Talk abstracts

Spring 2024

April 5 | Asia Pietraszko  (University of Rochester)

Clause internal phase and successive cyclic A-movement"

Phase Theory posits that each clause consists of two locality domains (phases): the complete clause (CP) and a clause internal domain located roughly around vP. A common type of evidence for this claim comes from footprints of successive cyclic movement observed at the edges of both CP and vP. However, the two domains famously differ in their opacity for syntactic operations such as A-movement and phi-agreement, with vP being significantly more transparent than CP. This asymmetry has led some authors to question the phasehood of vP, especially in the context of an alternative explanation of intermediate movement through vP (Keine & Zeijlstra 2023). I will argue in this talk that operational opacity is indeed observed at the clausal middle field, supporting the clause-internal phase hypothesis. In particular, I argue that VoiceP in Zimbabwean Ndebele is opaque for A-movement and phi-agreement. The facts additionally support the claim that successive cyclic movement, both A and A-bar, is probe-driven. Finally, I offer some thoughts on why the VoiceP/vP phase is more transparent than the CP phase. 

March 29 | Rebecca Jarvis (UC Berkeley)

The source(s) of movement-derived resumptive pronouns: Two asymmetries in Atchan

Recent work has shown that resumptive pronouns can be generated under movement, and that in such configurations the resumptive element can mismatch its antecedent in some or all phi-features (van Urk 2018, Scott 2021, Georgi & Amaechi 2022). To account for these mismatches, these works assume the existence of a cross-linguistically-unified Copy Deletion algorithm that deletes certain phi-related structure from lower movement copies, rendering them more ‘default.’ In this talk, I present data on resumption in Atchan (also called Ébrié; Kwa, Côte d’Ivoire), which complicates predicted typologies of movement-derived resumptives in two ways: the phi-faithfulness of resumptive elements in Atchan depends both on the external merge site of the moving element (subject or PP object) and on the type of moving element (pronoun or lexical DP). To account for these asymmetries, I propose that we must allow for two independent sources of movement-derived resumption in the grammar: we must appeal both to the Copy Deletion algorithm and also to morphological operations that feed resumption. The latter is broadly in line with Nunes (2004) and Kandybowicz (2006), though I propose that it is m-merger (cf. Matushansky 2006) that feeds resumption in these cases, rather than Fusion (cf. Halle & Marantz 1993, 1994).

March 08 | Penelope Daniel (UConn)

Parameters of differential argument marking

Differential argument marking (DAM) refers to case patterns where case-marking is conditioned by semantic properties of an argument. Typically, the argument with the relevant semantic property is the same argument that receives the marked case. Surprisingly, however, there are also DAM patterns where a semantic property of one argument influences the case of another, including a little-known pattern in Ik (Kuliak) where the person of the subject determines the case of the object. In this talk, I show that previous approaches to DAM do not address the full range of DAM phenomena, and I present a new analysis that unifies all of the DAM patterns as phenomena driven by valuation of interpretable features.

March 01 |  Ka Fai Yip  (Yale University)

Biclausal multidominant syntax of right dislocation in Chinese

In this talk, I argue for a novel biclausal multidominant approach to right dislocation (RD) in Chinese languages (Cantonese and Mandarin), and moreover propose two diagnostic tests for multidominant structures. 

The first part of the talk revisits the clausal structure of RD. I present arguments from my recent manuscript (Yip 2024, https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/007912) that RD, including gapped and gapless variants, underlyingly consists of two clauses (Cheung 2015, Tang 2015; contra. Cheung 2009, Lee 2017, 2021, Lai 2019). The gapped RD only differs from the gapless one in having empty categories in the first clause, and they both involve movement and non-pronunciation of the remnant materials in the second clause.

The second part addresses the nature of the above-mentioned non-pronunciation in RD, which I propose to be a result of multidominance (see Wilder 1999, Citko 2005, Gračanin-Yuksek 2007, i.a.). Crucial evidence comes from RD of exclusive focus adverbs ‘only’ and doudai/daodi ‘(wh-)the-hell’ adverbs in Chinese. I demonstrate that these adverbs, when they are overt, must c-command the pronounced copy of their focus/wh-associates. Ellipsis or movement of their associates render the focus or wh-association impossible. This generalization, coupled with a biclausal structure, naturally calls for a multidominant analysis of RD. I further show that Right Node Raising constructions, as well as other multidominant structures, similarly allow such focus association and wh-association.

February 23 |  Ruth Kramer (Georgetown University)

Discontinuous agreement and haplology: evidence from Amharic imperatives

Discontinuous agreement has been the focus of considerable research, especially within the Afroasiatic language family.  However, most previous work has focused on how exactly discontinuous agreement is generated and has relied on data from verbs with relatively basic tense, aspect and mood.  In this talk, I investigate a different kind of discontinuous agreement puzzle in an atypical kind of verb, namely, why and how the agreement prefix (but not the agreement suffix) is absent from imperative verbs in Amharic.  I argue that the agreement prefix undergoes morphological haplology because it repeats the second person features found in the imperative head. I then demonstrate how a haplology approach decides between two different analyses of discontinuous agreement: it furnishes evidence against a Linearization analysis (Harbour 2008a, 2016, 2023) and in favor of a Metathesis analysis (Hewett 2023ab).  Overall, the talk develops a novel approach to imperative inflection (potentially generalizable beyond Amharic), supports a Metathesis approach to discontinuous agreement, and advances our understanding of morphological haplology.

February 16 | Peter Grishin (MIT)

Clause size, wh movement, and long-distance agreement in Passamaquoddy-Wolastoqey

I argue that clauses in Passamaquoddy-Wolastoqey (Eastern Algonquian) come in (at least) three sizes---large CPs (CP2), small CPs (CP1), and bare TPs---examining their internal syntax, their distribution, and their semantic interpretation. I then show how we can use these clause size differences to derive the different behavior of long-distance wh movement out of and long-distance agreement into each of these types of clauses, given the following two additional assumptions: (i) a high locus for the CP phase within an expanded left periphery (i.e. CP2; Yoshimoto 2012, Carstens and Diercks 2013, a.o.); and (ii) an economy condition like Multitasking constraining the interaction of multiple probes on a single head (Pesetsky and Torrego 2001, van Urk and Richards 2015, a.o).

February 2 Maria Kouneli (Rutgers University)

Movement asymmetries in external possession as a diagnostic for possessor raising

In external possession, a noun phrase behaves semantically as a possessor (of another noun), but syntactically as an argument of the verb. There have been two broad types of approaches to the phenomenon in the literature: the base generation account, where the possessor is base-generated as an argument of the verb, and the possessor raising account, where the possessor is base-generated inside the noun phrase of the possessee and then moves to a higher projection. In this talk, I provide a description and analysis of external possession in Kipsigis (Nilotic; Kenya), arguing for a posessor raising analysis. I show that evidence for movement comes from a peculiar asymmetry between the possessee and the possessor in topicalization and relativization (two movement types that in Kipsigis have mixed A/A bar properties): while either argument of a double object construction can usually be relativized/topicalized in the language, only the possessor may move in external possession constructions, with relativization/topicalization of the possessee being impossible. I argue that this asymmetry arises because possessor raising creates a remnant DP(=the DP including the possessee) and movement of the remnant over the possessor would constitute a violation of the Müller-Takano generalization (Takano 1994, Müller 1996), according to which remnant movement of type α cannot take place if the movement step that created the remnant is also of type α. 

Fall 2023

December 8 Matthew Hewett (Georgetown University)

The precedence component to intervention effects: Evidence from English passives.

This talk reports and provides an account of the following novel generalization:

(1) When just one constituent can undergo passive A-movement in English, it is invariably the leftmost accessible passivizable constituent within vP.

I interpret (1) as indicating that English passive A-movement exhibits precedence-based intervention. Such precedence-based intervention effects are largely unexpected under traditional analyses of intervention based solely on structural prominence determined via asymmetric c-command (e.g. Relativized Minimality, the Minimal Link Condition, or Attract Closest). Instead, I argue that precedence-based intervention is derivable from the mechanics of probing under internal Merge. Specifically, sisters within the search domain of the probe are linearly ordered for evaluation and probing delves deeply into internally complex left sisters prior to considering right sisters. A major conclusion is that syntactic movement must be able to refer to linear precedence. Alternative conceivable analyses of the attested intervention effects which rely on obligatorily right-branching (i.e. descending) verb phrases are shown to be empirically inadequate based on evidence from do so—replacement and the anti-c-command condition on parasitic gap licensing. Indeed, parasitic gap licensing reveals the need for a non-c-command--based account of binding and licensing asymmetries within vP. I conclude by considering the role that precedence might play elsewhere in syntax, for instance in binding and in intervention in Ā-movement.

December 1 Johanna Benz (University of Pennsylvania)

The content reading in German nominalizations

In the investigation of nominalizations since Grimshaw (1990), we have learned a lot about the systematic ambiguity of nominals such as observation between an event reading (Complex Event Nominalization, CEN, Simple Event Nominalization, SEN) and a result reading (Result Nominalization, RN). The questions at the center of this investigation have been how this ambiguity arises and what it can tell us about the syntactic structure of nominalizations and their syntactic surroundings. I argue that another reading, the content reading, offers a window on the structure of nominalizations. Complex Content Nominalizations (CCNs) are neither SENs nor RNs, emphasizing the ambiguity problem in nominalization anew. I argue that German CCNs and their characteristic syntax of CP-complementation are best accommodated in a structural polysemy account of the type proposed in Wood (2023) for Icelandic CENs and RNs. While the addition of yet another reading is problematic for the prevalent homophony-based approaches to nominalization ambiguity, a small but `>2' set of readings is in fact expected once the readings are derived from the mechanisms of allosemy.

November 3 Phoevos Panagiotidis (University of Cyprus)

On roots, and why we care

This talk brings together what we learned about roots since we began considering them elements that directly participate in the syntactic computation, some 24 years ago. It focuses on the approach in Acquaviva & Panagiotidis (2012) and Harley (2014) that roots are mere indices, the only syntax-internal criterion of ‘lexical identity’.

The talk begins by discussing the radical lack of semantic content of roots and why they should not be identified with the forms realising them (their exponents), with special reference to suppletion. The talk concludes with describing an algorithm for the identification of roots during the acquisition process, one powered by both morphosyntactic acquisition and word learning.

October 27 Kenyon Branan (University of Göttingen) 

Syntax-phonology interactions and the Left Edge Ban

Syntax is commonly supposed to be autonomous, in the sense that it operates independent of considerations of other modules of the grammar, such as the phonology or the semantics. In this talk I develop an argument against the autonomy hypothesis: the syntax, in some cases, must make reference to phonological considerations in determining whether or not a syntactic operation, such as movement, should take place. The argument consists of two main parts: identifying a plausible restriction on phonological form that might motivate movement, and then demonstrating that syntactic movement does indeed take place to satisfy the restriction in question. 

Towards the first goal, I discuss the Final-over-Final Condition (Sheehan, Biberauer, Roberts and Holmberg 2017), a purportedly universal ban on certain recursive syntactic complementation structures. I discuss case studies from Finnish, Georgian, and Uyghur-Mandarin code-switching that suggest, minimally, that the FOFC should be thought of as a requirement that holds at PF. I further suggest that the FOFC be assimilated to a more general restriction on prosodic structure, termed the Left Edge Ban, discussed in extensive detail in Branan (under contract). This ban, crucially, may be satisfied by moving elements in the offending configuration to other positions in the clause. 

Towards the second goal, I provide a reasonably detailed discussion of a process of negation-triggered object preposing in Skou [Skou; Papua/Papua New Guinea]. While the language is generally SOV, and displays fairly inflexible word order, the arguments of a small class of verbs in the language must appear in a post-verbal position. However, in the context of a post-verbal negation particle, the aforementioned post-verbal arguments are obligatorily preposed. Noting that the presence of these post-verbal arguments between the verb and negation would lead to a violation of the Left Edge Ban, I suggest that movement is motivated to avoid violating this ban. I first show that a number of syntactic processes distinguish pre-verbal and post-verbal objects, and that arguments preposed under negation take on all relevant properties of pre-verbal objects, suggesting this movement takes place in the syntax. I further show that this process of object preposing fails to target a singular identifiable position in the clause, suggesting that preposing is not triggered by a syntactic feature located on a particular head (see also Kučerová 2007, Richards 2021 for arguments of this form). The most straightforward account, then, is one where movement takes place directly to create a well-formed phonological representation.

This suggests that we need a grammatical architecture where the syntax is allowed access to at least some phonological information, which comes into conflict with the autonomy hypothesis.

October 20  Carolina Fraga (CUNY)

Completive todo: Implications for Possessives, Existentials, and Locative Expressions 

In Spanish, the element todo ‘all’ agrees in gender and number with the noun it quantifies over (todas las ventanas ‘all.F.PL the.F.PL windows.F.PL’). In this talk I discuss a novel construction in Rioplatense Spanish, restricted to existentials and possessives, in which todo agrees in gender and number with a given nominal in the structure but is neither syntactically nor semantically related to it (e.g., Hay toda agua en el baño (have.PRS all.F.SG water.F.SG in the bathroom) ‘There’s water over the whole bathroom floor’). I argue that the syntax and the interpretation of this construction, which I have labeled the completive todo construction, can be explained only if todo ‘all’ is understood to be modifying a silent element (in the sense of Kayne 2004). In particular, I propose that completive todo sentences contain a silent SPACE element and a silent preposition WITH. Todo is the modifier of a PP headed by silent WITH and the nominal that agrees with todo (e.g., agua in Hay toda agua en el baño) is the complement of this silent P. This analysis has a series of welcome consequences. I show that it sheds light on the structure of existential sentences in Spanish and it supports the view put forth in Levinson 2011, contra Freeze 1992, that a single underlying structure for possessive structures cannot be maintained. It also furthers our understanding of other constructions such as the locative alternation (e.g., He loaded hay onto the truck./He loaded the truck with hay.) by offering a new explanation of the source of the holistic effect. Moreover, it holds the promise of deepening our understanding of possession and existence in other languages such as English, where the construction (I have all sand in my hair!), subject to dialectal variation, is also attested.

October 6  Adrian Stegovec  (University of Connecticut)

Short scrambling as smuggling: The argument from Slovenian ditransitives

Languages differ in how they realize ditransitive clauses: some, like English, have more than one option: a double object construction or a prepositional dative construction, others, like Japanese, Korean and most Slavic languages, only seem to allow the double object construction. In addition, languages of the latter type often allow a seemingly free alternation with respect to the order of the two objects. In the past, this free object order alternation was analyzed either as: optional movement of one object over the other (the scrambling analysis), or two distinct underlying ditransitive constructions (the dual base analysis). In this talk I will argue for a third type of analysis: one objects moves over the other smuggled inside the VP (cf. Collins 2005a,b).

I will use Slovenian (Slavic) as the main case study and show that neither the scrambling analysis nor the dual base analysis are fully satisfactory. The former faces problems with contexts where object order is restricted (causative and benefactive readings, verb sensitivity, and idiomatic readings), while the latter faces issues with explaining quantifier scope asymmetries while also introducing a lot of redundancy into the analysis that is not reflected in the cross-linguistically attested ditransitive case patterns. The proposed solution builds on the approach to projection of Chomsky (2013, 2015). The key is that when second object merges with a VP, it creates an ambiguous labeling scenario ({NP,VP}), which I argue has two equivalent resolutions: (i) movement of the VP with the first object inside (Kayne 2005; Collins 2021), or (ii) movement of the second object. This crucially derives both free object order in the general case and the restrictions on object order in select contexts, as due to the specifics of the VP-movement analysis it is possible for selectional restrictions to filter out either derivation (i) or (ii). Additionally, I will discuss how the proposed analysis can be extended to the English dative alternation and Romance ditransitives, and (time permitting) why comparable patterns in verb final languages like Japanese can also be analyzed in the same fashion.

September 29 Kenneth Hanson  (Stony Brook University)

A Computational Perspective on the Typology of Agreement

Agreement configurations across languages show extensive variation, including (1) which elements agree, (2) which elements may intervene, and (3) whether values are obtained from above or from below. What is striking about these configurations (among others) is that they all belong to the formal class tier-based strictly local (TSL), which was originally motivated to model long-distance phonotactics but has since been shown to encompass a wide array of of syntactic patterns, including movement and case dependencies (Graf 2022). TSL computa- tions are severely restricted in the range of patterns they can express, yet within this range a large fraction of what is possible does in fact occur, even just within the realm of agreement, suggesting that this characterization defines a natural set of parameters for variation.

The core properties that define a TSL pattern are relativized locality, invisibility, and block- ing. A simple example is subject-verb agreement, assumed to involve a 𝜙-probe on finite T:

·   Relativized locality: usually, the probe agrees with the closest DP in its domain; more distant DPs are inaccessible.

·   Invisibility:someDPsarepassedoverasifinvisible,oftenthosemarkedwithanoblique case, such that the probe finds a more distant nominative DP instead.

·   Blocking: some elements block agreement even though they do not participate. Such elements include finite C in many languages, and sometimes certain DPs.

Furthermore, TSL is agnostic to directionality, and indeed there seem to be probes that look up rather than down. Concord within the DP can be analyzed this way, but the best example I have found comes from complementizer agreement (Diercks 2013). In these respects, agree- ment is almost perfectly analogous to vowel harmony, where we find invisible and blocking vowels, and both progressive and regressive harmony. Looking farther afield, even seemingly complex syntactic patterns, such as A′-agreement (Van Urk 2015) and those modeled using the interaction-satisfaction theory (Deal 2015) fit neatly into the predicted typology.

The formalization I have in mind is based on command strings (Graf and Shafiei 2019) with some ideas adapted from De Santo and Graf (2019). But the focus of the talk will be on the patterns themselves. As for the consequences, first and foremost, TSL patterns are efficiently learnable from positive data, suggesting that the typology of linguistic patterns emerges in part from the process of language acquisition (Lambert et al. 2021).

Spring 2023

Apr 7 Sandhya Sundaresan (Stony Brook University)

RELATE-ing replicative & non-replicative processes in syntax

Agree in Minimalism (Chomsky, 2001) is based on the idea that syntactic relationships are asymmetric dependencies between a probe (deficient for some feature α) & a goal (bearing α): feature-copying of α onto the probe by the goal redeems this asymmetry. Agree is thus crash-proof: the syntax will output all and only those outcomes involving replication of α across the probe & goal. Under a strongly Minimalist worldview, whereby Agree and Merge are the only syntactic operations, this predicts that all syntactic relationships should be replicative. This prediction is falsified in the case of phenomena which are both syntactic and anti-replicative (e.g. Preminger, 2014; Levin, 2015; Yuan, To Appear, for case).

In this talk, I develop a radically revised model of Agree (renamed RELATE) which can derive both replicative & anti-replicative phenomena in syntax. RELATE abandons the idea that syntactic relationships are (asymmetric) dependencies between a probe & matching goal. Rather, two syntactic objects A and B may be non-trivially linked under RELATE if one is valued & the other is unvalued (as under standard models of Agree), but also if both are unvalued. The only restriction underlying RELATE is the following generalized OCP constraint (along the lines of Richards, 2010, with significant deviations): a syntactic relation between two objects A and B may not output a representation where A and B are featurally indistinguishable for the purposes of interpretation at LF & PF. Corollary: a syntactic link between two nodes A & B for some feature α must output a representation where A & B remain distinguishable at LF/PF wrt. some relevant feature β, where β ̸= α. I show that the new powerful algorithm not only allows us to present a unified derivation for replicative processes like φ-agreement and non-replicative ones like (dependent) case-marking, but also accurately predicts some long-observed replicative vs. non-replicative differences at LF and PF between local and long-distance anaphora crosslinguistically (Faltz, 1977; Jackendoff, 1992; Lidz, 2001; Reuland, 2011).

March 31 Gillian Ramchand (University of Tromsø)

The Roots of Extended Projection: The Syn-Sem Interface and the role of the Lexicon

This talk is about the nature of the semantic primitives that correlate with syntactic generalizations in the domain of extended projection (Grimshaw 1991) and cartographic patterns more generally (Cinque 1999, Rizzi 1997 inter alia). I will argue that the semantic-ish labels that usually decorate such extended projections are neither adequate nor explanatory. To make the argument, I will show that there are cases of the same 'semantic' operations occurring across hierarchical zones, and conversely there are cases of importantly different semantic operations at the same hierarchical location crosslinguistically.  I draw two interim conclusions: one is that the semantic primitives we need to explain recurring patterns across languages are actually different and more abstract than usually supposed; the second is that universal grammar does not give rise to a fine-grained hierarchical template but rather a more general coarse-grained one. In the last part of the talk I will re-visit the notion of Lexicon and try to convince you that it is neither boring nor inert, and that understanding the rootedness of extended projections in lexical items is the clue to cartographic generalizations and the mystery of creative semantic composition more generally.  

