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Wh-questions in Malagasy
(2004)
Wh-questions in Malagasy consist of a clause-initial wh-phrase followed by an invariant particle and then the remainder of the clause. This paper considers the structural analysis of Malagasy wh-questions and argues for a biclausal cleft analysis in which the initial wh-phrase is a predicate and the remaining material is a headless relative in subject position. The paper is organized as follows: Section 2 introduces some basic facts about Malagasy clause structure and wh-questions. Section 3 lays out two competing structural analyses of wh-questions: the cleft analysis and a fronting analysis in which Malagasy wh-questions are derived by wh-movement. Section 4 introduces various evidence in favor of the pseudocleft analysis and against the fronting analysis. Section 5 concludes.
The German word also, similar to English so, is traditionally considered to be a sentence adverb with a consecutive meaning, i.e. it indicates that the propositional content of the clause containing it is some kind of consequence of what has previously been said. As a sentence adverb, also has its place within the core of the German sentence, since this is the proper place for an adverb to occur in German. The sentence core offers two proper positions for adverbs: the so-called front field and the middle field. In spoken German, however, also often occurs in sentence-initial position, outside the sentence itself. In this paper, I will use excerpts of German conversations to discuss and illustrate the importance of the sentence positions and the discourse positions for the functions of also on the basis of some German conversations.
Starting from a consideration of the internal make-up of adverbial clauses this paper shows that the widespread assumption that fronted arguments in English and CLLD constituents in Romance occupy the same position leads to a number of problems. I will conclude that the position occupied by English topicalized arguments differs from that of the CLLD topics in Romance. In particular, English topics occupy a higher position in the left periphery. The final part of the paper compares three proposals for the lower topic position in Romance.
The aim of this paper is to investigate Rizzi's (2001) recent claim that in combien constructions full movement correlates with a specific or D-linking interpretation of the nominal (see also Obenauer, 1994) while the in-situ option corresponds to focus of the noun. On the one hand, it is argued that the notion of specificity or D-linking for the raised nominal is too strong while on the other hand it is shown that the stranded nominal is not a focus, but a topic, albeit of a special kind. It is also argued that there is a dedicated postverbal position for this kind of topic and that the nominal has all the properties of an incorporated nominal: it is interpreted as an asserted background topic. In the final part of the article, some time is spent discussing the pragmatics and the modality involved in discontinous structures, and showing that the stranded nominal is interpreted inside the VP/below the event variable.
Speakers have a wide range of noncanonical syntactic options that allow them to mark the information status of the various elements within a proposition. The correlation between a construction and constraints on information status, however, is not arbitrary; there are broad, consistent, and predictive generalizations that can be made about the information-packaging functions served by preposing, postposing, and argument-reversing constructions. Specifically, preposed constituents are constrained to represent discourse-old information, postposed constituents are constrained to represent information that is either discourse-new or hearer-new, and argument-reversing constructions require that the information represented by the preposed constituent be at least as familiar as that represented by the postposed constituent (Birner & Ward 1998). The status of inferable information (Clark 1977; Prince 1981), however, is problematic; a study of corpus data shows that such information can be preposed in an inversion or a preposing (hence must be discourse-old), yet can also be postposed in constructions requiring hearer-new information (hence must be hearer-new). This information status – discourse-old yet hearer-new – is assumed by Prince (1992) to be non-occurring on the grounds that what has been evoked in the discourse should be known to the hearer. I resolve this difficulty by arguing for a reinterpretation of the term 'discourse-old' as applying not only to information that has been explicitly evoked in the prior discourse, but rather to any information that provides a salient inferential link to the prior discourse. Extending Prince’s notion in this manner allows us to account for the distribution of noncanonically positioned peripheral constituents in a principled and unified way.
Two diametrically opposed stances have emerged from recent theoretical debates on adverbial syntax. One approach, represented by Alexiadou (1997) and Cinque (1999), espouses a rigid hierarchy of functional projections hosting individual adverbs. The other, represented broadly by Jackendoff (1972), McConnell-Ginet (1982) and most recently Ernst (2002), takes adverb placement to be determined by the semantics of the adverbs themselves as opposed to the functional architecture of the clause. Under the latter view, adverbs may be divided into several categories based on their meaning with each category being licensed in a certain range within the sentence.
Here, I undertake a detailed examination of Tagalog adverbs and compare the predictions of the two best articulated recent theories of adverbs, that of Cinque (1999, 2004) and Ernst (2002). The results offer support for some of the basic predictions of the semantically based approach of Ernst. Particularly important are scopal facts which do not obtain a clear explanation under a functional projection-based theory such as Cinque's.
How the left-periphery of a wh-relative clause determines its syntactic and semantic relationships
(2004)
This paper discusses a certain class of German relative clauses which are characterized by a wh-expression overtly realized at the left periphery of the clause. While investigating empirical and theoretical issues regarding this class of relatives, it argues that a wh-relative clause relates syntactically to a functionally complete sentential projection and semantically to entities of various kinds that are abstracted from the matrix clause. What is shown is that this grammatical behaviour clearly can be attributed to the properties of the elements positioned at the left of a wh-relative clause. Finally, a lexically-based analysis couched in the framework of HPSG is given that accounts for the data presented.
The syntax and semantics of the resumptive dependency in hungarian focus-raising constructions
(2004)
Previous work (Gervain, forthcoming) has established that focus-raising may be derived by two strategies in Hungarian. One of them is the traditional movement derivation, the other a resumptive dependency created between the focus constituent base-generated in its matrix focus position and a phonologically null resumptive pronoun in the corresponding argument position in the embedded clause. However, the previous account (Gervain, forthcoming) does not give a detailed description of the nature of this resumptive dependency. The present work aims to address this question. More specifically, by providing a series of empirical tests, it attempts to determine whether the dependency is purely syntactic in nature, i.e. obligatory variable binding, or whether a semantic option is also available, i.e. coreference between the focus constituent and the resumptive pronoun. Thus, it provides new insights into the ongoing debate about the nature of resumptive pronouns.
In what follows, we will first put forward the claim that syntactic ergativity results from morphological ergativity by examining relativization and pea-coordination in Tongan (Section 2). In Sections 3 and 4, we compare 'O-constructions with pea-constructions to conclude a) that unlike pea, 'O should be regarded as a complementizer rather than a conjunction; and b) that the gap in 'O-clauses is not an outcome of deletion, but a null anaphor. We will then discuss a Minimalist approach to binding proposed by Reuland (2001) and see how it accounts for the distribution and behavior of proSE in Tongan. Some implications of the current proposal are discussed in Section 6, with section 7 in conclusion.
The claim advanced in this paper is that the presence of a left-dislocated element together with a resumptive clitic in Bulgarian is a special case of argument saturation with implications for the focus structure of the clause, while contrast involves discontinuous focus (contrastive topics/foci) with no clitics present in the derivation. Contrastive topic/focus constructions in Bulgarian can be united on the view that they involve (sets of) ordered pairs where the higher element is valuing a contrastive feature (cf. OCC in Chomsky 2001) while the element in the VP is a non-contrastive topic or focus. The contrastive feature participates in wh-structures but not in clitic-left-dislocated structures where pairing between arguments is 'accidental'.
In this work we examine several sentential particles, occurring in imperatives, main exclamative and interrogative sentences, which display a uniform syntactic behaviour. We analyse them as heads of high CP projections which require their specifier to be filled either by the wh-item (in sentences where there is one) or by the whole clause, yielding the sentence final position of the particle. The hypothesis that they are C°-heads accounts for their sensitivity to sentence type and for their occurrence only in matrix contexts. We also provide a first sketch of their semantic contribution, showing that they select ‘non standard’ contexts and interact with tense and modality of the verb when the whole CP has moved to their specifier.
