Introduction

Abstract

The aim of this book is to consider some aspects of the distribution of nominal arguments in the Germanic languages and in particular aspects of the cross-linguistic variation in this domain of the syntax. The central questions that will be addressed on the basis of the Germanic languages are: (a) What are the common underlying properties which determine the distribution of nominal arguments across languages? and (b) How can the considerable cross-linguistic variation be accounted for? With respect to these issues, two main claims will be made. First, it will be argued that the basic distributional properties of nominal arguments which hold across languages can be derived from the definition of syntactic categories and in particular from the interaction between nominal and verbal elements in this respect. And secondly, it will be proposed that several aspects of the cross-linguistic variation in the syntax of nominal arguments can be directly related to morphological properties which also differ across languages, i.e. to properties such as verbal agreement or case morphology. Both of these results will be obtained by developing certain proposals made within the Minimalist Program (cf. Chomsky 1993, 1995, 2000, 2001) and in particular by trying to restrict the inventory of syntactic features in a given language to features which play a role at least at one of the two interface levels. The goal of this chapter is to provide the theoretical basis for our discussion in the later chapters.