| Summary: | "The concept of head-movement plays a central role in transformational analysis and comparative syntax. The research reported here resolves the problem of head-movement with a model which integrates the phenomenon of multiple head-movement. It is shown that head-movement involves two distinct components: a feature valuation operation which takes place within the core syntax at the phase level, and a substitution transformation which operates as a part of the externalization process, forming complex words from atomic roots and affixes. Evidence which supports this new theoretical model is provided with case studies in a number of languages, including detailed examinations of the verb prefix system in Russian and the tripartite morphological structures in Innu-aimûn. The resulting analyses resolve a host of problems in Slavic and Algonquian grammatical studies. Slavic grammars exploit multiple head-movement in structures where T and participial suffixes attract prefixes before they attract verb stems. This approach eliminates bracketing paradoxes and clarifies the relationship between verb raising, ellipsis, and adverb placement. Algonquian grammars employ multiple head-movement throughout the grammar, so that all affixal functional heads can attract multiple heads to them. This analytic result offers a simpler, more comprehensive overall picture of how complex words in such polysynthetic languages can be derived from familiar underlying syntactic structures. Finally, the implications of these results for the theory of language typology, parameters, and language learnability are presented"--
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