{"title":"Does D Select the CP in Light Verb Constructions? A Reply to Hankamer and Mikkelsen 2021","authors":"Sadhwi Srinivas;Géraldine Legendre","doi":"10.1162/ling_a_00477","DOIUrl":"10.1162/ling_a_00477","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48044,"journal":{"name":"Linguistic Inquiry","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49356014","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Probe Specification and Agreement Variation: Evidence from the Algonquian Inverse","authors":"Will Oxford","doi":"10.1162/ling_a_00478","DOIUrl":"10.1162/ling_a_00478","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48044,"journal":{"name":"Linguistic Inquiry","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43345497","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Bruening (2018) uses the facts of anaphora and depictive modification to justify non-small-clause analyses of resultative constructions, caused-motion constructions, verb-particle constructions, and double object constructions: these constructions behave differently from canonical small clause constructions in terms of anaphora and depictive modification. In this reply, we argue against treating these tests as reliable diagnostics of small clauses. For one thing, we show that small clauses may have two different kinds of interpretations: they can be either semantically complete or incomplete. For another, Bruening’s (2018) arguments rely on some particular assumptions about anaphora and depictive modification which, we argue, are not without problems. If we adopt another set of reasonable assumptions, those facts of anaphora and depictive modification can be accounted for via the two kinds of interpretations for small clauses and thus do not argue in favor of non-small-clause analyses of the relevant constructions.
{"title":"Anaphora and Depictives Do Not Rule Out Small Clause Approaches to Argument Structure: A Reply to Bruening 2018","authors":"Yehao Hu, Gong Cheng","doi":"10.1162/ling_a_00536","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/ling_a_00536","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Bruening (2018) uses the facts of anaphora and depictive modification to justify non-small-clause analyses of resultative constructions, caused-motion constructions, verb-particle constructions, and double object constructions: these constructions behave differently from canonical small clause constructions in terms of anaphora and depictive modification. In this reply, we argue against treating these tests as reliable diagnostics of small clauses. For one thing, we show that small clauses may have two different kinds of interpretations: they can be either semantically complete or incomplete. For another, Bruening’s (2018) arguments rely on some particular assumptions about anaphora and depictive modification which, we argue, are not without problems. If we adopt another set of reasonable assumptions, those facts of anaphora and depictive modification can be accounted for via the two kinds of interpretations for small clauses and thus do not argue in favor of non-small-clause analyses of the relevant constructions.","PeriodicalId":48044,"journal":{"name":"Linguistic Inquiry","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-06-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141361285","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this paper we reply to the objections raised against a connection between Double Object Constructions (DOC) and to-constructions and present new arguments showing the empirical and theoretical advantages of derivational analyses over non-derivational ones. We argue that to-constructions and DOCs share a common substructure—where the theme is higher than the goal—that construction-based analyses fail to capture, both crosslinguistically and English-internally. We also argue that variation on the lexical properties of verbs and adpositions is the right tool to account for the alternation.
{"title":"In the Beginning Was a to-Phrase","authors":"Javier Ormazabal, Juan Romero","doi":"10.1162/ling_a_00534","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/ling_a_00534","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In this paper we reply to the objections raised against a connection between Double Object Constructions (DOC) and to-constructions and present new arguments showing the empirical and theoretical advantages of derivational analyses over non-derivational ones. We argue that to-constructions and DOCs share a common substructure—where the theme is higher than the goal—that construction-based analyses fail to capture, both crosslinguistically and English-internally. We also argue that variation on the lexical properties of verbs and adpositions is the right tool to account for the alternation.","PeriodicalId":48044,"journal":{"name":"Linguistic Inquiry","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-05-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140979684","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this article, I argue that when movement maps onto a λ-bound variable (a “trace”), that variable must be of an individual semantic type, such as type e or type d. Thus, even though natural language has expressions of higher types, these expressions cannot be represented as traces. When an individual-type trace would not be able to semantically compose in the launching site of movement, the moved element is forced to syntactically reconstruct. The motivation for this constraint on traces comes from a detailed investigation of how DPs in their different semantic guises—entities, properties, and generalized quantifiers—are interpreted when they move. I then argue that strong definite descriptions exhibit the same type-based restriction—namely, they cannot occur in higher-type positions, which I take as evidence for the theory that traces are definite descriptions.
