Congratulations Lauren Friedman
Tuesday, May 6th, 2008Lauren Friedman’s Honors Thesis received the Virginia Voss award from the Honors Program and the Matt Alexander Prize from the Linguistics Department due to its outstanding quality.
The thesis, entitled “The loss of Old English Null Expletive hit/it“, explores the loss of the null expletive it, or rather the changes that led to the requirement of an overt expletive hit/it in constructions which lack an overt thematic subject in Spec, IP of a clause. From the descriptions and analyses of OE considered in this study, along with an analysis of EPP (Extended Projection Principle) properties in OE (Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou 1998, Holmberg 2005, Jaeggli & Safir 1989), the thesis argues that OE is in stage 3: null true expletive it is possible across paradigms while null thematic and null quasi-arguments are restricted in use. Additionally, I contend that despite the possibility for null subjects in OE, the EPP is checked is checked by Move XP (i.e. insertion of an overt category in the subject [Spec, IP] position).
Lauren has been an active member of the department and the undergraduate club over the last several years. She leaves the University of Michigan to attend graduate school in Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania.
Congratulations and good luck, Lauren!
