Syntax and Semantics: Perspectives on Phrase Structure Heads and Licensing

Intended for linguistic professionals and graduate students, this book explores licensing theory and its implications for a theory of syntax. The papers focus on developing a constrained set of licensing mechanisms relating elements in a syntactic representation, and on the different properties of lexical and functional heads as licenses of complements and specifiers. Aimed at syntacticians and those interested in the application of syntactic theory, the book demonstrates the expanding explanatory parts of this approach to syntax.