March 24 Sreekar Raghotham (Rutgers University)

Verbal Reflexivity in Telugu

The study of verbal reflexivity has largely been concerned with the nature of the resulting predicate’s transitivity. There are languages however, in which the verbal reflexive doesn’t affect the predicate’s transitivity (at least in some cases) --- Telugu being one of them. I describe the verbal reflexive in Telugu, analyse it and extract some lessons for linguistic theory. Highlights of its properties include (a) agent orientation, (b) the absence of proxy or statue-readings, (c) seemingly optional transitivity of the predicate it attaches to, and (d) nondeterministic choice of internal argument to associate with the external. Taken together, the first and second properties argue against the biuniqueness mapping theories like UTAH and the Theta-Criterion require. Lessons from the latter two properties are more tentative: the third property hints towards relegating notions like transitivity to the interpretive component, and from the fourth property is extracted a draft of a recipe to identify thematic relations active in the grammar.  

March 3 Kimberley Baxter (NYU)

Complementizer-Trace Effects in Jamaican Patois

The present paper examines complementizer-trace effects in Jamaican Patois and presents a complementizer-based analysis of seh and its ability to flout these effects. In addition, this paper analyzes the grammatical status of seh in Jamaican Patois, and examines an analysis of seh being a verb exclusively, or otherwise part of a serial verb construction (SVC) when appearing in contexts that may otherwise suggest a separate complementizer form as discussed in Durrleman (2008). 

Feb 24 Shannon Bryant (Rutgers University)

Clausal complementation: the view from Oromo

Work by Wurmbrand and Lohninger (2020) suggests that complement clauses fall into three broad categories cross-linguistically, distinguished by their syntactic complexity as well as their meaning contribution. Drawing on new data and examples from the literature, I propose that the same three-way split characterizes the clausal complements found in Oromo (Cushitic). At the same time, the distribution of complement categories in Oromo diverges from what has been reported for better-studied languages. Oromo thus provides new evidence for a potential universal in clausal complementation while suggesting some flexibility in the way certain meanings can be linguistically encoded.

Feb 17 Andrew McInnerney (University of Michigan)

Prepositional phrases in an adjunction-free syntax

How are prepositional phrases arranged within the verb phrase? A classic idea is that the answer is determined (in part) by the Argument/Adjunct Distinction (A/AD): Argument PPs are attached as left-specifiers like DP arguments, while adjunct PPs are adjoined on the right. I evaluate several standard sources of evidence for this idea and the A/AD more broadly (including syntactic and semantic optionality, VP-anaphora, and VP-fronting). By showing that standard diagnostics each have independent, A/AD-free analyses, I argue that the A/AD and its consequences for VP-configuration are not well supported. I then consider the consequences for VP-structure of rejecting the A/AD, focusing in particular on the plausibility of multiple-complementation structures given a workspace-based definition of Merge.

Feb 10 Elise Newman (University of Edinburgh)

Structure-building in the verbal domain

In this talk, I discuss two kinds of observations about verb phrase syntax: 1) cross-linguistic restrictions on the number of arguments verb phrases can host and their relative positions, and 2) a wh-movement/Voice interaction in many languages’ passives of ditransitives. I suggest that both of these kinds of facts can be explained by a single underlying system, given some general conditions on structure-building, and given a particular inventory of structure-building features and syntactic categories. Some properties of the approach include: 1) a non-lexicalist view of the distribution of structure-building features: on this view, structure-building features are properties of syntactic categories rather than individual lexical items (taking inspiration from Wood & Marantz 2017, Merchant 2019), 2) the existence of underspecified features, which can be checked by anything (Chomsky 2005), and 3) a view of the A/A-bar distinction which reduces entirely to the distribution of features driving each kind of movement (van Urk 2015).

Fall 2022

Dec 9 Dan Brodkin (UCSC)

Prosodic Greed

There is a long tradition of work that takes constituent order to follow directly from the syntax (Kayne 1994). This view contrasts with an alternative that allows the phonology to influence the positions of prosodically deficient elements (Halpern 1995, Bennett, Elfner, & McCloskey 2016). This talk offers evidence from Mandar (Austronesian; South Sulawesi) for the second view. This language has a pair of locative particles that are L-selected by a subset of the demonstratives (✓this book here; *this book; ✓that book) but routinely surface far away from their associated NPs (✓this book __ fell here; *this book here fell). I argue that the right analysis of their distribution is one which makes reference to phonology- they appear at the right edge of a prosodic constituent that corresponds to the clause- and propose that they move to this position in the phonology to align with nuclear stress: an instance of Prosodic Greed.

Dec 2 Dan Milway (University of Toronto)

A critical assessment of Agree

While debates over possible variation in the Agree operation have occupied a significant portion of the recent syntactic literature, there has been little to no theoretical discussion of the operation itself—no questioning of whether the operation is theoretically sound. In this talk, I aim to fill that gap. First, I discuss the historical origins of Agree in the Case Theory of Movement, arguing that the original theoretical justification for Agree dissolved when Move was subsumed under Merge. Next, I outline what I take to be the essential characteristics of Agree—Search, Match, and Value—which can be parameterized to give its various versions—Upward/Downward, Checking, Local, etc. I then sketch a formal definition of Agree as a derivation operation like Merge, and present a few issues that fall out of this, taking special note of the high complexity of the operation and its unexpected consequences for the theory of the lexicon, both of which issues, arise from the fact that Agree violates NTC by design. Finally I discuss the inherent difficulties in showing the necessity of Agree empirically.

Nov 18 Lefteris Paparounas (University of Pennsylvania)

Reflexivity and external argument introduction in Greek

What is traditionally known as the unaccusative analysis of reflexives has two parts: a) the anaphoric element is an  index-bearing DP in the external argument position, and b) the non-anaphoric argument originates as a deep object, from which position it may raise to bind the anaphor. 

Languages showing a particular type of Voice syncretism, including Greek, have been widely taken as offering evidence in favor of this type of analysis: in these languages, verbal reflexives bear the non-active morphology also borne by passives and unaccusatives. For Greek, the main argument offered in favor of the unaccusative analysis has been the morphology itself, with syntactic diagnostics of unaccusativity in reflexives being hard to come by. 

Revisiting the morphosyntax of reflexives in Greek, I argue that the language does provide crucial evidence in favor of b), but against a). A range of novel diagnostics show that the surface subject of verbal reflexives is indeed a deep object; however, striking contrasts between the Greek anaphor and the language’s reflexivizing morpheme suggest that the latter is not an external argument in disguise, but rather the realization of a reflexivizing Voice head. Only one type of reflexivity is thus tied to external argument introduction; I will argue that this results in a syntactic and semantic profile distinct from that of anaphoric pronouns, such that ‘reflexivity’ broadly construed is not a unitary notion.

The resulting view of verbal reflexives – whereby a reflexive interpretation can arise from a truly syntactically intransitive structure – is incompatible with views of thematic interpretation based on the Theta Criterion, and instead supports treatments where thematic roles are functions introduced 'late' by functional heads.

Nov 11 Thomas Graf (Stony Brook University)

Syntactic tiers: Empirical applications and challenges

In prior work (Graf 2018), I have argued on computational grounds that movement is best understood by borrowing an idea from autosegmental phonology: specific elements of the syntactic structure are projected onto one or more tiers, and movement dependencies must be maximally local over these tiers. While this perspective is mathematically convenient, there is also a linguistic payoff in that tiers furnish new ways of analyzing empirical phenomena.

This talk will give a whirlwind tour of phenomena that can be insightfully analyzed with syntactic tiers, with particular emphasis on island effects and extraction morphology (e.g. wh-agreement in Irish, where complementizers along wh-paths surface with a form that is distinct from the default). We will see how tiers naturally give rise to islands while still allowing for exceptions and gradience. And we will explore how the nature of tiers predicts the typology of extraction morphology observed in Georgi (2017): agreement reflexes may appear on the landing site, or on lexical items along the movement path, or on both, or on neither. I will also discuss what kind of phenomena are challenging for syntactic tiers, e.g. smuggling in the sense of Collins (2005), and how the limits of tiers push us to replace the Ban On Improper Movement with Stefan Keine’s (2016) notion of probe horizons.

The general upshot is that syntactic tiers are a computationally simple and analytically flexible addition to syntacticians’ toolbox that can be applied to a variety of phenomena — who knows, maybe even the one you’re working on right now.

Nov 4 Andy Murphy (University of Chicago)

Multiple Left-Branch Extraction revisited

This talk is about a still unresolved puzzle about Left-Branch Extraction. In Slavic languages that have both multiple wh-fronting and Left-Branch Extraction, the two processes may not co-occur. Furthermore, mixed multiple fronting (LBE and non-LBE) gives rise to unexpected ordering restrictions with subjects, but not objects. In my dissertation, I provided an optimality-theoretic analysis of this phenomenon in terms of cumulative constraint interaction. In this talk, I will report on my ongoing attempt to re-analyze this data without recourse to violable constraints, with a focus on data from Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian. This new analysis tries to maintain the core intuition of the original (it involves a constraint on multiple specifier creation), but seeks to derive it using intervention effects with A'-feature geometries (e.g. Abels 2012, Aravind 2017, 2021).

Oct 21 Luisa Seguin (University of Maryland)

Decomposing A’-movement: on clause internal wh-words and foci in Valdôtain Patois

In the cartographic literature (Rizzi 1997; Rizzi & Bocci 2017; Bonan 2019), foci and wh-words are assumed to be mutually exclusive. They carry a [FOCUS] feature and target the same position, FocP. This position is assumed to be available in two separate domains: the High Left Periphery (HLP) and Low Left Periphery (LLP) of a clause. In this talk, I will present data from the Franco-Provençal language Valdôtain Patois (ValPa), challenging this assumption. In ValPa, clause-internal wh-words and foci can co-occur. Wh-words occupy a dedicated A’-position at the edge of the LLP, while foci are in a lower position in the LLP. Thus, there are two A’-positions for wh-words, one in the LLP, the other, in HLP. I show that wh-words always move to the highest A’-position (in the HLP), but different word orders can occur as the result of a copy-deletion mechanism at PF (Bošković 2011). While wh-words and foci co-occur in the LLP, they cannot co-occur in the HLP. In the talk, I will address this difference and propose some tentative solutions to this puzzle.

Oct 14 Ivona Kučerová (McMaster University), presenting joint work with Alan Munn (Michigan State University)

On selective probes: Agreement asymmetries arise from the order of Merge and Agree

Structural asymmetries in subject-predicate agreement (e.g., first-conjunct versus resolved agreement with coordinations, semantic versus grammatical agreement) led to a number of proposals weakening the notion of Agree (e.g., downward versus upward agree, positing semantic features in narrow syntax, agree valuation by implication hierarchies; Zeijlstra 2012, Deal 2016, Smith 2017, a.o.), in turn weakening the predictive power of syntactic theory and requiring mechanisms not attested elsewhere. We argue that agreement asymmetries of this sort can be reduced to a variation in the order of syntactic operations, namely, the order of Merge and Agree. We build on the insight of Georgi (2017) who argues that variation in agreement reflexes of long-distance wh-movement results from the order of unvalued agree features and edge features on a probing functional head. However, our implementation differs in that we argue that a probe may enter into only a single Agree relation with a goal. Consequently, Agree first yields an Agree link that can match and value the unvalued φ -features of the probe with valued φ -features of the goal, but as a consequence disables Move. In contrast, checking an edge feature of the probe first (Move) disables φ -agree. When φ -features of the probe are morphologically realized, the realization arises post-syntactically (e.g., Bobaljik 2008, Arregi & Nevins 2012), being parasitic on the existing edge feature link with the goal. The proposal thus simplifies existing theories of agreement, reducing them to independently needed minimal syntax building operations, and refines our understanding of agreement as corresponding to two structurally distinct operations: (i) syntactic agree with φ -features, and (ii) post-syntactic realization of features, parasitic on another Agree link.

Sept 23 Chris Collins (NYU)

Principles of Argument Structure: A Merge-Based Approach

I argue for a Merge‐based theory of argument structure based on the Argument Criterion/Theta‐Criterion, a principle of UG. Using Principles A and B of the Binding Theory, the distribution of Helke expressions and secondary predicates, I show that the implicit argument of the short passive in English is syntactically projected. I situate these empirical results in a general theory of implicit arguments. Similarly, I argue that the by‐phrase in the passive is externally merged in the same position as the external argument in the active. I show that my analysis is superior empirically to analyses which do not adopt the Argument Criterion/Theta‐Criterion. Lastly, I discuss the consequences of the Merge‐based theory for the dative al‐ ternation, for the conception of voice in syntactic theory, and for the role of formal semantics in a theory of argument structure.

Spring 2022

April 22       Kate Mooney (NYU)

                        Morphological doubling via locality

In this talk, I present some in-progress work on clitic doubling in Basque. Basque is well-known for its morphologically rich finite auxiliary, which encodes tense, complementizers, and the phi-features of arguments. I focus on auxiliaries when a pronominal element unexpectedly appears twice, e.g. s-eu-ku-su-n ‘you.abs V-ed him.dat’ (Alboniga variety, de Yrizar 1992). Here the argument structure would lead us to predict /s-eu-ku-n/ or /eu-ku-su-n/, but instead we get two copies of the s(u) pronominal clitic. Previous work has analyzed these with construction-specific copy operations (e.g. Arregi & Nevins 2012: 284), and therefore contend that these types of doubling are arbitrary morphological alternations that must be memorized. In contrast to this, I present a span-based account of the Basque auxiliary, and explore syntactic accounts of this doubling that appeal to locality.

April 15       Artemis Alexiadou (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)

                        Voice syncretism cross-linguistically (joint work with Despina Oikonomou)

Voice syncretism is widely attested cross-linguistically. Reporting on joint work with Despina Oikonomou, I will discuss three different types of Voice syncretism, under which the same morpheme participates in different configurations. We provide an approach under which the same Voice-head can convey different  interpretations depending on the environment it appears in, thus building on the notion of allosemy.

April 1       Heejeong Ko (Seoul National University)

                    Postverbal adjuncts as post-syntactic Late Merge

In this talk, I closely examine the syntax of postverbal adjuncts (PAs) in Korean – which received relatively little attention, in comparison to postverbal arguments in right dislocation. In the first part of the talk, I aim to establish empirical evidence against major approaches to right-dislocation which treat PAs as a consequence of rightward movement, PF-ellipsis, or English-type extraposition. Further developing Ko (2015), I propose that PAs in Korean are late-adjoined to the host after Spell-out via concatenation (Hornstein and Nunes 2008, cf. Müller’s (2017) reassociation, Ishii’s (2017) self-pair Merge; cf. Fox and Nissenbaum 1999, Fox 2017, Overfelt 2017 for Late Merge in English extraposition). I show that this proposal not only explains intricate puzzles concerning PAs, but also captures the interesting fact that the syntax of PAs is regulated by a general constraint on sideward movement in inter-arboreal domains. Evidence for my claim is drawn from various tests which involve right root effects, island effects, depth of embedding in LBE, and scope/binding in postverbal domains in Korean. Theoretically, the current research provides novel support for the existence of non-conventional Merge in natural languages: concatenation (Merge without integration in syntax) and inter-arboreal Merge (Merge across different workspaces). I also suggest that typological differences between Korean PAs and English adjunct extraposition can be attributed to two factors: i) the timing of Late Merge and ii) strict head-finality in syntax & massive agglutination in Korean morphology.

Mar 25       Ksenia Ershova (Stanford)

                    Contextually determined islandhood and constraints on possessor extraction in West Circassian

A’-extraction of possessors in West Circassian is constrained in a puzzling way: the possessor of an ergative or applied argument DP may not undergo clause-bound wh-movement, but long-distance possessor extraction across a clausal boundary is grammatical. Based on the variable islandhood of these DPs, this talk argues for an agree-based understanding of phasehood per Rackowski & Richards (2005). Within this approach, phase opacity is treated as defective intervention, with the phase intervening between the movement-triggering probe and the goal contained within the corresponding phase. Per Richards’ (1998) Principle of Minimal Compliance, defective intervention does not take place if the potential goal has independently entered an Agree relation with the movement-triggering probe. Islandhood is thus correctly predicted to be contextually determined: in West Circassian, the difference between clause-bound and long-distance possessor extraction is conditioned by the set of agreement features on the local movement-triggering probe. With clause-bound possessor extraction, wh-movement is triggered by the wh-feature bearing C, while long-distance possessor extraction involves successive cyclic movement that is triggered by the embedded C. Additionally, the account provides an explanation for the contrast between DPs which display variable islandhood effects (the ergative and applied argument DPs) and constituents which are uniformly transparent for subextraction (the absolutive DP and postpositional phrases) by appealing to the opacity of phase edges.

Mar 11       Hagen Blix (NYU)

                    Number-based noun classification as an interface legibility condition: The case of Kipsigis

Since the advent of the Minimalist program, syntactic analysis employs so-called uninterpretable features as the drivers of syntactic operations: Uninterpretable features are hypothesized to be illegible at (one of) the interfaces, and hence some syntactic operation needs to solve the issue arising from uninterpretability. However, no general theory of 'uninterpretability' has so far been forthcoming, and instead it is generally a purely stipulated property, not rooted in any theory of the interfaces.

In this talk, I attempt to take on one recently proposed uninterpretable feature for an interface-driven, explanatory account, namely the number-based noun class feature u±SG from Kouneli's (2020) analysis of Kipsigis.

Under the assumption that vocabulary insertion is governed by a superset principle, vocabulary items (VIs) constitute a set of interface legibility conditions: For a syntactic structure to be PF-legible, it must consist entirely of legible trees. Given this fact, we can re-cast feature-interpretability as a configurational issue: Depending on the root VI, a feature may or may not be legible in a certain configuration, and interpretability follows from generally motivated principles governing the translation of syntactic structure at PF.

Feb 25       Tanya Bondarenko (MIT)

                   Two paths to clausal embedding 

This talk is concerned with the relationship between the inner syntax of finite embedded clauses and the way they are incorporated into the matrix clause. The question I ask is the following: does presence/absence of nominal projections on top of a CP determine the way it combines with the verb? In particular, (i) does it determine the role of the clause in the argument structure and (ii) does it determine possible structural configurations in which the clause can attach?  To answer these questions, I examine data from two languages that show overt distinctions between nominalized and bare CPs, Buryat (Mongolic) and Russian. I argue that there is a one-to-one mapping between the inner syntax of the CP and its status in the argument structure: while nominalized CPs are arguments just like DPs, bare CPs are event modifiers (Bogal-Allbritten 2016, Kratzer 2016, Elliott 2020). I then show that this difference has consequences for possible structural configurations in which CPs can attach: unlike nominalized CPs but like other event modifiers, bare embedded CPs can attach both as complements and as adjuncts. This variability results in bare embedded CPs being islands for movement in some cases but not in others, landing support for configurational theories of the adjunct island (Uriagereka 1999, Johnson 2003, Privoznov 2021).

Feb 18       Karlos Arregi (University of Chicago)

                   PCC effects with subject and object marking: Washo, Aleut, and beyond (joint work with Emily Hanink)

Washo (Hokan/isolate, USA) has a reverse weak Person-Case Constraint (PCC) effect in its subject-object verbal marking system. The verb always marks the person of the subject, while object marking is more complex. Overt objects are never marked, and marking of covert objects is obligatory where possible, which is only with certain subject-object feature combinations: While participant (1st/2nd person) objects are marked regardless of the person of the subject, 3rd person object marking is only allowed if the subject is also 3rd person. This is the reverse (Stegovec 2020) of the weak version of the PCC in which a 3rd person higher argument (indirect object clitic) is blocked in the presence of a participant lower argument (direct object clitic), while other combinations are allowed (as in e.g. Catalan). We draw a comparison with Aleut (aka Unangam Tunuu; Eskimo-Aleut, Alaska), in which covert objects also trigger verbal marking, and the combined expression of subject and object marking is also constrained by PCC effects, which, unlike in Washo, are not reverse (Boyle 2000, Merchant 2011, Woolford 2018).

We argue for an analysis of the facts in both languages that employs the interaction/satisfaction framework for Agree developed in Deal 2015, 2020. Specifically, subject and object marking in these languages is licensed by a single probe generated above both arguments. I'll argue that the Washo reverse PCC pattern follows straightforwardly from the probe's interaction with both goals. The fact that Aleut pattern is the reverse of Washo (i.e. non-reverse PCC) follows from the hypothesis that objects that trigger verbal marking raise above the subject in this language, thereby reversing the way the probe interacts with the two arguments. Movement of these objects to a high position in Aleut is in accord with Yuan's (2018) analysis of variation in syntactic ergativity in the Eskimo-Aleut family.

