Generating copies : an investigation into structural identity in language and grammar

of the Dissertation Generating Copies: An investigation into structural identity in language and grammar by Gregory Michael Kobele Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics University of California, Los Angeles, 2006 Professor Edward P. Stabler, Chair In this dissertation I provide a directly compositional semantics for minimalist grammars, which allows us to view the derivation as the only relevant syntactic structure, thereby eliminating all non-interface levels, and obtaining a system similar in this respect to categorial grammar. I give an explicit account of a fragment of English consisting of passivization, raising, control, and expletive-it, which accounts for quantifier scope ambiguities. The system is quite minimal; there are no trans-derivational economy conditions, no preferences for merge over move, no numerations, no lexical sub-arrays. Instead, all operations are feature driven, and there is a single economy condition, the Principle of Immediacy, which simply requires that features be checked as soon as the appropriate configuration arises. I add copy movement to the minimalist grammar system. I implement copying in two ways. Once with multiple dominance, treating copies as being derived only once, and once with synchronous derivation, treating each copy as having been