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20 - Dependency, Licensing, and the Nature of Grammatical Relations

from Part Four - Syntax

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 June 2022

By
Anna Cardinaletti  and
Giuliana Giusti
Edited by
Adam Ledgeway  and
Martin Maiden
Adam Ledgeway
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Martin Maiden
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
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Summary

In this chapter, we discuss three classes of phenomena that are captured by the terms dependency and licensing, in clauses and nominal expressions: (i) the structural relation between a lexical head (e.g., V, N, A) and the functional structure projected by it such as the relation between a verb and an auxiliary or between a noun and a determiner; (ii) the selectional relation between a lexical head and the constituents that are combined with it to satisfy its argument structure, as in the case of the verb and the direct object; and (iii) the structural relation created by two different constituents that share the same referential index. In the third case, we observe two major types: a constituent is displaced, as in the case of the subject of a passive clause or a wh-constituent; or two constituents share the same referent but have different functions in the clause (or in different clauses), as is the case of pronouns and their antecedents. The dependencies dealt with in the first two cases are ‘local’, while the others can be long distance. Most of the analyses of the dependency phenomena relate the relative richness in inflexional morphology to variation in word order, argument marking, agreement, and the realization of pronominal reference.

Keywords

adjectivesargument structuredependencydifferential object markinglicensingpossessivesclitic pronouns
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Romance Linguistics , pp. 604 - 636
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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References

Selected References

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