Semantic research over the past three decades has provided impressive confirmation of Donald Davidsons famous claim that “there is a lot of language we can make systematic sense of if we suppose events exist” (Davidson 1980:137). Nowadays, Davidsonian event arguments are no longer reserved only for action verbs (as Davidson originally proposed) or even only for the category of verbs, but instead are widely assumed to be associated with any kind of predicate (e.g. Higginbotham 2000, Parsons 2000).1 The following quotation from Higginbotham and Ramchand (1997) illustrates the reasoning that motivates this move: "Once we assume that predicates (or their verbal, etc. heads) have a position for events, taking the many consequences that stem therefrom, as outlined in publications originating with Donald Davidson (1967), and further applied in Higginbotham (1985, 1989), and Terence Parsons (1990), we are not in a position to deny an event-position to any predicate; for the evidence for, and applications of, the assumption are the same for all predicates. (Higginbotham and Ramchand 1997:54)" In fact, since Davidson’s original proposal the burden of proof for postulating event arguments seems to have shifted completely, leading Raposo and Uriagereka (1995), for example, to the following verdict: "it is unclear what it means for a predicate not to have a Davidsonian argument (Raposo and Uriagereka 1995:182)" That is, Davidsonian eventuality arguments apparently have become something like a trademark for predicates in general. The goal of the present paper is to subject this view of the relationship between predicates and events to real scrutiny. By taking a closer look at the simplest independent predicational structure – viz. copula sentences – I will argue that current Davidsonian approaches tend to stretch the notion of events too far, thereby giving up much of its linguistic and ontological usefulness. More specifically, the paper will tackle the following three questions: 1. Do copula sentences support the current view of the inherent event-relatedness of predicates? 2. If not, what is a possible alternative to an event-based analysis of copula sentences? 3. What does this tell us about Davidsonian events? The paper is organized as follows: Section 2 first reviews current event-based analyses of copula sentences and then gives a brief summary of the Davidsonian notion of events. Section 3 examines the behavior of copula sentences with respect to some standard (as well as some new) eventuality diagnostics. Copula expressions will turn out to fail all eventuality tests. They differ sharply from state verbs like stand, sit, sleep in this respect. (The latter pass all eventuality tests and therefore qualify as true “Davidsonian state” expressions.) On the basis of these observations, section 4 provides an alternative account of copula sentences that combines Kim’s (1969, 1976) notion of property exemplifications with Ashers (1993, 2000) conception of abstract objects. Specifically, I will argue that the copula introduces a referential argument for a temporally bound property exemplification (= “Kimian state”). The proposal is implemented within a DRT framework. Finally, section 5 offers some concluding remarks and suggests that supplementing Davidsonian eventualities by Kimian states not only yields a more adequate analysis for copula expressions and the like but may also improve our treatment of events.
The article offers evidence that there are two variants of adverbial modification that differ with respect to the way in which a modifier is linked to the verbs eventuality argument. So-called event-external modifiers relate to the full eventuality, whereas event-internal modifiers relate to some integral part of it. The choice between external and internal modification is shown to be dependent on the modifiers syntactic base position. Event-external modifiers are base-generated at the VP periphery, whereas event-internal modifiers are base-generated at the V periphery. These observations are accounted for by a refined version of the standard Davidsonian approach to adverbial modification according to which modification is mediated by a free variable. In the case of external modification, the grammar takes responsibility for identifying the free variable with the verbs eventuality argument, whereas in the case of internal modification, a value for the free variable is determined by the conceptual system on the basis of contextually salient world knowledge. For the intriguing problem that certain locative modifiers occasionally seem to have nonlocative (instrumental, positional, or manner) readings, the advocated approach can provide a rather simple solution.
One aspect of the progress being made is that the focus of attention has widened. Adverbials, though still the heart of the matter, now form part of a much larger set of constituent types subsumed under the general syntactic label of adjunct; while modifier has become the semantic counterpart on the same level of generality. So one of the readings of Modifying Adjuncts stands for the focus on this intersection. Moreover, recent years have seen a number of studies which attest an increasing interest in adjunct issues. There is an impressive number of monographs, e.g. Alexiadou (1997), Laenzlinger (1998), Cinque (1999), Pittner (1999), Ernst (2002), which, by presenting in-depth analyses of the syntax of adjuncts, have sharpened the debate on syntactic theorizing. Serious attempts to gain a broader view on adjuncts are witnessed by several collections, see Alexiadou and Svenonius (2000), Austin, Engelberg and Rauh (in progress); of particular importance are the contributions to vol. 12.1 of the Italian Journal of Linguistics (2000), a special issue on adverbs, the Introductions to which by Corver and Delfitto (2000) and Delfitto (2000) may be seen as the best state-of-the-art article on adverbs and adverbial modification currently on the market. To try and test a fresh view on adjuncts was the leitmotif of the Oslo Conference “Approaching the Grammar of Adjuncts” (Sept 22–25, 1999), which provided the initial forum for the papers contained in this volume and initiated a period of discussion and continuing interaction among the contributors, from which the versions published here have greatly profited. The aim of the Oslo conference, and hence the focus of the present volume, was to encourage syntacticians and semanticists to open their minds to a more integrative approach to adjuncts, thereby paying attention to, and attempting to account for, the various interfaces that the grammar of adjuncts crucially embodies. From this perspective, the present volume is to be conceived of as an interim balance of current trends in modifying the views on adjuncts. In introducing the papers, we will refrain from rephrasing the abstracts, but will instead offer a guided tour through the major problem areas they are tackling. Assessed by thematic convergence and mutual reference, the contributions form four groups, which led us to arrange them into subparts of the book. Our commenting on these is intended (i) to provide a first glance at the contents, (ii) to reveal some of the reasons why adjuncts indeed are, and certainly will remain, a challenging issue, and thereby (iii) to show some facets of what we consider novel and promising approaches.
The paper is structured as follows. Section 2.1 introduces the basic classes of adjectives that constitute the factual core of the paper. Section 2.2 summarizes in greater detail the X° and the XP movement approaches to word order variation within the DP. Section 3 briefly discusses problems for both approaches. Sections 4.1, 5.1, and 5.2 draw from Alexiadou (2001) and contain a discussion of Greek DS and its relevance for a re-analysis of the word order variation in the Romance DP. Section 4.2 introduces refinements to Alexiadou & Wilder (1998) and Alexiadou (2001). Section 5.3. discusses certain issues that arise from the analysis of postnominal adjectives in Romance as involving raising of XPs. Section 6 discusses phenomena found in other languages, which at first sight seem similar to DS. However, I show that double definiteness in e.g. Hebrew, Scandinavian or other Balkan languages constitutes a different type of phenomenon from Greek DS, thus making a distinction between determiners that introduce CPs (Greek) and those that are merely morphological/agreement markers (Hebrew, Scandinavian, Albanian).
This paper argues for a particular architecture of OT syntax. This architecture hasthree core features: i) it is bidirectional, the usual production-oriented optimisation (called ‘first optimisation’ here) is accompanied by a second step that checks the recoverability of an underlying form; ii) this underlying form already contains a full-fledged syntactic specification; iii) especially the procedure checking for recoverability makes crucial use of semantic and pragmatic factors. The first section motivates the basic architecture. The second section shows with two examples, how contextual factors are integrated. The third section examines its implications for learning theory, and the fourth section concludes with a broader discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of the proposed model.
This paper argues for a scopal explanation of the readings of the adverb wieder (‘again’). It is the syntactic entity that wieder is related to which determines whether the repetitive or the restitutive reading obtains. If it is adjoined to the minimal verbal domain, it relates to a situation-internal state thus producing a restitutive interpretation, if adjoined to a higher verbal projection, it relates to an eventuality resulting in a repetitive interpretation. Proceeding from the assumption that adverbial adjuncts have base positions which reflect their semantic relations to the rest of the sentence, repetitive wieder is shown to belong to the class of eventuality adverbs that minimally c-command the base positions of all arguments, whereas restitutive wieder has many properties in common with process (manner) adjuncts that minimally c-command the verb in clause-final base position.
