Whamit!

The Weekly Newsletter of MIT Linguistics

Syntax Square 9/19 - Elise Newman (MIT)

Speaker: Elise Newman (MIT)
Title: E2P2: The Extended Extended Projection Principle
Date and time: Tuesday, September 19, 1:00-2:00pm
Location: 32-D461
Abstract:

Current definitions of EPP properties stipulate a preference for checking features via specifier creation rather than merging as a complement. I argue that this is an unnecessary stipulation, and that we can generalize EPP properties such that they may be satisfied by either specifier creation or complementation. I will use facts about English V to T movement and do-support to motivate this extension of the EPP. I propose a syntactic account of V to T movement, which builds off of Matushansky (2006), in conjunction with this new extension of EPP (henceforth E2P2) to explain not only facts about the English auxiliary system, but also facts about the interaction between negation and auxiliary verbs, and negation and non-finite T. I will discuss how this view can also extend to T to C movement, as well as notions about Anti-locality.