Hybrid Categories and the CIT

Abstract

One of the principles believed to be a basic cornerstone of the theory of the structure of phrases is the Categorial Identity Thesis (CIT), see in particular Grimshaw (1991, 2005) and Van Riemsdijk (1990, 1998). The CIT states that the categorial status of functional heads in extended projections must be identical. In other words, functional heads in nominal projections all the way up to the highest DP shell must be nominal in nature. And correspondingly functional heads in verbal projection all the way up to the clausal shells must be verbal in nature. There is a class of constructions, well-known, that seems to counterexemplify the CIT. The most obvious example of this kind, perhaps, is the existence, in English, of nominal and verbal gerunds. The present article suggests that a natural solution to this problem can be found if the theory of syntactic representations is rethought radically. The central idea is that syntactic representations should be thought of in terms of monovalued syntactic features and a multi-tiered arrangement of these features in ways that are close in spirit to Element Theory as developed for phonology in the 1980 s.