Evidentiality in Qiang
(2003)
The Qiang language is spoken by about 70,000 (out of 200,000) Qiang people, plus 50,000 people classified as Tibetan by the Chinese government. Most Qiang speakers live in Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture on the eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau in the mountainous northwest part of Sichuan Province, China. The Qiang language is a member of the Qiangic branch of the Tibeto-Burman family of the Sino-Tibetan stock. Within Tibeto-Burman, a number oflanguages show evidence of evidential systems, but these systems cannot be reconstructed to any great time depth. The data used in this chapter is from Ranghang Village, Chibusu District, Mao County in Aba Prefecture.
This paper reports results from a series of experiments that investigated whether semantic and/or syntactic complexity influences young Dutch children’s production of past tense forms. The constructions used in the three experiments were (i) simple sentences (the Simple Sentence Experiment), (ii) complex sentences with CP complements (the Complement Clause Experiment) and (iii) complex sentences with relative clauses (the Relative Clause Experiment). The stimuli involved both atelic and telic predicates. The goal of this paper is to address the following questions.
Q1. Does semantic complexity regarding temporal anchoring influence the types of errors that children make in the experiments? For example, do children make certain types of errors when a past tense has to be anchored to the Utterance Time (UT), as compared to when it has to be anchored to the matrix topic time (TT)?
Q2. Do different syntactic positions influence children’s performance on past-tense production? Do children perform better in the Simple Sentence Experiment compared to complex sentences involving two finite clauses (the Complement Clause Experiment and the Relative Clause Experiment)? In complex sentence trials, do children perform differently when the CPs are complements vs. when the CPs are adjunct clauses? (Lebeaux 1990, 2000)
Q3. Do Dutch children make more errors with certain types of predicate (such as atelic predicates)? Alternatively, do children produce a certain type of error with a certain type of predicates (such as producing a perfect aspect with punctual predicates)? Bronckart and Sinclair (1973), for example, found that until the age of 6, French children showed a tendency to use passé composé with perfective events and simple present with imperfective events; we will investigate whether or not the equivalent of this is observed in Dutch.
The present tense is vacuous
(2002)
In German, prosody interacts with quantifier scope. We investigate this interaction in inverse linking constructions. We present evidence from elicited production of linguistically naive speakers supporting the following two claims: 1) There are two kinds of inverse linking constructions of which only the prepositional type requires a marked intonation contour for inverse scope. 2) In the prepositional construction, a double focus contour is employed with inverse scope rather that a topic-focus (rise-fall) contour as previously assumed (Krifka 1998).
The philosophy of language comes in three varieties. 1. The functionalist’s view: linguistic forms are instruments used to convey meaningful elements. This is the basis of European structuralism. 2. The formalist’s view: linguistic forms are abstract structures which can be filled with meaningful elements. This is the basis of generative grammar. 3. The parasitologist’s view: linguistic forms are vehicles for the reproduction of meaningful elements. This is the view which I advocated twelve years ago in a Festschrift (1985).
Ever since the publication of Greenberg 1963, word order typologists have attempted to formulate and refine implicational universals of word order so as to characterize the restricted distribution of certain word order patterns, and in some cases have also attempted to develop general principles to explain the existence of those universals.
The interface of lexical semantics and conceptual structure deverbal and denominal nominalizations
(2002)
Nominalizations can refer to events, instances of events or participants in an event. The particular reference is determined by the lexical semantics of the base and the suffix, and by the conceptual structure of the base. The comparison between deverbal and denominal nominalization in -ata in Italian reveals that the conceptual structure plays a crucial role in determining the reference of a nominalization. Italian nominalizations of -ata are productively derived from verbal and nominal bases. Derivations from verbal bases refer to a single event denoted by the base. Derivations from a nominal base N denote events or results corresponding to a limited number of pattems, such as a hit by N, a characteristic action of N, a period of N, a quantity that is contained in N, etc. The paper argues that the function of the suffix operates on the lexical meaning of the base, but the con~positiono f the lexical meaning of the base with the lexical meaning of the suffix is restricted by the conceptual properties of the base.
This volume presents working versions of presentations heard at and selected for the Workshop on Syntax of Predication, held at ZAS, Berlin, on November 2-3, 2001 (except the editor’s own paper).
Predication is a many-faceted topic which involves both syntax and semantics and the interface between them. This is reflected in the papers of the volume.
In his 1995 monograph, Apresyan suggests that it would be extremely interesting to investigate the means of expressing the definiteness/indefiniteness opposition in languages that do not have articles. In this paper, I will attempt to find possible correlations between the organization of discourse and the positions in which the (in)definite nominals may appear within a sentence of Russian. I will examine the information structure of Russian sentences and, based on the previous analyses, provide a new account of their organization with respect to information packaging. I will then look at various nominal elements contained in certain parts of a sentence and arrive at a system describing the distribution of NPs in Russian with respect to the information structure. The ultimate goal of this paper is to establish and motivate a system of correlations between various types of NPs and functions of information structure. This goal will be achieved by determining which characteristic of a NP may serve as a criterion allowing to provide a one-to-one mapping.
The syntactic structure of predicatives : clues from the omission of the copula in child english
(2001)
This paper explores the syntax of main clause predicatives from the perspective of trying to account for an asymmetry in copular constructions in certain languages. One of the languages in which we find such an asymmetry is child English (around age 2). Specifically, new results show that children acquiring English tend to use an overt (and inflected) copula in individual-level predicatives, but they tend to omit the copula in stage-level predicatives. The analysis adopted to account for this pattern draws on evidence from adult English, Russian, Spanish and Portuguese that stage-level predicates are Aspectual (they contain AspP) while individual-level predicates are not (they involve only a lexical Small Clause predicate). Children's omission of the copula in structures with AspP is linked to the fact that at this stage of development, children fail to require finiteness in main clauses. In particular, Asp0 is temporally anchored in child English, thereby obviating the need for a finite (temporally anchored) Infl, i.e. an inflected copula.
This volume presents a collection of papers touching on various issues concerning the syntax and semantics of predicative constructions.
A hot topic in the study of predicative copula constructions, with direct implications for the treatment of he (how many he's do we need?), and wider implications for the theories of predication, event-based semantics and aspect, is the nature and source of the situation argument. Closer examination of copula-less predications is becoming increasingly relevant to all these issues, as is clearly illustrated by the present collection.
This paper argues for non-primary c- and s-selectional restrictions of verbs in computing nonprimary predicatives such as resultatives, depictives, and manners. Our discussion is based both on the selection violations in the presence of nonprimary predicates and on the cross-linguistic and language-internal variations of categorial and semantic constraints on nonprimary predicates. We claim that all types of thematic predication are represented by an extended projection, and that the merger of lexical heads with another element, regardless of the type of the element, consistently has c- and s-selectional restrictions.
Predication at the interface
(2001)
We try to show that predication plays a greater role in syntax than commonly assumed. Specifically, we wil argue that predication to a large extent determines both the phrase structure of clauses and trigger syntactic processes that take place in clauses. If we are on the right path, this implies that syntax is basically semantically driven, given that predication is semantically construed.
Sluicing phenomena
(2001)
The paper shows that in various sluicing types, the wh-phrase in the sluicing sentence as well as its relatum in the antecedent clause must be F-marked, and it explains this observation with Schwarzschild's (1999) and Merchant's (1999) focus theory. According to the semantics of the wh-phrase, it will argue that the relatum of the wh-phrase is an indefinite expression that must allow a specific interpretation. Following Heusinger (1997, 2000), specificity will be defined as an anchoring relation between the discourse referent introduced by the indefinite expression and a discourse given item. Because specific indefinite expressions are always novel, contexts like the scope of definite DPs, the scope of thematic matrix predicates, and the scope of downward-monotonic quantifiers which all exhibit non-novel indefinites do not allow sluicing.