Feb 11       Carol Rose Little (University of Oklahoma)

                   On external possession and remnant movement

Under the copy theory of movement (Chomsky (1993); Nunes (1995, 2004); Müller (1996) i.a.), a moved element leaves behind a copy of itself, the higher copy is pronounced and the lower one is deleted at PF. Under this theory, it is not immediately clear what to do with remnant movement, that is, where a constituent that contains a copy of a moved subconstituent is moved. Analyses have addressed this issue, primarily focusing on VP remnant movement (e.g., Nunes (1995, 2004); Müller (1996)). In this paper, I investigate remnant movement in external possessive constructions in Ch’ol, a Mayan language. I argue that the external possession facts for Ch’ol are an instance of possessor raising. I show that when the object has been focus-moved to the preverbal position, the DP-internal copy of the possessor is pronounced, supporting a locality-based analysis of remnant movement (e.g., Hunter (2012)), rather than a derivational one (e.g.,  Bošković & Nunes (2007)).

Fall 2021

Dec 10       Omer Preminger (University of Maryland)

                   Against terminal-centrism in the mappings from syntax to its interfaces 

Traditional, lexicalist models of grammar take the individual syntactic terminal to be the locus in which listed form meets listed meaning, together with any sui generis syntactic information that the terminal is associated with. (The term ‘listed’ here means “phonologically or semantically non-compositional,” i.e., having properties that cannot be computed directly from properties of the object’s immediate subparts.) 

It has long been observed, however, that natural languages always deviate from the kind of ideal, fully reliable form-meaning correspondences that such a system would predict. This is so even if we correct for phonologically predictable instances of allomorphy, i.e., cases where both the conditioning environments and the alternations in form can be predicted on the basis of phonological patterns that hold across the entire language. Following some of the literature, I will refer to this (unmet) ideal as Humboldt’s Universal (“one meaning : one form”).

Of particular interest here is that at least some cases of allomorphy (as well as some cases of allosemy) require reference to the derived syntactic structure that an expression finds itself in (e.g. go‑went, bad‑worse). One response to this state of affairs has been the adoption of Late Insertion: the idea that phonological (as well as semantic) content is associated with derived structures, not base-generated ones. Among the frameworks that adopt Late Insertion, perhaps none has been more influential in recent decades than Distributed Morphology (henceforth, DM; Halle & Marantz 1993, 1994). In DM, phonological content, as well as semantic content (at least for open-class items), is associated with terminals via context-sensitive spellout rules, where the relevant context is furnished by the syntactic derivation. Empirically, this allows a host of attested deviations from Humboldt’s Universal to be captured.

Despite its increased theoretical and empirical wherewithal, DM remains fundamentally wedded to the individual syntactic terminal as the nexus of phonological (and semantic) insertion. In this talk, I will explore two kinds of arguments against this position. First, I will argue that given some fairly benign assumptions about syntax (assumptions for which no cogent alternative has ever been put forth, at least at the time of this writing), the terminal-centrism of DM ends up being empirically vacuous. Specifically, the restrictions on blocking discussed by Embick & Marantz (2008) are unenforceable, even in DM. Second, I will discuss a couple of empirical patterns that may favor an architecture where phonological and semantic content is associated not with individual syntactic terminals but with spans of terminals. (NB: This does not rule out the specific subcase in which a span happens to have a cardinality of one.) These empirical patterns are within the expressive power of DM, which is in any case equivalent to that of a span-based account (see above); but I will argue that the span-based account provides a more explanatory theory of the relevant phenomena.

Nov 19       Erik Zyman (University of Chicago)

                   Covert A-movement out of Coordinate Structures

Particular types of overt movement are often argued to have covert counterparts—spurring us to ask, for every single type of overt movement, whether it has a covert counterpart or not. This talk asks that question about overt extraction of conjuncts from coordinate structures (Bošković 2009, 2020, Oda to appear, a.o.) and answers it in the affirmative—arguing that, in English, a nominative pronoun that is a conjunct in a coordinate structure moves covertly out of the latter. Contra the standard view that nominative and accusative pronouns are syntactically almost identical, the overt differences between them being due to different postsyntactic realizations (Emonds 1986, Sobin 1997, a.o.), it is argued that a nominative pronoun and its accusative counterpart are distinct (though related) lexical items, and the former requires special licensing: it bears a probe feature [∗T∗] (Heck & Müller 2007) that forces it to move to a specifier position of T (cf. Bošković 2007). If so, then, when the nominative pronoun is a conjunct—and there is good reason to think it does not move to [Spec,TP] overtly—it must move to [Spec,TP] covertly. This analysis makes the subtle prediction that a nominative (but not an accusative) pronominal conjunct in a coordinate structure should give the appearance of "commanding out of" the latter for purposes of Condition C—a prediction that is borne out when confounds are eliminated. The talk concludes by tackling the larger question of why covert movement of nominative pronouns should be exempt from the Coordinate Structure Constraint, arguing that this property of it may be a straightforward consequence of its being moving-element-driven rather than higher-head-driven.

Nov 12      Zhuoye Zhao (NYU)

                   Particle-verb constructions and the Head-Final Filter

There is an interesting word-order contrast between English and Mainland Scandinavian (MS) particle-verb constructions: in raising constructions as in (1), the adjectival predicate in the small-clause complement obligatorily follows the particle in English (1a), but precedes it in MS (1b, illustrated in Danish but same for Norwegian and Swedish).

(1) a. John turned {out} smart {*out}.

     b. Per ser {*ud}   glad  {ud}. (Dan) 

      Per see {*out} glad  {out}.

    ‘Per looks glad.’

Furthermore, the MS construction shows a word-order pattern reminiscent to those constrained by the Head-Final Filter (HFF, cf. Greenberg 1963, Williams 1982, Sheehan 2013). The HFF bans anything from intervening between the head of a pronominal modifier and the phrase it modifies (e.g. *a proud of his son father); and in MS, post-adjectival adverbials can only surface to the right of the particle, as shown in (2).

(2)  Per ser  {*ut}    väldigt  nervös   {ut}   över    tentamen {*ut}. (Swe) 

      Per see {*out}  very      nervous {out} about  exam.the {*out}.

      ‘Per seems very nervous about the exam.’

Both (1b) and (2) present non-trivial challenges to existing syntactic analyses of (complex) particle-verb constructions, where the word-order is usually derived via movement of/around the particle (e.g. Kayne 1985, den Dikken 1995, Larsen 2014, a.o.). As an alternative, I present a labeling-based approach that derives the word orders in (1-2) as results of direct linearization. The analysis is built on Sheehan’s (2011, 2013, 2017) copy theory of labeling (CoL), which provides a principled explanation for the HFF. I will then circle back to consider the implications of the current approach to the simple transitive particle-verb constructions, and the larger question of where the locus of word-order variations of particle-verb constructions lies. 

Nov 5        Alec Marantz (NYU)   ★ Here are the links to the [paper] and [Wood & Marantz (2017)] ★

                   What if Head Movement/Morphological Merger/Incorporation did not Change Grammatical Relations? What if Extended 

Projections were only Launched from Roots?

Why don’t we have complex event nominalizations which include the syntax of verb phrases but the extended projection of nouns, with number, quantifiers and definiteness (*the many destructions the city)?  An answer implicit in many analyses is that the nominalization process involves syntactic head-movement of a verb to an N head, with the consequence of destroying the VP structure and changing grammatical relations (what was the object of the verb is now the complement of an N).  However, having head movement change grammatical relations was motivated by (Relational Grammar inspired) accounts of causatives and applicatives, which have now been abandoned in favor of superior alternatives.  Moreover, the head-movement VP-destroying analysis of English and Icelandic complex event nominalizations has been shown to be misguided by Wood (to appear; book on Icelandic nominalizations).  If we give up the possibility that the nominalization process itself necessarily changes grammatical relations, we need a different account of the non-existence of our “mixed” nominalizations “*the many destructions the city.”  Here I propose a “new” analysis of syntactic categories (cobbled together from existing accounts, in particular Shushurin’s 2021 NYU dissertation) that effectively rules out these constructions.  I separate the internal structure of lexical categories into two domains, a purely formal lower domain and the higher domain of the extended projection, which is grounded in semantics.  A verbal lower domain can only project a verbal extended projection.  One can find a formal “nominalizing” feature in the extended projection of a verb, as in English gerunds.  But these formal features by themselves, without a root, cannot generate an extended projection of a noun (with plurals, definiteness, etc.).  If we add a root to formal nominal head before trying to use this to nominalize a verb, we find we can only create a very low nominalization, which is built on an incomplete verb (no voice) and thus can only support nominal syntax.  The framework developed here leads to a new understanding (potentially wrong, of course) of derivational morphology and of the distribution of roots in syntactic and word structures.

Oct 22       Ka-Fai Yip (Yale)

                   Universal concord as syntactic agreement

Quantifier concord represents a case of apparent syntax-semantics mismatch where multiple quantificational elements appear to be mapped onto one logical quantifier in semantics. The question arises as to whether a syntactic solution (e.g. Zeijlstra 2004, Watanabe 2004, Haegeman and Lohndal 2010) or a semantic solution (e.g. Ladusaw 1992, Giannakidou 2000, de Swart and Sag 2002) should be adopted to resolve the mismatch. In this talk, I report a case of universal concord in Cantonese and present arguments in favor of a syntactic solution. I argue that the verbal suffix -can in Cantonese, while associated with universal quantification, is indeed a concord element that carries an uninterpretable universal feature and agrees with a genuine universal quantifier. I show that this agreement is subject to Relativized Minimality and the Phase Impenetrability Condition, and discuss how minimality effects offer new evidence for a syntactic approach to concord.

Oct 15        Neil Benerjee (Amazon)

                   An indivisible portmanteau and the nature of phrasal ellipsis

Hungarian has a portmanteau negative copula which is obligatorily used for 3rd person indicative negative present contexts when the copula and negation would be adjacent to each other. While ellipsis of the complement of negation is generally unremarkable, if the intended ellipsis site contains a copula that can form a portmanteau with negation, for some speakers, the copula must be pronounced with negation in its portmanteau form, while the rest of the complement of negation gets elided. In this talk, I will show that no smaller ellipsis site is possible for many of these speakers, meaning the copular half of the portmanteau is being pronounced despite being inside an ellipsis site. I claim that for such an elliptically indivisible portmanteau to be possible, the contents of the ellipsis site must be accessible to whatever forms portmanteaux, and that portmanteau formation can bleed ellipsis silencing. I will argue that the negative copula portmanteau forms post-syntactically, meaning that the contents of ellipsis sites have to be at least somewhat post-syntactically accessible, and discuss which theories of ellipsis silencing can and cannot capture the existence of elliptically indivisible portmanteaux.

Oct 8        Tal Linzen (NYU)

                   Inductive biases for the acquisition of syntactic transformations in neural networks: an interim update

One of the fundamental questions in the cognitive science of language concerns the conditions under which computational learners generalize from their input in a similar way to humans: by examining the effects of different learning assumptions on the generalizations acquired by the learner, we can construct hypotheses about the constraints and biases that underlie human learning. In this meeting, I will describe an ongoing long-term project with Bob Frank (Yale) and other colleagues, whose goal is to investigate this question using one type of behavior -- syntactic mappings between related forms (e.g., a declarative and a question) -- and a broad class of learners based on artificial neural networks. I have two goals for this session: first, to give an overview of the project and some of our results; and second, to obtain feedback about the ways this project (and others like it) can engage more productively with syntacticians, whether it is by addressing specific questions they are concerned with, by constructing tests for computational learners that incorporate challenging and subtle syntactic generalizations from a variety of languages, or in any other way.

Spring 2021

May 14        Milena Šereikaitė (Yale) & Einar Freyr Sigurðsson (Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies)

                     The dual face of structural object case: on Lithuanian genitive of negation

We analyze genitive of negation (GN) in Lithuanian. When the verb is negated, GN is realized on an object that would otherwise be realized in the accusative. We demonstrate that Lithuanian GN is a syntactic (in line with Arkadiev 2016) and morphological phenomenon in contrast to Russian GN, whose realization is influenced by semantic factors (e.g., Kagan 2013). It differs from Russian in that (i) it is always assigned to a DP which would otherwise bear structural accusative regardless of its semantic properties, (ii) it cannot affect a structural nominative DP regardless of whether it is an external or internal argument (cf. Pesetsky 1982 for Russian). We offer a new account of GN arguing that it is a reflection of structural object case, assigned in syntax, then translated to morphological genitive case at PF and, finally, realized at Vocabulary Insertion (Halle & Marantz 1993). Thus, the structural object case has two morphological realizations: as genitive when negation is present, or as accusative in the absence of negation. Lithuanian also exhibits long-distance GN (Arkadiev 2016), showing that the case boundaries can cross non-finite clauses without an overt CP element, suggesting that these are not phases (see, e.g., Landau 2008).

April 30        Sarah Asinari (UConn)

                     Multiple Quantifier Float in Philadelphian Irish English

This talk focuses on a dialect of English called Philadelphian Irish English (PhIrE) which allows quantifier float under wh-movement. This dialect also allows multiple quantifiers to be stranded at various stages of intermediate movement, a novel pattern not observed before. Here I focus on the patterns of multiple quantifier float and their restrictions. I propose that single and multiple quantifier float are derived through two different mechanisms: stranding and copying, respectively. Single quantifier float is derived through the standard stranding mechanisms, while wh-phrases in multiple quantifier constructions leave multiple copies which then undergo scattered deletion (See Bošković 2001; Nunes 2004).

April 16        Selikem Gotah (NYU)

                     Relative Clauses in Tongugbe

An interesting issue identified in Ewe relative clauses is the distribution of the plural morpheme relative to the head noun and the relative pronoun. In this talk, I examine relative clauses in the Tongugbe dialect and two inland dialects of Ewe. I discuss data showing the distribution of the plural morpheme in these dialects. I also discuss the variation in the position of relativisers in PP pied-piping in the inland dialects. Adopting the raising analysis of relative clauses, I propose an analysis for the distribution of the plural morpheme, showing that the morphosyntactic properties of the relative pronoun allows it to be contiguous to the plural morpheme. Regarding the variation in the behavior of relativisers in the inland dialects of Ewe, I discuss two approaches-a big DP approach and a RelP approach. I defend the RelP approach, albeit a relative clause internal postposition stranding stipulation.

April 2        Guy Tabachnick (NYU)

                     Second-Position Clitics in Czech Infinitival Clauses

Czech has a number of "second-position" clitics that cluster after the first constituent of most clauses. In addition, pronominal clitics associated with embedded infinitives can sometimes "climb" into the matrix clause. I lay out a model of the Czech left periphery including a split CP with Force, Top, and Fin projections, the last with an EPP feature, and argue that clitics move to specifiers of dedicated projections above T in order to license their case or reflexive feature. I then argue that clitics can climb out of clauses as large as TP and compare clitic climbing to the ability of matrix sentential negation to license NPIs in an embedded clause. Both are blocked by a ForceP phase boundary, and clitic climbing can further be blocked by interveners to case assignment in the matrix clause, for example in object control constructions. This yields a three-way distinction, in which some constructions allow both clitic climbing and NPI licensing, some block both, and some allow NPI licensing but block climbing of some or all clitics.

Mar 26        Dylan Tsai (National Tsing Hua University)

                     Wh and Self: On Correlating Wh-conditionals and Reflexive Doubling

In a robust analytic language such as Chinese, the notion of “phase” manifests itself not through locality effects, but through distribution-interpretation correspondences. Certain semantic characteristics of a sentence can be “read off” directly from certain syntactic positions (presumably the peripheral area of a phase). This is best demonstrated by the (anti-)causality of interrogative and reflexive adverbials on the CP layer, in contrast to the (anti-)comitativity of interrogative and reflexive adverbials on the vP layer (cf. Tsai 2015, 2019). The CP-vP dichotomy arguably follows from two factors: First, the so-called first phase syntax in Ramchand’s (2008) sense has been extended to the “second phase” along the clausal spine, as dictated by the typological setup of Chinese. Second, in lack of agglutinative morphology, unselective binding is employed extensively in constructing operator-variable dependencies on a sentential scale. One piece of evidence stands out in this context, that is, the curious bare conditional construction in Mandarin, which employs only a pair of identical wh-expressions, as illustrated below (NEC: implicit necessity operator):

(1) NECx [ … wh(x) …], [ … wh(x) …]

This talk argues for the unselective binding approach to this type of donkey sentences (often dubbed as wh-conditionals in the literature) along the line of Huang & Cheng (1996, 2020), by alluding to a rather obscured phenomenon in Chinese, i.e., reflexive doubling, where a bare conditional can be constructed in a very similar way:

(2) NECx [ … self(x) …], [ … self(x) …]

Interestingly enough, while multiple wh-conditionals may allow the interference from a Q(uesiton) operator, reflexive doubling may shift from quantificational construals to predicational usages. We argue that this is exactly due to the disassociation of operator-variable pairs through unselective binding. As a result, Chinese whs and selfs behave either like an operator or a variable. In the former case, we have ziji ‘self’ functioning as a logophor/intensifier, and zenme ‘how’ as a mirative/causal wh. In the latter case, we have ziji and zenme functioning as donkey anaphoras (in addition to their respective usages as anaphors and polarity variables). By correlating the pairing of whs in (1) to that of selfs in (2) in typological terms, this study lends substantial support to the unselective binding approach to wh-conditionals, hence against the correlative and answerhood operator analyses in the literature (cf. Crain & Luo 2011, Liu 2016, among others).

Mar 12        Naomi Lee (NYU)

                     Learning (im)possible number syncretisms: investigating innate featural representations

Number systems with singular, dual, and plural values have been argued to be represented by binary, cross-classifying features (e.g. Harbour 2016), as well as by privative, linearly hierarchical features (e.g. Smith et al. 2019). This paper tests and compares the predictions of these theory types experimentally, by training and testing participants on artificial languages differing in which of the three logically possible pairs of number values participate in a syncretism pattern. Results from 149 adult participants show that participants exposed to the dual-plural syncretism (ABB), a pattern predicted by both kinds of feature representations, had the greatest success in a referent selection task, supporting Maldonado & Culbertson (2020)’s findings that adults employ morphological features in artificial language learning experiments. Participants’ relative success with singular-plural (ABA) but significant difficulty with singular-dual (AAB) syncretisms (p < 0.001) further provides support for a linear containment hierarchy for number features.

Feb 26        Bronwyn Bjorkman (Queen's University)

                     How syntax tries to avoid conflict, and morphology (sometimes) resolves it

Some syntactic structures appear to require conflicting features on a single word or phrase—a noun to be both nominative and accusative, for example, or a verb to show for both singular and plural agreement. While some languages exhibit systematic resolution strategies for such conflicts (e.g. closest conjunct agreement), and others allow the conflicting features to all be realized morphologically (as in languages with case stacking), often syntactic feature conflicts are simply ungrammatical—except, in surprisingly many cases, when there is a morphologically syncretic form that is neutral for the conflicting features. Such patterns are found across many languages, including Finnish (Zaenen and Karttunen 1984), French (Kayne 1975), German (Groos and van Riemsdijk 1981; Pullum and Zwicky 1986), Hungarian (Szamosi 1974), Polish (Dyla 1984), and Russian (Asarina 2011). 

Accounting for resolution via syncretism is a challenge for many models of morphosyntax, including interpretive theories like Distributed Morphology (DM, Halle and Marantz 1993 et seq.). For syncretism to ever resolve feature conflicts, structures with mismatching features on a single head must be syntactically licit. On the one hand, classic DM predicts that any well-formed syntactic structure should have some possible morphological realization, if only by an elsewhere or default form, in which case syncretism should be irrelevant. On the other hand, a version of DM where some representations can only be realized by syncretic exponents would easily overgenerate, incorrectly predicting that syncretism would always be able to resolve feature mismatches. 

Reviewing phenomena where morphological neutrality is needed to resolve a syntactic feature conflict in some languages, I argue that profile of conflict resolution via syncretism requires both a constrained theory of the conditions under which syntax allows multiple features of the same type on a head, and a shift in the units to which Vocabulary Insertion applies from heads to feature structures. 

