New Research in Linguistics and English Language
English without VPs
Abstract
The existence of a VP constituent in English has largely been taken for granted since the appearance of the rule S -> NP + VP in early generative grammar, and tests for VP constituency form part of the canon of argumentation in most syntax textbooks. In this paper we argue that the arguments for a syntactic VP constituent in English are individually flawed, and that the absence of valid arguments shoudl be taken as evidence that clause structure in English is in fact flat. In the proposed analysis, the units affected by the operations traditionally used to justify Vp constituency do not in general correspond to syntactic constituents, but rather emerge as units created by the logical form operations of predicate saturation and higher-order unification
Date Published
June 2007
Author
John Payne