Have contraction
Explaining "Trace Effects" in a Theory Without Movement
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4890238 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Julia Barron (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1998 |
| Volume | 36 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 223-252 |
| Publication date | 1998-01-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Linguistics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0024-3949 • E-ISSN: 1613-396X |
| Publisher | Walter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1515/ling.1998.36.2.223 |
| OpenAlex | W2078719110 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 5 |
The English auxiliary have may reduce to the nonsyllabic form /v/ in certain environments. This phenomenon (known as have contraction) has been adopted by proponents of derivational approaches to syntax (e.g. Radford 1988: 414) as evidence for the existence of traces and of verb movement in general. However, closer examination of the data reveals that have contraction only occurs when three conditions apply: i. when the auxiliary is finite ; ii. when it follows a pronoun with an empty coda; iii. when that pronoun is the whole subject, that is, is not conjoined with any other noun or pronoun. It is not clear how the movement approach can account for conditions (ii) and (iii) above. My proposal is that the frequent occurrence of strings conforming to the above conditions is such that over time the auxiliary verb has become an affix. The solution is offered within the framework of lexical-functional grammar, a unification-based approach in which words and phrases are represented at copresent parallel levels containing functional and categorial information (f-structure and c-structure). The two individual f-structures created by the pronoun and the affix are able to unify to create the larger f-structure of an inflected pronoun. The affix v attaches to its pronominal host through morphological composition using inside-out function application. In this way the affix is able to supply information regarding TENSE and ASP to the whole sentence. This is blocked if the inflected pronoun is part of a conjoined subject, explaining the ungrammaticality of sentences with conjoined NP subjects, one of which is an inflected pronoun. This behavior would not be predicted by theories that assume that have contraction is a purely surface (phrase-structure) phonetic phenomenon
Aesthetics · Contraction (grammar) · Epistemology · Linguistics · Movement (music) · Theoretical linguistics · TRACE (psycholinguistics) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Natural Language Processing Techniques · Philosophy · Psychology · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation
| Citations per year | 0.14 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2004 - 2021 (18) |
| Highly cited | No |