Journal Issue: Proceedings of the 36th Annual Penn Linguistics Colloquium
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01/28/2013
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Publication The Pragmatics of Direct Object Fronting in Historical English(2013-01-28) Stevens, Jon; Light, CaitlinSpeyer (2008) finds an overall decline in the rate of topicalization in historical English, which we refer to pre-theoretically as direct object fronting. He attributes it to two separate phenomena: 1) the early loss of unaccented pronominal and demonstrative fronting, and 2) a gradient decline in the use of accented, contrastive fronting due to prosodic well-formedness conditions imposed by the loss of the V2 constraint. In this paper we present a prima facie problem with Speyer's account. While personal pronouns exhibit the expected behavior, the rate at which demonstrative pronouns front is more stable. We propose that, contrary to expectation, unaccented demonstratives in Old English behaved syntactically as if they were contrastive. The reason for this lies in a special information-structural function for demonstrative pronouns across Germanic, for which our corpus study provides independent evidence. Specifically, demonstratives in Germanic tend to refer anaphorically to elements whose meanings, like the meanings of contrastive elements, are not in every possible answer to the Question Under Discussion (see Roberts 1996, Buring 2003 and Schwarz to appear).Publication Re(de)fining Jespersen’s Cycle(2013-01-28) Chatzopoulou, KaterinaThis paper discusses the historical development of the Greek negator system, from Homeric Greek to Standard Modern Greek, in connection to the Jespersen’s Cycle phenomenon (Jespersen 1917, since Dahl 1979) and proposes a broader approach for Jespersen’s Cycle: an approach that is inclusive both to traditional Jespersen’s Cycle languages (Van der Auwera 2009), as well as atypical Jespersen’s Cycle languages. Greek is among the latter, along with languages that deviate in one way or another from what the current understanding of Jespersen’s Cycle predicts. The proposed approach views Jespersen’s Cycle as a phenomenon that targets intensified predicate negation and with time elevates it to propositional. This view agrees with current theories of grammaticalization and syntactic change (Roberts and Roussou 2003, Van Gelderen 2004), while the schematic representation of Jespersen’s Cycle is given as an instance of upward lexical micromovement (Chatzopoulou 2012).Publication V≥2 in Basque(2013-01-28) Haddican, Bill; Elordieta, ArantzazuThis paper analyzes quasi-verb second (V2) effects in Basque. We show that Basque instantiates a typological prediction of the most widely assumed theory of V2, namely that V2 is a conspiracy of an [uV] on a C-field head attracting the verb and an EPP feature on this same head attracting the closest satellite XP. General considerations suggest that these two features should vary independently across languages, and if so, we expect the possibility of a language with EPP movement to the left periphery but not verb movement. We argue that this combination of properties fits the V≥2 pattern of Basque root clauses, and develop an analysis of the left periphery of Basque root clauses that expresses these restrictions.Publication Mandarin Parasitic Gaps(2013-01-28) Liu, Chi-Ming LouisLin (2005) argues that parasitic gaps in Mandarin Chinese have to be licensed by syntactic wh-movement. However, given three syntactic pieces of evidence which involve weak crossover effects, replacement of pronouns, and multiple wh-phrases respectively, I propose that the sentence-initial wh-phrases in relevant sentences cannot be said to move from the object position of the matrix verb. Instead, they should be thought of as originating in the sentence-initial position, which amounts to saying that there is no syntactic wh-movement in this kind of sentences. Nevertheless, this analysis does not imply that there is no parasitic-gap sentence in Mandarin Chinese. With the help of the sentences containing a complex NP in which the object position is empty, we conclude that it is null operator movement that serves as the licensor for Mandarin parasitic gaps. By assuming so, we can maintain the idea that parasitic gaps have to be licensed by A’-movement without raising the problems mentioned in the paper.Publication Future Reference in Hungarian with and without Future Marking(2013-01-28) Palffy-Muhoray, NicoleThere are two main expressions which can give rise to future-oriented interpretations in Hungarian. The fog construction, which consists of an auxiliary verb and an infinitival main verb is obligatorily associated with future interpretations. The second expression, the non-past, consists of a verb inflected for person and number, with no grammatical marker of temporal reference. Interestingly, atelic predicates give rise to event-in-progress readings and telic non-past predicates give rise to future readings in the absence of future-oriented contexts or adverbs. I provide a semantics of fog and the non-past construction that accounts for these patterns through the interaction of the situation aspect of the predicate with temporal properties of the constructions in question. I argue that fog is a simple existential quantifier over future intervals, whereas the non-past restricts the time that the predicate can hold to the interval extending from now to infinitely in the future. There are three logical possibilities for how an atelic predicate like ”john run” can hold of this interval. Either the predicate holds only over the the moment of speech, P holds over some interval after speech time, or P holds of the interval where John’s running would begin at speech time and extend into the future. I argue that because telic predicates do not have the Subinterval Property, they cannot hold punctually of now, and so do not give rise to ongoing readings.Publication When You Can and Can’t See Double: Revisiting Focus Doubling in ASL(2013-01-28) Shimamura, Koji; Tieu, Lyn ShanIn this paper, we examine the emphatic focus doubling construction in American Sign Language (ASL) and Brazilian Sign Language (Libras), in which one element of the sentence appears in its base-generated position within the sentence and one copy appears in sentence-final position. We review the existing focus doubling data in the literature, as well as a previous syntactic analysis of the construction that we think is the best available option on the market (Nunes and Quadros 2005). Diverging minimally from this analysis however, we propose that movement of the focused element