In this paper I firstly argue that secondary predicates are complement of v, and v is overtly realized by Merge or Move in secondary predication in Chinese. The former option derives the de-construction, whereas the latter option derives the V-V construction. Secondly, I argue that resultatives are hosted by complement vPs, whereas depictives are hosted by adjunct vPs. This complement-adjunct asymmetry accounts for a series of syntactic properties of secondary predication in Chinese: the position of a secondary predicate with respect to the verb of the primary predicate, the co-occurrence patterns of secondary predicates, the hierarchy of depictives, the control and ECM properties of resultative constructions, and the locality constraint on the integration of secondary predicates into the structure of primary predication. Thirdly, I argue that the surface position of de is derived by a PF operation which attaches de to the right of the leftmost verbal lexical head of the construction. Finally, I argue that in the V-V resultative construction, the assumed successive head-raising may account for the possible subject-oriented reading of the resultative predicate, and that the head raising out of the lower vP accounts for the possible non-specific reading of the subject of the resultative predicate.
The paper characterizes three different domains in the German middle field which are relevant for the interpretation of an indefinite. It is argued that the so-called 'strong' reading of an indefinite is the basic one and that the 'weak' reading needs special licensing which is mirrored by certain syntactic requirements. Some popular claims about the relation between the position and the interpretation of indefinites as well as some claims about scrambling are discussed and rejected. From the findings also follows that the strong reading of an indefinite is independent of its information status.
Exclamative clauses exhibit a structural diversity which raises the question of whether they form a clause type in the sense of Sadock & Zwicky (1985). Based on data from English, Italian, and Paduan, we argue that the class of exclamatives is syntactically characterizable in terms of a pair of abstract syntactic properties. Moreover, we propose that these properties encode two components of meaning which uniquely define the semantics and pragmatics of exclarnatives. Overall, our paper is a contribution to the study of the syntaxlsemantics interface and offers a new perspective on the notion of clause type.
Case and event structure
(2001)
I argue in this paper for a novel analysis of case in Icelandic, with implications for case theory in general. I argue that structural case is the manifestation on the noun phrase of features which are semantically interpretable only on verbal projections; thus, Icelandic case does not encode features of noun phrase interpretation, but it is not uninterpretable either; case is properly seen as reflecting (interpretable) tense and aspect features. Accusative case in Icelandic is available when the two subevents introduced in a transitive verb phrase are identified with each other, and dative case is available when the two parts are distinct (thus Icelandic case manifests aktionsart or inner aspect, in partial contrast to Finnish). This analysis bears directly on the theory of feature checking in the Minimalist Program; specifically, it paves the way for a restrictive theory of feature checking in which no features are strictly uninterpretable: all formal features come in interpretable-uninterpretable pairs, and feature checking is the matching of such pairs, driven by legibility conditions at Spell-Out.
Predication and equation
(2001)
English is one language where equative sentences and non-equative sentences have a similar surface syntax (but see Heggie 1988 and Moro 1997 for a discussion of more subtle differences). In this paper we address the fact that many other languages appear to use radically different morphological means which seem to map to intuitive differences in the type of predication expressed. We take one such language, Scottish Gaelic, and show that the real difference is not between equative and non-equative sentences, but is rather dependent on whether the predicational head in the structure proposed above is eventive or not.
We show that the aparently odd syntax of “equatives” in this language derives from the fact that they are constructed via a non-eventive Pred head. Since Pred heads cannot combine with non-predicative categories, such as saturated DPs, “equatives” are built up indirectly from a simple predicational structure with a semantically bleached predicate. This approach not only allows us to maintain a strict one-to-one syntax/semantics mapping for predicational syntax, but also for the syntax of DPs. The argument we develop here, then, suggests that the interface between the syntactic and semantic components is maximally economical— one could say perfect.
In this paper I show that the different case marking possibilities on predicate adjectives in depictive secondary predicates in Russian constitute the uninterpretable counterpart of the interpretable tense and aspect features of the adjective. Case agreement entails that the predicate adjective is non-eventive, i.e., it occurs when the event time of the secondary predicate is identical to the event time of the primary predicate. The instrumental case, however, entails that the secondary predicate is eventive: some change of state or transition occurred prior to or during the event time of the primary predicate. I claim that case agreement occurs in conjoined tense phrases in Russian, while the instrumental case occurs in adjoined aspectual phrases. In English, secondary predication is sensitive both to the structural location of its antecedent and to the event structure of the primary predicate. I suggest that depictives with subject antecedents in English are true adjunction structures, while those with direct object antecedents occur in a conjoined aspectual phrase. This hypothesis finds support in the different movement and semantic constraints in conjunction versus adjunction phrases in both English and Russian.
It will be shown that verbs can be missing in predicative sentences by using the data from Chinese. Copula-less sentences in Chinese are subject to 'Generalized Anchoring Principle' (GAP), which requires that every clause be anchored at the interface for LF convergence. To satisfy GAP, clauses may be either tensed or focused. It is shown that copula-less sentences in Chinese are subject to focus anchoring. It will be further argued that whether a verb is needed in predication depends on the syntax of predicate nominals.
This paper discusses a variant of German V2 declaratives sharing properties with both subordinate relative clauses and main clauses. I argue that modal subordination failure helps decide between two rivaling accounts for this construction. Thus, a hypotactic analysis involving syntactic variable sharing must be preferred over parataxis plus anaphora resolution. The scopal behavior of the construction will be derived from its 'proto-assertional force,' which it shares with similar 'embedded root' constructions.
This article discusses some syntactic peculiarities of Chinese yes/no questions. Starting from the observation that Standard Mandarin shares significant typological features with prototypical SOV languages, Chinese is treated as an underlyingly verb-final language. Based on this heuristic principle, A-not-AB, AB-not-A and AB-not questions are uniformly derived by means of one simple raising rule that operates within the sentence constituent V'. This novel idea is elaborated on in great detail in the first part of the article. In contrast to the prevailing trend, it is argued that the question operator contained in A-not-A and A-not sentences CANNOT be raised to "Comp". In consequence, A-not-A and A-not questions are "typed" in the head position of a sentence-internal functional phrase that we call Force2 Phrase (F2P) in the present paper. This position is not to be confused with Drubig's (1994) Polarity 1 Phrase (PollP), in the head position of which assertive negations and an abstract affirmative element are located. The existence of a head position F2° other than Poll° is supported by the fact that F2° can be occupied by certain overt question operators, such as assertive shi-bu-shi, which are compatible with negations. In contrast to the assertive question operator shi-bu-shi which is obligatorily associated with information focus, non-assertive shi-bu-shi serves as a compound focus and question operator whose focus feature is complex insofar as it is composed of two subfeatures: a contrastivity and an exhaustivity subfeature. Non-assertive shi-bu-shi is obligatorily associated with identificational focus in the sense of Kiss (1998). In accordance with some basic ideas of Chomsky's checking theory, the two subfeatures of the complex focus feature carried by the non-assertive shi-bu-shi operator check a correlating subfeature in the head position of a corresponding functional phrase (Contrastive Phrase and Focus Phrase, respectively). The question feature contained in the non-assertive shi-bu-shi operator is attracted by the head of Force1 Phrase (F1') at the level of LF. Due to the fact that F1° is sentence-final, the question feature of non-assertive shi-bu-shi must be Chomsky-adjoined to F1'. Unlike identificational focus phrases which are inherently contrastive, topics are non-contrastive in the default case. As separate speech acts, they are located in a c-commanding position outside the sentence structure. Semantically, there is a difference between Frame-Setting Topics and Aboutness Topics. As shown in the article, both A-not-A and A-not questions on the one hand and yes/no questions ending with ma on the other can be used in neutral and non-neutral contexts. The decisive advantage of mu questions, however, is that their question operator has scope over the whole sentence.
We will argue that some seemingly adverbial free DPs in the instrumental in Russian which are traditionally termed measure instrumental are best understood as secondary predicates. We present the relevant syntactic assumptions and propose a semantics of this use of DPs in the instrumental. This proposal hears on the distinction between adjunct modification and secondary predication.
What are incremental themes?
(2001)
In this paper I examine the approach to incremental themes developed in Krifka 1992,1998, Dowty 1991 and others, which argues that the extent of a telic event is determined by the extent of its incrementally affected theme. This approach identifies the defining property of an accomplishment event as being the fact that the theme relation is a homomorphism from parts of the event to parts of the (incremental) theme. I show that there are a large number of accomplishments, both lexical and derived via resultative predication, which cannot be characterised in this way. I then show that it is more insightful to characterise accomplishments in terms of their internally complex structure: an accomplishment event consists of a non-incremental activity event and an incrementally structured 'BECOME' event, which are related by a contextually available one-one function in such a way that the incremental structure of the latter is imposed on the activity.
