Zero Syntax

The analysis and theory developed in Zero Syntax is an important
contribution to the understanding of Universal Grammar. The overriding theme is the
notion that the availability and syntactic positioning of arguments is not a matter
of chance but arises from laws governing the structure of lexical entries and from
laws governing syntactic structures themselves. Along the way, Zero Syntax also
examines issues of broad significance to current theoretical linguistic research in
syntax and lexical semantics.Zero Syntax develops two main topics: a simple view of
syntactic linking regularities that it defends in the domain of Experiencer
predicates (predicates such as "annoy"), and a theory of syntactic constituency that
involves two parallel modes of structural organization (one of which is the Cascade
syntax). The theme that ties these issues together is the supposition that
phonologically null ("zero") morphology is present in structure, detectable through
its syntactic and morphological consequences.The arguments in Zero Syntax will be
relevant to debates about such issues as empty elements in syntax and morphology,
whether syntactic structures should be binary branching, the structure of
double-object constructions, and whether verbs have multiple meanings related by
lexical rules or abstract/general meanings that are ambiguated in particular
constructions.Current Studies in Linguistics No. 27