A Unified Theory of Verbal and Nominal Projections (review)

The main objective of Ogawa’s book is to impose a parallel architecture on the clausal and nominal domains. Such a result would be desirable as it would simplify syntactic structure and syntactic theory in general. Work in the late 1980s and early 1990s has shown that the nominal domain is divided into lexical and functional subdomains in a fashion similar to the clausal domain. Related work in the process of nominalization has shown that Noam Chomsky’s lexicalist hypothesis of nominalization can be replaced by a syntactic analysis of the process. O follows this latter approach.

The book is divided into five chapters. In the introduction, O introduces some of the essentials of the minimalist framework, outlines the basic concepts that will be explored in the book, and presents what he calls the ‘limits’ of a unification approach. Ch. 2 presents the hypothesis that all finite clauses are CPs and that all null complementizers are affixes. The distribution of null Cs crosslinguistically is attributed to conditions on inflectional affixes and a set of parameters with respect to overt verb raising. In Ch. 3, O investigates the structure of derived nominal complements and proposes that derived nominals are verbal heads that have moved to a NzP position to receive a nominalization affix. In Ch. 4, he proposes that the maximal projection of every NP is a Komplementizer phrase (KP), a nominal counterpart of CP. Ch. 5 summarizes the arguments presented in the book and raises some issues that need further research.

Departing radically from the government and binding tradition that allows for CP, IP, and small clause structures, O proposes that all finite clauses as well as exceptional case marking (ECM) and raising structures are CPs. The modification of the theory that allows for this analysis is that all null Cs are affixal. The only type of elements that have a different structure are control complements. O proposes that the reason for this may lie in the fact that finite clauses, ECM, and raising structures denote ‘propositions’ while control complements denote ‘events’, where ‘propositions’ are canonically realized as CPs and ‘events’ as IPs. He then goes on to investigate the process of nominalization. His proposal involves a functional projection called the nominalization phrase (NzP), which occupies the same place in a verbal projection as vP, but, contrary to the vP, is responsible for the syntactic nominalization of verbs. The difference between the clausal and nominal domain is that the tense projection selects for a vP complement while D selects an NzP complement. The selectional possibilities of v and Nz are parallel. Furthermore, in correspondence to nominative and accusative cases, genitive case is considered a structural case in the nominal domain and needs to be checked in a Spec-Head relation.

Finally, O argues that the maximal projection of the nominal domain is a functional projection called the Komplementizer phrase, which corresponds to the clausal complementizer. Null Komplementizers are argued to be affixal as are their corresponding null complementizers. Furthermore, the specifier position of KPs is the landing site for A’-movement, as is the specifier of CPs.

O offers a well-researched and argued approach. He reviews the relevant literature in detail and backs up his new theoretical insights with numerous crosslinguistic data. O’s book is a valuable read for students and scholars interested in syntactic research in the clausal and nominal domain and in the structural relations of syntactic elements as they have been analyzed in generative grammar.