Provocative Syntax

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Provocative Syntax

Author : Phil Branigan
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262515598
Total Pages : 189 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

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Book Synopsis Provocative Syntax by : Phil Branigan

Download or read book Provocative Syntax written by Phil Branigan and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new theory of syntactic movement within a Chomskyan framework. Chomsky showed that no description of natural language syntax would be adequate without some notion of movement operations in a syntactic derivation. It now seems likely that such movement transformations are formally simple operations, in which a single phrase is displaced from its original position within a phrase marker, but after more than fifty years of generative theorizing, the mechanics of syntactic movement are still murky and controversial. In Provocative Syntax, Phil Branigan examines the forces that drive syntactic movement and offers a new synthetic model of the basic movement operation by reassembling in a novel way isolated ideas that have been suggested elsewhere in the literature. The unifying concept is the operation of provocation, which occurs in the course of feature valuation when certain probes seek a value for their unvalued features by identifying a goal. Provocation forces the generation of a copy of the goal; the copy originates outside the original phrase marker and must then be introduced into it. In this approach, movement is not forced by the need for extra positions; extra positions are generated because movement is taking place. After presenting the central proposal and showing its implementation in the analyses of various familiar cases of syntactic movement, Branigan demonstrates the effects of provocation in a variety of inversion constructions, examines interactions between head and phrasal provocation within the "left periphery" of Germanic embedded clauses, and describes the details of chain formation and successive cyclic movement in a provocation model.

Subjunctive Conditionals

Author : Michela Ippolito
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262314886
Total Pages : 177 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (623 download)

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Book Synopsis Subjunctive Conditionals by : Michela Ippolito

Download or read book Subjunctive Conditionals written by Michela Ippolito and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2013-09-13 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A proposal for a compositional semantics for subjunctive (or would) conditionals in English. In this book, Michela Ippolito proposes a compositional semantics for subjunctive (or would) conditionals in English that accounts for their felicity conditions and the constraints on the satisfaction of their presuppositions by capitalizing on the occurrence of past tense morphology in both antecedent and consequent clauses. Very little of the extensive literature on subjunctive conditionals tries to account for the meaning of these sentences compositionally or to relate this meaning to their linguistic form; this book fills that gap, connecting the different lines of research on conditionals. Ippolito's proposal will be of interest both to linguists and to philosophers concerned with conditionals and modality more generally. Ippolito reviews previous analyses of counterfactuals and subjunctive conditionals in the work of David Lewis, Robert Stalnaker, Angelika Kratzer, and others; considers the contrast between future simple past subjunctive conditionals and future past perfect subjunctive conditionals; presents a proposal for subjunctive conditionals that addresses puzzles left unsolved by previous proposals; reviews a number of presupposition triggers showing that they fit the pattern predicted by her proposal; and discusses an asymmetry between the past and the future among subjunctive conditionals, arguing that the best account of our linguistic intuitions must include an indeterministic view of the world.

Probes and Their Horizons

Author : Stefan Keine
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 026253827X
Total Pages : 380 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

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Book Synopsis Probes and Their Horizons by : Stefan Keine

Download or read book Probes and Their Horizons written by Stefan Keine and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2020-02-25 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive theory of selective opacity effects—configurations in which syntactic domains are opaque to some processes but transparent to others—within a Minimalist framework. In this book, Stefan Keine investigates in detail “selective opacity”— configurations in which syntactic domains are opaque to some processes but transparent to others—and develops a comprehensive theory of these syntactic configurations within a contemporary Minimalist framework. Although such configurations have traditionally been analyzed in terms of restrictions on possible sequences of movement steps, Keine finds that analogous restrictions govern long-distance dependencies that do not involve movement. He argues that the phenomenon is more widespread and abstract than previously assumed. He proposes a new approach to such effects, according to which probes that initiate the operation Agree are subject to “horizons,” which terminate their searches. Selective opacity effects raise important questions about the nature of locality in natural language, the representation of movement-type asymmetries, correlations between clause structure and locality, and possible interactions between syntactic dependencies. With a focus on in-depth case studies of Hindi-Urdu and German, Keine offers detailed investigations of movement dependencies, long-distance agreement, wh-dependencies, the A/A' distinction, restructuring, freezing effects, successive cyclicity, and phase theory. Keine's account offers a thorough understanding of selective opacity and the systematic overarching generalizations to which it is subject.