Adjectival secondary predicates can enter into two Case frames in Russian, the agreeing form and the Instrumental. The paper argues that these Case frames go together with two syntactic positions in the clause which are correlated with two different interpretations, the true depictive and the temporally restricted reading, respectively. The availability of the two readings depends on the houndedness of the secondary predicate. Only bounded predicates can enter into both Case frames and only partially non-bounded predicates can appear in the Instrumental. The paper therefore argues that the pertinent two-way SL/IL-contrast is to he replaced by a three-way distinction in terms of boundedness. The paper outlines the syntax and semantics of the true depictive and the temporally restricted interpretation and discusses how adjectival secondary predicates whose salient properties involve a cotemporary interpretation with the matrix predicate and a control relation of an individual argument, differ from temporal adjuncts as well as from non-finite clauses.
The main purpose of this paper is to show that argument structure constructions like complex telic path of motion constructions (John walked to the store) or complex resultative constructions (The dog barked the chickens awake) are not to be regarded as "theoretical entities" (Jackendoff (1997b); Goldberg (1995)). As an alternative to these semanticocentric accounts, I argue that their epiphenomenal status can be shown iff we take into account some important insights from three syntactically-oriented works: (i) Hoekstra's (1988, 1992) analysis of S<mall>C<lause> R<esults>, (ii) Hale & Keyser's (1993f.) configurational theory of argument structure, and (iii) Mateu & Rigau’s (1999; i.p.) syntactic account of Talmy's (1991) typological distinction between 'satellite framed languages' (e.g., English, German, Dutch, etc.) and 'verb-framed languages' (e.g., Catalan, Spanish, French, etc.). In particular, it is argued that the formation of the abovementioned constructions involves a conflation process of two different syntactic argument structures, this process being carried out via a 'generalized transformation'. Accordingly, the so-called 'lexical subordination process' (Levin & Rapoport (1988)) is argued to involve a syntactic operation, rather than a semantic one. Due to our assuming that the parametric variation involved in the constructions under study cannot be explained in purely semantic terms (Mateu & Rigau (1999)), Talmy's (1991) typological distinction is argued to be better stated in lexical syntactic terms.
This volume presents working versions of presentations heard at and selected for the Workshop on Syntax of Predication, held at ZAS, Berlin, on November 2-3, 2001 (except the editor’s own paper).
Predication is a many-faceted topic which involves both syntax and semantics and the interface between them. This is reflected in the papers of the volume.
With the rise of minimalism, many concepts related to the geometrical relations of phrase structure held fast to in earlier approaches have been reconsidered. This article deals with distinguishing (relational and technical) properties of specifiers and adjuncts in a Bare Phrase Structure framework (X'-Theory). I extend specific aspects of X-structure relevant to the discussion of specifiers vs. adjuncts. I argue that unique specifiers can be derived from the system and that adjunction, possibly multiple, results from Direct Merge only. The final product is a series of relationships in line with recent thoughts and minimalist premises, but formally more similar to earlier conceptions of the X'-schema.
I address conceptual, empirical and theoretical arguments against multiple specifiers and related issues next, that is beyond the predictions immediately following from the tripartitional view of clause structure proposed in Grohmann (2000). After laying out my motivations to critically consider the issue, I present a set of data that casts serious doubt over the justifications offered to replace Agr with v as the accusative casemarker. Having conceptual and empirical back-up, I then tackle the theoretical validity of specifiers, and ways to distinguish unique specifiers from (multiple) adjuncts. I introduce a version of Bare Phrase Structure that does so, yet keeps the spirit of defining structural identification over relational rather than categorial properties.
In this work, I provide an analysis of adjectival depictive constructions which accounts for most of their fundamental properties. First, I focus on the restrictions having to do with the integration of the depictive and the verbal predicate: they are based on aspectual compatibility between the two predicates, which, in turn, will depend on the ability, on the part of the depictive, to make reference to some (sub)event in the event structure of the verbal predicate. Facts not captured by previous approaches in the literature will be straightforwardly accounted for, among them the possibility to have I-L depictive constructions, and the impossibility to combine a depictive with some non-stative verbal predicates. Second, it will be shown that the informational import of the depictive in the sentence can be equivalent to that of the verbal predicate: both can be the primary lexical basis of predication. This is reflected in the sentence in various ways, having to do with aspectual modifiers, and in the properties of the sentential subject. In this connection, we will reconsider the notion of subject, arguing that no subject-predicate relation takes place in the lexical domain of sentences, and hence that the argument the depictive is oriented to, the common argument, cannot be a subject of the depictive. Finally, a minimalist analysis is proposed for the syntax of the construction, in terms of direct syntactic merge of predicative constituents and sidewards (q-to-q) movement for the common argument, from the lexical domain of the depictive to the lexical domain of the verb. As to morphosyntactic properties, a syntactic Double Agree relation is assumed to hold between T/v, as probes, on the one hand, and the common argument and depictive, as simultaneous goals, on the other, which would allow for the deletion of Case features on both goals. The assumed presence of Structural Case on the adjectival depictive will be responsible for the well-known restriction on the orientation of depictives to the sentential subject or object.
In this paper I put forward and justify a syntactic configuration that I call Complex Small Clause-structure. I show that this single syntactic structure can explain both the semantic value and the syntactic behavior of a range of constructions that up to now have been explored separately and, hence, proposed divergent analyses among them.
Even if we can generate a logical form, principles of use may limit the ways in which we can use it. In this paper, I motivate one such principle of use, and explore its effects. Much of the discussion involves kinds of sentences that have received attention in the literature on "individual-level predicates".
The effects of different forms of predication have been insightfully (and almost exclusively) studied for 'simple' cases of predication, of which the 'presentational sentence' is maybe the paradigm instantiation. It is the aim of this paper to show that thc same kind of effects as well as in fact the same kind of structures are present at embedded levels in thematically and otherwise more complex structures. Beyond presentational sentences, 'unaccusative' experiencing constructions involving a dative subject, 'double object constructions' and - to a lesser extent - spraylload constructions are discussed. For all of these, it is argued that they comprise a predication encoding the ascription of a transient temporal property to a location. On this basis, a proposal is made as to how the scope asymmetry between the two arguments involved in the colistructions can be explained. Furthermore, a proposal is made as to how what has been called 'argument shift' is motivated.
This paper compares secondary predication constructions (including small clause complements, resultatives, and/or depictives) in English and Korean and argues that these two typologically different languages employ different modes of satisfying the Case Filter (Chomsky 1981) with regard to the Case of the subjects of secondary predication constructions. More specifically, we argue that the subject of the secondary predicate in English is Accusative Case-marked by the higher governing verb, while that in Korean is Nominative Case-marked by default. Evidence for default Nominative Case will be provided from Korean and other languages.
This paper is part of a research project on OT Syntax and the typology of the free relative (FR) construction. It concentrates on the details of an OT analysis and some of its consequences for OT syntax. I will not present a general discussion of the phenomenon and the many controversial issues it is famous for in generative syntax.
In this paper, I argue that this informally given list of characteristics covers only a certain subclass of specific indefinites. […] In particular, I dispute the definition of specific indefinites as "the speaker has the referent in mind" as rather confusing if one is working with a semantic theory. Furthermore, I discuss "relative specificity", it. cases in which the specific indefinite does not exhibit wide, but intermediate or narrow scope behavior. Based on such data, I argue that specificity expresses a referential dependency between introduced discourse items. Informally speaking, the specificity of the indefinite expression something [...] expresses that the reference of the expression depends on the reference of another expression, here, on the expression a monk, not the speaker.
