Issues on Modern Greek Sentential Complementation

Dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park (1994)
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Abstract

This dissertation is concerned with a range of syntactic phenomena related to sentential complementation in Modern Greek and the consequences they have for the Theory of Grammar. Two types of complements are examined: factive complements and their pattern of wh-extraction, and subjunctive complements and their implications for the theory of control and the licensing of case. ;In particular, evidence from the syntax of Modern Greek--more specifically, from the distribution of an A$\sp\prime$-bound pronoun--is drawn against an operator approach to factive complements. It is argued that the strong islandhood observed in Modern Greek factive complements is due to the fact that they are not real complements of the subcategorizing verb but independent clauses standing in a paratactic relation to an empty nominal complement of the matrix predicate. The crosslinguistic variation attested with respect to extraction is attributed to the ability of languages such as English to form certain types of A$\sp\prime$-chains which evidently are impossible in Modern Greek. ;Furthermore, upon investigation of the so called subjunctive complements in Modern Greek it is shown that the position of their understood subject may be occupied sometimes by a pronominal pro and sometimes by an anaphoric PRO. The licensing of the two empty categories is derived through the aspectual and tense properties of these constructions. It is claimed that the presence of PRO in these configurations and the set of anaphoric properties it displays provides evidence that the distribution of this category can be derived on a case theoretic account, along the lines of Bouchard or Chomsky and Lasnik , and does not depend on the notion of government as in Chomsky

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