<i>Syntactic Structures</i> Redux

Abstract

Abstract. This article extends Howard Lasnik's commentary in Syntactic Structures Revisited (2000) on Chomsky's transformational analyses of the verbal morphology system. It reviews Lasnik's critique of the transformational machinery in Syntactic Structures and shows how the problems he identifies are resolved under a more minimal theory of transformations that developed circa 1980. Considering the three central topics in the analysis of this system—the order and form of verbal elements, the main verb movement parameter, and the distribution of periphrastic do —it discusses some problems that arise in Lasnik's hybrid account and proposes a lexicalist alternative that eliminates the rules of affix hopping and do ‐support.