Speaker: David Adger (Queen Mary University of London)
Title: Mereological Syntax and Island Locality
Time: Friday, November 22nd, 3.30-5pm
Location: 32-141
Abstract: The problems with Bare Phrase Structure theory are well known, especially the issues surrounding copies and labelling, both of which require supplementary theories which have their own problems. Similarly, the stipulations that need to be made to ensure that phase theory works are well known, as is the inadequacy of that theory for capturing various locality effects associated with strong islands. In this talk, I suggest replacing BPS with a novel theory of phrase structure, Mereological Syntax (MS), which replaces BPS’s set-theoretic Merge operation with an operation, Subjoin, that builds mereologicaly structured objects. I show how this provides (almost) immediate solutions to the copy and labelling issues, and that a simple geometrical relationship on MS structures opens up the way for a new theory of island locality. I exemplify this empirically in the domain of wh-islands, deriving their cross-linguistic variation, as well as a a new effect (the Wh-Island Re-emergence Effect), that emerges in certain circumstances even in even languages that lack wh-islands. Time permitting, I sketch how the approach suggests that the prospects for a fairly unified theory of islandhood is not as remote as it currently