Abstract
The English verbscome andgo in the ‘aspectual’ use exhibit a curious restriction: they may not appear in any overtly inflected form. We argue that this inflectional restriction is due to syntactic and thematic considerations which are independent of word formation, supporting the claim that the basic properties of inflectional morphology are to be analyzed by making reference to the syntax proper. Our analysis has implications for several other topics, including the structure of INFL, the mechanisms involved in affix lowering, the ban on unbound affixes, the LF properties of primary vs. secondary ϑ-role assigners, and the role played by pleonasticdo.
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The Editors note with great sorrow the death of Osvaldo Jaeggli on August 20, 1990.
We would like to acknowledge helpful comments and discussion from Alfredo Arnaiz, Morris Halle, Kyle Johnson, Alec Marantz, David Pesetsky, Jean-Yves Pollock, Geoffrey Pullum, Ian Roberts, and Jean-Roger Vergnaud. A version of this paper was presented at the Midsummer's Syntax Workshop at UC Irvine during Spring 1990. Our thanks as well to the participants of that workshop for their comments. Thanks also to Susan Hirsh for editorial assistance.
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Jaeggli, O.A., Hyams, N.M. On the independence and interdependence of syntactic and morphological properties: English aspectualcome andgo . Nat Lang Linguist Theory 11, 313–346 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00992916
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00992916