Jan 29        Faruk Akkuş (University of Pennsylvania)

                     On the (non)-relation between C and T

Chomsky (2007, 2008, 2013) proposes that Agree (𝜙-) and Tense features associated with the inflectional system are not an inherent property of T; instead T inherits these features from the phase head C. Zwart (1993, 1997, 2001) essentially advocates for the opposite view, and argues that the 𝜙-set on C is simply a duplication of T’s valued 𝜙-set, acquired as a result of T-to-C movement.  Common to both approaches is the hypothesis that a single head is the locus of the 𝜙-features, and the other one acquires them in the derivation. In this talk, I investigate three configurations in several Arabic varieties which shed light on the putative relation between C and T, and challenges both Chomsky's and Zwart's approaches: (i) C and T can agree with the same goal, but bear different values (cf. Haegeman and Van Koppen 2012), (ii) C and T can agree with different goals – they do not necessarily agree with the same goal, and (iii) embedded constructions with a finite T without CP, which may still agree. These phenomena provide strong evidence that C and T are independent probes, i.e., C and T must each be endowed with a discrete set of 𝜙-features. I also demonstrate that the 𝜙-feature checking in these configurations takes place in syntax and not at PF (pace Miyagawa 2010, Ackema and Neeleman 2003, 2012).

Fall 2020

Nov 20        Emily Hanink (University of Manchester)

                     Motivating PossP in Washo subject nominalizations

Within the literature on deverbal nominalizations, thematic subject nominalizations beyond agentive -er nominals remain relatively understudied. This talk contributes to the empirical landscape of this nominalization type through the investigation of data from Washo (isolate, United States). The first aim of the talk is to diagnose the size of subject nominalizations in Washo, which I argue are large enough to contain a subject PRO. The second aim of the talk is to argue that subject nominalizations in Washo are formed by PossP, in a way consistent with the idea that Poss is the nominal correlate of T. It is then shown that the ‘nominalizing' prefix observed in this construction is not a nominalizer at all, but rather the result of agreement between Poss and a covert possessor.  This proposal leads to a unified analysis of this agreement prefix in both ordinary possession and subject nominalizations, building on previously proposed similarities in the featural specifications of pro and PRO.

Nov 13        Ivy Sichel (UC Santa Cruz)

                     The featural life of nominals (joint work with Maziar Toosarvandani)

We introduce a novel locality violation and its repair in Sierra Zapotec: an object pronoun cannot cliticize when the subject is a lexical DP. This locality effect differs from more familiar ones (e.g., superiority) because the lexical DP does not move. We argue that it is nonetheless able to Agree, consistent with the idea that locality conditions apply to Agree, rather than to a separate movement component. We develop an account in which pronouns and lexical DPs interact with the same probe because they share featural content. In particular, we suggest that the person domain extends to include non-pronominal DPs, so that all nominals are specified for a feature we call δ (to resonate with DP); all and only personal pronouns are specified for π. This account requires a departure from Chomsky’s (2000, 2001) classical system of featural co-variation (Agree). A functional head must be able to participate in overprobing, interacting with a goal even though its requirements would appear to be met. We introduce a probe activation model for Agree, in which, after applying once, the operation can but not need apply again.

Oct 23        Laura Grestenberger (University of Vienna)

                     Periphrastic constructions and the structure of participles

Classical Greek, Sanskrit, and Latin (along with many other older Indo-European languages) have a rich participial system, but not all of their participles are also used in periphrastic constructions (PCs). In this talk, I argue that the Classical Greek, Sanskrit, and Latin periphrastic perfect (passive) constructions differ in how much structure is spelled out by the respective participial morphology in these languages, and that the properties of participles in PCs are essentially the same as those outside of PCs (e.g., attributively used participles and participial adjuncts). This account builds on Bjorkman (2011), who argues against "selectional" approaches to auxiliaries in PCs and proposes that elements such as BE and HAVE are not selected by other syntactic elements, and hence do not project. Instead, auxiliaries pick up "stranded" features on higher functional projections, in particular T/AGR, when agreement with these projections fails. This approach dispenses with the need to stipulate designated functional projections for auxiliaries and participles and explains why periphrastic constructions like the Latin perfect passive appear to "supplete" a paradigm: They morphologically realize the same syntactic structure as the synthetic forms, the only difference lies in the features (or feature combinations) of these structures. We will also see how this account can be extended to cover the properties of deponent participles in PCs and of participles outside of periphrastic contexts.

Oct 9        Christopher Hammerly (University of Minnesota)

                     Deriving person-based prominence effects: A set-based theory of AGREE 

Person-based prominence effects occur when certain person categories or features are privileged by the grammar. Over the past 25 years, the feature geometry of Harley & Ritter (2002) and Béjar (2003) has been widely employed to capture these effects. The first goal of this talk is to argue that the feature geometry is in fact second order, in the sense that it describes properties that hold between features, but should not be encoded in the representation itself. The second goal is to propose a new level of representation, termed primitives (inspired by Harbour’s 2016 theory of person) that provides a first order account of prominence effects. Besides having a conceptual advantage over the feature geometry, I show that reformulating AGREE to operate over sets of primitives allows all and only the possible range of person-based prominence effects to be captured. The feature geometry is shown to have a more limited empirical coverage, further favoring the proposed representation and reformulation of AGREE.

Oct 2        Soo-Hwan Lee & Yining Nie (NYU)

                     Case stacking and honorifics in Korean  

Korean exhibits a phenomenon known as case stacking where two case markers can appear on the same nominal. In this talk, we draw the distinction between inner markers, which are associated with argument introducing heads (Voice and Appl), and outer markers, which are associated with discourse marking (Topic and Focus). In our approach, ordinary NOM and ACC are in fact focus markers, whose distributions are distinct from those of genuine case markers (Schütze 2001). By assigning inner markers low and outer markers high, our analysis derives the apparent templatic ordering in Korean nominals (Cho & Sells 1995) and explains the difference in distribution of honorific nominative and plain nominative. 

Spring 2020

May 1             Imke Driemel & Maria Kouneli (Universität Leipzig) 

                          Say complementation and Agreement in Kipsigis

Kipsigis (Nilotic, Kenya) has been reported to have upwards-oriented complementizer agreement with a matrix subject (Rao & Diercks 2019, Diercks et al. 2020), a pattern that raises questions about the directionality and locality of agreement. We argue in this talk that complementizer agreement in Kipsigis is verbal agreement with a logophoric pronoun, and what has been described as a say-based complementizer in the language is in fact the lexical verb say. Our theory makes use of an eventuality-based model of attitude and speech reports (Kratzer 2006, 2013, Hacquard 2006, Özyıldız et al. 2018).

April 24        Danfeng Wu (MIT) 

                          Why *if or not but ✓whether or not 

Both whether and if can introduce embedded alternative questions in English (1), but they are not completely equivalent. For example, it has been long observed that the disjunction phrase or not can immediately follow whether, but cannot immediately follow if (Kayne 1972; Emonds 1985): 

(1) I don’t know whether/if John will arrive or not.

(2) I don’t know whether or not John will arrive.

(3) *I don’t know if or not John will arrive.

This talk makes a novel observation that parallels this contrast, and argues that this contrast can be explained if we assume that whether can pied-pipe its sister, but pied-piping is not possible when whether is replaced by if. Strikingly, once we eliminate the pied-piping parse for whether, it behaves like if. Then I show that the same patterns and analysis apply to Polish and Bengali.

April 17        Michael Barrie (Sogang University) 

                          Variation in Agreement and PNI in Blackfoot (joint work with Kyumin Kim and Moonhyun Sung)

We investigate differences in one dialect of Blackfoot between Pseudo Noun Incorporation and agreement in terms of prosody and morphosyntax. We observe that PNI objects and full objects behave differently with respect to their prosody. We also note variation in the availability of agreement with "partially" pseudo incorporated nouns, which consist of a lexical noun and a numeral. We suggest the some speakers have a null determiner, blocking PNI, while other speakers lack it. Speakers that have the null D can optionally employ it or not. If it is used, then PNI is not available. If it is not used, then the reduced object undergoes PNI. Speakers that do not have this null D are required to pseudo incorporate the reduced nominal phrase. Prosodically, the PNI noun corresponds to a phonological word. Crucially, however, we show that the word corresponds to a phrase (​n​P) rather than to a syntactic head. We propose that phonological words are the Spell Out of small phases rather than syntactic heads. We tentatively suggest that all higher prosodic categories (intonational phrase, phonological phrase, phonological word) correspond to phases.

April 10        Itamar Kastner (University of Edinburgh) 

                         Everywhere in the world quantifies over individuals  (joint work with Benjamin Lowell-Sluckin)

In this informal report on work in progress I present the results of an ongoing study on the use of everywhere in different dialects of English as an impersonal subject. Some speakers of English are able to use everywhere as the subject of a sentence: for them (1) can mean (2), and even if (1) is degraded, (3) is much better.

(1) Everywhere eats fish and chips.

(2) Everyone eats fish and chips.

(3) Everywhere in Southampton eats fish and chips.

I will provide what is to our knowledge the first systematic investigation of this phenomenon, based on large-scale judgment surveys. We had originally thought that this was a dialectal feature of southern British English (Solent English) but have since replicated the findings with general UK speakers and with US speakers. I will give an overview of the results, differences between age groups (which might indicate change in progress), and differences between regions/dialects; but mostly I will ask for input as to what might be going on here. Time permitting, I can sketch our formal analysis.

Mar 6            Jordan Kodner (University of Pennsylvania) 

                         Acquiring the Latin Past Participles and 't-Deverbals'

The Classical Latin past participles are a recurring topic in both synchronic and diachronic literature. They system that determines their forms is fairly complex, so even though all past participles contain an -t- (or allomorph -s-) followed by case marking, the actual forms that they take are not reliably predictable from other forms of the verb (e.g, amāre ~ amātus, but sonāre ~ sonitus; habēre ~ habitus, but tenēre ~ tentus). Most generalizations that can be proposed have significant exceptions. Furthermore, the semantics of the past participles and their component parts are unclear. A significant and semantically incoherent set of verbs lack them altogether (e.g., statives in general, but also 'drink' and 'strike'), and while most are passive, not all are, and they reliably share the -t-/-s- and all their form eccentricities with the 't-deverbals,'  a collection of derived agent, event, and result nouns, adverbs, and future active participles, despite their semantic heterogeneity and the past participle forms' unpredictability. This has generated debate, implemented in a variety of frameworks, over whether -t-/-s- has any meaning to begin with and what mechanism might give rise to the correspondence between the past participles and t-deverbals in the possible absence of shared semantics (e.g., Aronoff 1994, Embick 2000, Embick & Halle 2005, Steriade 2016).

Navigating generalization in the face of apparent arbitrariness is as much a central focus in grammar learning as it is in theoretical analysis. So after motivating a learning-based analysis of the historical data (Kodner 2019), I apply a quantitative learning model (Yang 2016) to Latin verbal morphology. In adopting a model of generalization which is externally motivated by child development and psycholinguistics, we can better assess which potential generalizations over past participle forms may actually reside in the minds and grammars of speakers than if we relied on our theoretical intuitions alone. This analysis, extended to the 't-deverbals,' allows us to assess the theoretical treatments of Latin inflectional and derivational morphology in a new light. In addition, it makes accurate predictions about the diachronic fate of the Latin verbal system, including a first account for the mysterious replacement of frequent Latin -itus and -tus/-sus with rare -ūtus in Romance (e.g., Italian veduto < vīsus, Catalan tingut < tentus, French perdu < perditus) and the collapse of the past participle ~ 't-deverbal' correspondence (e.g., Italian vincere 'to win' ~ vinto 'won', but vincetore 'winner' < Latin vincere ~ victus ~ victor). 

Feb 28            Tysean Bucknor (CUNY Graduate Center) 

                          Retention of Lower-Copy Adjectives in Belizean Creole How-Phrases

Belizean Creole (BC) is an English-lexified creole language spoken primarily in Belize. The linguistic literature for syntactic analysis of BC is scarce, but descriptive materials do exist (Decker 2005, Green 1994, Young 1973, and Escure 2013 inter alia). BC uses the zero copula for predicates containing AdjP. In how-phrases­­ such as how tall are you? AdjPs are required and, therefore, contain the zero copula by default in BC. There is also no subject-auxiliary inversion in BC, which forces the zero copula to remain at the right edge of how-phrases. As a syntactic repair strategy, BC allows a copy of the “moved” adjective following the zero copula where we might expect a trace of movement in GB-style syntax (Chomsky 1981), thus providing evidence for the copy theory of movement (Chomsky 1995). I explore an analysis of this where unstressable syllables cannot be the final phonetically realized element of how-phrases, in turn triggering the retention of a lower-copy adjective following the zero copula. This observation suggests an interaction between syntax and prosody.

Feb 21            Mariia Privizentseva (Universität Leipzig, visiting UMass Amherst) 

                          Nominal ellipsis reveals concord in Moksha Mordvin

In some languages nominal modifiers generally do not show concord with the noun, but are inflected if the noun is elided. This inflection is often analyzed as stranded and cliticized affixes of an elided noun (see Dékány (2011), Saab & Lipták (2016), Ruda (2016), Murphy (2018), and Saab (2019)). On the basis of original data from Moksha Mordvin (Finno-Ugric), I argue that inflection under nominal ellipsis is best analyzed as nominal concord and that features are regularly present on a nominal modifier, but remain without morphological realization in non-elliptical contexts. The distribution of features follows from conditions on Spell-Out and types of features that can be spelled out. In particular, I suggest that shortly after valuation probe features are still identifiable as such and are therefore not subject to Vocabulary Insertion. Spell-Out applies to nominal modifiers right after probes responsible for concord are valued, so that features are exempt from realization. Concord is morphologically realized under ellipsis, because in this case there is an additional feature on a nominal modifier, which postpones Spell-Out. 

Jan 30            Amy Rose Deal (UC Berkeley) 

                          Uncentered attitude reports

One of the major discoveries in attitude semantics over the last thirty years has been the fact that certain types of attitude reports require interpretation de se. This finding has prompted a move among semanticists to treat attitude verbs as uniformly quantifying over centered worlds (typically modeled as triples of worlds, individuals, and times), rather than merely over possible worlds, and likewise a move to treat attitude complements as uniformly denoting sets of centered worlds, rather than mere sets of possible worlds. Thus, for instance, "A believes P" is true iff P holds of all triples <x,t,w> such that A believes that she might be x in w at t.  Proponents of a Uniformity Thesis of this type include Schlenker (1999), Ogihara (1999), von Stechow (2003), Anand (2006), Pearson (2015), and Grønn and von Stechow (2010). In this talk I present evidence against the Uniformity Thesis, drawing from my fieldwork on Nez Perce (Sahaptian). I show that dedicated de se devices (shifty 1st person indexicals, relative tenses) are possible in one type of attitude report in Nez Perce, but not in another type, and argue that the difference between the two types of attitude report crucially reflects the semantics of the attitude verb and its complement. I argue in particular that some attitude verbs quantify over centered tuples, making it possible to include dedicated de se devices, whereas others quantify merely over possible worlds, ruling such devices out. [Note that a paper version of this work is available for download on my website.]

Fall 2019

Dec 13            Alex Warstadt (NYU) 

                           Discovering Structure: Can neural networks acquire a bias for structural generalizations?

During language acquisition, humans have a bias towards acquiring grammatical rules based on hierarchical structure, as opposed to linear order. Chomsky (1965, 1971) argues this bias is innate, based on key "structure dependent" examples. For instance, children must learn a general rule for subject-auxiliary inversion primarily from input like Is the man happy?. With this input, a low-bias learner could form a structural generalization (front the highest auxiliary in the corresponding declarative) or a linear one (front the first auxiliary), but human learners always choose the former. That is, no human learns a rule that produces the form *Is the man who tall is happy?.

Chomsky's argument follows if we grant the assumption that the raw input during language acquisition lacks crucial evidence for a purely data-driven learner to reject the linear generalization. We test this assumption by investigating whether BERT (Devlin et al., 2018), a state-of-the-art low-bias neural network for sentence understanding, acquires a structural bias. We conduct four experiments testing its preference for structural vs. linear generalizations in different structure-dependent phenomena. The results show that in 3 out of 4 empirical domains, BERT shows evidence of a structural bias. While these findings do not falsify Chomsky's argument or its conclusions, they shed some doubt on the crucial assumption that a structural bias is unlearnable from raw data alone.

Nov 22            Jason Kandybowicz (CUNY Grad Center) 

                           Diagnosing (Non)restrictivity in Ikpana and Shupamem Relative Clauses

How do we diagnose restrictivity/non-restrictivity in relative clauses? Trained native speaker linguists consult their intuitions as an analytical first step. But how do we proceed when working on unfamiliar languages with linguistically naïve speakers? We rely on a complex of what appear to be cross-linguistically valid syntactic and semantic diagnostics. In this talk, I show that many of the existing diagnostics are ill-equipped to diagnose (non)restrictivity in Ikpana, an endangered Ghana-Togo Mountain language of Ghana. I also argue that on the basis of these diagnostics, there is no restrictive/appositive distinction in the relative clauses of Shupamem, a Grassfields Bantu language spoken in Cameroon. 

Nov 15            Yining Nie (NYU) 

                           The limits of applicative recursion

Some languages, such as Kinyarwanda, allow the stacking of multiple applicatives in a single clause. However, most languages do not permit such applicative recursion. I argue that the availability of applicative recursion in a language cannot be due to semantic or c-selectional restrictions, but can be explained by the independent properties of nominal licensing in the language. I propose that applicative heads are nominal licensers in recursive applicative languages but are not licensers in non-recursive languages. Applied arguments in non-recursive languages must therefore compete for licensing by a higher head, Voice, deriving the fact that only one applied argument may be licensed per clause.

Nov 8               Soo-Hwan Lee (NYU) 

                           Swahili locatives and post-syntactic operations

According to Bresnan & Mchombo (1995) and Carstens (1997, 2008, 2011), noun classes 16, 17, and 18 in Bantu languages denote locative expressions. Apart from these noun classes, the realization of the locative suffix, -ni, is also possible. From a theoretical perspective (e.g., Minimalist Program), the connection between the two has been understudied. Here, I propose a uniform analysis on the realization of these locative affixes. Adopting post-syntactic operations and late-insertion introduced in Distributed Morphology (Halle & Marantz 1993), I specifically argue that the locative affixes are allomorphs derived from the same syntactic operations (e.g., locative inversion and agreement).

Nov 1               Stanislao Zompi (MIT) 

                           On some interactions between verb movement and clitic ordering

Clitic ordering is notoriously subject to intricate cross-linguistic variation. Among other patterns, we know there are languages (call them “type 1”) that generally allow only DAT<ACC, and others (“type 2”) that generally allow only ACC<DAT. In this work-in-progress report, I focus on a phenomenon that cuts across this split: both types include languages that, while permitting only one order preverbally, turn out to allow both ACC<DAT and DAT<ACC postverbally. We can make sense of this if these languages choose one clitic order as their only basic order (only DAT over ACC in type 1, only ACC over DAT in type 2) but accord verb movement the option of either pied-piping or not pied-piping the lower clitic along the way. I discuss several possible implementations of this idea, and explore potential applications of it to some interactions between verb placement and PCC-like restrictions.

Oct 18               Hagen Blix (NYU) 

                             The Size of Complex Prefields: The Case Against Structure Removal

This paper provides an analysis of complex prefields and verbal prefields in German in terms of size. Under the assumption that German exhibits right-headed verbal structure, and V->v movement, complex prefields are analyzed as movement of a verbal structure that contains an empty verbal position (Fanselow 1993). The analysis receives motivation from the behavior of repetitive/restorative wieder 'again', control adjuncts, and secondary depictive predicates. I show that such an analysis can account for a set of properties that Müller (2018) argued to involve conflicting representations for complex prefields without the need to introduce a structure removal operation into the syntactic component.

Oct 4                 Richard S. Kayne (NYU) 

                             On Complementizers and Relative Pronouns in Germanic vs. Romance

Many Germanic languages have a finite-clause complementizer that resembles a demonstrative, e.g. English that, Dutch dat, German dass. No Romance language does. The traditional view of complementizers as simplex projecting heads that take IP or some comparable category as complement has no way of accounting for this difference between Germanic and Romance. In this talk, I will attempt to make progress toward an account of this difference by reinterpreting finite-clause complementizers as relative pronouns.

Spring 2019

May 3                 Friederike Moltmann (CNRS) 

                              The Core-Periphery Distinction in Syntax, Semantics, and Natural Language Ontology

This talk discusses the nature and importance of core-periphery distinctions in syntax (and phonology) as well as semantics and natural language ontology. Distinctions between a core and a periphery of language are best known from generative syntax. The Chomskyan distinction between the syntactic core and periphery is controversial, though, and does not generally guide the practice of syntactic analysis. I will argue that a core-periphery distinction is indispensable for natural language ontology as well as conceptual meaning, and has in fact been implicitly made by semanticists as well as philosophers (and that throughout the history of philosophy whenever philosophers appealed to natural language to motivate a philosophical notion or view). The talk will try to elucidate the distinction with a range of cases and discuss what it means for the subject matter of linguistic disciplines and natural language ontology in particular.

