Across many languages, multiple sluicing obeys a clausemate constraint. This can be understood on the empirically well-supported assumption that covert phrasal wh-movement is clause-bounded and subject to Superiority. We provide independent evidence for syntactic structure at the ellipsis site and for locality constraints on movement operations within the ellipsis site. The fact that the distribution of multiple sluicing is substantially narrower than that of multiple wh-questions, on their single-pair as well as their pair-list reading, entails that there must be mechanisms for scoping in-situ wh-phrases that do not rely on covert phrasal wh-movement. We adopt the choice-functional account for single-pair readings. For pair-list readings, we develop a novel functional analysis, argue for the functional basis of pair-list readings, and present a new perspective on pair-list readings of questions with quantifiers.
{"title":"On the Syntax of Multiple Sluicing and What It Tells Us about Wh-Scope Taking","authors":"Klaus Abels;Veneeta Dayal","doi":"10.1162/ling_a_00448","DOIUrl":"10.1162/ling_a_00448","url":null,"abstract":"Across many languages, multiple sluicing obeys a clausemate constraint. This can be understood on the empirically well-supported assumption that covert phrasal wh-movement is clause-bounded and subject to Superiority. We provide independent evidence for syntactic structure at the ellipsis site and for locality constraints on movement operations within the ellipsis site. The fact that the distribution of multiple sluicing is substantially narrower than that of multiple wh-questions, on their single-pair as well as their pair-list reading, entails that there must be mechanisms for scoping in-situ wh-phrases that do not rely on covert phrasal wh-movement. We adopt the choice-functional account for single-pair readings. For pair-list readings, we develop a novel functional analysis, argue for the functional basis of pair-list readings, and present a new perspective on pair-list readings of questions with quantifiers.","PeriodicalId":48044,"journal":{"name":"Linguistic Inquiry","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-06-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48743070","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}
I argue that the well-known islandhood of adjunct prepositional phrases does not substantially derive from their adjuncthood. Instead, islandhood of these domains derives from various factors that are orthogonal to the argument/adjunct distinction, including PP-internal structure, lexical properties of prepositions, and semantico-pragmatic construal. To show this, I demonstrate that PP-islandhood cross-cuts the argument/adjunct distinction. In particular, (i) PPs with NP complements are generally not islands, (ii) PPs with tensed clausal complements are generally (strong) islands, and (iii) PPs with gerundive complements are generally (weak) islands. These generalizations hold whether or not the relevant PP has a prototypical adjunct function.
{"title":"The Argument/Adjunct Distinction Does Not Condition Islandhood of PPs in English","authors":"Andrew McInnerney","doi":"10.1162/ling_a_00511","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/ling_a_00511","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 I argue that the well-known islandhood of adjunct prepositional phrases does not substantially derive from their adjuncthood. Instead, islandhood of these domains derives from various factors that are orthogonal to the argument/adjunct distinction, including PP-internal structure, lexical properties of prepositions, and semantico-pragmatic construal. To show this, I demonstrate that PP-islandhood cross-cuts the argument/adjunct distinction. In particular, (i) PPs with NP complements are generally not islands, (ii) PPs with tensed clausal complements are generally (strong) islands, and (iii) PPs with gerundive complements are generally (weak) islands. These generalizations hold whether or not the relevant PP has a prototypical adjunct function.","PeriodicalId":48044,"journal":{"name":"Linguistic Inquiry","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48474236","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}
This paper examines the typology of the ordering of contrastive elements. It is shown first that languages including English, French, Italian, Japanese and Georgian ban a contrastively focused object from preceding a contrastive topic subject. It is further observed that among these languages, only English and French allow a contrastively focused subject to precede a contrastive topic object. In order to explain this typology, an extended version of Contiguity Theory is proposed. The account is further compared with some other potential alternative accounts and argued to be a more desirable account than them, with some additional empirical virtues.
{"title":"Contiguity Theory and the Ordering of Contrastive Elements","authors":"Daiki Matsumoto","doi":"10.1162/ling_a_00509","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/ling_a_00509","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This paper examines the typology of the ordering of contrastive elements. It is shown first that languages including English, French, Italian, Japanese and Georgian ban a contrastively focused object from preceding a contrastive topic subject. It is further observed that among these languages, only English and French allow a contrastively focused subject to precede a contrastive topic object. In order to explain this typology, an extended version of Contiguity Theory is proposed. The account is further compared with some other potential alternative accounts and argued to be a more desirable account than them, with some additional empirical virtues.","PeriodicalId":48044,"journal":{"name":"Linguistic Inquiry","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49551665","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}
Theories of argument ellipsis based on PF deletion or LF copying do not generate predictions regarding possible constraints on the semantic type of the elided argument. Yet such constraints obtain, as documented in Landau 2022: only type-e arguments can be targeted by argument ellipsis. Focusing on quantificational arguments here, I show that when they yield readings expressible by type-e denotations, they may elide, but when they denote genuine generalized quantifiers, they may not. Utilizing the restricted range of interpretations made available by choice function binding and E-type pronouns, the analysis derives a number of peculiar scopal properties of indefinite NPs, quantifiers, and exceptive phrases under argument ellipsis.
