The Greek DP periphery

This paper aims to elucidate the licensing of wh-phrases in Korean and English. Wh-phrases in both wh-moving languages and uh-in-situ languages are assumed to have an interpretable uh-feature which is one of the criterial features to be realized in the left periphery. Adopting Rizzi (2006, 2009), criterial features are assumed to be satisfied by raising to the criterial position in the left periphery. I propose that wh-phrases move to CP, the left periphery, to satisfy this criterial feature under the copy theory of movement (Chomsky 1995, 2008). The parametric difference comes from whether the top copy is pronounced or the low copy is pronounced. It is suggested that the head C with the Edge Feature (EF) requires its Spec to be overtly filled, hence the pronunciation of the top copy whereas the head C without EF does not require its Spec to be overtly filled, hence the pronunciation of the low copy. The Locality based on phases and the Last Resort based on no intermediate feature checking are observed in wh-movement. Eliminating separate levels, a single output syntax is observed in this analysis.

This paper re-examines the syntactic properties of the sentence-final particle (henceforth, SFP) ho2 in Hong Kong Cantonese (henceforth, Cantonese). Despite studies such as Lam 2014, Tang 2020, and Law et al. 2024, variation persists among native speakers in their judgments regarding the acceptability of SFP clusters such as me1-ho2. Additionally, Law et al.’s (2024) preliminary observation that ho2 involves an addressee shift remains underexplored. To address these issues, this paper investigates whether ho2 can co-occur with the class of Degree SFPs (Tang 2015a). The results reveal that there are two distinct ho2s: one operating at the propositional level and the other at the speech act level. To capture this contrast, I propose that ho2[A] is an SFP occupying the head of F3P, which is one of the layers of the split-FP under the cartographic approach (Tang 2015b). On the other hand, ho2[B] is a pro-sentence merged with the antecedent sentence by an empty conjunction, forming a general conjunctive structure. The proposed account provides better empirical coverage compared to previous literature (Lam 2014; Law et al. 2024) and enhances our understanding of the nature of the left periphery in natural languages.

Spanish preverbal subjects and the cartography of the Spanish left periphery