When Arguments Merge

Author : Elise Newman
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262549107
Total Pages : 231 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

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Book Synopsis When Arguments Merge by : Elise Newman

Download or read book When Arguments Merge written by Elise Newman and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2024-10-15 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A novel theory of argument structure based on the order in which verbs and their arguments combine across a variety of languages and language families. Merge is the structure-building operation in Chomsky’s Minimalist Program. In When Arguments Merge, Elise Newman develops a new Merge-based theory of the syntax of argument structure, taking inspiration from wh- questions. She uncovers new connections between disparate empirical phenomena and provides a unified analysis of patterns across many languages and language families, from Mayan to Bantu to Indo-European languages (among others). The result is a syntactic theory with a small inventory of features and categories that can combine in a limited number of ways, capturing the range of argument configurations that we find cross-linguistically in both declarative and interrogative contexts. Newman’s novel approach to argument structure is based on the time at which different kinds of arguments merge and move in the verbal domain. Assuming that all kinds of Merge are driven by features, she proposes that subset relationships between elements bearing different sets of features can constrain the distribution of arguments in unexpected ways and that different feature bundles can predict unusual interactions between arguments in many contexts. The positions of arguments in different contexts have consequences for agreement alignment and case assignment, which are reflected in the Voice of the clause. Examining the order in which verbs and their arguments are combined, she explores the consequences of different orders of combination for the kinds of utterances observed across languages.

(Re)labeling

Author : Carlo Cecchetto
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262527219
Total Pages : 209 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

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Book Synopsis (Re)labeling by : Carlo Cecchetto

Download or read book (Re)labeling written by Carlo Cecchetto and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2015-01-23 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book owes its title to a simple idea: words are special because they can provide a label for nothing when they merge with some other category. An exemplification of this special power of words is introduced by the familiar head-complement configurations. For example, the structure that is created when a verb and a direct object DP are merged receives a label from the verb, namely it is a VP. One idea that unifies the linguistic analyses presented in this book is that a word can provide the label even in case of movement.

Principles of Argument Structure

Author : Chris Collins
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262548275
Total Pages : 211 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

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Book Synopsis Principles of Argument Structure by : Chris Collins

Download or read book Principles of Argument Structure written by Chris Collins and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2024-09-17 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new theory of argument structure, based on the syntactic operation Merge and presented through an in-depth analysis of properties of the English passive construction. In Principles of Argument Structure, Chris Collins investigates principles of argument structure in minimalist syntax through an in-depth analysis of properties of the English passive construction. He formulates a new theory of argument structure based on the only structure-building operation in minimalist syntax, Merge, which puts together two syntactic objects to form a larger one. This new theory should give rise to detailed cross-linguistic work on the syntactic and semantic properties of implicit arguments. Collins presents an update and defense of his influential 2005 theory of the passive, including a completely original theory of implicit arguments. He makes a direct empirical argument for the Theta-Criterion against various claims that it should be eliminated. He also discusses the conception of voice in syntactic theory, arguing that VoiceP does not introduce external arguments, a position otherwise widely accepted in the field. He shows how the ”smuggling” approach to the passive extends naturally to the dative alternation accounting for a number of striking c-command asymmetries. He compares syntactic and semantic approaches to argument structure, outlining conceptual problems with adopting formal semantics as the basis for a theory of argument structure. The book will be of interest not only to syntacticians and semanticists, but also to typologists investigating the cross-linguistic properties of the passive, psycholinguists and computer scientists working on natural language understanding, and philosophers thinking about the issue of “implicit content.” It includes an appendix that provides common-sense guidelines for doing syntactic research using internet data.

Composing Questions

Author : Hadas Kotek
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262351072
Total Pages : 227 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (623 download)

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Book Synopsis Composing Questions by : Hadas Kotek

Download or read book Composing Questions written by Hadas Kotek and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-02-19 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An investigation of the syntax and semantics of wh-questions through the lens of intervention effects, offering a new proposal on overt and covert wh-movement. In this book, Hadas Kotek investigates the syntax and semantics of wh-questions, offering a new solution to a central question in the study of interrogatives: given that overt wh-movement is cross-linguistically common, is syntactic movement a prerequisite for the interpretation of wh-phrases? Some linguists argue that all wh-phrases undergo movement to interrogative C, even if covertly; others propose mechanisms of in-situ interpretation that do not require any movement. Kotek moves beyond these positions to argue that wh-in-situ does move covertly, but not necessarily to C. Instead, she contends, wh-in-situ undergoes a short movement step akin to covert scrambling. This makes the LF behavior of English parallel to the overt behavior of German. Kotek presents a series of self-paced reading experiments, alongside judgment data from German, to substantiate the idea of covert scrambling. She introduces new diagnostics for the underlying structure of questions, using as a principal tool the distribution of intervention effects. This system allows her to offer the first unified account for a range of phenomena of interrogative syntax-semantics as pied-piping, superiority effects, the cross-linguistically varied syntax of questions, and intervention effects. Kotek develops a theory of interrogative syntax-semantics; studies the phenomena of intervention effects in wh-questions, proposing that the nature of intervention is crucially tied to the availability of wh-movement in a question; and shows that covert wh-movement should be modeled as a short scrambling operation rather than an unbounded, successive-cyclic, and potentially long-distance movement operation.

