Journal Issue: University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: Volume 24, Issue 1
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Publication Evidentiality and Undirected Questions: A New Account of the German Discourse Particle wohl(2018-03-30) Göbel, AlexanderThis paper presents novel data on the German discourse particle 'wohl', which has been analyzed as a marker of uncertainty by Zimmermann (2008), and argues for treating 'wohl' as an inferential evidential. The argument is twofold. First, in declaratives 'wohl' is felicitous in contexts the respective modified proposition is known to be true, which is incompatible with an account in terms of uncertainty. Second, the distribution of 'wohl' in interrogatives is more complex and more restricted than assumed by the standard account: Following Truckenbrodt (2006), I assume that V2-interrogatives are undirected questions that can be licensed by 'wohl' but whose undirectedness effect is independent of 'wohl'. V-final interrogatives, on the other hand, are canonical directed questions but can only host 'wohl' when targeting content that cannot be known directly. The final analysis is couched in the framework of Murray (2010), proposing that 'wohl' contributes a not at-issue restriction of the common ground to those worlds in which the speaker (in declaratives) or addressee (in interrogatives) has inferential evidence.Publication Lexical vs. Nominal prefixes and Their Meaning Domains(2018-04-02) Šereikaitė, MilenaThis study contrasts two types of prefixes in Lithuanian (a Baltic language), the lexical prefix and the nominal prefix. Despite being homophonous, I demonstrate that these prefixes are two distinct elements. There is a tradition in the literature to analyze lexical prefixes as part of a VP complement (Babko-Malaya 2003, Dimitrova-Vulchanova 1999, Svenonius 2004, ia.) since, despite being perfective, they also license an additional argument. Nevertheless, the data from Lithuanian show that the lexical prefix lacks phrasal properties. Instead, I propose that the lexical prefix is a morphological element, which is merged directly with a verbalized root (in line with Basilico 2008). In contrast, I show that the nominal prefix is a category-defining head n since it operates on the roots meaning space (Marantz 2001; Arad 2005) and can assign gender to a noun (Kramer 2016). I further gave evidence for this analysis showing that it correctly predicts polysemy resolution effects (Marantz 2013).Publication When Differential Object Marking is Obligatory: Some Remarks on the Role of Case in Ellipsis and Comparatives(2018-04-02) Irimia, Monica AlexandrinaThe identity condition in ellipsis has received a great deal of attention in formal studies, one of the most prominent topics of inquiry being its precise nature. This paper contributes to this debate by examining a rather ignored equative (equality comparative) context where unexpected differential object marking is obligatory irrespective of its canonical features. The data come from Romance (taking Romanian as a representative sample) and one Indo-Aryan variety, namely Nepali. We show that such marking poses a challenge to most theories examining the precise nature of the identity condition in ellipsis and comparatives. The answer we propose follows mixed theories (Mártin González 2016); crucially, we also show that (some types of) Case identity can be reduced to the requirement of certain structures to manipulate arguments instead of predicates (oftype). Our remarks are relevant to licensing of arguments and identity conditions that go beyond ellipsis.Publication Embedded Predicate Restrictions on Partial Control(2018-03-30) Autheir, J.-Marc; Reed, LisaSheehan (2012, 2014) observes that Partial Control (PC) readings arise in Romance (but not in English) only with those embedded collective predicates that can take an overt comitative argument. She argues that this phenomenon, which she calls “fake PC,” arises indirectly from a silent comitative phrase present in the infinitive. Landau (2016a) convincingly shows, however, that her analysis is untenable by pointing out that certain elements associated with overt comitatives are systematically unavailable with PC complements. But if Sheehan’s analysis is untenable, we must now explain why the selective availability exhibited by Romance embedded predicates is not also present in English. In this paper, we claim first that there is no such thing as “fake PC,” that is, there is only one kind of PC and this phenomenon is subject to the same conditions in English as it is in Romance; second, that one such condition is that the embedded collective predicate have symmetric reciprocal semantics in the sense of Siloni 2002, 2012 and Dimitriadis 2004, 2008; and third, that the difference between English and Romance boils down to the fact that only reciprocals formed in the lexicon introduce symmetric semantics and that the set of reciprocals formed in the lexicon in English and that formed in the lexicon in Romance are not identical. Additionally, we explore the consequences of these differences for the theory of PC. Specifically, we show that Landau’s (2016a,b) characterization of PRO in PC as a group-denoting, syntactically singular but semantically plural pronoun cannot explain the fact that it can only be the subject of symmetric predicates and we also discuss another shortcoming of his approach