ONE, NOUN STRUCTURE, AND MODIFICATION

Abstract

The present thesis aims to use novel observations as to the behaviour of anaphoric one when under modi cation in order to explore more acutely the structure of the nominal phrase. There has been decades of disagreement as to the syntactic nature of anaphoric one. This work highlights novel observations about anaphoric one and offers structural analyses for them. Anaphoric one behaves in a markedly distinct way when modified by a prenominal modi er versus when it is modified by a postnominal modifier. Specifically the indefinite article, numerals, and certain quantifiers are able to be introduced into the structure of the noun phrase only when anaphoric one is modified prenominally. In such cases that is modi ed postnominally the introduction of such material is not possible. Rather than appealing to rich featural specifications on syntactic objects by way of explanation this thesis offers an account based upon the structure of the nominal. An obligatory movement operation in the nominal projection is proposed, the result of which produces a structural configuration which limits extraction from the moved constituent. It is the two of these factors working together that produces the pattern of behaviour to be captured. Finally I present phenomena that can be found in Spanish, Dutch, Turkish, and Slovenian which can be easily captured using the structural analysis offered in this work. The suggestion being that all of these languages exhibit not only the same movement operation in the nominal projection, but the same limit on what may be extracted from the moved constituent.