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The Final-Over-Final Constraint (FOFC) is a proposed[1] constraint in Generative syntax that bans head-final projections that immediately dominate head-initial projections, defined as:

Final-over-Final Constraint: If and are members of the same extended projection, then a Head-Final cannot immediately dominate a Head-Initial , as below:

Head final '"`UNIQ--postMath-00000005-QINU`"' immediately dominates head-initial '"`UNIQ--postMath-00000006-QINU`"', violating the Final-over-Final constraint.
Head final immediately dominates head-initial , violating the Final-over-Final constraint.

This effect was first noticed by Anders Holmberg in Finnish, when comparing it with the similarly disharmonic Head-Initial over Head-Final structure[2][3].

a.

Kyllä

indeed

se

he

[AuxP

 

onAux

has

[VP

 

ostanutV

bought

auton]]

car

Kyllä se [AuxP onAux [VP ostanutV auton]]

indeed he {} has {} bought car

'He has indeed bought a car'

b.

Kyllä

indeed

se

he

[AuxP

 

[VP

 

auton

car

ostanutV]

bought

onAux]

has

Kyllä se [AuxP [VP auton ostanutV] onAux]

indeed he {} {} car bought has

b.

Kyllä

indeed

se

he

[AuxP

 

onAux

has

[VP

 

auton]

car

onAux]

bought

Kyllä se [AuxP onAux [VP auton] onAux]

indeed he {} has {} car bought

d.

*Kyllä

indeed

se

he

[AuxP

 

[VP

 

ostanutV

bought

auton]

car

onAux]

has

*Kyllä se [AuxP [VP ostanutV auton] onAux]

indeed he {} {} bought car has

(Holmberg, 2000)

Accounting for the FOFC with the Linear Correspondence Axiom (LCA)

[edit]

Biberauer, Holmberg and Roberts (2014)[4] propose an account of the FOFC derived from Kayne's Antisymmetry Theory and the Linear Correspondence Axiom (LCA), in which all maximal projections follow the 'specifier head-complement template' as below, and all variation in word-order arises due to movement.

Biberaer et al. assume that all movement is triggered by the presence of a movement diacritic with no semantic content such that movement to the specifier of a head is triggered by the presence of on . Functional heads cannot introduce , though they may inherit it from the head of their complement[1]. Then from this, the proposal is that the following more formally defined constraint holds.

Final-over-Final Constraint: If a head in the extended projection EP of a lexical head L, EP(L), has associated with its -feature, then so does , where is c-selected by in EP(L).

Other accounts of the FOFC

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There have been attempts, notably by Carlo Cecchetto[5] and Hedde Zeijlstra[6], to account for the FOFC asymmetry without making use of the LCA, instead basing their accounts as coming from restrictions in parsing on rightward-dependencies.

Cecchetto proposes that if backward dependencies cannot cross phrase structure boundaries, then the Right-roof constraint (a locality condition on rightward movement) and FOFC are 'two faces of the same coin', as they both constrain the generation of structures that involve backward localisation; a trace, in the case of the Right-roof constraint, or in regards to the selected head of a selecting head in the case of FOFC, and so the FOFC-violating configuration will only be possible if is a movement target for rather than as backward localisation is costly for the parser and will only be possible if it is very local.

Zeijlstra's account, meanwhile follows from Abels & Neeleman's[7] account of Greenberg's Universal 20, which observes that head movement within an extended projection cannot be rightward unless the movement is string-vacuous, which not only circumvents the theoretical and empirical challenges to LCA, but also accounts for particles which often form counter-examples to FOFC.

See also

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References

[edit]
  1. ^ a b E. Clem, ‘Disharmony and the Final-Over-Final Condition in Amahuaca’, Linguistic Inquiry, vol. 53, no. 4, pp. 809–822, Oct. 2022, doi: 10.1162/ling_a_00425.
  2. ^ Holmberg, Anders. 2000. Deriving OV order in Finnish. In The derivation of VO and OV, ed. by Peter Svenonius, 123–152. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  3. ^ M. Sheehan, T. Biberauer, I. G. Roberts, and A. Holmberg, The Final-over-Final Condition: A Syntactic Universal. in Linguistic inquiry monographs, no. 76. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2017.
  4. ^ T. Biberauer, A. Holmberg, and I. Roberts, ‘A Syntactic Universal and Its Consequences’, Linguistic Inquiry, vol. 45, no. 2, pp. 169–225, Apr. 2014, doi: 10.1162/LING_a_00153.
  5. ^ C. Cecchetto, ‘Backward dependencies must be short’, in Challenges to Linearization, T. Biberauer and I. Roberts, Eds., DE GRUYTER, 2013, pp. 57–92. doi: 10.1515/9781614512431.57.
  6. ^ H. Zeijlstra, ‘FOFC and what left–right asymmetries may tell us about syntactic structure building’, J. Ling., vol. 59, no. 1, pp. 179–213, Feb. 2023, doi: 10.1017/S002222672200007X.
  7. ^ K. Abels and A. Neeleman, ‘Linear Asymmetries and the LCA’, Syntax, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 25–74, Mar. 2012, doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9612.2011.00163.x.

Further Reading

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[1] M. Sheehan, T. Biberauer, I. Roberts, and A. Holmberg, The Final-Over-Final Condition: A Syntactic Universal. The MIT Press, 2017. doi: 10.7551/mitpress/8687.001.0001.

[2] M. Sheehan, ‘Explaining the Final-over-Final Constraint: Formal and Functional Approaches*’, in Theoretical Approaches to Disharmonic Word Order, T. Biberauer and M. Sheehan, Eds., Oxford University Press, 2013, pp. 407–444. doi: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199684359.003.0015.