On syntactic concept of Phase
I’ve been reading this holidays a little book in .pdf: Estudios de lingüística de la Universidad de Alicante nº 15 where Erundina Garcerán has made an study about the concept of Phase. Actually, Strong Phase. I think it’s a very nice study with an important part of explanations and based on the Minimalist Program. Maybe now I’m ready to read a famous Chomsky’s article: On Phase. I’ll try it!
Since Chomsky (1998 & 1999) introduced the concept of Strong Phase and Weak Phase, it’s been an important theme of discussion. In resume, a Strong Phase has an [EPP] (Extended Principle of Projection) who assures the position of the syntactic subject and its requirement like an External Argument. The conclusions of E. Garcerán are: i) There is only a Strong Phase when a syntactic subject is the External Argument of a predicative verb; ii) Only ST-SV and SC-ST can be Strong Phases.
