Zero Syntax

The analysis and theory developed in Zero Syntax are important contributions to the understanding of Universal Grammar. The overriding theme of the book is the notion that the availability and syntactic positioning of arguments is not a matter of chance but arises from laws governing the structure of lexical entries and from laws governing syntactic structures themselves. Along the way, Zero Syntax also examines issues of broad significance to current theoretical linguistic research in syntax and lexical semantics. Zero Syntax develops two main topics: a simple view of syntactic linking regularities that it defends in the domain of Experiencer predicates (predicates such as "annoy"), and a theory of syntactic constituency that involves two parallel modes of structural organization (one of which is the Cascade syntax). The theme that ties these issues together is the supposition that phonologically null ("zero") morphology is present in structure, detectable through its syntactic and morphological consequences. The arguments in Zero Syntax will be relevant to debates about such issues as empty elements in syntax and morphology, whether syntactic structures should be binary branching, the structure of double-object constructions, and whether verbs have multiple meanings related by lexical rules or abstract/general meanings that are ambiguated in particular constructions.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.