The Syntax of Temporal Interpretation in Embedded Clauses

ii Acknowledgements iii List of Abbreviations iv Section 1: Introduction 1 Section 2: The Spanish Present Subjunctive 3 2.1. Concordantia Temporum 3 2.2. The Present Subjunctive in Argentinean Spanish 5 2.3. Previous Accounts of Violations of Concordantia Temporum 7 Section 3: Time and Language 14 3.1. Tensed and Tenseless Languages 14 3.2. Reichenbach‟s Theory of Tense 18 3.3. Hornstein‟s Neo-Reichenbachian Theory of Tense 22 3.4. Sequence of Tense (SOT) 25 Section 4: The Syntactic Realization of Tense 30 4.1. The Internal Structure of TP and AspP 30 4.2. The Tense Structure of Infinitival Clauses 35 4.3. The Syntactic Structure of Infinitival Clauses 37 Section 5: A Tenseless Subjunctive in Argentinean Spanish 45 5.1. The Analysis 45 5.2. Temporal Adjunct Clauses 55 Section 6: Finiteness 58 6.1. Non-Finite forms cross-linguistically 58 6.2. Finiteness and Binding 64 Section 7: Theory Extension 66 7.1. Language Change driven by Economy Conditions 66 7.2. Language Change and the Conjunctive Marker in New Blackfoot 68 7.2.1 The Conjunctive and the –ááhkMarker in Blackfoot. 69 7.3. Summary 74 Section 8: Implications 75 8.1. Parallels across Domains 75 8.2. Economy and Language Change 76 8.3. Language Change in Spanish 79