{"title":"Type-Restricted Argument Ellipsis and Generalized Quantifiers","authors":"I. Landau","doi":"10.1162/ling_a_00489","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/ling_a_00489","url":null,"abstract":"Theories of argument ellipsis based on PF deletion or LF copying do not generate predictions regarding possible constraints on the semantic type of the elided argument. Yet such constraints obtain, as documented in Landau 2022: only type-e arguments can be targeted by argument ellipsis. Focusing on quantificational arguments here, I show that when they yield readings expressible by type-e denotations, they may elide, but when they denote genuine generalized quantifiers, they may not. Utilizing the restricted range of interpretations made available by choice function binding and E-type pronouns, the analysis derives a number of peculiar scopal properties of indefinite NPs, quantifiers, and exceptive phrases under argument ellipsis.","PeriodicalId":48044,"journal":{"name":"Linguistic Inquiry","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-04-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45290084","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}
Binding theory Condition A must be so formulated as to accommodate the range of behaviors exhibited by anaphors crosslinguistically. In this respect, the behavior of the Modern Greek anaphor o eaos mu is theoretically important as it has been reported to display a number of unusual distributional properties, thus leading to treatments by Iatridou (1988) or Anagnostopoulou and Everaert (1999) dierent from that of standard anaphors represented by English himself and thus requiring a rethinking of the classic Condition A descriptive generalization and its theoretical derivation. is paper revisits the distribution of this expression documenting rst that previous discussions are subject to a confound as this expression is not always a reexive. Controlling for this confound and relying on new data surveys, we conclude that when anaphoric, o eaos mu is in fact a well behaved standard anaphor from the point of view of the standard Condition A (akin to Chomsky 1986). ese surveys support some aspects of the empirical picture presented in Anagnostopoulou and Everaert (1999) but not others. It does support two important conclusions of theirs, namely that this expression cannot be used logophorically and that as nominative subject, it is allowed but in derived subject positions only. is in turn leads to a number of new (theoretical) consequences and predictions: (a) the absence of logophoric usage can be used to determine the domain of application of Condition A independently from the inanimacy criterion used in Charnavel and Sportiche (2016), and yields a picture consistent with its ndings, (b) the ability of anaphors to function as nominative subjects can be reduced to dierences in their internal structure (Greek o eaos mu 6= English himself), (c) an inuential theoretical innovation made in Anagnostopoulou and Everaert (1999) which takes the reexivization mechanism to be self incorporation as a general solution to why self induces reexive readings cannot be maintained as a general mechanism underlying anaphor binding in Greek. ∗Email contact: n.angelopouloss1@gmail.com, sportich@g.ucla.edu
约束理论:条件A的制定必须能适应回指在跨语言上所表现出的行为范围。在这方面,现代希腊语对ea ø os mu的比喻行为在理论上是重要的,因为据报道,它显示出许多不寻常的分布特性,因此导致Iatridou(1988)或Anagnostopoulou和Everaert(1999)的处理与英语本人所代表的标准比喻不同,因此需要重新思考经典条件a描述性概括及其理论推导。他的论文回顾了这个表达式的分布,首先证明了之前的讨论是混乱的,因为这个表达式并不总是一个合理的。控制这种混淆并依靠新的数据调查,我们得出结论,当回指时,从标准条件a的角度来看,实际上是一个表现良好的标准回指(类似于乔姆斯基1986)。这些调查支持Anagnostopoulou和Everaert(1999)中提出的实证图景的某些方面,但不支持其他方面。它确实支持了他们的两个重要结论,即,这个表达不能在词义上使用,作为主格主语,它是允许的,但只能在派生的主语位置上使用。’反过来又导致了许多新的(理论的)结果和预测:(a)的缺失logophoric使用可以用来确定应用程序的域的条件独立于inanimacy准则用于Charnavel和Sportiche(2016),和收益率一幅符合其扩散连接,(b)照应语的功能作为记名的对象可以减少dierences在他们的内部结构(希腊o eaos 6μ=英语自己),(c) Anagnostopoulou和Everaert(1999)的一项关于隐喻的理论创新,该理论将自我整合的隐喻化机制作为一般解决方案,以解释为什么自我诱导的隐喻阅读不能作为希腊语中隐喻结合的一般机制。*电子邮件联系方式:n.angelopouloss1@gmail.com, sportich@g.ucla.edu
{"title":"Treating Greek o eaftos mu as a Regular Anaphor: Theoretical Implications","authors":"Nikos Angelopoulos, Dominique Sportiche","doi":"10.1162/ling_a_00508","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/ling_a_00508","url":null,"abstract":"Binding theory Condition A must be so formulated as to accommodate the range of behaviors exhibited by anaphors crosslinguistically. In this respect, the behavior of the Modern Greek anaphor o eaos mu is theoretically important as it has been reported to display a number of unusual distributional properties, thus leading to treatments by Iatridou (1988) or Anagnostopoulou and Everaert (1999) dierent from that of standard anaphors represented by English himself and thus requiring a rethinking of the classic Condition A descriptive generalization and its theoretical derivation. is paper revisits the distribution of this expression documenting rst that previous discussions are subject to a confound as this expression is not always a reexive. Controlling for this confound and relying on new data surveys, we conclude that when anaphoric, o eaos mu is in fact a well behaved standard anaphor from the point of view of the standard Condition A (akin to Chomsky 1986). ese surveys support some aspects of the empirical picture presented in Anagnostopoulou and Everaert (1999) but not others. It does support two important conclusions of theirs, namely that