This paper pursues the question what the implications of the Anti-Locality Hypothesis could be for the syntax of secondary predication. Focus of the discussion will be an investigation of what their internal structure of small clause complements must look like, how these small clause complements connect to their matrix environments, and what the relevance could be for the formulation of anti-locality presented here. Anti-locality is defined over a tripartite clause structure (split into three Prolific Domains) and a PF-condition on the computation (the Condition on Domain-Exclusivity). The investigation revolves around two leading questions: (i) does the syntax of small clauses involve more structure than simply [SC DP XP] and (ii) do small clauses constitute their own Prolific Domain (or maybe even more)? The results, affirmative answers to both questions, are also relevant for other types of secondary predication.
The ultimate goal of this paper is to find a representation of modality compatible with some basic conditions on the syntax-semantic interface. Such conditions are anchored, for instance, in Chomsky's (1995) principle of full interpretation (FI). Abstract interpretation of modality is, however - be it "only" in semantic terms - already a hard nut to crack, way too vast to be dealt with in any comprehensive way here. What is pursued instead is a case-study-centered analysis. The case in point are the English modals (EM) viewed in their development through time - a locus classicus for a number of linguistic theories and frameworks. The idea will be to start out from two lines of research - continuous grammaticalization vs. cataclysmic change - and to explain some of their incongruities. The first non-trivial point here consists in deriving more fundamental questions from this research. The second, possibly even less trivial one consists in answering them. Specifically, I will argue that regardless of the actual numerical rate of change, there is an underlying and more structured way to account for the notions of change and continuity within the modal system, respectively.
A contrast to a trace
(2001)
For movement, such as quantifier raising, the three different structures illustrated in (1) are discussed in the recent literature.
(1) A girl danced with every boy
a. [every boy]x a girl danced with x (copy + replace)
b. [every boy]x a girl danced with [every boy] (copy)
c. [every boy]x a girl danced with [thex boy] (copy + modify)
In this paper, I'll call the proposal illustrated by (1a) the copy+replace theory since the movement is analyzed as first copying the moving phrase followed by replacing the moving phrase with a trace in the base position of movement. Chomsky (1993) and Fox (1999) argue against the copy+replace theory (1a) on the basis of Condition C data that show that moved material can behave as if it occupied the base position of movement. This behavior would, for example, be expected on the copy theory of movement illustrated by (1b), which also seems conceptually simpler than the copy+replace theory since it involves only copying without replacement. This conceptual advantage, however, is probably only apparent since a theory of the interpretation of structures like (1b) would probably be more complicated than for (1a). Standard assumptions about interpretation, at least, don't predict the right meaning when applied to (1b). For this reason, Chomsky and Fox propose what I'll call the copy+modify-theory illustrated in (1c). This proposes that copying is followed by a trace modification operation that replaces the determiner of the moved DP with something else. I assume that this is an indexed definite determiner, the interpretation of which is to be clarified below.
We will see how it is reasonable to speak of a minimum distance that an element must cross in order to enter into a well-formed movement dependency. In the course of the discussion of this notion of anti-localiry, a theoretical framework unfolds which is compatible with recent thoughts on syntactic computation regarding local economy and phrase structure, as well as the view that certain pronouns are grammatical formatives, rather than fully lexical expressions. The upshot will be that if an element does not move a certain distance, the derivation crashes at PF, unless the lower copy is spelled out as a pronominal element. The framework presented has a number of implications for the study of clause-typing, of which some will be discussed towards the end.
This paper deals with restitutive and repetitive wieder. Proceeding from the assumption that adverbial adjuncts have base positions which reflect their semantic relations to the rest of the sentence, it is shown that repetitive wieder belongs to the class of event adverbs minimally c-commanding the base positions of all arguments whereas restitutive wieder has many properties in common with process adjuncts, minimally c-commanding the final verb.
Approaching the grammar of adjuncts : proceedings of the Oslo conference, September 22 - 25, 1999
(2000)
Issues on topics
(2000)
The present volume contains papers that bear mainly on issues concerning the topic concept. This concept is of course very broad and diverse. Also, different views are expressed in this volume. Some authors concentrate on the status of topics and non-topics in so-called topic prominent languages (i.e. Chinese), others focus on the syntactic behavior of topical constituents in specific European languages (German, Greek, Romance languages). The last contribution tries to bring together the concept of discourse topic (a non-syntactic notion) and the concept of sentence topic, i.e. that type of topic that all the preceding papers are concerned with.
The present investigation is concerned with German participles II (past participles) as lexical heads of adjuncts.
Within a minimalist framework of sound-meaning correlation, the analysis presupposes a lexicalist conception of morphology and the differentiation of Semantic Form and Conceptual Structure. It is argued that participles II have the same argument structure as the underlying verbs and can undergo passivization, perfectivization and conversion to adjectives. As for the potential of participles to function as modifiers, it is shown that attributive and adverbial participle constructions involve further operations of conversion. Participle constructions are considered as reduced sentences. They do not have a syntactic position for the subject, for an operator (comparable to the relative pronoun in relative clauses) or for an adverbial relator (as in adverbial clauses). The pertinent components are present only in the semantic structure.
Two templates serve the composition of modifiers - including participle constructions - with the modificandum. It is necessary to differentiate between modification which unifies two predicates relating to participants or to situations and frame setting modification where the modifier is given the status of a propositional operator.
The proposed analysis shows that the high degree of semantic underspecification and interpretative flexibility of German participle II constructions resides in the indeterminacy of participles II with respect to voice and perfect, in the absence of certain constituents in the syntactic structure and in the presence of corresponding parameters in the Semantic Form of the participle phrases.
This paper deals with restitutive and repetitive 'wieder'. Proceeding from the assumption that adverbial adjuncts have base positions which reflect their semantic relations to the rest of the sentence, it is shown that repetitive 'wieder' belongs to the class of event adverbs minimally c-commanding the base positions of all arguments whereas restitutive 'wieder' has many properties in common with process adjuncts, minimally c-commanding the final verb.
Rethinking the adjunct
(2000)
The purpose of the present paper is twofold: first, to show that, when defining the adjunct, it is necessary to distinguish in a strict modular way between the syntactic level and the lexico-semantic level. Thus, the adjunct is a syntactic category on a par with the specifier and the complement, whereas the argument belongs to the same set as does (among others) the modifier. The consequence of this distinction is that there is no direct one-to-one opposition between adjuncts and arguments. Nor is there any direct one-to one relation between adjuncts and modifiers.
The second and main purpose of the paper is to account for the well-known difference between the position of a specific set of modifiers (cause, time, place etc.) in, on the one hand, English and Swedish, on the other, German. In English and Swedish the default position of these modifiers is postverbal, whereas in German it is preverbal. Further, in English and Swedish, these modifiers occur in a mirror order compared with their German counterparts, an order which, from a semantic point of view, is not the expected one. I shall demonstrate that this difference is due to the different settings of the verbal head parameter, the former languages being VO-languages and the latter being OV -languages. I shall further argue that in English and Swedish these modifiers are base generated as adjuncts to an empty VP, which is a complement of the main verb of what I shall call the minimal VP (MVP), whereas in German they are adjuncts on top of the MVP. Finally, I shall argue that the postverbal modifiers move at the latest at LF to the top of the MVP, in order to take scope over it, the restriction being 'Shortest move'. The movement results in the correct scope order of the postverbal modifiers.
The proposed structure also accounts for the binding data, in particular for the binding of a specific Swedish possessive anaphor 'sin'. This pronoun, which may occur within the MVP, must not occur within the postverbal modifiers in the empty VP. This supports the assumption that there is a strict borderline between the MVP and the assumed empty VP. The account is also in accordance with the focus data, the specific set of modifiers being potential focus exponents in a wide focus reading in English and Swedish, but not in German.
In this study, I investigate the positions and interpretations available to 'manner' adverbs in English. My central claim, contra Wyner (1994, 1998), is that an association does exist between 'manner' adverb positions and interpretations, which is best characterized in terms of Peterson's (1997) distinction between 'restrictive' and 'non-restrictive' modification. I also claim, however, that the association in question is not as general as commonly claimed; and, in particular, does not apply directly to 'manner' adverbs in 'fronted' and 'parenthetical' positions, which require special syntactic description.
