A parameter-free underspecification approach to complementizer agreement

Abstract

The issue of linguistic variation, corresponding to parametric variation in syntax, has not been explored comprehensively in the minimalist approach (but see e.g. ROBERTS, 2019 and references in). Two partially distinct, central views of linguistic variation in this framework are (i) variation comes from the lexicon (the so-called Borer-Chomsky conjecture, see BAKER, 2008) and (ii) variation is spelled out through externalization (or the Berwick-Chomsky conjecture). In this paper, we explore a third view of linguistic variation, invoking underspecification of rule ordering in narrow syntax, based on Obata et al. (2015). To implement this approach, we compare two languages, Brazilian Portuguese (BP) and Cabo Verdean Creole (CVC), regarding complementizer agreement in argument and adjunct wh-questions. Whereas CVC requires an overt complementizer in argument wh-questions, BP shows a general pattern of optionality in both argument and adjunct wh-questions. We argue that both systems can be accounted for in terms of rule-ordering underspecification in the grammar.

Keywords

• generative grammar (minimalism)
• syntactic variation
• underspecification of rule ordering
• complementizer agreement