Advanced Syntax Percolation
Linguistics 405
Advanced Syntax
Percolation is a theory that account for agreement, and
could account for affix movement, and less probably, transformations. Percolation
is based on the notion introduced in Chomsky 1986 (Barriers).
We advance the theory such that in the pre-syntax, all grammatical
features assigned to a head must percolate upwards up to the maximal projection,
and then the same features must percolate down to the arguments and adjuncts
of head. One major restriction on percolation: no feature can percolate
to an argument or adjunct of a lexical head.
Let us start with subject-verb agreement.
