Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Ritter, Elizabeth
• Wiltschko, Martina

Titel

The composition of INFL: An exploration of "tense, tenseless" languages, and "tenseless" constructions

Ist Teil von

• Natural language and linguistic theory, 2014-11, Vol.32 (4), p.1331-1386

Ort / Verlag

Dordrecht: Springer

Erscheinungsjahr

2014

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

SpringerLink (Online service)

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The central goal of this article is to argue that functional categories are universally associated with a core function but that their substantive content is subject to variation. We review evidence from Ritter and Wiltschko (2009) based on language variation: INFL may be associated with temporal, spatial, or participant marking. This paper explores the properties of the universal category INFL in clauses where it remains without substantive content. We show that languages pattern in similar ways in these contexts. That is, in the absence of variable substantive content, the universal formal properties of INFL emerge.