| The program seeks to gain a better understanding of dependency in grammar. It tests a novel hypothesis according to which the grammatical process of structure building (merger) automatically yields an asymmetric sister pair consisting of a dependent and a nondependent element. Grammars and constructions differ in the way the dependency relation is realized on (a term of) the dependent element. This dependency theory deviates from standard approaches which define dependency in terms of relations among heads and nonheads in phrase structure. The actual research focuses on empirical substantiation/falsification of the central hypothesis, which involves the construction of a typological database. Two graduate projects study the realization of morphosyntactic dependency in complementary domains: the clause and the noun phrase. A postdoc project charts the fundamental properties of pairs of elements created by merger. |
