Generalized Inversion

• Published in: Natural language and linguistic theory Vol. 22; no. 1; pp. 1 - 49
• Main Author: Bailyn, John Frederick
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Kluwer Academic Publishers 01.02.2004; Springer; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Anaphora; Computer applications; Descriptive studies and applied theories; Dissertations & theses; Extended Projection Principle; Functional Heads; Germanic Languages; Grammatical clauses; Grammatical constructions; Inversion; Language; Linguistic scrambling; Linguistics; Locative case; Movement; Natural language; Nominative case; Russian; Russian language; Sentence structure; Subject; Syntactic Analysis; Syntax; Tense; Theory; Verbs; Word Order; Syntactic construction; Economy; Extended projection principle; Verb raising; INFL-phrase; Generative syntax; Inversion
• ISSN: 0167-806X; 1573-0859
• DOI: 10.1023/B:NALA.0000005556.40898.a5

In this article, I generalize the notion of "Inversion" on the IP-level to include all cases of what has previously been referred to as Inversion (following Collins 1997) and A-Scrambling (following Miyagawa 2000, forthcoming a, b) as well as various other constructions in which a non-Nominative subject fills the canonical subject position, SpecIP. I exemplify IP-Inversion using a range of constructions from Russian, and show that the "inverted" constituent has subject (A) properties, and that it is accompanied by verb-raising, which is required in such instances by the Overt Tense Condition. The ability to fill SpecIP with a non-Nominative constituent is a parameterized property of a language related to the strength of the Nominative case features in I. The driving force behind Inversion is (a version of) the (traditional) Extended Projection Principle (EPP), that is an overtness requirement on the specifier of the functional category I. Finally I argue that Inversion, as an overtness requirement on the specifier of a functional projection, can be generalized to the CP level as well, where an equivalent overtness requirement forces filling of SpecCP, as in Germanic V2 languages. The analysis allows us to unite various apparently disparate constructions as the result of a simple set of parameters, and to expose central issues of economy within the computational system.