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Bill Haddican
182-190 (complete pdf)
Recent monoclausal approaches to restructuring come in two flavors. Cinque (2004) and Cardinaletti and Shlonsky (2004) propose that restructuring is always and everywhere between a main verb and a higher functional head of the same functional sequence. In contrast, Wurmbrand (2001, 2004) argues that "lexical" restructuring must also be admitted; that is, lexical verbs in V may, under certain conditions, restructure with a small verbal complement. This paper discusses evidence from two kinds of restructuring infinitives in Basque, which supports the latter view. Both kinds of infinitives are transparent to person and number agreement between dative and absolutive arguments and a higher auxiliary (long distance agreement). Different properties of these infinitives, however, suggest that they have different functional structures. Infinitives with the affixes tu/-i/-n/Ø (depending on the verb class) are InfinPs, a vP-internal projection that restructures with a higher functional head of the same functional sequence ("functional restructuring" in Wurmbrand's terms). In contrast, -t(z)e infinitives are minimally AspPs that restructure with a verb in VP (lexical restructuring). Evidence in favor of this distinction comes from (1) the availability of infinitival negation and (2) the morphological behavior of main verbs vs. modals.
Published in:
Proceedings of the 24th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics
edited by John Alderete, Chung-hye Han, and Alexei Kochetov
Table of contents
ISBN 978-1-57473-407-2 library binding
vi + 405 pages
publication date: 2005
published by Cascadilla Proceedings Project, Somerville, MA, USA