this expression cannot be used logophorically and that as nominative subject, it is allowed but in derived subject positions only. is in turn leads to a number of new (theoretical) consequences and predictions: (a) the absence of logophoric usage can be used to determine the domain of application of Condition A independently from the inanimacy criterion used in Charnavel and Sportiche (2016), and yields a picture consistent with its ndings, (b) the ability of anaphors to function as nominative subjects can be reduced to dierences in their internal structure (Greek o eaos mu 6= English himself), (c) an inuential theoretical innovation made in Anagnostopoulou and Everaert (1999) which takes the reexivization mechanism to be self incorporation as a general solution to why self induces reexive readings cannot be maintained as a general mechanism underlying anaphor binding in Greek. ∗Email contact: n.angelopouloss1@gmail.com, sportich@g.ucla.edu","PeriodicalId":48044,"journal":{"name":"Linguistic Inquiry","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-04-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43198263","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}
Since Halle 1962, explicit algebraic variables (often called alpha notation) have been commonplace in phonological theory. However, Hayes and Wilson (2008) proposed a variable-free model of phonotactic learning, sparking a debate about whether such algebraic representations are necessary to capture human phonological acquisition. While past experimental work has found evidence that suggested a need for variables in models of phonology (Berent et al. 2012, Moreton 2012, Gallagher 2013), this article presents a novel mechanism, Probabilistic Feature Attention, that allows a variable-free model of phonotactics to predict a number of these phenomena. This approach also captures experimental results involving phonological generalization that cannot be explained by variables. These results cast doubt on whether variables are necessary to capture human-like phonotactic learning and provide a useful alternative to such representations.
自1962年Halle以来,显式代数变量(通常称为阿尔法记法)在语音理论中已经很常见。然而,Hayes和Wilson(2008)提出了一个无变量的语音策略学习模型,引发了关于这种代数表示是否有必要捕捉人类语音习得的争论。虽然过去的实验工作已经发现证据表明在音韵学模型中需要变量(Berent et al.2012,Moreton 2012,Gallagher 2013),但本文提出了一种新的机制,即概率特征注意,它允许无变量的表音策略模型来预测许多这样的现象。这种方法还捕捉到了无法用变量解释的涉及语音泛化的实验结果。这些结果让人怀疑,变量是否是捕捉类人发音策略学习所必需的,并为这种表示提供有用的替代方案。
{"title":"Probabilistic Feature Attention as an Alternative to Variables in Phonotactic Learning","authors":"Brandon Prickett","doi":"10.1162/ling_a_00440","DOIUrl":"10.1162/ling_a_00440","url":null,"abstract":"Since Halle 1962, explicit algebraic variables (often called alpha notation) have been commonplace in phonological theory. However, Hayes and Wilson (2008) proposed a variable-free model of phonotactic learning, sparking a debate about whether such algebraic representations are necessary to capture human phonological acquisition. While past experimental work has found evidence that suggested a need for variables in models of phonology (Berent et al. 2012, Moreton 2012, Gallagher 2013), this article presents a novel mechanism, Probabilistic Feature Attention, that allows a variable-free model of phonotactics to predict a number of these phenomena. This approach also captures experimental results involving phonological generalization that cannot be explained by variables. These results cast doubt on whether variables are necessary to capture human-like phonotactic learning and provide a useful alternative to such representations.","PeriodicalId":48044,"journal":{"name":"Linguistic Inquiry","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-03-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49303127","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":"Salvation by Deletion in Nupe","authors":"Gesoel Mendes;Jason Kandybowicz","doi":"10.1162/ling_a_00434","DOIUrl":"10.1162/ling_a_00434","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48044,"journal":{"name":"Linguistic Inquiry","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-03-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47110226","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}
Traditional approaches to verbal periphrasis (compound tenses) treat auxiliary verbs as lexical items that enter syntactic derivation like any other lexical item, via Selection/Merge. An alternative view is that auxiliary verbs are inserted into a previously built structure (e.g., Bach 1967, Arregi 2000, Embick 2000, Cowper 2010, Bjorkman 2011, Arregi and Klecha 2015). Arguments for the insertion approach include auxiliaries’ last-resort distribution and the fact that, in many languages, auxiliaries are not systematically associated with a given inflectional category (Bjorkman’s (2011) “overflow” distribution). Here, I argue against the insertion approach. I demonstrate that the overflow pattern and last-resort distribution follow from Cyclic Selection (Pietraszko 2017)—a Merge counterpart of Cyclic Agree (Béjar and Rezac 2009). I also show that the insertion approach makes wrong predictions about compound tenses in Swahili, a language with overflow periphrasis. Under my approach, an auxiliary verb is a verbal head externally merged as a specifier of a functional head, such as T. It then undergoes m-merger with that head, instantiating an External-Merge version of Matushansky’s (2006) conception of head movement.