April 26               Deepak Alok (Rutgers) 

                                The Morpho-Syntax of Addressee agreement and indexical shift in Magahi

In this talk, I study two phenomena, addressee agreement (Add-Agr) and indexical shift (i-shift) in Magahi, an Eastern Indo-Aryan language, spoken in East India. A leading idea in the literature of Add-Agr, based on work in Japanese and Basque, is that Add-Agr is a root/main clause phenomenon. It is a realization of C-agreement with a null but syntactically expressed representation of an addressee “Hr” (for “hearer”) in the speech act phrase (SAP) (Miyagawa 2012, 2017, after Speas & Tenny’s (2003) influential proposal). I show that this view cannot explain Add-Agr in Magahi where Add-Agr is freely available on all sorts of finite embedded clauses as well as matrix clauses. I propose that the “Hr”, the goal of Add-Agr, and the head involved in Add-Agr are lower in the C-domain, specifically in finite Fin in Magahi. In this view, Add-Agr can be achieved without SAP.

I then discuss i-shift phenomenon. i-shift has been analyzed in a variety of languages over the past few decades, mostly from a semantic perspective (Schlenker 2003, Anand & Nevins 2004, Anand 2006, Deal 2017, 2018). However, I will explore the possibility of a new syntactic approach to i-shift in Magahi that is centered on the presence of “Hr”. First, I show that “Hr” binds 2nd person pronouns in its domain (that is what makes them 2nd person, Baker (2008)). Then I show that being a null DP in the left-periphery of the clause, “Hr” can be controlled by a higher DP, similar (but not identical) to the way PRO is controlled in infinitival clauses in English. I will then claim that when this control and binding relationship is established the 2nd person pronoun in the embedded clause gets referentially dependent on the matrix goal, resulting i-shift (Alok & Baker 2018, Baker & Alok 2019) -no context shifting OP is needed (contra Anand & Nevins 2004, Anand 2006, Deal 2017). I will support the idea by discussing different kinds of interactions that we see between i-shifts and Add-Agr in Magahi.

April 19              Paula Fenger (UConn) 

                              Words within words: The internal syntax of verbs

For this talk I investigate what the limits are on word formation by looking at periphrastic (V+aux) and agglutinating (V+suffix) verb patterns. I propose that creating syntactic words is limited by phase boundaries and that language variation comes from (i) whether Tense/Mood/Aspect elements can or cannot be part of the inner phase (elaborating on Wurmbrand 2014 Harwood 2015, Todorović 2016, a.o.) and (ii) the availability of post-syntactic rebracketing, creating syntax-phonology mismatches (Embick and Noyer 2001). 

I investigate this idea by conducting a cross-linguistic survey and look at phonological (i.e., stress assignment, pitch accent, vowel harmony) and syntactic behaviour (i.e., coordination, movement) of verbs and auxiliaries. I present data mainly from Japanese and Turkish, and provide preliminary ideas on where to go next (Korean, Bangla, Italian, English).

March 15            Maria Kouneli (NYU) 

                               Determiner spreading and modification in Kipsigis

Determiner Spreading (DS; also called polydefiniteness and definiteness agreement/concord in the literature) is the phenomenon in which multiple determiners are present in a single DP, usually in the context of (adjectival) modification. There is significant cross-linguistic variation in the properties of the construction, and Alexiadou (2014) argues that a unified analysis for all languages that have DS is impossible. There are two broad approaches to the phenomenon: a) multiple determiners spell out multiple D heads that are present in the syntax, and have the role of introducing the adjectival modifier (e.g., Alexiadou & Wilder 1998), b) multiple determiners spell out definiteness agreement/concord morphology on the adjective (e.g., Kramer 2010). Greek DS is usually analyzed as in (a) because multiple determiners are only possible with certain types of adjectives, and their presence is associated with special semantic effects. DS in Semitic, on the other hand, is usually analyzed as in (b), because it is obligatory, without any semantic effects, and does not show any restrictions with respect to adjectival type; all these are properties that point towards a concord analysis according to Alexiadou's (2014) typology of DS. In this talk, I present novel data from DS in Kipsigis (Nilotic; Kenya), where each adjective modifying the head noun is introduced by a determiner, which can be either a relativizer or one of the three demonstrative morphemes in the language. I argue that there is independent evidence in Kipsigis for analyzing adjectives as relative clauses, and for treating the relativizer and demonstratives as determiners that take a CP complement (Kayne 1994 a.o.). I, thus, argue that multiple determiners in the language are D heads that are present in the syntax, and are responsible for introducing the adjectival modifiers. What is interesting about Kipsigis DS is that it is obligatory for all adjectives in the language, and does not show any special semantic effects, just like Semitic. We can, therefore, conclude that these properties of DS in a given language cannot be used as diagnostics for a concord analysis, contra Alexiadou's (2014) claim.  

March 1              Philip Shushurin (NYU) 

                               External possessors in Russian: an applicative account

Much of the work on external, or raised, possessors in Russian (Paykin and van Peteghem (2003), Grashchenkov and Markman (2009)), as well as in other languages with the similar phenomenon (Landau (1999), Deal (2016)), has recognized the dual nature of such arguments: on one hand, they are interpreted as possessors, on the other hand, they show many similarities with other types of arguments, most frequently, applicatives and topics. I consider two external possession constructions in Russian and propose that they are merged in a DP-external functional projection (ApplP) and either are licensed in situ or move to a topic position for licensing. I propose that goals of ditransitives (low applicatives), external possessors and DP-internal possessors are introduced by the same functional head. 

February 22      Lefteris Paparounas (UPenn) 

                                Indefinite null objects in Greek: distinguishing between weakly equivalent ellipses (joint work with Ioanna Sitaridou)

Verb-stranding ellipsis (ellipsis of a remnant VP in languages with verb-raising) and argument ellipsis (deletion of an object nominal) are generally capable of generating the same surface string. How are the two operations to be distinguished from one another? We confront this analytical challenge based on data from Modern Greek, a language that drops indefinite, but not definite, objects. We argue that these object gaps are derived by argument ellipsis, instead of verb-stranding ellipsis as recently argued by Merchant (2018), and derive the restriction of object drop to indefinite DPs from the interaction between ellipsis and cliticization in Greek. The finding that Greek employs argument ellipsis forms part of a body work suggesting that this operation is not confined to the languages of East Asia (Sato and Karimi 2016; Landau 2018), and that its presence is not tied to the absence of agreement (Saito 2007) or to scrambling (Oku 1998). Finally, the question arises why Greek does not employ verb-stranding ellipsis. We offer two mutually exclusive explanations of this fact: either the language lacks VP ellipsis altogether, or VP ellipsis bleeds head movement in Greek (cf. Sailor 2018), such that the verb-stranding pattern cannot arise.

February 15       Yining Nie (NYU) 

                                 Raising applicatives in Tagalog

Applied arguments in Tagalog must always be promoted to "pivot" or "subject" of the clause, triggering apparent agreement morphology on the verb. I argue that while Voice and v may license their specifier and complement, respectively, thematic applicatives cannot license the arguments they introduce. An applied argument must instead raise to a higher athematic "raising" applicative projection (Georgala 2012), where it agrees with Voice, conditioning allomorphy on the verb, and is promoted to pivot. I examine external possession, instrumental and causative constructions and conclude that applicative introduction and licensing must be severed in Tagalog.

February 1         Faruk Akkuş (UPenn) 

                                "Variable" embedded agent in Sason Arabic

The paper investigates the syntax of the analytic ‘make’-causatives in Sason Arabic, with a focus on the syntactic status of the implict embedded agent and the embedded structure. The study demonstrates that this construction embeds both an active and passive VoiceP despite the absence of morphological reflex. It contends that the implicit embedded agent may be introduced (i) as a full DP in Spec,VoiceP, being subject to Romance ECM-type restrictions (cf. Kayne 1975, Boškovic 2002), and providing striking evidence of Ā-movement feeding licensing relationships, or (ii) as a free variable à la Heim (1982) generated on the Voice head itself. The latter possibility also raises implications regarding licensing, suggesting that licensing of a grammatical object is dissociated from the projection of a specifier.

Fall 2018

December 14        Richard S. Kayne (NYU) 

                                 The Syntax of Suppletion

Starting from my 2008 "Expletives, Datives, and the Tension between Morphology and Syntax” on the expletive ghe that appears in dative sentences in many Italian dialects, I will pursue a general hypothesis about suppletion that takes suppletion to involve silent elements and additional structure, rather than to involve just substitution of one overt element by another.

December 7         Gary Thoms (NYU) 

                                  The curious development of have-raising (joint work with David Adger, Caroline Heycock and Jennifer Smith

In this talk we discuss have-raising, where possessive have raises to T/C (I haven't any money with me), and using data from the Scots Syntax Atlas, we show that a definiteness effect has developed with have-raising: only older or relic dialect speakers accept e.g. I haven’t that one. We develop an analysis which crucially relies on the idea that there are two structures for possessives: a transitive analysis, which hosts definites and spells out optionally as have got, and an existential analysis, which does neither. We tie the definiteness effect to another change in the possessive system which is described by Noble (1985): have got rose to near-ceiling rates in British English, leading to specialisation of the transitive analysis for have got. We develop a precise understanding of how this specialisation came about in terms of a competing grammars-based approach to language change. 

November 30      Byron Ahn (Princeton) & Laura Kalin (Princeton)

                                   Breaking ‘Ourselves’ Down: The Morphosyntax of English Reflexive Anaphors

In this talk, we explore the form and interpretation of English reflexive anaphors, such as “ourselves”. We present novel observations about the dynamic form and productive modifiability of English reflexive anaphors, which motivates us to conclude that these anaphors are derived syntactic objects (and not statically listed as [+reflexive] objects in the lexicon), with internal structure paralleling possessives. In particular, we discuss (i) how to derive what has been characterized as the “[+reflexive]” property, and (ii) when case/phi values for the possessive pronoun in an anaphor may deviate from what is prima facie expected.

November 16       Matt Tyler (Yale)

                                   Characterizing the causative alternation in Choctaw

In Choctaw, a large class of verbs participate in a non-productive causative (active vs. non-active) alternation. Notably, the active alternants are marked with a morpheme -li that is also used productively to transitivize stative verbs. At the same time, Choctaw has a morpheme -chi that forms syntactic causatives. In the first part of the talk, I argue that 'active' -li and 'causative' -chi realize the same syntactic head: a Voice head with an obligatory specifier. In particular, it is shown that this head is realized as -chi in the elsewhere case (akin to Japanese -sase, Harley 2006), but as -li in the context of the categorizing head v. I show how -chi unexpectedly shows up to expone this Voice head in a variety of environments where v-Voice locality is disrupted. Supporting evidence comes from the similar range of interpretations available to arguments introduced by -chi and -li. In the second part of the talk, I turn to the non-active alternants, which, I argue, expone a specifierless Voice head. I show that the interpretation of this head is partly conditioned by the root—in terms of whether or not it introduces agentive semantics—and is partly invariant, in that it necessarily introduces manner semantics (similar to non-active morphology in Greek, cf. Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou 2004). In this way, passive-like and inchoative-like interpretations are constructed in a language with no productive valency-reducing morphology. Taken all together, we see that both the productive and non-productive pieces of argument-structural morphology make predictable contributions to morphological and semantic interpretation. 

November 9         Zuzanna Fuchs (Harvard)

                                   Gender on n in Bantu DP Structure, from root-derived nominals to locatives (joint work with Jenneke van der Wal)

The goal of this presentation is to provide an exploration of the n analysis of gender as it can be applied to gender in Bantu languages. We believe this language family provides a particularly exciting testing ground for the analysis given the complexity of its gender system on the one hand, and the relative transparency of its morphology on the other. In particular, variation within the Bantu language family allows us to consider how the analysis might be refined or amended to establish and account for parameters of crosslinguistic variation. We see the present proposal as a general toolkit for the language family that would need to be specialized for a detailed account of any single language within the family. We hope that future work on language-specific properties of gender or on some of the outstanding phenomena, which we can only touch on, will contribute to a more nuanced understanding of these topics. Until then, we offer this investigation as further evidence for gender on n as a uniform and crosslinguistically plausible analysis.

October 26           Melanie Hobich (Goethe Univ. Frankfurt, visiting UPenn)

                                   A diachronic perspective on 'was für'

Due to its split form, the what for (‘what kind of’) construction (WFC) has been much called on in literature on extraction and syntactic theory; approaches to its internal structure, however, have been scarce (Leu 2015, Kwon 2015; Blümel & Coniglio t.a.). In my talk I present data on the origin of the German WFC that suggest that the construction lines up neatly in the paradigm of other quantifying constructions cross-linguistically. Following Roehrs & Sapp (2018), I claim that the WFC developed from a head-type construction to a phrase-type construction. The facts from the diachronic development of the WFC may be taken as evidence that there are two types of quantificational constructions, as claimed by Danon (2012) and Roehrs & Sapp (2018).

October 12            Ryan Hearn (Cornell)

                                    Evidence from innovation: Reconstructing disharmonic headedness for Proto-Indo-European

In the past it has been suggested that older Indo-European (IE) languages were uniformly head-final (Lehmann 1974). Recent work on Hittite by Sideltsev (2014), however, demonstrates that at least the Anatolian branch of Indo-European showed mixed or disharmonic headedness much like that of modern German: head-initial CP and head-final TP. In this paper, I use a corpus-based analysis of Tocharian and Homeric Greek innovated auxiliary constructions to show that they too had a disharmonic distribution mirroring that of Anatolian. In addition, I cite preliminary data from Sanskrit and Latin innovated auxiliary constructions which indicate that, in fact, all of the earliest-attested IE languages show this behavior. Taken together, my Tocharian and Greek data along with the other old IE language data support the conclusion that these languages inherited this disharmonic headedness from Proto-Indo-European (PIE).

September 28      Karoliina Lohiniva (NYU)

                                    Two strategies for forming unconditionals: Evidence from disjunction

The analysis of English alternative unconditionals such as (1) has been proposed to involve the syntax and semantics of alternative questions (e.g. Rawlins 2008, 2013). 

(1) Whether Mary moves to Paris or Lyon, she needs to learn French.

Specifically, for Rawlins, the adjunct clause corresponds to an alternative question, and combines with the matrix clause in pointwise fashion in order to yield a final sentence meaning akin to (2). 

(2) If Mary moves to Paris, she needs to learn French, and if Mary moves to Lyon, she needs to learn French.

In this talk, I propose that there is a second strategy that languages may use to form unconditionals. This strategy does not rely on question syntax or semantics, but existential closure (cf. Erlewine 2017). The evidence for this strategy comes from Finnish and Mandarin Chinese, which lexicalize separate logical and interrogative disjunctors. Crucially, in these languages, alternative questions are always formed with the interrogative disjunctor, but alternative unconditionals must (Finnish) or may (Mandarin Chinese) be formed with the logical disjunctor. Therefore, an analysis based on alternative questions does not fully capture the syntax and semantics of unconditionals in these languages. 

September 28       Gary Thoms (NYU)

                                     (Anti)reconstruction as layering

“Reconstruction” is the term used to describe when a given constituent seems to be interpreted in a position lower than its surface position with respect to certain interpretive effects, for instance for low scope (1a) or anaphor binding options (1b). 

(1)     a. A Kenyan is likely to win the race. 

          b. Which picture of himselfi does Johni/j think Billj likes?

The challenge posed by such data depends on one’s theory of movement. Pre-Minimalist theories derive surface structure interpretations by default, and they have to stipulate some way of “lowering” the moved XP into the trace position to produce non-surface structure interpretation. Minimalist theories, working with the Copy Theory of Movement (Chomsky 1995), get the reconstructed interpretation more easily, since there is a copy of the quantifier in the lower position, but they must then add extra technology to determine the different interpretive options, for instance by converting copies into non-quantificational expressions (see e.g. Fox 1999, Erlewine 2014). Johnson (2012, 2016) develops a novel theory of (anti)reconstruction couched in multidominance terms. On Johnson’s theory, the default is that when a DP moves, it is interpreted in its base position, and so when a moving DP seems to take scope in some higher position - for instance Spec,CP in a wh-question - this is because that DP is sideward-merged with a quantificational element Q; the QP formed by this sideward merger is then merged in Spec,CP, where it takes scope. Thus Johnson’s theory derives reconstruction as the default, and nonreconstruction of quantificational material follows from these items being first-merged with NP “on the way” to the surface position, in a separate subroot (as an instance of sideward movement, AKA external remerge), and then the DP formed by this is remerged into its surface position. 

While Johnson’s theory derives reconstruction into base positions readily (e.g. the “picture of Bill” reading of 1b), he does not discuss how it would deal with cases of antireconstruction (the “picture of John” reading), where some content of a fronted nominal is not reconstructed fully to the base position. In this talk we develop a generalized version of Johnson’s theory where sideward merge is responsible for all instances of antireconstruction: any material which is not reconstructed is sideward-merged onto the moving element on the way up to the landing site. I call this process layering for exposition, but it adds nothing more to the theory than external remerge does, and external remerge is motivated empirically by the existence of complex specifiers, which can only be derived by external remerge (de Vries 2009, Zwart 2011). 

The layering approach to antireconstruction makes a number of predictions which other accounts do not make concerning the interaction of the different layers of moved expression and other syntactic processes. An element X which is subject to antireconstruction will not be present in the “base position” because it is first-merged in a separate subroot, and so that X will not be visible for syntactic processes which would “see” the base position, such as agreement; relatedly, material which is reconstructed (i.e. not layered on on the way up the tree) will always be visible for the same syntactic processes. We thus predict reconstruction to interact with processes such as agreement. I show that this makes welcome predictions regarding the interaction of agreement and reconstruction which are not made by competing theories, and I outline how such a theory may account for some other important properties of reconstruction as well. 

Spring 2018

April 27    Hongchen Wu (Stony Brook)

                     Topicality and quantifier scope in Mandarin

Mandarin is argued to be a scope rigid language (Huang 1982; Aoun and Li 1989, 1993), because the simple transitives (c.f., (1)) in Mandarin only show surface scope whereas the English counterparts (c.f., (2)) are ambiguous.

(1) San-ge xuesheng xue-guo mei-zhong yuyan.

      three-CL student learn-ASP every-CL Language

      3 > ∀ : ‘There are three students x such that x learned every language.’

      * ∀ > 3: ‘For every language y, y is learned by three possibly different students.’

(2)   Three students learned every language. (3 > ∀ ; ∀ > 3)

However, in many other contexts (e.g., PP datives, PP locatives), Mandarin behaves just like English with respect to scope interpretation, and these empirical data pose challenges for the two current approaches to Mandarin quantifier scope: Huang (1982)’s Isomorphic Principle and Aoun and Li (1989, 1993)’s Scope Principle.   Here we show that the scope ambiguity of Mandarin PP datives and PP locatives is expected under Fox (2000)’s Scope Economy and then argue that the scope frozenness of Mandarin simple transitives comes from the topicality of Mandarin matrix clause structure, which is in line with the implications of Scope Economy.

April 20    Ümit Atlamaz (Rutgers)

                     Agreement with Case-marked Nominals

In this talk, I propose that Agree has a post-syntactic component that is sensitive to Fusion. Following Arregi and Nevins (2012), I argue that Agree consists of a syntactic and a post-syntactic component. The post-syntactic component of Agree is sensitive to the fusion patterns on goal NPs. The theory accounts for the differences across languages where agreement is sensitive to overt case. In languages like Hindi (also Tsez, Sakha, Kashmiri), overt case blocks agreement completely whereas this blocking effect is only partial in Kurmanji (also Icelandic and Faroese). In Hindi, for example, NPs marked with ERG (-ne) or ACC (-ko) are never agreed with. But in Kurmanji, 1/2 oblique subjects cannot be agreed with whereas third person oblique subjects can be agreed with in number. I show that the crucial difference between languages like Hindi and Kurmanji is about the fusion patterns on nominals. In some Kurmanji nominals, case and number fuse into a single head and this feeds agreement. In contrast, case in Hindi does not fuse with anything and this bleeds agreement. I also briefly discuss languages like Laz, where overt case does not block agreement at all. I propose an account based on Relativized Probing (Nevins 2007, Preminger 2014).

April 13    Sze-Wing Tang (CUHK/MIT)

                     A Cartography Analysis of the Clausal Periphery

Insights of Ross (1970) of the analysis of the clausal periphery have been revived under the cartographic approach (Rizzi 1997, 2004, Cinque 1999, see also Speas 2004, Tenny 2006, Hill 2007, Miyagawa 2012, 2017, and Wiltschko and Heim 2016). The goal of this talk is twofold. First, it is argued that there should be two distinct syntactic layers in the clausal periphery that are dedicated to “grounding” and “responding” (Wiltschko and Heim 2016), respectively, by examining the grammatical properties of the Mandarin sentence-final particle (“SFP”) ma and Cantonese SFP ge and the “h-family”. Second, it is argued that some sentence-final expressions, such as tags in tag questions in English should be in the highest syntactic position and form a coordination structure with a silent head, in the sense of Kayne (2016). A hierarchical structure/ordering “Proposition > SFP > Tag” is proposed, which may serve as a working hypothesis to study the syntax of speech act cross-linguistically.

