This talk will re-examine the status of roots and of formal features in linguistic theory. It will reaffirm the claim that roots as abstract indices — as opposed to them being meaningful ’small words’ — are the one element the Faculty of Language manipulates, with the other one being formal features, to the exclusion of so-called ’semantic features’. Some thoughts on the different evolutionary origins of roots and formal features will be offered.
Speaker
Professor E. Phoevos PANAGIOTIDIS
Phoevos Panagiotidis is Professor of Theoretical Linguistics at the University of Cyprus. He is the author of two monographs: Pronouns, Clitics and empty nouns (Benjamins, 2002) and Categorial Features: a generative theory of word class categories (Cambridge University Press, 2015); he is also the author of two successful Greek-language popular science introductions to Linguistics. He has presented over 190 papers and talks and has published extensively in international journals and in jointly authored volumes. His research interests include lexical categories, adjectives, roots, pronouns, the nominal domain, mixed projections, and the syntax of Greek and Balkan languages.