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Stacking, Stranding, and Pied‐Piping: A Proposal about Word Order
Author(s) -
Jayaseelan K. A.
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
syntax
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.587
H-Index - 24
eISSN - 1467-9612
pISSN - 1368-0005
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9612.2010.00141.x
Subject(s) - inflection , stacking , merge (version control) , word order , inflection point , order (exchange) , movement (music) , first order , computer science , linguistics , history , mathematics , geometry , physics , philosophy , natural language processing , acoustics , information retrieval , finance , nuclear magnetic resonance , economics
. It is assumed that verbal stems and their suffixal inflection come together by phrasal movement—specifically, remnant‐VP preposing. Remnant‐VP preposing is analyzed as two movements: the “evacuation” of a V’s complement out of the VP (termed stacking ), and the “evacuated” VP’s movement to the (immediate) left of Inflection for V to pick up inflection. The VP movement can strand or pied‐pipe the stacked material, giving rise to VO or OV order. The fact that sequences of Vs in the head‐final order cannot be “interrupted” by scrambled material is shown to be a consequence of the stacking analysis. The position of Focus in VO and OV languages is also explained in this way. Stacking and VP preposing can be separated by merge of other elements than Inflection in some languages, although not in others. French allows such anticipatory stacking and English does not—giving rise to their seeming difference regarding “V raising.”