Phrase Structure and the Lexicon

The relation between phrase structure and the lexicon has always been an area of prime concern in syntactic theory, but never more so than in the recently developed minimalist framework, where the lexicon is largely reduced to configurational and computational properties of the grammar. Taking this perspective as their point of departure, the authors of this volume address relevant issues, including the mapping between thematic information and phrase structure, the way in which the configurational character of functional categories determines interpretation in a theory of phrase structure, and methodological discussions about core assumptions of phrase structure itself. Some of the essential themes that emerge are that projection and interpretation go hand in hand (a successful projection in an interpretable one), and that, to a large extent, phrase structure itself encodes lexical information and determines interpretation in the thematic domain. This book is intended for theoreticians in syntax, semantics and language acquisition, and in related fields.