On Linearization

Author : Guglielmo Cinque
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262372878
Total Pages : 221 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (623 download)

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Book Synopsis On Linearization by : Guglielmo Cinque

Download or read book On Linearization written by Guglielmo Cinque and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2023-03-07 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first attempt at a restrictive theory of the linear order of sentences and phrases of the world's languages, by one of the founders of cartographic syntax. Linearization, or the typical sequence of words in a sentence, varies tremendously from language to language. Why, for example, does the English phrase “a white table” need a different word order from the French phrase “une table blanche,” even though both refer to the same object? Guglielmo Cinque challenges the current understanding of word order variation, which assumes that word order can be dealt with simply by putting a head either before or after its complements and modifiers. The subtle variations in word order, he says, can provide a window into understanding the deeper structure of language and are in need of a sophisticated explanation. The bewildering variation in word order among the languages of the world, says Cinque, should not dissuade us from researching what, if anything, determines which orders are possible (and attested/attestable) and which orders are impossible (and not attested/nonattestable), both when they maximally conform to the “head-final” or “head-initial” types and when they depart from them to varying degrees. His aim is to develop a restrictive theory of word order variation—not just a way to derive the ideal head-initial and head-final word orders but also the mixed cases. In the absence of an explicit theory of linearization, Cinque provides a general approach to derive linear order from a hierarchical arrangement of constituents, specifically, by assuming a restrictive movement analysis that creates structures that can then be linearized by Richard S. Kayne's Linear Correspondence Axiom.

Agreement Beyond Phi

Author : Shigeru Miyagawa
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262533324
Total Pages : 247 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

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Book Synopsis Agreement Beyond Phi by : Shigeru Miyagawa

Download or read book Agreement Beyond Phi written by Shigeru Miyagawa and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2017-03-24 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An argument that agreement and agreementless languages are unified under an expanded view of grammatical features including both phi-features and certain discourse configurational features. Much attention in theoretical linguistics in the generative and Minimalist traditions is concerned with issues directly or indirectly related to movement. The EPP (extended projection principle), introduced by Chomsky in 1981, appeared to coincide with morphological agreement, and agreement came to play a central role as the driver of movement and other narrow-syntax operations. In this book, Shigeru Miyagawa continues his investigation into a computational equivalent for agreement in agreementless languages such as Japanese. Miyagawa extends his theory of Strong Uniformity, introduced in his earlier book, Why Agree? Why Move? Unifying Agreement-Based and Discourse-Configurational Languages (MIT Press). He argues that agreement and agreementless languages are unified under an expanded view of grammatical features including both phi-features and discourse configurational features of topic and focus. He looks at various combinations of these two grammatical features across a number of languages and phenomena, including allocutive agreement, root phenomena, topicalization, “why” questions, and case alternation.

Classifier Structures in Mandarin Chinese

Author : Niina Ning Zhang
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter
ISBN 13 : 3110304996
Total Pages : 332 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (13 download)

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Book Synopsis Classifier Structures in Mandarin Chinese by : Niina Ning Zhang

Download or read book Classifier Structures in Mandarin Chinese written by Niina Ning Zhang and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-05-28 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph addresses fundamental syntactic issues of classifier constructions, based on a thorough study of a typical classifier language, Mandarin Chinese. It shows that the contrast between count and mass is not binary. Instead, there are two independently attested features: Numerability, the ability of a noun to combine with a numeral directly, and Delimitability, the ability of a noun to be modified by a delimitive modifier, such as size, shape, or boundary modifier. Although all nouns in Chinese are non-count nouns, there is still a mass/non-mass contrast, with mass nouns selected by individuating classifiers and non-mass nouns selected by individual classifiers. Some languages have the counterparts of Chinese individuating classifiers only, some languages have the counterparts of Chinese individual classifiers only, and some other languages have no counterpart of either individual or individuating classifiers of Chinese. The book also reports that unit plurality can be expressed by reduplicative classifiers in the language. Moreover, for the constituency of a numeral expression, an individual, individuating, or kind classifier combines with the noun first and then the numeral is integrated; but a partitive or collective classifier, like a measure word, combines with the numeral first, before the noun is integrated into the whole nominal structure. Furthermore, the book identifies the syntactic positions of various uses of classifiers in the language. A classifier is at a functional head position that has a dependency with a numeral, or a position that has a dependency with a generic or existential quantifier, or a position that represents the singular-plural contrast, or a position that licenses a delimitive modifier when the classifier occurs in a compound.