In this paper I would like to show that the principles which have been proposed so far to account for the relationship between the informational level and the syntactic level in a Chinese utterance are unable to predict some interesting and regular facts of that language.
To my mind, the form and the position of the question operator in an interrogative utterance provide two distributional tests which univocally indicate where the new information lies. Hence, the pairing of affirmative and interrogative sentences might be a better approach to locate where the new information lies in a Chinese utterance.
Editorial preface
(2000)
The present issue grew out of two sources. The main one was the workshop on Adding and Omitting (A & 0) held during the DGfS Conference organized in Konstanz at the beginning of 1999 by our ZAS project on Syntax der Fokusbildung. The purpose of the workshop was to bring together people working on topicalization (addition of expressions, in a sense) and ellipsis (omission, i.e. deletion of linguistic material) and their relations and interaction. Since the workshop was very successful and met with a great deal of interest on the part of both participants and outsiders, we decided to collect and publish the papers that were presented. Towards the end of 1999, a follow-up workshop on Ellipsis and Information Structure was organized by Kerstin Schwabe and Susanne Winkler (Tübingen). The papers given at this second meeting were supposed to be an integral part of the publication as well. More and more people got involved, further developing our common understanding of the topic phenomenon, so that there was too much material for a single volume. We therefore decided to split the enterprise into two volumes. The ellipsis papers are to be published by 'Benjamins' this year in Interpreting Omitted Structures.
Dulong/Rawang is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken on both sides of the China/Myanmar (Burma) border just south and cast of Tibet. [...] In this chapter, I will be using data of the Mvtwang (Mvt River) dialect, which is considered the most central of those dialects in Myanmar and so has become something of a standard for writing and intergroup communication, though most of the phenomena we will be discussing are general to dialects in both China and Myanrnar. I will use the short form 'Rawang' in referring to this dialect.
The paper proposes structural constraints for different adjunct classes in German and English. Approaches in which syntax has only the task to provide adjunct positions and in which principles of scope are supposed to explain the distribution of adjuncts are rejected as incomplete. The syntactic requirements are not as rigid as other approaches require, such that there is just one possible position for a given adjunct. Rather the syntactic constraints may be fulfilled in different positions.
An adjunct-DP in the free instrumental case occurs in a number of surface positions where the DP is syntactically optional. does not depend on any element in the sentence, and has a number of different interpretations. We introduce Bailyn's proposal which postulates a uniform syntactic environment for all the uses of instr. This calls for a uniform semantics of these DPs which can nevertheless accomodate the different interpretations. Starting with the hypothesis of Roman Jakobson about the semantics of the instrumental case we formulate a semantic interpretation theory based on abduction. We give a uniform semantics for three different adjunct uses of instr in this framework. In the concluding part of the paper we discuss some possible alternatives and ramifications as well as questions and objections raised with respect to the treatment proposed in this paper.
This article aims to recast the properties of topic-prominent languages and their differences from subject-prominent languages as documented in the functionalist literature into the framework of the Principle-and-Parameter approach. It provides a configurational definition of the topic construction called Topic Phrase (TP), with the topic marker as its head. The availablity of TP enables topic prominent languages to develop various topic structures with properties such as morphological marking; cross-categorial realization of topics and comments; and mutiple application of topicalization. The article elaborates the notion of topic prominence. A topic prominent language is characterized as one that tends to activate the TP and to make full use of the configuration. Typically, it has a larger number and variety of highly grammaticalized topic markers in the Lexicon and permits a variety of syntactic categories to occur in the specifier position and the complement position of TP.
The complexity of human languages has always inspired research for some human faculty that makes language learning possible. The system that generates the complexity of human languages, ideally, is simple and effective. Recent developments of the generative grammatical theory explore deeper into the issue of simplicity or economy. The Minimalist Program developed in Chomsky (1991, 1993, 1995) tries to provide contents to such notions. What does it mean to be more economic or least effort? An important instantiation of such notions is the proposal that movement is the last resort assuming that movement is more costly than non-movement. Processes occur only because they are necessary. The definition of necessity generally is cast in morphological terms. Moreover, the notion of "economy" or "least effort" is deterministic of the appropriate derivations for sentences: a shorter derivation is better than a longer one. In this work, we show that the notion of "least effort," - do minimally if possible - is manifested not only in derivations but also in other aspects of the grammar. We take Chinese as an example and show that this language exhibits the properties manifesting some "least effort" guidelines in the area of movement and reconstruction, and in the projection of syntactic positions: when there is a choice, non-application of moyement/reconstruction and non-projection of a position are adopted. These phenomena essentially are attested in topic structures. The question arises as to why topic structures exhibit such minimal effort effects. We suggest that this is due to the fact that topic structures can be derived by movement or base-generation. When there are morpho-syntactic clues that reconstruction is necessary, the structure is a movement structure. Otherwise, the less costly non-movement structure is assumed. Moreover, because of the possibility of assuming a topic NP to be base-generated, bearing a predication (or aboutness) relation with the comment clause, the argument position which otherwise would be related to the topic (conveniently termed the trace position) is not projected when there is a choice of projecting or not projecting it.
The left periphery has enjoyed extensive study over the past years, especially drawn against the framework of Rizzi (1997). It is argued that in this part of the clause, relations are licensed that have direct impact on discourse interpretation and information structure, such as topic, focus, clause type, and the like. I take this line of research up and argue in favour of a split CP on the basis of strictly left-peripheral phenomena across languages. But I also want to link the relation of articulated clause structure, syntactic derivations, and information structure. In particular, I outline the basics of a model of syntactic derivation that makes explicit reference to the interpretive interfaces in a cyclic, dynamic manner.
I suggest a return to older stages of generative grammar, at least in spirit, by proposing that clausal derivation stretches over three important areas which I call prolific domains: the part of the clause which licenses argument/thematic relations (V- or θ-domain), the part that licenses agreement/grammatica1 relations (T- or ϕ-domain), and the part that licenses discourse/information-relevant relations (C- or ω-domain). It is thus a rather broad and conceptual notion of "adding" and "omitting" that I am concerned with here, namely licensing of material to relate to information structure, and the desire to find an answer to the question which elements might be added or omitted across languages to establish such links.
This paper is a preliminary comparative study of the relation between word order and information structure in three Null Subject Languages ((NSLs) Spanish, Italian and Greek). The aim is twofold: first I seek to examine the differences and the similarities among these languages in this domain of their syntax. Secon, I investigate the possible derivations of the various patterns and attempt to localize the differences among these languages in different underlying syntactic structures.
The distinction between COMPLEMENTS and ADJUNCTS has a long tradition in grammatical theory, and it is also included in some way or other in most current formal linguistic theories. But it is a highly vexed distinction, for several reasons, one of which is that no diagnostic criteria have emerged that will reliably distinguish adjuncts from complements in all cases – too many examples seem to "fall into the crack" between the two categories, no matter how theorists wrestle with them.
In this paper, I will argue that this empirical diagnostic "problem" is, in fact, precisely what we should expect to find in natural language, when a proper understanding of the adjunct/complement distinction is achieved: the key hypothesis is that a complete grammar should provide a DUAL ANALYSIS of every complement as an adjunct, and potentially, an analysis of any adjunct as a complement. What this means and why it is motivated by linguistic evidence will be discussed in detail.
Why variables?
(1999)
This paper addresses the question of how sentence-internal semantic dependencies are computed? The kind of semantic dependency I am looking at is that between a so called "bound (variable) pronoun" and its binder illustrated in (1), where the dependency is indicated by a connecting line. With all the literature on the topic (see for example Partee 1973, Percus 1998), I assume that this case is the prototype of all semantic dependencies, and therefore any result for this case generalizes to all types of sentence-internal semantic dependencies.
This paper corroborates the interpretability proposal of Chomsky (1995) with evidence from scrambling in Japanese and German. First it is shown that scrambling in Japanese is semantically vacuous, whereas scrambling in German is semantically contentful. Chomsky’s proposal then predicts that the feature driving Japanese scrambling is erased after checking, while the corresponding feature in German remains visible, specifically for the Shortest Attract condition. Looking at patterns of movement that result in overlapping paths, this prediction is seen to be correct.
