http://glottopedia.org/index.php?action=history&feed=atom&title=Lexical_arrayLexical array - Revision history2026-04-22T15:59:44ZRevision history for this page on the wikiMediaWiki 1.34.2http://glottopedia.org/index.php?title=Lexical_array&diff=7907&oldid=prevWohlgemuth: utrecht2009-02-16T20:24:08Z<p>utrecht</p>
<p><b>New page</b></p><div>Formal device, introduced in Chomsky (1998); a lexical array is the set of lexical items that will be used in a derivation. The notion is similar to [[numeration]]; the only difference is that the elements in a numeration bear indices, while the elements in a lexical array do not. The empirical evidence for the existence of lexical arrays comes from sentences like the following:<br />
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(i) a. There<sub>i</sub> is likely [<sub>A</sub> t<sub>i</sub> to be<br />
[a proof discovered]].<br />
b. * There<sub>i</sub> is likely [<sub>A</sub> a proof to be<br />
[ t<sub>i</sub> discovered]].<br />
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At stage A of the derivation, T's EPP-feature must be [[check]]ed. This could be done by either merger of ''there'', or movement of ''a proof''. Chomsky argues that (b) is ungrammatical because ''a proof'' has been moved before the expletive is inserted, and this violates [[Merge-over-Move]]. <br /> This is indirect evidence for the existence of lexical arrays, because the principle of Merge-over-Move doesn't make sense if we don't have a restricted set of accessible elements; if the lexicon would be fully accessible during the derivation, and we have Merge-over-Move, we would expect every sentence to have an expletive satisfying the EPP, since merger of an [[expletive]] is cheaper than moving the subject. <br /> See also [[lexical subarray]].<br />
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=== Link ===<br />
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[http://www2.let.uu.nl/UiL-OTS/Lexicon/zoek.pl?lemma=Lexical+array&lemmacode=1515 Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics]<br />
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=== References ===<br />
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* Chomsky, N. 1998. ''Minimalist inquiries: the framework,'' MIT working papers in linguistics.<br />
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[[Category:Syntax]]</div>Wohlgemuth