March 30    Yining Nie (NYU) 12:30pm

                        Possessor raising and adversity in Tagalog

In this talk, I relate external possession and adversity constructions in Tagalog, both of which involve a possession relation between an affected pivot argument and the theme argument of a Locative Voice-marked (LV) verb. I propose that in both external possession and adversity constructions, the possessor raises from a DP-internal position to the specifier of a low applicative head, which is spelled out by LV (Rackowski 2002; Aldridge 2004), in order to be licensed and receive an affected interpretation. I show that, like Russian adversity impersonals (Babby 1994), adversatives in Tagalog are incompatible with agents; I provide an analysis based on the licensing properties of different Voice heads.

March 23    Alec Sugar (UWashington)

                        Verb-Linking Patterns in Uyghur

This talk gives a detailed overview of what resembles a serial verb construction in the Turkic language Uyghur. In this construction, the -(i)p suffix attaches to non-final verbs in lieu of finite inflection when more than one verb or verb phrase are juxtaposed in a sentence. Uyghur grammarians have analyzed -(i)p as an adverbial suffix selecting a VP as a complement. In this talk, I first give an overview of the environments in which -(i)p appears, showing that it is involved in a variety of structurally distinct constructions for which a single analysis will not suffice. I suggest that what these constructions have in common is that -(i)p is merged as a 'last resort' to value inflectional features on Uyghur verbs when a higher verbal item blocks agreement with tense. I then motivate -(i)p as realizing various event-related functional heads along a clausal spine, including a functional head between little v and lexical V, a functional above Voice and below viewpoint aspect, and non-finite tense.

Feb 23    Maria Kouneli (NYU) 12:30pm

                  Does Kipsigis have adjectives?

It is relatively uncontroversial that nouns and verbs are universal syntactic categories. Adjectives, on the other hand, are more controversial: previous typological studies (e.g. Dixon 1982) have argued that many languages completely lack adjectives as a syntactic category, while recent generative approaches to syntactic categories (e.g. Baker 2003) have argued that adjectives are a universal category, which is, however, subject to significant cross-linguistic variation.In this talk, I present novel data on adjectives in the understudied Nilotic language Kipsigis, which can shed light on the syntax of adjectives cross-linguistically. Firstly, using both morphological and syntactic distribution criteria, I show that adjectives in the language form a morphosyntactic category distinct from verbs and nouns. I also show, however, that they can never directly modify a noun, which is the hallmark property of adjectives in most languages that have them. Kipsigis is, therefore, interesting in having adjectives, but lacking the direct modification type, which raises the question of what determines whether an adjective can directly modify a noun in some languages, but not in others. While I do not have an answer to this question, I argue that adjectives in Kipsigis have exactly the same syntactic distribution and behavior as relative clauses, and present evidence for a head-raising analysis of relative clauses, along the lines of Kayne (1994).

Fall 2017

Dec 8       Juliet Stanton (NYU)

Antipronominality effects and other divisions among A’-extractions

In this talk, I discuss a restriction on English preposition stranding: the ability of a given preposition (P) to be stranded is partially dependent on whether or not P accepts a pronoun as its complement, i.e. whether or not P is an antipronominal context (Postal 1998). Certain A’-extractions permit stranding of antipronominal Ps, while others do not. I extend the theory of wholesale late merger (Takahashi 2006, Takahashi & Hulsey 2009) and propose that while a subset of A’-extractions obligatorily leave full copies in the base position, others don’t. I show that this proposal derives the observed restrictions on P-stranding, and present some additional evidence (and some challenges) for the proposed analysis. [This talk will largely be based on a 2016 LI paper of mine, but advance familiarity with that paper is by no means required.]

Dec 1       Ailis Cournane (NYU)

On how to link child functional omissions to upwards reanalysis

Syntactic change research regularly appeals to the child innovator to explain upward reanalysis (V > v > INFL; e.g., Roberts & Roussou, 2003; van Gelderen, 2004). In child language, the most pervasive type of syntactic input divergence, or “error”, is the omission of functional morphemes (e.g., Brown, 1973; Snyder, 2007). Following Pannemann (2007), I argue that children learn language specific syntactic structures by assuming a Maximal Category First approach. Under this analysis, omission-laden child strings represent conservative interim structural analyses (rather than input-consistent analyses with unpronounced elements). When the child fails to revise her interim analysis to the input target, the resultant analysis will be upwards in nature (MIN>MAX), as predicted by the child innovator approach. This paper uses a corpus study of modal verbs (Cournane, 2015) to show that child functional omissions provide evidence for reanalyses up the verbal projection.

Nov 3      So Young Lee (Stony Brook)

Wh-island in wh-in situ languages

Nishigauchi (1990, 1999), Watanabe (1992), Han (1992), and Choe (1995) claim that wh-in situ languages such as Japanese and Korean obey wh-island constraint at LF. They argue that the semantic scope of nwukwu ‘who’ in the embedded clause in (1) cannot be extended to the matrix clause and that (1) is interpreted as the embedded scope reading (1a) only. (1) John-un [Mary-ka nwukwu-lul mannassnun-ci] mwuless-eo? John-Top [Mary-Nom who-Acc met-Comp] asked? a. ‘Did John ask who Mary met t?’ b. ‘Who did John ask whether Mary met t?’ The comprehension tests conducted by Hwang (2011), however, show that the matrix scope reading (1b) is also acceptable with the proper intonation, allowing such a violation. In addition to prosody, there is another factor that potentially affects the judgment of scope: the surface syntactic position of the wh-phrase. Japanese and Korean allow scrambling of wh-phrases, even to the left edge of the matrix clause as in (2). (2) nwukwu-lul John-un [Mary-ka t mannassnun-ci] mwuless-eo? who-Acc John-Top [Mary-Nom t met-Comp] asked? Thus, in this talk, I will present how the wh-phrase moved out of the embedded clause by scrambling affects wh-island effect without prosody, based on the result of acceptability judgment tasks.

Oct 27     Dan Duncan (NYU)

Spell-Out as the locus of syntactic variation

Syntactic variation, which I take to mean variation between structurally different forms with identical meanings, is a probabilistic phenomenon like lexical, phonological etc., variation. An important research question, then, is where and how in the grammar such variation is implemented. In order to hold to some basic assumptions, namely, that syntax is built from the bottom-up, and a single derivation is sent to Spell-Out, two approaches have emerged. The competing grammars approach (Kroch 1994) suggests probabilistic selection between multiple grammars, which then yields differing derivations. The probabilistic grammar approach (for example, Burnett 2015) suggests that operations such as Merge are applied probabilistically. As Embick (2008) notes, these approaches yield identical surface patterns of variation. In this talk, I’ll go a step further and suggest they make an identical prediction: if variation is implemented at a decision point (Wallenberg 2013), subsequent operations cannot condition syntactic variation. In other words, material higher than the variable in the derivation cannot condition such variation. I test this shared prediction in a study of embedded passives in Pittsburgh English, which can take two structurally different forms that are identical in meaning (see Edelstein 2014):

1. The car needs washed.

2. The car needs to be washed.

A variationist analysis of >500 tokens of embedded passives shows that the selection of embedded passive is in fact conditioned by material higher in the derivation. This suggests that variation is implemented in the derivation later than previous approaches claim. I’ll argue for an approach in which multiple derivations are selected from probabilistically in Spell-Out. Effectively, I claim that syntactic variation is derived post-syntactically.

Oct 20     Leland Kusmer (UMass)

Extraction from coordination in Khoekhoegowab

Khoekhoegowab allows a heretofore-unreported predicate coordination construction in which items from the first conjunct may be extract to the prefield, apparently violating the Coordinate Structure Constraint (Ross 1967). This construction parallels the Subject-Gap in Finite Clause construction known from Germanic (see e.g. Kathol 1995). I will present data from original fieldwork demonstrating this construction in Khoekhoegowab and argue that this data is compatible with an analysis in which the conjuncts in SGF are small, i.e. vP or TP sized. I will then sketch a novel analysis drawing on previous work by Bjorkman (2014) and Lin (2001).

Oct 13     Stephanie Harves (NYU)

Silent GO in Slavic

This talk explores the licensing of a silent predicate GO in three Slavic languages: Russian, Czech, and Slovenian. The construction of interest is where silent GO occurs with a directional Prepositional Phrase, as in (1).

(1) Ja         očen’   xoču  v    N'ju-Jork!

      I.nom  really  want  to  New York.acc

      ‘I really want to go to New York!’       (Russian)

The existence of a silent predicate GO in various Germanic languages goes back to work by Barbiers (1995) and van Riemsdijk (2002), followed up more recently in work by van Dooren (2014). Within Slavic, Marušić and Žaucer (2005) present arguments for a null silent GO in Slovenian. In this talk, I replicate the results of various tests for Slovenian and present new data from Russian and Czech that highlight constraints on the licensing of this silent predicate related to modality and aspect. Such explorations raise questions cross-linguistically as to what licenses the silence of various predicates at large.

Sept 15   Kensuke Takita (NYU) 12:30pm, 4th floor lounge of 10WP

 Voice-Mismatches under N’-Deletion in Japanese

The goal of this talk is to illustrate that kata-nominalization in Japanese (Kishimoto 2006; see also Sugioka 1992, Kageyama 1993, Hoshi 2002, Miyagawa 2009, 2012, a.o.) provides a new testing ground for several issues concerning ellipsis. To be more specific, I argue that so-called N’-deletion (Saito & Murasugi 1990, Saito, Lin & Murasugi 2008), once applied to kata-nominalized clauses, offers a novel way of investigating the issue of the identity conditions, especially voice-mismatches (Merchant 2008, 2013, a.o.). It is also shown that N’-deletion in turn helps us to develop a particular analysis concerning the internal structure of kata-nominalized clauses, in tandem with Shibata’s (2015) proposal regarding the clause structure in Japanese.

Sept 15    Vera Zu (NYU) 11:00am, 4th floor lounge of 10WP

 Disentangling De Se

Everybody has a sense of self. We are conscious of ourselves as an individual, separated from the environment and other individuals. Such self-awareness affects the way we speak and enables us to linguistically distinguish de se beliefs from the beliefs that we are unaware that we have about ourselves.

De se as a subject matter has been discussed extensively in the semantic and philosophical literature, but the following two questions are rarely addressed in previous work.

1 (a) What kind of linguistic expressions trigger de se interpretations?

   (b) What sorts of selves are encoded in the representations of de se attitudes?

In this talk I divide de se expressions into two major classes, i.e., nominal and verbal de se expressions. I argue that the two types of de se expressions differ in at least two aspects.

2 (a) Verbal de se expressions are more restricted structurally than nominal de se expressions.

   (b) Verbal de se expressions are more selective in the types of events they are compatible with than nominal de se expressions.

Drawing empirical data from Newari, Japanese and Korean, I show that verbal de se expressions manifest obligatory control and systematically encode internal perspective of the embedded event. Accounting for the syntactic and semantic differences between the two types of de se expressions, I propose an agreement-based account for verbal de se expressions. The syntactic differences, in turn, reflect distinct de se relations.

Spring 2017

Apr 21     Kunio Kinjo (Rutgers) 10:15am

Agree by minimal search: A probe-free model of agreement

In this talk, I present a new model of Agree, elaborating the idea speculated in Chomsky (2013, 2015) that labeling and agreement employ the same search procedure (minimal search, MS). Specifically, I propose that MS, whether it is employed for labeling or agreement, applies at the phase level and cannot see lower copies. When it is employed for Agree, MS scans a phase from its root node and establishes Agree relations between matching features successively in a top-down fashion. With this model, I examine various verbal agreement patterns, mainly focusing on Bantu languages, where more than two φ-bearing elements appear within a CP phase: verbal agreement in the subject inversion constructions (Kinyalolo 1991; Baker 2008 a.o.), hyperagreement in the complex tense construction (Henderson 2006; Carstens 2011 a.o.), and alternative-agreement (a.k.a antiagreement) in subject extraction contexts (Ouhalla 1993; Schneider-Zioga 2007; Diercks 2010; Henderson 2013 a.o.).

Apr 14    Abdul-Razak Sulemana (MIT) 10:15am

Q-particles and the nature of Covert movement: evidence from Bùlì

It is a well known fact that wh-questions in many languages may contain an in-situ wh-phrase. The nature of this wh-phrase, however, has been a contentious issue in the literature. While some have argued that the in-situ wh-phrase undergoes covert movement at LF (Aoun, Hornstein, and Sportiche, 1981; Huang, 1982; Nishigauchi, 1990; Pesetsky, 2000, Richards, 1997; 2000; Nissenbaum, 2000; Cable, 2007; 2010; Kotek, 2014; 2016), others have argued against this view (Watanabe 1992; Chomsky 1995; Reinhart 1998). A well-known puzzle for proponents of covert movement are the apparent differences in island-sensitivity between overt and covert movement — leading Huang (1982), for example, to propose that island-sensitivity is a property of S-structure or PF but not LF. The goal of this paper is to show that wh-questions in Bùlì provide strong arguments for covert movement of wh-in situ that eliminate the need to posit any overt/covert differences in island-sensitivity cross-linguistically. The key to this demonstration is the distribution of an overt Q-marker in Bùlì, and Bùlì's status as an in-situ language.

Mar 10    Dunja Veselinovic (NYU) 12:30pm

Parameters of syntax of must and can (and how they must and can affect language acquisition)

This talk examines the syntax of modal verbs, and more narrowly the distinctions and similarities between epistemic and root uses of modals such as can and must. Starting from a Kratzerian semantic framework (Kratzer 1977, 1981 i.a.), I present evidence from Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (BCS) showing that previous syntactic analyses (Cinque 1999, Hacquard 2006, 2010, i.a.) cannot fully capture the distinctions between the epistemic and root uses of verbs morati ‘must’ and moći ‘can’. Instead, I argue that epistemic modal constructions in BCS are biclausal, in that the modal complement contains a full CP (1), whereas root modal constructions are monoclausal, in that the modal complement is a vP (2). For English epistemic modals, I adopt a modified raising analysis proposed at least as early as Ross (1969) (3).

(1) [TP2 … [ModP epist. [vP … [CP [TP1]]]]]                (epistemic, BCS)

(2) [TP1 … [ModP root [vP …]]]]                                   (root)

(3) [TP2 … [ModP epist. [TP1]]]                                    (epistemic, English)

I tie this analysis to corpus and experimental work on language acquisition, which has shown that children between the age of 2 and 3 experience what is called the Epistemic Gap (EG). During EG, children use modal auxiliaries only in root contexts, with epistemic uses appearing only once children show evidence of ability to embed TPs (Cournane 2015). My corpus work based on Anđelković, Ševa and Moskovljević (2001) CHILDES corpus shows that BCS children’s Epistemic Gap (EG) is protracted, lasting at least until children are 4 years old. I argue that this is due to the parametric differences in the syntax, as children have cross-linguistically been shown to not use CP-complements until after 4 years old (Diessel 2004; De Villiers & Roeper 2016).

Fall 2016

Dec 9       Ian Roberts (Cambridge/UConn)

The Null Subject Parameter in the 21st Century

I begin by giving a very brief historical sketch of work on  null subjects, and summarising the typology of null subjects, distinguishing consistent, partial and radical null-subject/null-argument systems, following Roberts & Holmberg (2010). I then present the recent important proposals in Barbosa (2014) concerning the relation between partial and radical null subjects. Following and developing a suggestion of hers (Barbosa 2014:49), this is extended to consistent null-subject languages and, further, to non-null-subject languages. This leads to a typology of null arguments which links their properties directly to the D-system in general, suggesting a cross-linguistic link between the nature of the null-subject system and the general nature of the “article system” in a given language. Next, I look briefly at the proposals for the semantics of null pronouns and pronouns in general, summarising and building on ideas of Barbosa (2014) and Elbourne (2005). This leads to a consideration of the role of the Person feature in licensing null arguments, following proposals in Longobardi (2008) and Richards (2014). Finally, a general account of “licensing pro” is put forward, which relies on the twin ideas that pro contains a variable and that all variables must be bound at the C-I interface (cf. the Bijection Principle of Koopman & Sportiche 1982/1990). 

Dec 9       Matt Barros (Yale) and Robert Frank (Yale)

Discourse Domains and Syntactic Phases: A Constraint on Multiple Sluicing

Merchant (2001) notes that the clause-mate requirement on multiple sluicing (sluicing with more than one wh-phrase survivor—Takahashi 1994) is suspended when the embedded subject is a pronoun bound by the matrix subject. 

(1) Some student-i claimed {he­-i/*Sally} met with some professor, but I don’t know which student with which professor.

Analyses of this pattern (e.g., Grano and Lasnik 2015) have focused on the role of the bound pronoun in extending the domain over which multiple sluicing can obtain. In this talk, we present new syntactic contexts where clause boundedness is relaxed in the absence of bound pronouns, and others where bound pronouns do not extend the domain, suggesting the bound pronouns are neither necessary nor sufficient. We argue instead that the clause-mate requirement in multiple sluicing is active only when the embedded subject is a DP that lacks a higher co-referential element in the matrix clause.  We label such subjects “shifty," in that they shift the focus of attention in the embedded clause from discourse referents mentioned in the matrix. In the absence of a shifty subject, the embedded and matrix clauses constitute a single domain of syntactic computation, leading to the possibility of multiple sluicing across the clause boundary. We show how this idea can be implemented in a phase-based analysis of clause-boundedness effects and show how it extends to phenomena such as scope and gapping.

Dec 2       Hadas Kotek (Yale)

Unifying definite and indefinite free relatives: Evidence from Mayan (joint work with Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine)

Free relatives (FRs) such as I liked [FR what I read] are described cross-linguistically as a type of relative clause of DP size and definite semantics (Jacobson, 1995, a.o.). Some languages also have what seem to be indefinite FRs, but Izvorski (1998), Grosu (2004), and Šimík (2011) argue that these are structurally distinct and better described as Modal Existential wh-Constructions (MECs). In this talk we present a case where definite and indefinite FRs are more similar than previously thought. We present data from several understudied Mayan languages, focusing primarily on Chuj (Guatemala), where indefinite FRs show a subset of the properties claimed to hold universally of indefinite FRs as MECs. We propose a uniform internal syntax and semantics for FRs and argue that definite and indefinite FRs differ only in their external environments. We analyze Mayan indefinite FRs as property complements of existential verbs (see e.g. Milsark, 1974; McNally, 1998) lacking a DP layer. A DP layer can then be added to form definite FRs, available in any argument position. The study contributes to the typology of FRs cross-linguistically, challenging the claim in Šimík (2010) a.o. that all apparent indefinite FRs must be MECs with modal interpretation.

Nov 18    Laura Kalin (Princeton)

A new model of nominal licensing

Beginning with Vergnaud 1977 and Chomsky 1980, a rich tradition in generative syntax holds that, in addition to bearing a semantic (theta) role, nominals need to be formally “licensed” by receiving abstract Case. In this talk, I examine two types of nominal restrictions that are typically taken to fall outside the purview of this system, the Person Case Constraint (Bonet 1991) and Differential Object Marking (Comrie 1979, Bossong 1991, i.a.). Based on novel observations about parallels between the PCC and DOM, I turn the predominant theoretical model of abstract nominal licensing (Chomsky 2000, 2001) on its head: I propose that licensing is not a general property of nominals, but rather, is driven by the needs of (certain) “interpretable” nominal features (e.g., [participant], [definite]), rather than by abstract Case. In other words, whether a nominal needs licensing---and in what configurations a nominal may be abstractly licensed---depends on the valued features the nominal bears. The proposed system is also driven by a distinction between obligatory and secondary licensing loci (Levin and Massam 1985, Bobaljik 1993, Rezac 2011, i.a.), with secondary licensers activated only when a feature that requires licensing would otherwise go unlicensed.

Nov 4       Ken Hiraiwa (Meiji Gakuin/MIT)

Decomposing Indeterminates and Composing Indefinite Pronouns

Japanese builds up various indefinite pronouns by combining “indeterminates” and particles (Kuroda 1965, 2013, Nishigauchi 1990, Shimoyama 2001, among others). While this indeterminate system is thought to be quite systematic, a close look reveals that it does have an gap that has been ignored and unexplained: the non-human universal quantifier “nani-mo” (everything) is missing.

In this talk, I will argue that this gap is by no means accidental. Probing into the internal syntax of indeterminates, I will propose that indeterminates are further decomposed into demonstrative roots and noun class elements and that the gap is precisely predicted by the decompositional approach and the labeling algorithm. I will also explore some consequences of the proposed analysis.

