A Semantic Theory of “NP-Movement” Dependencies

Abstract

The various complex dependencies found in English sentences containing infinitival complements have provided some of the most compelling arguments for transformational grammar (TG) (for a survey of such arguments, see Postal (1974), Soames and Perlmutter (1979)). As a consequence, these dependencies also provide a testing ground for current alternatives to TG. Few linguists would take seriously a theory of grammar which did not address the fundamental problems of English grammar that were dealt with within the framework of “standard” transformational grammar (STG) (Chomsky (1965), Rosenbaum (1967)) by such rules as There-Insertion, It-Extraposition, Passive, Subject-Subject Raising, and Subject-Object Raising.¹

Various versions of the present paper were presented at Stanford University, The University of Washington, The University of Wisconsin at Madison, The University of Texas at Austin and Sussex University. I would like to thank the following people for helpful discussions: Jon Barwise, Mike Brame, Robin Cooper, David Dowty, Gerald Gazdar, Jorge Hankamer, James Higginbotham, Jerry Morgan, Fritz Newmeyer, Barbara Partee, Stanley Peters, Geoffrey Pullum, Robert Stalnaker, Tom Wasow, and Steve Weisler. The research reported here was conducted while I was an Andrew Mellon Fellow at Stanford University.