Indefinite Objects

Author : Luis Lopez
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 026251785X
Total Pages : 189 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

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Book Synopsis Indefinite Objects by : Luis Lopez

Download or read book Indefinite Objects written by Luis Lopez and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2012-10-05 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A novel view of the syntax-semantics interface that analyzes the behavior of indefinite objects. In Indefinite Objects, Luis López presents a novel approach to the syntax-semantics interface using indefinite noun phrases as a database. Traditional approaches map structural configurations to semantic interpretations directly; López links configuration to a mode of semantic composition, with the latter yielding the interpretation. The polyvalent behavior of indefinites has long been explored by linguists who have been interested in their syntax, semantics, and case morphology, and López's contribution can be seen as a synthesis of findings from several traditions. He argues, first, that scrambled indefinite objects are composed by means of Function Application preceded by Choice Function while objects in situ are composed by means of Restrict. This difference yields the different interpretive possibilities of indefinite objects. López's more nuanced approach to the syntax-semantics interface turns out to be rich in empirical consequences. Second, he proposes that short scrambling also yields Differential Marking, provided that context conditions are fulfilled, while in situ objects remain unmarked. Thus, López contributes to the extensive literature on Differential Object Marking by showing that syntactic configuration is a crucial factor. López substantiates this approach with data from Spanish, Hindi-Urdu, Persian (Farsi), Kiswahili, Romanian, and German.

Features of Person

Author : Peter Ackema
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262347377
Total Pages : 383 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (623 download)

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Book Synopsis Features of Person by : Peter Ackema

Download or read book Features of Person written by Peter Ackema and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-10-23 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A proposal that person features do not have inherent content but are used to navigate a “person space” at the heart of every pronominal expression. This book offers a significant reconceptualization of the person system in natural language. The authors, leading scholars in syntax and its interfaces, propose that person features do not have inherent content but are used to navigate a “person space” at the heart of every pronominal expression. They map the journey of person features in grammar, from semantics through syntax to the system of morphological realization. Such an in-depth cross-modular study allows the development of a theory in which assumptions made about the behavior of a given feature in one module bear on possible assumptions about its behavior in other modules. The authors' new theory of person, built on a sparse set of two privative person features, delivers a typologically adequate inventory of persons; captures the semantics of personal pronouns, impersonal pronouns, and R-expressions; accounts for aspects of their syntactic behavior; and explains patterns of person-related syncretism in the realization of pronouns and inflectional endings. The authors discuss numerous observations from the literature, defend a number of theoretical choices that are either new or not generally accepted, and present novel empirical findings regarding phenomena as different as honorifics, number marking, and unagreement.

The Development of Chomskyan Generative Grammar

Author : Mei Deming
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 104008544X
Total Pages : 369 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (4 download)

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Book Synopsis The Development of Chomskyan Generative Grammar by : Mei Deming

Download or read book The Development of Chomskyan Generative Grammar written by Mei Deming and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-06-28 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the major theories of generative grammar from a historical perspective, providing an overview of the evolution of this linguistic framework. Generative grammar is widely recognized for its major contributions to the study of theoretical linguistics in the twentieth century and has had a profound impact on the fields of linguistics, psychology, computer science, and cognitive science. This book consists of eight chapters that trace the development of generative grammar from its beginnings to its current focus on minimalism. The first chapter outlines the major stages of generative grammar, namely Classical Theory, Standard Theory, Extended Standard Theory, Revised Extended Standard Theory, Government and Binding Theory, and the Minimalist Program. The second chapter reviews the development of the C‐command relation and illustrates its use in syntactic analysis. Each of the following six chapters focuses on a specific area of generative grammar, including phrase structure, movement, Case, argument structure, binding, and raising and control. The volume will be an invaluable resource for researchers, teachers, and students in the fields of generative grammar, syntax, formal linguistics, and the social and cognitive sciences.

