also propose BE-specific conditions on the selection of the categorial status of to-ICs. Further, I show two ways of capturing the nature of the adjacency condition within the minimalist framework

Adjacency list · Basis (linear algebra · Complementizer · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Lexicography and Language Studies · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation

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