Are Features Inherited?

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter presents the feature percolation in coordinate structures. In grammatical frameworks that employ unification, features can be copied from one node to another. Whenever the same feature ends up on a node more than once, unification is applied to the different values. If a feature value clash occurs, the sentence is ruled ungrammatical. Unification is used as an algebraic tool to describe the agreement data. The workings of this operator can be extended as to cover coordination facts. The chapter also presents the problem of allowing more operators. Because natural language only uses a small subset from the set of possible operators, some way is needed to restrict this set. It is shown that the property of monotonous failure excludes inverse operations. A parallel between feature systems and the hereditary system is drawn. This similarity is used to restrict the set of possible operators even further. The chapter also presents that either X-bar theory is a primitive notion, or projection defining features percolate up in an earlier stage of the derivation than the other features do.