Rethinking Verb Second

Author : Rebecca Woods
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0192582577
Total Pages : 928 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (925 download)

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Book Synopsis Rethinking Verb Second by : Rebecca Woods

Download or read book Rethinking Verb Second written by Rebecca Woods and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-25 with total page 928 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume provides the most exhaustive and comprehensive treatment available of the Verb Second property, which has been a central topic in formal syntax for decades. While Verb Second has traditionally been considered a feature primarily of the Germanic languages, this book shows that it is much more widely attested cross-linguistically than previously thought, and explores the multiple empirical, theoretical, and experimental puzzles that remain in developing an account of the phenomenon. Uniquely, formal theoretical work appears alongside studies of psycholinguistics, language production, and language acquisition. The range of languages investigated is also broader than in previous work: while novel issues are explored through the lens of the more familiar Germanic data, chapters also cover Verb Second effects in languages such as Armenian, Dinka, Tohono O'odham, and in the Celtic, Romance, and Slavonic families. The analyses have wide-ranging consequences for our understanding of the language faculty, and will be of interest to researchers and students from advanced undergraduate level upwards in the fields of syntax, historical linguistics, and language acquisition.

Verb Second in Medieval Romance

Author : Sam Wolfe
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0198804679
Total Pages : 209 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (988 download)

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Book Synopsis Verb Second in Medieval Romance by : Sam Wolfe

Download or read book Verb Second in Medieval Romance written by Sam Wolfe and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume provides the first book-length study of the controversial topic of Verb Second and related properties in a range of Medieval Romance varieties. The findings have widespread implications for the understanding of both the key typological property of Verb Second and the development of Latin into the modern Romance languages.

Agreement and Its Failures

Author : Omer Preminger
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262323206
Total Pages : 309 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (623 download)

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Book Synopsis Agreement and Its Failures by : Omer Preminger

Download or read book Agreement and Its Failures written by Omer Preminger and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2014-09-19 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A novel proposal regarding predicate-argument agreement that combines detailed empirical investigation with rigorous theoretical discussion. In this book, Omer Preminger investigates how the obligatory nature of predicate-argument agreement is enforced by the grammar. Preminger argues that an empirically adequate theory of predicate-argument agreement requires recourse to an operation, whose obligatoriness is a grammatical primitive not reducible to representational properties, but whose successful culmination is not enforced by the grammar. Preminger's argument counters contemporary approaches that find the obligatoriness of predicate-argument agreement enforced through representational means. The most prominent of these is Chomsky's “interpretability”-based proposal, in which the obligatoriness of predicate-argument agreement is enforced through derivational time bombs. Preminger presents an empirical argument against contemporary approaches that seek to derive the obligatory nature of predicate-argument agreement exclusively from derivational time bombs. He offers instead an alternative account based on the notion of obligatory operations better suited to the facts. The crucial data involves utterances that inescapably involve attempted-but-failed agreement and are nonetheless fully grammatical. Preminger combines a detailed empirical investigation of agreement phenomena in the Kichean (Mayan) languages, Zulu (Bantu), Basque, Icelandic, and French with an extensive and rigorous theoretical exploration of the far-reaching consequences of these data. The result is a novel proposal that has profound implications for the formalism that the theory of grammar uses to derive obligatory processes and properties.

Japanese Syntax in Comparative Perspective

Author : Mamoru Saito
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199945217
Total Pages : 333 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (999 download)

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Book Synopsis Japanese Syntax in Comparative Perspective by : Mamoru Saito

Download or read book Japanese Syntax in Comparative Perspective written by Mamoru Saito and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-05-01 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the syntax of Japanese in comparison with other Asian languages within the Principles-and-Parameters framework. It grows out of a collaborative research project on comparative syntax pursued at the Center for Linguistics at Nanzan University from 2008-2013, in collaboration with researchers at Tsing Hua (Hsinchu, Taiwan), Connecticut, EFL U. (Hyderabad, India), Siena, and Cambridge. In ten chapters, the book compares the syntax of Japanese to that of Chinese, Korean, Turkish, Hindi, and Malayalam, focusing on ellipsis, movement, and Case. The first three chapters compare nominal structures in Japanese and Chinese and account for the differences between them. An important point of comparison in these chapters is the patterns of N'-ellipsis the two languages exhibit. The subsequent two chapters focus on ellipsis. One examines argument ellipsis in Japanese, Turkish, and Chinese, and argues for its correlation with the absence of