The Final-Over-Final Condition: A Syntactic Universal

Description

This book presents evidence for a universal word order constraint, the Final-over-Final Condition (FOFC), and discusses the theoretical implications of this phenomenon. FOFC is a syntactic condition that disallows structures where a head-initial phrase is contained in a head-final phrase in the same extended projection/domain. The authors argue that FOFC is a linguistic universal, not just a strong tendency, and not a constraint on processing. They discuss the effects of the universal in various domains, including the noun phrase, the adjective phrase, the verb phrase, and the clause. The book draws on data from a wide range of languages, including Hindi, Turkish, Basque, Finnish, Afrikaans, German, Hungarian, French, English, Italian, Romanian, Arabic, Hebrew, Mandarin, Pontic Greek, Bagirmi, Dholuo, and Thai. FOFC, the authors argue, is important because it is the only known example of a word order asymmetry pertaining to the order of heads. As such, it has significant repercussions for theories connecting the narrow syntax to linear order. Series Foreword by Samuel Jay Keyser vii Foreword by David Pesetsky ix Acknowledgments xiii Introduction / Anders Holmberg 1 Empirical Evidence for the Final-over-Final Condition / Theresa Biberauer, Anders Holmberg, Ian Roberts, and Michelle Sheehan 11 Harmony, Symmetry, and Dominance in Word Order Universals / Ian Roberts 27 The Final-over-Final Condition and Linearization in Generative Grammar / Anders Holmberg 43 The Final-over-Final Condition and Processing / Michelle Sheehan 79 The Final-over-Final Condition and Adverbs / Michelle Sheehan 97 The Final-over-Final Condition and the Head-Final Filter / Michelle Sheehan 121 The Final-over-Final Condition in DP: Universal 20 and the Nature of Demonstratives / Ian Roberts 151 The Final-over-Final Condition and Particles / Theresa Biberauer 187 The Final-over-Final Condition in a Mixed-Word-Order Language / Anders Holmberg 297 The Final-over-Final Condition in Morphology / Ian Roberts 323 Notes 347 References 385 Index 437