On Shell Structure

This volume collects together core papers by Richard K. Larson developing what has since come to be known as the "VP Shell" or "Split VP" analysis of sentential structure. The volume includes five previously published papers together with two major unpublished works from the same period: "Light Predicate Raising" (1989), which explores the interesting consequences of a leftward raising analysis of "NP Shift" phenomena, and "The Projection of DP (and DegP)" (1991), which extends the shell approach to the projection of nominal and adjectival structure, showing how projection can be handled in a uniform way. In addition to published, unpublished and limited distribution work, the volume includes extensive new introductory material. The general introduction traces the conceptual roots of VP Shells and its problems in the face of subsequent developments in theory, and offers an updated form compatible with modern Minimalist syntactic analysis. The section introductions to the material on datives, complex predicates and nominals show how the updated form of shell theory applies in the empirical domains where it was originally developed.

Richard K. Larson is Professor of Linguistics at Stony Brook University, US.