🚀 go-pugleaf

David Pesetsky writes (in reply to Eric Schiller):

>However, all the empirical *effects* of the Projection Principle are
>retained, and in fact something exceedingly close to the Projection
>Principle is still around, since the satisfaction of lexical properties
>is immediate once the requisite structure is built under Chomsky's new
>system, and perseveres to LF, as in previous systems.  This makes the
>following remark inaccurate:

>What is so striking is how few *analyses* seem to be affected even if
>Chomsky is on the right track, though these analyses might be couchable
>in slightly different terms.  Furthermore, the spur for this corner of
>Chomsky's work, Larson's shells, are rather undermotivated in the first
>place.  Therefore, if one discards this, one should take Chomsky's
>rethinking of D-structure and its consequences with a grain of salt.

>>Those stil unconvinced of the radical nature of the paper consider this:
>>Raising to Object is back!

>Not really, except as a figure of speech.  In the old theory and the
>new, accusative subjects of infinitives (in languages like English)
>never occupy the base position of direct objects.  Furthermore, in the
>old theory and the new, accusative subjects and accusative direct
>objects get case in the same way.  The new theory differs from the old
>in positing a distinct position -- related, it is claimed, to object
>agreement -- in which accusative case is assigned, a position which is
>neither the underlying object position nor the underlying
>subject-of-infinitive position, but another position higher than V.


Question to David: Is there then anything in this minimalist paper
that IS new, exciting, or even halfway right?

Eric had me thinking, for a moment, that maybe I should pick up this
paper rather than spend my time on sci.lang ..


jack hoeksema - university of groningen