volume: 4 (2000)
pages: 83–106
author: Mark Newson
title: The war of the left periphery
abstract: This paper deals with ‘left edge’ phenomena in Hungarian VPs and clauses. It is shown that a number of elements compete with each other for the privilege of sitting at the left edge of certain domains. Some always win while others are easy loosers. Some win in some cases, but not in others. This shows itself in terms of a complex pattern of complementary distribution between these elements. The paper attempts to capture these patterns using a number of alignment constraints, organised within the general framework of Optimality Theory. We show that some left edge phenomena can be accounted for by such constraints while others cannot. The relevant feature of alignments is that they place a number of elements in competition for a single position and hence phenomena involving the stacking of elements at an edge cannot be looked upon as alignment triggered. It then turns out that the complex interaction between alignment and non-alignment constraints is able to capture the complex distributional patterns observed.
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