Having looked at the morphosyntax of verbs in §2.2.1, and lexically and pragmatically determined VP* structure in §§2.2.2, 2.2.3, I turn now to the extended VP*, that is, the clausal structure above the lexical VP*, encoding such inflectional features as tense, mood and aspect. The aim of the chapter is to explore how the interplay between verbs and other clausal constituents sheds light on the structure of the clause. As we shall see, even independently of the pragmatic properties of the left periphery (§5), much evidence suggests that the clause is a much more richly articulated structure than the traditional analysis in terms of a single IP projection suggests. Following the practice developed thus far, this domain of clause structure is therefore labelled IP*. We'll see that the IP*-internal hierarchy of FPs parallels the ClfP*-internal hierarchy of FPs seen in §3. For example, just as the mass–count distinction is an aspectual property of nominals encoded within ClfP*, so the perfective–imperfective distinction is an aspectual property of clauses encoded within IP*. This parallel between nominal and clausal structure is welcome in view of the various phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic similarities found across nominal and clausal structures in a number of languages (Bernstein 2001).

Inflectional heads and adverbial positions: Cinque (1999)

The discussion throughout the chapter relies heavily on the approach to clause structure set out in Cinque (1999).