Nanosyntax

• Authors: CAHA Pavel
• Year of publication: 2019
• MU Faculty or unit: Faculty of Arts
• Description: The class will introduce the current stage of the Nanosyntax model of grammar, especially its later stages where phrasal spellout comes along with spellout-driven movement, backtracking derivations, Spec formation etc. While introducing these tools, I will be simultaneously investigating the phenomenon of case competition. Case competition arises in contexts where the grammar requires two cases on a single nominal, but only one of them gets to surface. In such constructions, the cases compete and the conflict is resolved according to a set of rules. These rules can, of course, be stated in a completely ad hoc fashion, say: in a language L, in a construction C, a case K1 wins over case K2. The goal of any theory is to move beyond such ad hoc statements, and replace them by general grammatical processes whose output the statements describe. My main goal will be to show that once we have the Nanosyntax model of grammar, we will need no rule of case competition at all, its effects entirely derivable from independent proposals about how the grammar works. The empirical discussion will start with Ossetic numerals and move on – hopefully – to Russian numerical phrases (though that remains to be seen).