The meaning of chains
(1998)
This thesis investigates the mechanisms applying in the interpretation of syntactic chains. The theoretical background includes a translation of syntactic forms into semantic forms and a model theoretic explication of the meaning of semantic forms. Simplicity considerations apply to all three stages of the interpretation process: syntactic derivation, translation into semantic forms, interpretation of semantic forms. Three main results are achieved. The first is that trace positions can have semantic content beyond what is needed for the semantic dependency of trace and binder. This extra content is some or all of the lexical material of the head of the chain, as expected on the copy theory of movement. Two independent arguments support this conclusion. One, discussed in chapter 2, is based on the distribution of Condition C effects, where novel interactions between variable binding, antecedent contained deletion and Condition C are observed. The second, developed in chapter 3, is based on conditions on the identity of traces observed in antecedent contained deletion constructions. Both arguments lead to the same generalizations about what lexical material of the head is interpreted in the trace position. The second main result is that lambda calculus is superior to both standard predicate logic and combinatorial logic as the mathematical model for the semantic mechanism mediating the dependency of trace (or bound pronoun) and binder. Chapter 4 argues this on the basis of the distribution of focus and destressing in constructions with bound pronouns. The third main result is that quantification must be allowed to range over pointwise different choice functions. Chapter 5 shows that quantification over individuals is insufficient, and that pointwise different choice functions are required. The result entails that the syntactic difference of A-chains and A-bar chains predicts a semantic difference in the type of the variable involved, which is argued to explain weak crossover phenomena. Chapters 6 argues that the interpretation procedures developed in the preceeding chapters account for all cases. It is shown that only traces of the type of individuals arise, and that scope reconstruction is a phonological phenomenon. The latter result also supports the T-model of syntax.
Relating propositions : subordination and coordination strategies in a polysynthetic language
(1998)
This paper discusses the relationship between the morphological structure of language and its syntactic structure. Although it is primarily a single language which is analysed in detail, namely, Inuktitut, an Eskimo language of the Canadian Eastern Arctic, the findings seem to be of general relevance.
This paper addresses the syntax and semantics plurals, and then applies it to reciprocal expressions. In the course of this investigation, I address two problems for the conventional view that a reciprocal makes essentially the same semantic contribution to the sentence as other noun phrases, but has an interesting internal structure. I will show that both problems are properties of plurality in general, and can be successfully explained along these lines. As a result, the paper is more about plurality in general than reciprocals though the goal of the paper is to account for the two problems relating to reciprocals.
Middle voice marking is very rarely recognized as such in the grammars written on Tibeto-Burman languages. It is often simply treated as a normal direct reflexive or as an intransitivizer. In order to draw the attention of scholars to the existence and function of middle voice marking in Tibeto-Burman languages, the present paper discusses the form and function of middle marking in several of these languages. We will first discuss key facts about middle marking in general, then discuss the individual Tibeto-Burman examples.
The case of German relatives
(1995)
The lemmings theory of case
(1995)
Early features
(1995)
In LaPolla 1990, I presented arguments to show that Chinese is a language in which there has been no grammaticalizalion of the syntactic relations "subject" and "object". This being the case, then syntactic relations cannot be what determines word order in Chinese. In this paper I will argue that, aside from a semantic rule that the actor of a verb, if expressed, must precede that verb, it is pragmatic relations (information structure) that are the main determinants of word order in Chinese.
In the last two decades Philippine languages, and of these especially Tagalog, have acquired a prominent place in linguistic theory. A central role in this discussion was played by two papers written by Schachter (1976 and 1977), who was inspired by Keenan's artcle on the subject from 1976. The most recent contributions on this topic have been from de Wolff (1988) and Shibatani (1988), both of which were published in a collection of essays, edited by Shibatani, with the title Passive and Voice. These works, and several works in-between, deal with the focus system specific to Philippine languages. The main discussion centers around the fact that Philippine languages contain a basic set of 5 to 7 affix focus forms. Their exact number varies not only in the secondary literature, but in the primary sources, i.e. Tagalog grammars, as well, where considerable differences in the number of affix focus forms can be found. All of these works, however, do agree on one point: the Philippine focus system basica1ly consists of agent, patient (=goal or object), benefactive, locative, and instrumental affix forms. Schachter/Otanes (1972) list a number of further forms, and in Drossard (1983 and 1984) we tried to show (in an attempt similar to those of Sapir 1917 and Klimov 1977) that the main criterion for a systematization of the Philippine focus system consists in the difference between the active and stative domains, an attempt which in our opinion was largely misunderstood (cf. the brief remarks in Shibatani (1988) and de Wolff (1988). The present paper is thus, on the one hand, an attempt to repeat and clarify our earlier position, and on the other, a further step towards such a systematization. A first step in this direction was an article on resultativity in Tagalog from 1991. In the present paper this approach will be extended to reciprocity. In the process we will show that it is valid to make a distinction between an active (=controlled action) vs. a stative (=limited controlled action) domain. First, however, we will take a brief look at what makes up the active and stative voice systems.
In attempting to reconstruct the morphosyntax of Proto-Sino-Tibetan, one of the most basic questions to be answered is what was the unmarked word order of the proto-language? Chinese, Bai, and Karen are verb-medial languages, while all of the Tibeto-Burman languages except for Bai and Karen have verb-final word order. lf these languages are all related, as we can assume from lexical correspondences, then either Chinese, Bai and Karen changed from verb-final to verb-medial word order, or the other Tibeto-Burman languages changed trom verb-medial to verb-final order. How we answer the question of which languages changed their word would then give us the answer to the question of word order in Proto-Sino-Tibetan.
Thirty-one years ago Tsu-lin Mei (1961) argued against the traditional doctrine that saw the subject-predicate distinction in grammar as parallel to the particular- universal distinction in logic, as he said it was a reflex of an Indo-European bias, and could not be valid, as ‘Chinese ... does not admit a distinction into subject and predicate’ (p. 153). This has not stopped linguists working on Chinese from attempting to define ‘subject’ (and ‘object’) in Chinese. Though a number of linguists have lamented the difficulties in trying to define these concepts for Chinese (see below), most work done on Chinese still assumes that Chinese must have the same grammatical features as Indo-European, such as having a subject and a direct object, though no attempt is made to justify that view. This paper challenges that view and argues that there has been no grammaticalization of syntactic functions in Chinese. The correct assignment of semantic roles to the constituents of a discourse is done by the listener on the basis of the discourse structure and pragmatics (information flow, inference, relevance, and real world knowledge) (cf. Li & Thompson 1978, 1979; LaPolla 1990).
Grammatical relations – in particular the relation 'subject of' – and voice are of central concern to any theory of universal grammar. With respect to these phenomena the analysis of Tagalog (and the Philippine languages in general) has turned out to be particularly difficult and continues to be a matter of debate. What traditionally has been called passive voice in these languages […] appears to be so different from voice phenomena in the more familiar Indo-European languages that the term 'focus' was introduced in the late 1950s to underscore its 'exceptional' nature [...]. Furthermore, […] an inflationary use has been made of the term 'ergative' in the last decade; it can thus no longer be assumed that it has an unequivocal and specific meaning in typologizing languages, apart from the technical definition it might be given within a particular framework. But if the Philippine 'focus' constructions are neither passive nor ergative, how else can they be analysed? [...] In this paper a ease will be made for the claim that 'focus' marking should be analysed in terms of orientation, a concept used […] for capturing the difference between English (and, more generally, Indo-European) orientated nominalisations such as 'employ-er' or 'employ-ee', and unorientated nominalisations such as 'employ-ing'. This approach implies that 'focus' marking is derivational rather than inflectional as often presumed in the literature. This is to say that what is typologically conspicuous in Tagalog is not the 'focus' phenomenon per se, since this is very similar to orientated nominalisations in many other languages, but rather the very prominent use of orientated formations (i.e., derivational morphology) in basic clause structure.