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Part of
Crossroads Semantics: Computation, experiment and grammar
Edited by Hilke Reckman, Lisa Lai-Shen Cheng, Maarten Hijzelendoorn and Rint Sybesma
[Not in series 210] 2017
► pp. 207–225

Chapter 13
Stacking up for the long way down

| Eötvös Loránd University | Hungarian Academy of Sciences

In Categorial Grammar, “[t]he combinatorics of long-distance dependencies are steered … by conditions on the state of argument stacks” (Cremers 2004: 99). In this paper I argue that in mainstream Chomskyan syntax, modelling filler-gap dependencies in these terms also works well, and is superior to the standard bottom-up movement-based approach. The discussion focuses primarily on the familiar locality restrictions on the establishment of long-distance filler-gap dependencies, and recasts “Subjacency” and “ECP” effects from the perspective of the top-down approach.

Keywords: directionality of structure building, filler-gap dependencies, cyclicity, pushdown stacks, locality, subjacency, predication
Article outline
  • 1.Directionality
    • 1.1Bottom-up structure building
    • 1.2Top-down structure building
  • 2.Cyclicity
  • 3.Locality
    • 3.1Strong islands: Absolute opacity
    • 3.2Weak islands: Intervention and path containment
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 12 April 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/z.210.13den
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