tied to the mismatch between the morphological and semantic values on PC PRO exhibited by French.Publication Forming a Compound and Spelling it Out(2018-03-30) Harðarson, Gísli RúnarIn this paper, I derive the asymmetries in morphosyntactic behaviors of synthetic and primary compounds through differences in terms of their formation. Following that, I examine how the resulting structures may regulate the interactions between the elements therein in terms of morphophonology and contextual allomorphy.Publication Denominal Verbs: Past Tense Allomorphy, Event Frames, and Zero-Categorizers(2018-03-30) Adamson, LukeThis study discusses ‘recategorized’ verbs that are derived from nouns, focusing on those that have no overt categorial morphology. On the basis of evidence from past tense inflection with privative locatum verbs, I argue that the event structure can select for nouns rather than roots, and that this is another potential source of obligatory recategorization beyond determination of meaning for the root. I also dispute the empirical generalizations of Borer (2013), whose theory disallows zero-derived recategorization altogether.Publication The Effect of Focus on Creaky Phonation in Mandarin Chinese Tones(2018-03-30) Huang, Yaqian; Athanasopoulou, Angeliki; Vogel, IrenePrevious studies of the prosodic realization of focus in Mandarin Chinese show an expansion of the pitch range of lexical tones. It is less clear, however, whether focus affects the Creaky Phonation (CP) that often co-occurs with the Dipping third tone (T3), and to some extent, also with the Falling fourth tone (T4). This study investigates the effect of focus on the acoustic properties of the four Mandarin tones, and while it confirms the expansion of the pitch range under focus, it does not find that focus affects CP in T3; it only finds an effect of focus on CP in T4. Both the F0 and CP patterns are also considered in relation to the Functional Load Hypothesis, specifically, the relationship between the contrastive properties of a language and the manifestation of prominence.Publication A New Way to Define Binding Domain in Korean(2018-04-02) Park, JayeonThis paper examines a binding paradigm in Korean which is claimed to support the Highest Edge Effect (HEE), where in a phase with multiple edges, only the highest-edge is accessible from outside of the phase due to the Phase-Impenetrability Condition (PIC), as proposed in Bošković (2013). It has been argued by a number of authors that the binding domain for principle A should be stated in terms of phases (e.g. Lee-Schoenfeld 2008, Despić 2011, Wurmbrand 2013b, Zanon 2015, Bošković 2016a). Under this approach, an anaphor must be bound in its minimal phase. What is important for our purposes is that an anaphor can be bound outside of its own minimal phase XP only if it is located at the edge of the phase (the anaphor then does not really “belong” to phase XP, but to a higher phase). I also argue that the binding patterns from Korean examined here provide empirical evidence for contextuali-ty of phasal edgehood, where the existence of another specificer of a phase (i.e. edge) affects the edgehood of other specifiers (see Bošković 2016a).Publication General Prohibition: A New Type of English Imperative(2018-03-30) Donovan, MichaelThis paper is an investigation of the properties of what I term the general prohibitive in English. This paper is an introduction to the distribution of general prohibitives, as well as a formal analysis of general prohibition in English. This is a new type of English imperative that has previously gone unnoticed. General prohibitives are used to express banned entities such as “No smoking!” or “No pets!” I will demonstrate that general prohibitives are directives and have nearly identical distribution with imperatives. I propose this is because a null imperative mood marker is present in general prohibitives, and that restrictions on imperative mood explain the restriction on general prohibitives. Additionally, the possibility of adding the word “allowed” to these construction overtly without any change in distribution or meaning leads me to include “allowed” as an adjectival passive explicitly in the structure. The interaction between this null imperative mood marker and a negative element in the clause (“no”, “only”) licenses general prohibitives and explains their syntactic distribution.Publication The Russian Comitative Construction as Reciprocal Conjunction(2018-04-02) Kasyanenko, SofiaOpen DownloadShare✕ The tendency of the Russian comitative construction to be interpreted collectively has raised a debate as to whether this construction denotes sums, like and-coordination, or denotes groups. I propose a more detailed mechanism explaining how the meaning of this construction is derived, and, relying on insights from the theory of possessives, I argue that the RCC should be treated as an instance of reciprocal conjunction. This more specific way to approach the RCC addresses the long-reported speakers’ intuition that this construction is best used when its members are “somehow related” or when the events in question occur in spatiotemporal proximity. Furthermore, my approach explains why the RCC can still be interpreted distributively when the abovementioned relatedness requirement is met, even as the collective interpretation might be strongly preferred.
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