If this line of argument is right, what looks like an accidental and trivial gap provides a crucial window into the nature of the structure-building algorithm in narrow syntax.

Oct 7       Shih-Yueh Jeff Lin (NYU)

Ulivelivek Wh1 as the Pseudocleft

In this talk, I will show that in Ulivelivek, a dialect of Puyuma spoken in the south-east part of Taiwan, wh-ex-situ questions involve the pseudocleft construction (Aldridge, 2004), arguing that the word maw in the sentence-initial position is a copular verb that expresses the identity between individuals as proposed by Montague (1974). Specifically, the evidence from reduplication, affixation, cliticization, negation, and the response to polar questions shows that maw is verbal in nature. The selectional restriction that maw only co-occurs with DPs supports Montague’s semantic translation for copular verbs, as well as the pseudocleft analysis. I will also propose that the copula-initial word order is derived by VP remnant movement. The conclusion is that [i] Ulivelivek as a V1 language does not have true Wh1 word order, contra Hawkins’ (1983) Generalization that if a language has dominant V1 word order, it tends to have Wh1 word order in wh-questions, and [ii] at least some Austronesian languages do have a copula as well as category distinctions, which supports Richards’ (2009) claim. 

Oct 7    Maria Kouneli (NYU)

The morphological expression of nominal number in Kalenjin

The number system of Kalenjin (a Nilotic language spoken in Kenya) is representative of the systems of Nilo-Saharan languages, which are well-known for their complicated number morphology in the nominal domain (Corbett 2000). The majority of these languages have a tripartite system of number marking: some nouns are interpreted as singular in their morphologically unmarked form and form their plural by the addition of a plural affix, some nouns are interpreted as plural in their unmarked form, and form their singular by the addition of a singulative affix, while others never appear in their unmarked form: they have a singulative affix in the singular, and a plural affix in the plural. The puzzle in such a system lies in the lack of a one-to-one relationship between semantic and morphological markedness irrespective of what number value is chosen as the unmarked one. Even though these systems have gained some attention in the typological literature (Dimmendaal 2000), there has been no theoretical work on their implications for the syntax of number. The purpose of this paper is to fill this gap by describing the number morphology of nouns in Kalenjin and by showing that the data support a split theory of number (Kramer 2009), in which number features are found both on the nominalizing head (little n), and on the head of the functional projection NumP. It is argued that nouns in Kalenjin belong to different classes depending on the kind of number features present on n, in the same way that nouns in Indo-European belong to different classes depending on biological sex gender features on n (Kramer 2015). Noun classification in Kalenjin works in the same way as number-based classification in Kiowa (Harbour 2007)

Sept 30  Anna Maria Di Sciullo (UQAM/NYU)

On the pronunciation/silence of certain prepositions in Italian

Microparametric variation is tied to specific features and lexical items (Kayne 2005, 2006, 2012; Collins 2007; Liao 2013, a.o.).  We focus on here and there in Italian qui and li, and in Fallese aecche and aloche, a dialect spoken in Abruzzi, where the preposition a (AT/TO) can be pronounced in some cases. We argue that the variation in the pronunciation/silence of the preposition follows from a minimal derivational difference, given independent properties of the computational system, where feature valuing is done via Merge. Furthermore, assuming derivation by phases (Chomsky 2008 and seq.), and that either the Specifier or the Head must be pronounced, and that when the Spec has phonetic feature, it must be pronounced (Collins 2007), it follows that AT/TO is silent in Italian, and that it must be pronounced in Fallese when the Spec of AT/TO is not filled. We argue further that the apparent optionality in the pronunciation of the preposition in Fallese, (a)ecche, (a)loche, and its silence in Italian follows from a difference in the feature specification of the preposition in the languages under consideration. We discuss the predictions of our analysis as well as some consequences for the theory. We predict that other prepositional heads may optionally be pronounced in the historical development of prepositional structures. This is the case in the development of comitative P-Pronoun structures, from Latin cum me/co me, me cum/me co “with me, me with”, to Old Italian con me co “with me with”, to modern Italian con me, “with me” (Di Sciullo et al. 2016). Our analysis supports Minimalist syntax as the variation in the pronunciation/silence of certain prepositions, including their apparent optionality in some languages, follows from the theory.

Sept 23  Chris Collins (NYU), Room 104 of 10WP

The Khoisan Languages of Botswana

I give a brief overview of the Khoisan languages of Botswana. Then, I discuss the linguistic fieldwork that I did during 2015-2016, focussing on the creation of a Sasi dictionary. The talk is meant for a general audience, including non-linguists.

Sept 16    Kensuke Takita (Meikai/UConn)

Labeling for Linearization

The general framework of Chomsky (2013, 2015) introduces a distinction among syntactic objects, namely, syntactic objects that can be labeled and ones that cannot be, which is quite novel because they have been taken either always labeled (as in the X-bar theory and Chomsky 1994’s version of the bare phrase structure theory) or totally label-free (see, for instance, Collins 2002, Seely 2006, Narita 2014). In this talk, I examine what consequences the distinction may have for linearization. Specifically, I first hypothesize that an unlabeled syntactic object of the form {XP, YP} is invisible to linearization so that the relative order between XP and YP cannot be determined, leading to an unpronounceable result. Then, I show that this hypothesis sheds new light on several issues concerning the invisibility of “traces” to the labeling algorithm, EPP-(un)satisfaction by null elements, a potential variability with respect to the size of Spell-out domains.

Spring 2016

May 16   Ivona Kučerová (McMaster)

The rise and fall of nominatives

A Syntax 101 theory of case assignment posits that nominative is an abstract case assigned by finite T. Yet, nominatives appear in environments where they cannot be licensed by finite T (as in Icelandic infinitival complements), or there can be more than one nominative noun phrase per finite T (as in NP-NP copular clauses). However, if a nominative phrase is in nominative, it triggers agreement, interacts with other DPs in PCC constructions, and shows restrictions on person in general. Morphological case theories have an easier time with the distribution of nominative forms in the structure but equally do not provide much insight as to why nominatives exhibit these consistent syntactic properties. In other words, there seems to be a notion of nominative-ness independent of case licensing.

I provide novel empirical evidence that this notion of nominative-ness corresponds to a nominal structure labeled by a D head (Chomsky 2013) where that the core labeling feature formally corresponds to CI licensing of [+PERSON] feature (see also Sudo 2012, Longobardi 2008, Landau 2010). This work thus provides new empirical evidence for a formal connection between Case and PERSON (Schutze 1997, Martin 1999, Chomsky 2000, Bejar and Rezac 2003, Richards 2008, a.o.). The core empirical evidence for the proposal comes from a micro-variation in Slavic numeral constructions. As we will see, if the internal structure of the numeral blocks PERSON from labelling the structure, the resulting structure may appear in argument positions typically occupied by nominatives, but they fail to agree, license secondary predicates, interact with person features of other DPs and create boolean conjunction.

Apr 8       Yohei Oseki (NYU)

Primitive Functional Elements of Argument Structure

In this talk, we explore primitive functional elements in the domain of argument structure. Specifically, under the strong working hypothesis that functional elements with the same sound must have the same meaning (“No Homophony” Hypothesis of functional elements; Richard Kayne, class lecture at NYU in Spring 2016), Japanese verbs paradigmatically identified in the previous literature (Miyagawa, 1984; Jacobsen, 1992; Volpe, 2005) are syntagmatically decomposed into primitive morphemes. Following the generative constructionist approach to argument structure (Scafer, 2008; Pylkkanen, 2008; Wood, 2012; Marantz, 2013), we then propose the system in which these primitive morphemes are identified as functional heads like little v, Appl, or Voice and combined to build the argument structure skeleton. Theoretical implications are two-fold: (i) the proposal that Voice and little v are two distinct functional heads is corroborated (Harley, 2013; Legate, 2014) and (ii) the syntactic approach to morphology should be correct, where there is only one computational engine to build complex "words" and phrases (Koopman & Szabolcsi, 2000; Koopman, 2005).

Apr 1        Yuta Sakamoto (UConn)

Clausal Complement Anaphora in Japanese: Deep or Surface?

In this talk, I investigate the possibility of extraction out of both overt and covert anaphora sites in Japanese, i.e. extraction out of clausal complements that are "replaced" by soo 'so' and clausal complements that are phonologically missing. Specifically, I show that both of them allow certain types of extraction out of them, unlike clausal complement anaphora in English, where extraction is uniformly banned out of its domain. Based on the extraction possibility, I then argue that the Japanese cases in question are instances of ellipsis, not pro-forms. Furthermore, I argue that both deletion and LF-copying are available strategies for implementing ellipsis. In particular, I argue that "replaced" clausal complements are best analyzed in terms of deletion and silent clausal complement anaphora in terms of LF-copying.

Mar 25    Steven Foley (UCSC)

Morphological conspiracies in Georgian agreement 

A conspiracy arises when more than one (e.g. phonological) process serves to enforce a single constraint on surface forms. A major theoretical advantage of an Optimality Theoretic grammar is the ability to capture conspiracies: instead of relying on otherwise unconnected rules that just happen to prevent some marked structure, OT allows us to refer directly to it by ranking a markedness constraint above relevant faithfulness constraints.

In this talk I identify a morphological conspiracy in Georgian, and use it to argue that morphology is governed by an OT grammar. Again and again, the language’s agreement system goes out of its way to avoid Multiple Exponence — the presence of more than one morpheme in a word exponing a single feature. Abstractly, when probes X and Y both Agree with a single argument for feature [F], and morphemes α and β can spell out [F] on X and Y respectively, multiple exponence of [F] is avoided by blocking the insertion of either α or β. Within Distributed Morphology (DM; Halle & Marantz 1993), such blocking relationships can be derived through some suite of postsyntactic operations, like impoverishment. However, these operations do not refer to multiple exponence directly, and thus fail to capture the conspiracy.

Instead, building on previous work in OT morphology (Kiparsky 2000, Trommer 2001, Wolf 2008, Caballero & Inkelas 2013), I propose that Vocabulary Insertion — the operation that chooses which morphemes expone which syntactic terminals — is governed by ranked, violable constraints. DM's Subset Principle is decomposed into morphosyntactic faithfulness constraints; highly ranked morphosyntactic markedness constraints (like *MultipleExponence) replace DM's postsyntactic operations. I show that Georgian's conspiracy against multiple exponence, along with other peculiarities of its agreement system, follow from standard constraint interactions.

Mar 11    Tricia Irwin (UPenn)

Verb vs. structure: Who's the boss?

In this talk I'll discuss the tension between verb meaning and syntactic structure with respect to intransitive sentences like A boy walked in. I'll show that in sentences like these, the syntactic structure that 'walk' occurs in matters more for VP meaning than the contribution of 'walk' on its own. This analysis helps explain some observations on PP extraposition that go back to Guéron (1980), and it also leads to the possibility that some sentences that we might not have thought were structurally ambiguous actually are.

Jan 29    Chris Tancredi (Keio University) 2pm, Rm 103 of 10WP

Contrastive Topic, Focus and Givenness

In this talk I will argue that contrastive topic, focus and givenness are three distinct, independent phenomena.  In particular, I will argue that Givenness cannot be analyzed as a side effect of focus interpretation and the reverse is impossible as well; that focus and contrastive topic, while behaving in similar ways, need to be formally distinguished locally; and that Given contrastive topics need to be distinguished from non-Given contrastive topics.  While this may look like the worst of all possible worlds, I will also show how Constant’s 2014 insights into how to reduce contrastive topic interpretation to focus interpretation can be preserved by making small changes to the syntactic assumptions underlying his analysis.

Fall 2015

Dec 11    Dustin Alfonso Chacón (New York University)

                  That-Trace Effect and Explanatory Adequacy

One of the conditions that Chomsky (1965) holds linguistic theory to is explanatory adequacy, or the capacity to explain how the learner comes to full linguistic competence from the initial state. For properties of grammars that vary across languages, this requires careful articulation of how the learner leverages her linguistic input to distinguish between possible grammars. In this talk, I examine the "that-trace effect", a constraint against long-distance subject extraction over an overt complementizer shown in (1). These effects are observed to vary across languages, e.g., the that-trace effect is not observed in many Romance languages (Perlmutter 1971; Rizzi 1982; Torrego 1985), as shown in (2).

(1) a. Who did Dale say that Sarah saw t ?

b. Who did Dale say Ø Sarah saw t ?

c. *Who did Dale say that t saw Bob?

d. Who did Dale say Ø saw Bob?

(2) ¿Quién dijo Dale que vio ___ a Bob? 

Who said Dale that saw ___ to Bob?

`Who did Dale say that saw Sarah?'

Minimally, for the learner to determine whether her language exhibits the that-trace effect, either (A) the Romance learner must condition the acceptability of subject extraction in Romance on some other feature, e.g. null subjects (Perlmutter 1971) or rich agreement (Rizzi 1982), (B) the Romance learner must be exposed to sufficient positive evidence that sentences like (2) are acceptable, or (C) the English learner must infer that sentences like (1c) are unacceptable on the basis of indirect negative evidence (Pearl and Sprouse 2013). I argue that neither of these latter two distributional learning strategies are likely to be successful on the basis of realistic cross-language child-directed speech. In other words, learners must infer whether the that-trace constraint is observed in her grammar on the basis of some other phenomena.

However, I end with a cautionary tale. I argue that extensions to Perlmutter's (1971) and Rizzi's (1982) parametric analyses, e.g. to capture the "anti-that-trace effect", shown in (3) (Perlmutter 2015) or the que/qui alternation in French (Kayne 1976), may complicate the inference process needed to explain how learners acquire (1c)/(2). I end the talk with suggestions on conditions that analyses of these phenomena must satisfy in light of these learnability concerns, and a sketch an outline of an analysis that meets these conditions.

(3) a. The man that Sarah saw t

b. The man Ø Sarah saw t

c. The man that t saw Sarah

d. *The man Ø saw Sarah

Nov 13    Dunja Veselinović (New York University)

                  Concord Failures: Defective intervention in the nominal domain

Russian and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (BCS) exhibit nominal concord in φ-features and case morphology. However, numeral-containing nominal phrases (NCNPs) in these languages display a range of agreement patterns, much discussed in the literature (Babby, 1987; Franks, 1995, Bošković, 2006; Pereltsvaig, 2010; Pesetsky, 2013). This range includes full NOM.PL agreement with low (two, three and four) numerals when the head noun is feminine (BCS), full GEN.PL agreement with high (five and up) numerals (BCS) and an array of mismatches in between. I present a novel analysis of NCNPs in Russian and BCS, building on Pesetsky’s (2013) proposal that case morphology is a morphological realization of part-of-speech features, but modifying the analysis in order to account for the full range of facts, which cannot be accounted for by Pesetsky's analysis. I argue that merging a feature-defective element with a feature assigner can block feature spreading and assignment, making feature assignment subject to a variant of Defective Intervention. I show that nominal concord can fail, and in the case of such failure, the derivation doesn’t crash but instead either default values are assigned (for φ-features, as in Preminger, 2011) or Back-Up Percolation ensues (Norris, 2014). This conclusion reveals a novel parallel between the clausal and nominal domains, while providing an account of feature-sharing and feature-spreading and explaining complex cross-linguistic data in Slavic NCNPs.

Nov 6    Adina Williams (New York University)

                A Cartographic Approach to the Syntax of the Mandarin Locative Preposition ZAI

In several languages spanning different language families -- Mandarin Chinese, German (from the Rhine region, Barrie & Spreng 2009), Jingpo, Russian (Matushansky 2002; Gehrke 2008) and Icelandic (Thrainsson 1979; Johannsdottir 2011; Wood 2012) -- imperfective semantics is often expressible using something that looks precisely like a preposition. In this talk, I will argue that the Mandarin locative element ZAI is always a preposition regardless of whether it encodes spatial location, temporal location, or progressive aspect. 

(1)    wo zai da-qiu                              ASPECTUAL

         I    AT kick-ball

         I'm playing ball.

(2)    wo zai gong-yuan                      SPATIAL

         I    AT public-park

         I'm at the park.

(3)   wo zai sandian lai jian ni.         TEMPORAL

         I    AT 3-PM come see you.

         I'm coming see you at three. 

Unlike for languages like English, which encode temporal and spatial locative phrases using scrambleable, adjoined prepositional phrases (e.g. "I met John in the park at 7pm" versus "I met John at 7pm in the park."), these three uses of ZAI occupy distinct and structurally fixed positions in Mandarin. 

Oct 30    Isaac Bleaman (New York University)

                  Predicate fronting in Yiddish and conditions on multiple Spell-Out

Predicate fronting-and-doubling has long been a puzzle for theories of syntax that do not predict the pronunciation of multiple occurrences. The Yiddish construction requires two overt occurrences of the verb, but exactly one overt occurrence of any complement (see 1).

(1) a.    ikh red               mame-loshn

             I     speak.1.SG  mother-language

             'I speak Yiddish.'

      b.   red-n          red               ikh mame-loshn

             speak-INF  speak.1.SG I     mother-language

             'As for speaking, I speak Yiddish.'

      c.    red-n          mame-loshn        red               ikh

             speak-INF mother-language speak.1.SG  I  

             'As for speaking Yiddish, I speak it.'

Native speaker judgments on the fronting of particle verbs (e.g., oys-trink-en ‘to drink up’) reveal that the doubling of particles is usually optional. This paper proposes explicit conditions on Spell-Out, recasting the parallel chain approach to verb doubling (Kandybowicz 2008; Aboh & Dyakonova 2009) in terms consistent with the Spell-Out algorithm for remnant movement of Collins & Stabler (to appear).

Oct 30    Ian Roberts (Cambridge), 2pm, Room 104 of 10WP

                A parameter hierarchy for passives (joint work with Michelle Sheehan (Anglia Ruskin University))

Assuming Chomsky’s (2008) feature inheritance, the passive arises, we propose, where Voice withholds its phi-features from v, so that v fails to assign accusative Case and Voice licenses the external argument in SpecvP, giving rise to either pro (the implicit argument in short passives) or the by-phrase. In some languages this option is never taken, resulting in a lack of passives (Yoruba, etc.). In many languages this happens only in transitive contexts (Hebrew, French, English etc.), but in others it is generalised to all little vs, giving rise to passives of unergative verbs (Turkish, Dutch, etc.). In other languages, this operation is restricted to a subset of little vs, agentive vs in Hebrew, for example (Doron 2003). Other parameters concern the order between V and O in passives, which can be observed in expletive-associate constructions: while English permits only OV order (as in there were several students arrested, with several students in SpecvP), Swedish has both OV and VO (with different agreement patterns) and Spanish and French have only VO (Svenonius 2000, Holmberg 2001).

Oct 23    Richard Kayne (New York University)

                  English for as a wh-phrase

Although the English complementizers that and for are generally taken to be elements that are externally merged high in the CP area, I will argue that English for (like English that) is not a complementizer in anything like the standard sense of the term, and will suggest that there are principled reasons why it could not be.

Oct 2    Vera Zu (New York University)

              Competition and Obviation from French to Newari

In many European languages (Ruwet 1984, Kempchinsky 1985, Farkas 1988, 1992, Landau 2004, Constantini 2005, Schlenker 2005, 2011, among others), the subject of a finite embedded clause cannot be bound by the matrix subject when the embedded clause is in the subjunctive (1), as opposed to the infinitive or indicative (2). This disjoint reference effect is known as obviation. 

(1) *[TP … Subject_i … [TP Subject_i T-SBJV ] ] 

(2) [TP … Subject_i … [TP Subject_i T-INF/IND ] ] 

Subjunctive subjects are exempted from obviation under specific circumstances (Ruwet 1984, Farkas 1992, Schlenker 2005, Szabolcsi 2010). In this paper, I present data from Newari (Tibeto-Burman, spoken in Nepal) that exhibit both obviation and exemption-from-obviation effects, but do not involve subjunctive mood, nor are limited to embedded clauses. I unify the two sets of data in the spirit of the Farkas-Schlenker competition account. In particular, I argue that the constructions in which obviation happens (subjunctive mood, disjunct marking) are defaults that are used when the conditions for their competitor constructions (infinitives, conjunct marking) are not fulfilled.

Sept 25   Andrew Murphy (University of Leipzig)

                   What can tone tell us about successive-cyclic movement? (joint work with Sampson Korsah)

We claim that the process of H tone raising on verbs and complementizers in Akan is a reflex of successive-cyclic A'-movement in that clause. In particular, if an operator (e.g. relative, focus or wh-operator) moves through the edge of a vP, then a reflex of this movement is realized as a floating H tone on v. This H tone overwrites any low tones on the verb. Such reflexes of movement are relatively well-attested cross-linguistically (Lahne 2008; Georgi 2014). Further evidence that v is the locus of the H tone is indicated by the fact that morphemes lower than v (e.g. aspect) are affected by H-tone insertion, whereas tense suffixes are not.

