The Syntax of Concessive Clauses: Evidence from Exempt Anaphora

Charnavel (2019b) argues that the acceptability of exempt anaphors in adjunct clauses can be used to diagnose the height of those clauses. The goal of this paper is first to provide experimental support for this diagnostic and then to use it to probe the syntax of two types of concessive clauses in English, namely clauses headed by "even though" and "although". The distribution of exempt anaphors reveals that "even though"-clauses attach lower than "although"-clauses. However, this result seems to contradict more standard scopal tests (such as pronominal binding) suggesting that "even though"-clauses scope as high as "although"-clauses. We argue that this apparent conflict reveals that more fine-grained scopal distinctions are needed both between different types of adjunct clauses and between different types of DPs.