Expletiveness in grammar and beyond
Tsiakmakis, Evripidis (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)
Espinal, M. Teresa (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)

Data:	2022
Descripció:	36 p.
Resum:	This paper sets out to find the defining characteristics of so-called expletive categories and the consequences the existence of such categories has for Universal Grammar. Looking into different instantiations of expletive subjects and impersonal pronouns, definite articles, negative markers and plural markers in various natural languages, we reach the following generalizations: (i) expletive categories are deficient functional elements interpreted as introducing an identity function at the level of semantic representation, (ii) they can be divided into syntactic expletives, that occur to satisfy some syntactic relationship with another item in the clause, and semantic expletives, that stand in a semantic dependency with some c-commanding category, and (iii) expletive categories tend to develop additional meaning components that are computed beyond core grammar, at the level where speech act-related information is encoded. Our discussion reveals that all categories that have been traditionally considered as expletive in the linguistic literature are interpretable in grammar or beyond and, thus, do not violate Chomsky's Full Interpretation Principle. We conclude that there are no expletive elements in natural languages and that expletiveness is not a grammatically relevant concept.
Drets:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Llengua:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; Versió publicada
Matèria:	Expletiveness ; Syntactic expletives ; Semantic expletives ; Identity function ; Speech acts
Publicat a:	Glossa: a journal of general linguistics, Vol. 7 (2022) , art 5807, ISSN 2397-1835

DOI: 10.16995/glossa.5807

36 p, 720.7 KB

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