proceed not to the head of an emphatic focus projection, but rather through the specifier of that projection; this modification nicely precludes the need for excorporation and c-command out of a dominating non-terminal node. We then examine an asymmetry between focus doubling in Libras vs. ASL, namely that doubling is permitted in indirect questions in the former but not the latter, an asymmetry not addressed by Nunes and Quadros. We suggest that there is a ban on multiple instances of focus-driven movement in ASL, and briefly discuss how a striking parallel with restrictions on multiple foci in Modern Greek may ultimately hold the answer to resolving the asymmetry, at the same time raising interesting questions about the way that information structure maps onto phonology and syntax in different languages.Publication Parasitic semantics (or why Swedish can’t lexicalize middle voice constructions)(2013-01-28) Fábregas, Antonio; Putnam, MichaelIn this squib we explore a strictly derivational explanation for the differences in possible middle voice constructions in Norwegian and Swedish. Whereas Norwegian allows by its lexical s-passive construction as well as a complex adjectival construction to stand in for middle semantics, only the latter option is available in Swedish. We argue that this contrast lies in the lexicalization of formal syntactico-semantic features and advance the claim that the failure to lexicalize all features in a derivational results in structures uninterpretable to the external interfaces (i.e., Exhaustive Lexicalization).Publication How Deep is Your Syntax? Heritage Language Filler-Gap Dependencies(2013-01-28) Bousquette, Joshua; Frey, Benjamin; Henry, Nick; Nützel, Daniel; Putnam, Michael; Salmons, Joseph C; Sewell, AlysonThis paper explores transfer of parasitic gap (p-gap) constructions from English into German by heritage speakers in Wisconsin. Kathol (2001) argues that German lacks ‘true’ p-gap constructions compared to English. Engdahl (1983:73/2001) introduces an accessibility hierarchy of domains in which p-gaps are accepted: (1) Engdahl’s accessibility hierarchy for occurrence of MGCs (partial) most accessible least accessible manner adv. > temp. adv. > purpose clauses > that, than > when, because > relative clause [untensed domains] [tensed domains] The licensing of p-gaps may thus be variable in several regards, including across complement vs. relative vs. adjunct clauses, and more basically between tensed and untensed domains. We probe whether the licensing strategies for p-gaps of a dominant L2 (English) can affect an incompletely-acquired L1 (German) that does not license such gaps and, if so, whether such strategies follow Engdahl’s hierarchy. The presence of p-gaps would support the work of Grosjean (2008), whose view predicts that English syntax may surface (i.e., ‘seep through’) in spoken German if English has become the dominant language for an individual. Our results support the theory of ‘grammatical seeping’, and our speakers in general behave in accordance with the predictions of Engdahl’s hierarchy. They produce p-gaps in English-to-German translations relatively frequently in manner clauses, often in temporal clauses and rarely in relative clauses. In temporal clauses we find considerable syntactic restructuring. In the least accessible context, relative clauses, speakers restructure more fundamentally, in order to eliminate the gapping environment altogether.Publication The relationship between schwa insertion and consonant cluster simplification in French: An Analysis of Covariance(2013-01-28) Milne, Peter M.This research in concerned with predicting rates of schwa insertion following consonant clusters at word boundaries in French. We are interested in knowing whether there are differences in rates of schwa insertion following a word-final consonant cluster predicted to simplify as compared with clusters predicted to remain stable in two dialects of French. Our data is drawn from a corpus of political debates from the national assemblies of Que ́bec and France. It contains approximately 126 hours of speech data from more than 200 speakers. We use an analysis of covariance to investigate the effects of dialect and cluster on rates of schwa insertion after taking into account differences in rates of reduction. Since differences in rates of schwa insertion due to rates of reduction can be predicted, then the differences in rates of schwa insertion between dialects that would be expected due to differences in rates of reduction can also be predicted. Any differences beyond these pre- dictions cannot be put down to differences in rates of reduction and can therefore be attributed to differences between the groups. The data contain rates of both reduction and schwa insertion for word final consonant clusters in each dialect. The data is further grouped according to whether the cluster is predicted to simplify or remain stable. We consider four variables: a response variable of rates of Schwa insertion, two categorical explanatory variables of Dialect and Cluster, and one covariate variable of rates of Reduction. Initial examination of a portion of the data suggest that the best model to fit the data contains three intercepts (a common intercept for all clusters in the France dialect, and one for each level of the explanatory variable Cluster for Que ́bec) and the regression line of Schwa against Reduction will be the same for all four. This suggests that, after controlling for differences in rates of reduction, there is a significant difference in rates of schwa insertion in the Que ́bec dialect between clusters predicted to simplify and clusters predicted to remain stable. There is no significant difference in rates of schwa insertion in the France dialect between these two groups of clusters. However, the relationship between cluster reduction and schwa insertion is the same in both dialects.Publication Toward a Better Understanding of Japanese Scramblings: What Makes Long-distance Scrambling of Subject (Im)possible?(2013-01-28) Yamashita, HideakiIn this paper, I show that, by gathering evidence from the past literature and by presenting new evidence, subjects can undergo scrambling in Japanese, contrary to Saito’s (1985) Ban on Scrambling of Subject (BOSS), which has been a classic and wide-spread claim. In so doing, I argue that Japanese scrambling in general is subject to a version of minimality/superiority effect, a Feature-based Minimality Condition (FMC). I also discuss that apparent difference between the applicability of FMC in Japanese and the inapplicability of FMC in English is due to Feature-Splitting Parameter.