在本文中，我认为当移动映射到一个 λ 绑定的变量（"轨迹"）时，该变量必须是一个单独的语义类型，如 e 型或 d 型。当一个单独类型的踪迹无法在移动的发射地点进行语义组合时，被移动的元素就会被迫进行语法重构。对痕迹进行这种限制的动机来自于对不同语义形态的 DP（实体、属性和广义量词）在移动时如何解释的详细研究。然后，我论证了强定语描述也表现出同样的基于类型的限制--即它们不能出现在更高类型的位置上，我将此作为踪迹是定语描述这一理论的证据。
{"title":"(Im)possible Traces","authors":"Ethan Poole","doi":"10.1162/ling_a_00467","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/ling_a_00467","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In this article, I argue that when movement maps onto a λ-bound variable (a “trace”), that variable must be of an individual semantic type, such as type <em>e</em> or type <em>d</em>. Thus, even though natural language has expressions of higher types, these expressions cannot be represented as traces. When an individual-type trace would not be able to semantically compose in the launching site of movement, the moved element is forced to syntactically reconstruct. The motivation for this constraint on traces comes from a detailed investigation of how DPs in their different semantic guises—entities, properties, and generalized quantifiers—are interpreted when they move. I then argue that strong definite descriptions exhibit the same type-based restriction—namely, they cannot occur in higher-type positions, which I take as evidence for the theory that traces <em>are</em> definite descriptions.</p>","PeriodicalId":48044,"journal":{"name":"Linguistic Inquiry","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140582135","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ā-Probing for the Closest DP","authors":"Kenyon Branan;Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine","doi":"10.1162/ling_a_00459","DOIUrl":"10.1162/ling_a_00459","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48044,"journal":{"name":"Linguistic Inquiry","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=10499279","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45523245","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Nasal Assimilation Counterfeeding and Allomorphy in Haitian: Nothing Is Still Something!","authors":"Mohamed Lahrouchi;Shanti Ulfsbjorninn","doi":"10.1162/ling_a_00469","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/ling_a_00469","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48044,"journal":{"name":"Linguistic Inquiry","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140606014","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The possessive dative construction has been widely adopted as an unaccusativity diagnostic (Borer and Grodzinsky 1986). Gafter (2014) casts doubt on the relevance of unaccusativity to the acceptability of the construction. We ran a series of acceptability judgment experiments to investigate the validity of the possessive dative construction as an unaccusativity diagnostic, controlling for possible confounds such as animacy, definiteness, plausibility, lexical choice, type of possession and context salience. The experiments reveal that possessive datives are significantly more acceptable with unaccusative verbs than with unergatives, including reflexive and emission verbs. We conclude that unaccusatives, but not unergatives, are grammatical in the construction, and defend a structural account of the data.
{"title":"The Relevance of Unaccusativity to Possessive Datives","authors":"Ziv Plotnik, Aya Meltzer-Asscher, Tal Siloni","doi":"10.1162/ling_a_00532","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/ling_a_00532","url":null,"abstract":"The possessive dative construction has been widely adopted as an unaccusativity diagnostic (Borer and Grodzinsky 1986). Gafter (2014) casts doubt on the relevance of unaccusativity to the acceptability of the construction. We ran a series of acceptability judgment experiments to investigate the validity of the possessive dative construction as an unaccusativity diagnostic, controlling for possible confounds such as animacy, definiteness, plausibility, lexical choice, type of possession and context salience. The experiments reveal that possessive datives are significantly more acceptable with unaccusative verbs than with unergatives, including reflexive and emission verbs. We conclude that unaccusatives, but not unergatives, are grammatical in the construction, and defend a structural account of the data.","PeriodicalId":48044,"journal":{"name":"Linguistic Inquiry","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140602131","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
How much of our linguistic knowledge is innate? According to much of theoretical linguistics, a fair amount. One of the best-known (and most contested) kinds of evidence for a large innate endowment is the so-called argument from the poverty of the stimulus (APS). In a nutshell, an APS obtains when human learners systematically make inductive leaps that are not warranted by the linguistic evidence. A weakness of the APS has been that it is very hard to assess what is warranted by the linguistic evidence. Current Artificial Neural Networks appear to offer a handle on this challenge, and a growing literature over the past few years has started to explore the potential implications of such models to questions of innateness. We focus here on Wilcox et al. (2023), who use several different networks to examine the available evidence as it pertains to wh-movement, including island constraints. They conclude that the (presumably linguistically-neutral) networks acquire an adequate knowledge of wh-movement, thus undermining an APS in this domain. We examine the evidence further, looking in particular at parasitic gaps and across-the-board movement, and argue that current networks do not, in fact, succeed in acquiring or even adequately approximating wh-movement from training corpora that roughly correspond in size to the linguistic input that children receive. We also show that the performance of one of the models improves considerably when the training data are artificially enriched with instances of parasitic gaps and across-the-board movement. This finding suggests, albeit tentatively, that the failure of the networks when trained on natural, unenriched corpora is due to the insufficient richness of the linguistic input, thus supporting the APS.
{"title":"Large Language Models and the Argument from the Poverty of the Stimulus","authors":"Nur Lan, Emmanuel Chemla, Roni Katzir","doi":"10.1162/ling_a_00533","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/ling_a_00533","url":null,"abstract":"How much of our linguistic knowledge is innate? According to much of theoretical linguistics, a fair amount. One of the best-known (and most contested) kinds of evidence for a large innate endowment is the so-called argument from the poverty of the stimulus (APS). In a nutshell, an APS obtains when human learners systematically make inductive leaps that are not warranted by the linguistic evidence. A weakness of the APS has been that it is very hard to assess what is warranted by the linguistic evidence. Current Artificial Neural Networks appear to offer a handle on this challenge, and a growing literature over the past few years has started to explore the potential implications of such models to questions of innateness. We focus here on Wilcox et al. (2023), who use several different networks to examine the available evidence as it pertains to wh-movement, including island constraints. They conclude that the (presumably linguistically-neutral) networks acquire an adequate knowledge of wh-movement, thus undermining an APS in this domain. We examine the evidence further, looking in particular at parasitic gaps and across-the-board movement, and argue that current networks do not, in fact, succeed in acquiring or even adequately approximating wh-movement from training corpora that roughly correspond in size to the linguistic input that children receive. We also show that the performance of one of the models improves considerably when the training data are artificially enriched with instances of parasitic gaps and across-the-board movement. This finding suggests, albeit tentatively, that the failure of the networks when trained on natural, unenriched corpora is due to the insufficient richness of the linguistic input, thus supporting the APS.","PeriodicalId":48044,"journal":{"name":"Linguistic Inquiry","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140582142","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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