{"title":"Cyclic Selection: Auxiliaries Are Merged, Not Inserted","authors":"Asia Pietraszko","doi":"10.1162/ling_a_00439","DOIUrl":"10.1162/ling_a_00439","url":null,"abstract":"Traditional approaches to verbal periphrasis (compound tenses) treat auxiliary verbs as lexical items that enter syntactic derivation like any other lexical item, via Selection/Merge. An alternative view is that auxiliary verbs are inserted into a previously built structure (e.g., Bach 1967, Arregi 2000, Embick 2000, Cowper 2010, Bjorkman 2011, Arregi and Klecha 2015). Arguments for the insertion approach include auxiliaries’ last-resort distribution and the fact that, in many languages, auxiliaries are not systematically associated with a given inflectional category (Bjorkman’s (2011) “overflow” distribution). Here, I argue against the insertion approach. I demonstrate that the overflow pattern and last-resort distribution follow from Cyclic Selection (Pietraszko 2017)—a Merge counterpart of Cyclic Agree (Béjar and Rezac 2009). I also show that the insertion approach makes wrong predictions about compound tenses in Swahili, a language with overflow periphrasis. Under my approach, an auxiliary verb is a verbal head externally merged as a specifier of a functional head, such as T. It then undergoes m-merger with that head, instantiating an External-Merge version of Matushansky’s (2006) conception of head movement.","PeriodicalId":48044,"journal":{"name":"Linguistic Inquiry","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-03-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48990728","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 seminal work, Potts (2005) claimed that the behavior of “supplements”—appositive relative clauses (ARCs) and nominals—offers a powerful argument in favor of a multidimensional semantics, one in which certain expressions fail to interact scopally with various operators because their meaning is located in a new semantic dimension. Focusing on ARCs, with data from English, French, and German (Poschmann 2018), I explore an alternative to Potts’s bidimensional account in which (a) appositives may be syntactically attached with matrix scope, despite their appearance in embedded positions, as in McCawley 1981; (b) contra McCawley, they may also be syntactically attached within the scope of other operators, in which case they semantically interact with them; (c) they are semantically conjoined with the rest of the sentence, but (d) they give rise to nontrivial projection facts when they do not have matrix scope. In effect, the proposed analysis accounts for most of the complexity of these data by positing a more articulated syntax and pragmatics, while eschewing the use of a new dimension of meaning.
{"title":"Supplements without Bidimensionalism","authors":"Philippe Schlenker","doi":"10.1162/ling_a_00442","DOIUrl":"10.1162/ling_a_00442","url":null,"abstract":"In seminal work, Potts (2005) claimed that the behavior of “supplements”—appositive relative clauses (ARCs) and nominals—offers a powerful argument in favor of a multidimensional semantics, one in which certain expressions fail to interact scopally with various operators because their meaning is located in a new semantic dimension. Focusing on ARCs, with data from English, French, and German (Poschmann 2018), I explore an alternative to Potts’s bidimensional account in which (a) appositives may be syntactically attached with matrix scope, despite their appearance in embedded positions, as in McCawley 1981; (b) contra McCawley, they may also be syntactically attached within the scope of other operators, in which case they semantically interact with them; (c) they are semantically conjoined with the rest of the sentence, but (d) they give rise to nontrivial projection facts when they do not have matrix scope. In effect, the proposed analysis accounts for most of the complexity of these data by positing a more articulated syntax and pragmatics, while eschewing the use of a new dimension of meaning.","PeriodicalId":48044,"journal":{"name":"Linguistic Inquiry","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-03-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41393595","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}