ABSTRACT
In earlier versions of -theory, the current ‘functional categories’ were either analysed as specifiers of some lexical category (see, for example, the treatment of determiners in Jackendoff (1977)), or not integrated into -theory at all (see, for example, the treatment of INFL and COMP in Chomsky (1981)). A first important change was brought about when Chomsky (1986a) reanalysed clausal structure as exhibiting two functional Heads, INFL and COMP, and the lexical Head V, all of which were assumed to be regular from the point of view of - theory; more exactly, V2 was taken to be a complement of INFL°, and INFL2, of COMP°. The reanalysis of phrases into a ‘subordinate’ lexical nucleus and one or more ‘superordinate’ functional categories was subsequently extended to nominal expressions (Abney 1987, Fukui and Speas 1986), and more recently to prepositional phrases (van Riemsdijk 1990, Rouveret 1991). A major integrative effort was made in Grimshaw (1991), aspects of which were brought up and put to use in Study 1.
