Selectional Asymmetries between CP and DP Suggest that the DP Hypothesis is Wrong

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Penn collection
University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics
Degree type
Discipline
Subject
Funder
Grant number
License
Copyright date
Distributor
Related resources
Author
Bruening, Benjamin
Contributor
Abstract

The primary motivation for the DP Hypothesis has been a claimed parallel with the clausal domain, where functional projections (at least IP and CP) dominate the lexical projection of the verb. However, the claimed parallels are not real. Verbs that select for clausal complements only select things that are high in the clause, plausibly on C (questions vs. declaratives, finite vs. non-finite, etc.); they never select V. In contrast, verbs that select for nominal arguments only select for N, and never for the functional elements like D. In form selection, each head in the clausal domain determines the form of the head of its complement. In contrast, within nominals, it is N that determines the form of everything else. These asymmetries indicate that the head of the clause is C, but the head of the nominal is not D, it is N. A review of other arguments that have been given for the DP Hypothesis indicates that none of them are compelling.

Advisor
Date Range for Data Collection (Start Date)
Date Range for Data Collection (End Date)
Digital Object Identifier
Series name and number
Publication date
2009-03-23
Volume number
Issue number
Publisher
Publisher DOI
Comments
Recommended citation
Collection