Specificity-driven syntactic derivation : a new view on long-distance agreement

Abstract

In this paper I propose a new cyclic agree analysis of long-distance agreement (LDA). The analysis rests upon the idea that specificity, which is arguably one of the main basic concepts of morphological theory, is at work in syntactic derivations, too. In the new anal- ysis, LDA is the result of ordered operation application at an ex- tremely local level conditioned by a specificity condition, the Maxi- mize Matching Principle, which is an extension of Chomsky’s (2001) Maximize Matching Effects Condition. The new analysis accounts for a number of properties of LDA: It captures the parasitic nature of the construction (matrix V can only show LDA if embedded V shows local agreement), offers a principled explanation for the non- intervening embedded external argument, accounts for the blocking of LDA in the presence of left-peripheral material, derives scope ef- fects, and is flexible enough to account for cross-linguistic variation. The new analysis also allows for a new perspective on the relation between LDA and topicality in Tsez: I argue that LDA is not de- pendent on topicality, but that both the topic interpretation and LDA fall out as a side effect of V-to-I movement.