Ura Hiroyuki. Checking Theory and Grammatical Functions in Universal Grammar

Oxford University Press, 2000. — xvii, 318 pages. — (Oxford Studies in Comparative Syntax). — ISBN: 0-19-511838-3; ISBN: 0-19-511839-1.In this book I attempt to investigate some consequences of the theory of formal feature checking under the minimalist framework, developed and elaborated by Chomsky (1992, 1994, 1995a), by studying a wide range of data, some of which are unfamiliar in the Principles-and-Parameters theory, data which are drawn from a variety of languages in the world. More specifically, through analyzing "grammatical function splitting phenomena," in which some of the grammatical functions alleged to be associated with a certain grammatical relation are split up, I explore the significance and implications of the theory of multiple feature checking, which is a possible extension of the Agr-less checking theory proposed in Chomsky (1995a). The main purpose of this book, thus, is to demonstrate that the minimalist program gives a natural explanation to a wide range of data found in a variety of languages, in a very consistent way with a limited set of parameters.