Adjuntosampliación del dominio local y formación de cadenas. Una propuesta basada en el 'movimiento lateral'

Abstract

The present dissertation analyses the locality conditions which affect adjunct constituents within the theoretical framework Bare Phrase Structure (Chomsky 1995). It has been recently proposed that adjunct constituents are introduced in the main clause by means of the operation concatenation (i.e. merge without labeling). Taking this premise as a starting point, this dissertation defends that, theory-wise, locality criteria should affect concatenated constituents and merged consituents in the same way. Instead, adjuncts are usually considered to be non-local constituents. The local interpretation of adjuncts is restricted to specific structural circumstances.This dissertation focuses on the necessary circumstances under which a local interpretation of adjuncts is possible. It claims that one sole operator can form two different chains with two different variables as long as those variables do not c-command each other. The lack of c-command within the variables makes them equidistant variables such that, if one variable is close enough to form a chain with the operator, so is the other. In this way, the local domain of the operator is widened. This dissertation develops this proposal in depth by going through some empirical cases: parasitic gaps, some instances of binding and extraction from secondary predicates...