Please join us for this week’s ling lunch:
Norvin Richards
“Beyond Strength and Weakness 2: EPP and head-movement”
Thursday, Oct. 30
12:30-1:45
32-D461
>In an earlier paper, “Beyond Strength and Weakness”, I attempted to develop a
theory that could predict whether wh-movement would be overt or covert in a
given language, on the basis of observable properties of the language’s word
order and prosody. This talk is the sequel to that paper; I will try to
predict whether languages should exhibit EPP effects or not, and (time
permitting) how far their verbs move, again on the basis of observable
properties. As in the earlier paper, the goal will be to do away with
syntactic diacritics like ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ (and, for that matter, ‘EPP’), by
allowing the syntax to make more direct reference than usual to the phonological
representation. We will see more evidence bearing on the nature of that
reference, helping us to understand how much syntax knows about phonology.