Functional Categories

The division labor between the lexicon and the §syntax has been a major topic within the generative §grammar for decades. Many linguists have been §occupied with assigning more central information to §the lexicon in order to explain the syntactic §behaviors which seem to be dependent on the lexical §semantics of certain items. This book, however, §argues that the syntax-driven approach, whereby §properties of grammatical structures, typically §having been assumed to be associated with lexical §items, are reduced to general syntactic §considerations, can provide straightforward accounts §to various domains of nominal and adjectival §constructions. The sets of functional projections §responsible for forming nominal and adjectival §phrases are also identified, which are considered §universally attested and necessitated even in East §Asian languages, which have been known as the §languages with impoverished functional categories. §This book will be useful to linguists interested in §the syntax-semantics interface issues especially in §the nominal and adjectival constructions and also §serve as a reference source for those interested in §East Asian languages including Korean.