From A to N and Back: Functional and Bare Projections in the Domain of N and A

This dissertation investigates structural complexity of the adjectival and the nominal domain, arguing these domains are parallel in their complexity within a language, but their complexity can vary cross-linguistically. The point of departure is Bošković’s (2008, 2012) two-way typology regarding the nominal domain, where languages with articles are argued to project a functional layer (DP) above NP, while languages without articles lack the DP layer and allow bare NPs. By investigating the extended domain of both N and A, I show that a subset of languages with articles, namely those with affixal articles, cross-cut this two-way typology and argue they belong to a separate type. Chapter 2 examines the parallelism between the domain of N and A, starting with an investigation of adverb extraction from predicative traditional adjective phrases (TAPs) cross-linguistically, comparing it with a parallel type of extraction (left-branch extraction) in the nominal domain. I show the two phenomena receive a unified account under a contextual approach to phases, arguing that languages differ in whether they always require functional structure in the domain of both N and A, or whether they allow bare NPs and APs: Languages with non-affixal articles belong to the former group and languages without articles to the latter, but a number of phenomena indicate that affixal article languages allow bare NPs and APs, even though they often project functional structure above them. Chapter 3 discusses constructions where complements of phasal heads appear to move, which has been argued to be impossible (Abels 2003). I argue that these cases actually involve movement out of the complement, the main argument coming from the syntax-prosody interface, namely, the way clitics map from the syntax to prosody. Chapter 4 reveals an asymmetry between attributive and predicative TAPs, where the former quite generally contain functional structure above AP, even in languages that have bare predicative APs (unless the language has a special predicative adjectival form that can be exceptionally used attributively, as in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian and Icelandic). Investigating two different forms of adjectives in BCS in more detail provides support for additional functional projection with adjectival forms that occur only attributively