Sept 18   Kensuke Takita (Meikai University)

                   On Null Clausal Arguments in Japanese

Several researchers have argued that null arguments in Japanese can arise through so-called argument ellipsis (Oku 1998,Saito 2004, 2007, Takahashi 2008, 2013, among others). As for the status of null clausal arguments, however, there is a controversy whether they are subject to argument ellipsis (Saito 2007, Tanaka 2008, Takita 2010, among others), or obtained by some other ways (Funakoshi 2014, Kasai 2014).

In this talk, I argue for the argument ellipsis analysis of null clausal arguments, based on a close scrutiny of hitherto unexplored construction, which I call antecedent-contained clausal argument ellipsis. In particular, I show that this construction provides a novel way of distinguishing the argument ellipsis analysis from the verb-stranding VP-ellipsis analysis.

Sept 11   Mark Baltin (NYU)

                   Syntactic Versus Semantic Explanations

This paper investigates two phenomena that have received a semantic treatment, and shows instead that the explanation lies in the syntactic input to the semantics, particularly with Chomsky’s (2000, 2001)  notion of phases and his Phase Impenetrability Condition.  Assuming the phases to be vP and CP, the PIC blocks analysis inside the phases except at the edges.   The two phenomena are May’s (1976) Name Constraint (also the Specificity Condition of Fiengo & Higginbotham (1980)), and Szabolcsi & Zwarts’s (1997) account of weak islands.

Spring 2015

May 1    Judy Bernstein (William Paterson University)

                 The expression of case across English demonstrative forms

Departing from Schütze (2001), I claim that morphological accusative case in English vernacular examples like [them guys] (‘those guys’) does not involve ‘default case’. Instead, I pursue the idea that English demonstratives bear morphological case more generally and I show that the case is not consistently accusative. In Scots and Devon English, for example, the plural distal demonstrative is a nominative form [thae days] (‘those days’). Nominative and accusative morphological case are also found on personal pronouns DP-internally in English, in the types of examples originally discussed in Postal (1966): [we/us kids], [you kids]. Although not typically assumed for English, I take these 1st and 2nd person pronouns to be demonstratives as well. This idea draws some support from the Turkish facts (from Kornfilt 1997; recently discussed in Leu 2015). In Turkish, person (1st, 2nd, 3rd) is encoded in the forms of the demonstratives and contributes information about distance from speaker and hearer. No one denies that English demonstratives agree with a head noun in number, the only elements in English to do so. The fact that the personal pronouns (in the Postal examples) do as well supports the idea of aligning these forms with the th- demonstratives. Besides number agreement, I suggest that English demonstratives bear morphological case and also person (1st, 2nd, 3rd).

Apr 24    Omer Preminger (UMD)

                 Upwards and onwards: On the direction of valuation in phi-feature agreement (joint work with Maria Polinsky)

This talk is about the structural configuration necessary for establishing an agreement relation between a verb or Tense/Aspect/Mood-marker, and a nominal, in phi-features (person, number, and gender/noun-class). It will be argued that the verb/TAM-marker must c-command the nominal from which it receives its feature values – a configuration dubbed upward valuation. Some prevalent arguments that agreement in phi-features requires the opposite configuration – downward valuation – will be evaluated, and shown to be inconclusive at best. Further data that can only be handled by upward valuation of phi-features will then be presented and discussed. Finally, a new (putative) generalization concerning phi-feature agreement at-a-distance will be offered, and it will be argued that this generalization can only be explained if downward valuation in phi-features is categorically disallowed.

Apr 17    Friederike Moltmann (CNRS)

                  Modals as Predicates of Modal Objects

I will explore a novel view of modals according to which modal verbs (and adjectives) are not quantifiers (ranging over possible worlds), but predicates of what I call 'modal objects', entities such as obligations, offers, necessities, and options. On that view the complement of modals specifies the satisfiers (and violators) (in roughy the sense of Fine's truthmaker semantics) of the modal object, that is, the situations or actions that satisfy or violate the modal object. The view will be applied especially to various sorts of modal concord and connections between modals and attitudinal and illocutionary predicates.

Apr 10    Yuta Sakamoto (UConn)

                 Argument Ellipsis versus Pro: No Simple Dichotomy

Although Kuroda (1965) analyzes Japanese missing arguments as empty pronouns (pro), the current standard assumption is that they can involve surface anaphora via ellipsis, cf. Oku's (1998) argument ellipsis, where arguments can directly undergo ellipsis. However, Hoji (1998, 2003) and Tomioka (2003, 2014) argue that the data which is taken to support the ellipsis view can/should be treated via deep anaphora, i.e. pro. In this presentation, I show that Japanese missing arguments actually exhibit mixed behavior of surface and deep anaphora based on some traditional diagnostics, e.g. missing antecedent phenomena and extraction (cf. Hankamer and Sag 1976, Sag and Hankamer 1984, Depiante 2000, Johnson 2001, Merchant 2013, among others). Then, I demonstrate that the mixed behavior that Japanese missing arguments show can uniformly be captured by (modified) LF-copying (cf. Thompson 2013, 2014), which in turn argues for such an ellipsis strategy in Japanese. Furthermore, I explore a novel hybrid approach to Japanese missing arguments where they are uniformly pro in overt syntax but can be replaced by appropriate linguistic antecedents, if any, via (modified) LF-copying, which is shown not only to account for the mixed behavior in question but also to have some consequences for the cross-linguistic difference regarding the availability of "argument ellipsis", distinct behaviors of Japanese relative clauses and non-case-marked clefts, and the distributional parallelism of pro and "argument ellipsis".

Mar 12    Neil Myler (BU), 11am, 4th floor lounge

                   A long, hard look into the Mirror

The Quechua family has a widespread reputation for showing a very transparent relationship between the order of affixes and their syntactico-semantic effects. Indeed, Baker (1985) used Quechua as one of his examples illustrating the Mirror Principle, building on pathbreaking work on Quechua affix order by Muysken (1981).  However, Muysken (1981) also pointed out some cases which seemed problematic for what became known as the Mirror Principle, and subsequent work has since pointed out others (e.g. Muysken 1986; van de Kerke 1996).  In this talk, I will revisit these apparently problematic cases, and show that they dissolve once the syntactic and semantic properties of the affixes in question are better understood.  In every case, a key part of the solution will be refusing to take wordhood too seriously.

Mar 6    Paul Bassong (University of Yaounde I, Rutgers), 3pm

                Sluicing and Functional Heads in Bantu (joint work with Edmond Biloa)

This talk will focus on sluicing, a relatively new or unknown domain of linguistic research from a Bantu and African linguistics dimension. The study is conducted in the light of Merchant’s (2001, 2004, 2008) [E]-feature-based approach according to which ellipsis is triggered by an abstract [E]-feature that c-commands and dictates non-pronunciation of a TP/IP complement as in (1). It is shown that in Basaá and Tuki, two related Bantu languages, sluicing is provoked in the c-domain by an overt [E]-feature which dictates non-pronunciation of a c-commanded TP/AgrSP complement (2). The [E]-feature which encodes either evidentiality or alternative question and which is hosted under Evid, the head of Evdentiality Phrase (EvidP) or Alt, the head of Alternative Phrase (AltP), is preceded by the force, interrogative and focus markers which are in turn hosted by force, the head of the force phrase (ForceP, Int, the head of the interrogative phrase (IntP) and Foc the head of the focus phrase (FocP) respectively. As portrayed in (3a-b), the order of these functional morphemes which project different functional projections provides a fine-grained characterization of the clausal left periphery following (Rizzi 1997) and subsequent work.

(1) Jack bought something, but I don’t know [CP what1 [C[E] [TP Jack bought t1]]

(2) a. Maaŋgɛ́ a- m- mîl ŋgim jɔ̌m, mɛ ń- yí ɓé mɛ́ jɔ, Basa’a mɛ ḿ- mɓat-ɓá lɛ́ tɔɔ́ [FocP kíí1 [EvidP [Evid î[E] [AgrP proi a- m- mîl kíí1]]]

        1.child 1.SM-PST1-swallow 9.some 7.thing I PRS-know NEG I.EMPH 9.it I PRS-ask-REC that if 9.what 9.EVID pro 1.SM-PST1-swallow 9.what

        ‘The child has swallowed something, I don’t know it. Look, what!’

     b. Mutu mo a- mu- iba itutu rame eena. Nu nga-ta- mu-idzima omwene. Tuki nu nka-mbim ee ngi [FocP ane1 [Foc odzu [EvidP dzu kee [AgrP proi a- mu- iba itutu rame eena ane1]]]

         Man IND SM-PST1-steal bike my here I SM-Neg-OM-know her/him I SM-astonish that if who FOC EVID ALT pro 1.SM-PST1-steal bike my here what

         ‘Someone stole my motorcyle here. I do not know him/her. But I wonder who?’

(3) a. [ForceP lɛ́ [ IntP tɔɔ́ [FocP kíí1 [EvidP î [TP/AgrSP... kíí1...]]]]]

         that if/whether 9.what 9.EVID what

     b. [ForceP ee [IntP ngi [FocP ane1 [Foc odzu [EvidP dzu [AltP kee [TP/AgrSP...ane1...]]]]]]

         that if/whether what FOC EVID ALT what

Feb 20     Jim Wood (Yale)

                   Accusative subjects are special

Accusative subjects seem to have a special status in Icelandic. While the assignment of dative to a subject seems to be tied to thematic interpretation (at least to some extent), accusative subjects have been argued to be either lexically idiosyncratic or derived syntactically by special syntactic features that are not otherwise needed.

In this talk, I take a close look at accusative subject constructions. Taking seriously the connections across morphology, semantics, and syntax, I argue that the study of these constructions leads to some important architectural conclusions:

• “Structurally” case-marked DPs are not frozen, and can in fact be forced to A-move, if the structural configuration is right. This necessitates a full dissociation of morphological case marking from DP licensing.

• “Lexical idiosyncrasy” is not a unified phenomenon; in particular, semantic idiosyncrasy and morphological idiosyncrasy are not listed in the same place.

My argument stems in particular from the analytical implications of what I will call the Accusative Subject Generalization (ASG):

(1) Accusative Subject Generalization: Accusative subjects in Icelandic are never thematic arguments of morphologically intransitive verbs. 

In fact, a sizeable subclass of accusative subject verbs are not only transitive in form, they are semantically idiomatic uses of otherwise-occurring transitive verbs. An illustration of this is given in (2), where we have the ordinary, transitive form of ‘break’ from a morphological perspective, and a special meaning of ‘break’ from a semantic perspective.

(2)    Ölduna             { braut / *brotnaði }                 á     skerinu.

         wave.the.ACC  { broke.TR / *broke.INTR }   on   skerry.the

         ‘The wave broke on the skerry.’

That is, we don’t have a big list of verbs that happen to take accusative subjects; we have a list of ordinary transitive verbs that, with a special interpretation, can take accusative subjects.

In general, I will propose that something special has to happen, syntactically, for an accusative DP to become a structural subject. It has to be c-commanded by a higher DP in order to get accusative case, but must somehow move past that DP to become a subject. In cases like (2), I propose that there is a silent external argument which has the syntax of a clitic (allowing movement past it) and the interpretation of a weather pronoun (triggering special interpretations of verbal roots). I will show that the predictions of this analysis are borne out, and that the ASG follows as a matter of course: the verbs are morphologically transitive because the morphology is reflecting the syntactic presence of the silent external argument.

Feb 13     Isabelle Charnavel (Harvard), 1pm

                   Point of View on Condition A

Some anaphors appear to be exempt from Condition A regardless of how it is formulated. Based on French and English data, I will propose a way to draw the line between exempt and non-exempt anaphors and I will argue that seemingly exempt anaphors are in fact locally bound by covert logophoric operators. These operators code three kinds of perspective centers: attitude holders, empathy loci and deictic reference points

Feb 6    Sabina Matyiku (Yale)

               Negative auxiliary inversion as an instance of overt quantifier raising

In this talk, I propose that negative auxiliary inversion, a phenomenon present in some varieties of North American English, is an instance of overt quantifier raising. An example exhibiting negative auxiliary inversion is given in (1).

(1) Didn't everybody go to the party.

The example is a declarative sentence with a sentence-initial negated auxiliary. The phenomenon is constrained in several ways (Labov et al., 1968 a.o.), one of which is in the types of subjects it allows. Definite subjects such as proper names are not licit, as in (2).

(2) *Didn't Jack go to the party.

I will give a more thorough characterization of the subject restriction and argue in favor of accounting for it by revising the principle of Scope Economy proposed by Fox (2000) to apply to overt, optional movement. Since the analysis depends on negation, a head, gaining scopal significance in its moved position, the phenomenon can be seen as further evidence for the previously made observation that head movement can exhibit semantic effects (Lechner, 2007; Roberts, 2010; Szabolcsi, 2010). I present two possible implementations for how the movement of negation could be scopally significant.

Jan 30     Chris Collins (NYU)

                   On the Typology of Nominal NPIs (joint work with Paul Postal and Elvis Yevudey)

Following Postal 2005, Collins and Postal 2014 analyze any-NPIs (e.g., "anybody", "any physics") as being ambiguous between two possible structures: unary NEG NPIs and binary NEG NPIs. These structures correspond to the familiar distinctions between weak and strong NPIs and between strict and non-strict NPIs.

In this talk, I analyze NPIs in Ewe and Serbian/Croatian in the framework of Collins and Postal 2014. I show that Ewe only possesses unary NEG NPIs (for DPs), while Serbian/Croatian possesses both unary NEG NPIs and binary NEG NPIs, and that they are distinguished morphologically. Finally, I give explanations for the differences in the distribution of NPIs between the three languages.

Overall, the results of this study provide cross-linguistic support for the claims made about the syntactic structure of English NPIs in Collins and Postal 2014.

Jan 30     Lotte Hendriks (Meertens Instituut), 1:45pm

                   Knowledge of verb clusters (joint work with Sjef Barbiers and Hans Bennis)

Speakers are able to judge syntactic constructions that are not part of their own language variety. When they are asked to rank a number of variants of such a construction on a scale, this ranking turns out to be parallel to the geographic frequency distribution of these variants. We consider three possible explanations for this striking fact, based on (i) processing, (ii) familiarity and (iii) the syntactic system. We argue that only the third option can explain the behavior of the speakers. 

We discuss two aspects of verb clusters that exhibit variation in the Dutch dialects: the order of the verbs in the cluster and interruption of the verb cluster by non-verbal material.

There is much variation in the order of the verbs in the cluster in (1); (cf. Barbiers 2005; SAND Volume II, Barbiers et al. 2008). While all varieties of Dutch have verb cluster constructions, we find a clear geographic distribution of different orderings across the language area, with differences in frequency of occurrence.

Verb cluster interruption shows a lot of geographical variation too, here with respect to the type of constituent that can interrupt the cluster, varying from particles (moet op-bellen ‘must up-call’) to various types of arguments (moet een schuur bouwen ‘must a barn built’) and adverbs (moet vroeg opstaan ‘must early rise’)  (cf. SAND Volume II). Two factors turn out to be relevant, the complexity of the interrupting constituent and the position in the syntactic hierarchy (in the sense of Cinque 1999) where this element is base-generated (Hendriks 2014).

The clear geographic distribution of the various variants of these two constructions makes it possible to investigate if speakers have intuitions on variants that occur in language varieties different from their own.

We find a high degree of correspondence between the speakers’ rankings and the number of locations in the Dutch language area that have a particular construction. (i) verb cluster orders that are more frequent amongst the varieties of Dutch are ranked higher and (ii) speakers in areas where verb cluster interruptions are only used sporadically and with many restrictions, nevertheless have intuitions that correspond to the observed syntactic patterns in the Flemish varieties of Dutch.

We demonstrate that processing preferences and familiarity with the phenomenon cannot account for the observed correspondence between speakers’ intuitions of a construction and that constructions’ geographic distribution. Potentially, the intuitions follow from properties of the grammatical system.

Fall 2014

Dec 12     Heidi Klockmann (Utrecht, UiL-OTS), 2pm

                   Inherent case as a PP-case

In this talk, I consider case alternations in Polish, which suggest an analysis in which inherent case is analyzed as the realization of a PP (Rezac 2008; McFadden 2014), as well as the implications of such an analysis for systems of case and agreement in other languages.

Case alternations are found in a number of Slavic and Uralic languages, attracting the most attention with regards to numerals. In Polish, numerals 5+ (5-10, 100) trigger genitive case assignment in structural case positions, but appear to show case agreement in inherent case positions, as in (1). Negation shows similar properties, triggering genitive case on structural accusative objects, but not on inherently cased objects, as in (2).

(1)   a.  Pięć       ptaków          spało.                                           Nom Environment

             Five       birds.GEN    slept.N.SG

             ‘(The) five birds slept.’

        b.  ...z                 pięcioma     ptakami                                 Inst Environment

              withINST    five.INST    birds.INST

              ‘...with five birds.’

(2)   a.  Łukasz              nie  widział            dziewczyny.          Acc Environment

              Łukasz.NOM  not  saw.3.M.SG   girl.GEN

              ‘Lukas did not see a girl.’

         b.  Łukasz            nie     ufa                dziewczynie.          Dat Environment

              Łukasz.NOM not     trust.3.SG   girl.DAT

              ‘Lukas does not trust the girl.’

In this talk, I analyze inherent case as the realization of a PP, which is opaque to external case assignment processes. I argue that Polish numerals are semi-lexical, based on various morphological and syntactic properties, and show how this in combination with a treatment of inherent case as a PP-case can capture the patterns in (1) and (2). I further consider the implications of this treatment of inherent case for systems of case and agreement in other languages, operating under the assumption that if PPs are opaque to case assignment processes, then they should also be opaque to other processes, such as agreement. I explore how this analysis might account for certain differences in patterns of agreement across languages.

Dec 12     Greg Johnson (CUNY, CSI)

                    Liketa: Restructuring in Appalachian English

In this talk I provide a syntactic analysis for the non-standard liketa and its un-contracted counterpart liked to in Appalachian English. I argue that both forms are verbal and are related via restructuring following similar analyses of wanna contraction. However, liketa is different from wanna in that it places unique aspectual restrictions on its complements. Specifically, it requires that the verb appearing immediately to the right be marked with past participle morphology for felicitous interpretation. A comparison of liketa and liked to reveals that both are verbal. Liketa has many hallmark properties of restructuring predicates. In fact, it shares many properties with wanna contraction, another contractions argued to be an example of restructuring in English. I then analyze liketa in a mono-clausal approach to restructuring (Wurmbrand 2001). This analysis leads to a particular view of auxiliary insertion in restructuring contexts. I then consider dialect variation among grammars which allow slightly different syntactic constraints on the usage of liketa. Finally, I sketch out an alternative bi-clausal restructuring account in order to compare the consequences of two prominent theories of restructuring verbs.

Dec 5     Vera Zu (NYU)

                 Word Order and the Typology of Non-Local Dependencies

There are two lines of research concerning word order. Ever since the typological studies of languages initiated by Greenberg (1963), a lot of attention has been paid to the high correlation between the order of the direct object with regard to the verb, and the word order options in other phrases. For instance, postpositions, sentence-final interrogative markers, postverbal auxiliaries, preverbal and pronominal modifiers tend to co-occur in OV languages. The second line of research relates head directionality to other linguistic properties (e.g., overt wh-movement, ergative Case marking, rigid scope), and attempt to reduce these properties to a word order related principle (Kayne 1994, Mahajan 1997, Fox & Pesetsky 2009). In the spirit of the second line, I will present a series of linguistic phenomena, some of which are less familiar than others, that all involve non-local dependencies between two elements and that have been found almost exclusively in OV languages. The goal of this project is to relate these seemingly independent phenomena to each other, and eventually to the OV word order.

Nov 21     Raffaella Zanuttini (Yale)

                 Here’s a puzzle: ecco

In this presentation, I will discuss some work in progress on Italian sentences with ecco, like those exemplified in (1). We see that ecco can co-occur with a noun phrase (1a), a finite clause (1b), and a pseudo-relative (1c), thus resembling perception verbs, which are exemplified in (2):

(1) a. Ecco Maria.

‘Here’s Maria.’

b. Ecco Maria che perde la pazienza.

‘Here’s Maria losing her patience.’

c. Ecco che Maria perde la pazienza.

‘Now Maria is losing her patience.’

(2) a. Vedo Maria.

‘I see Maria.’

b. Vedo Maria che perde la pazienza.

‘I see Maria losing her patience.’

c. Vedo che Maria perde la pazienza.

‘I see that Maria is losing her patience.’

The similarity between perception verbs and what might be seen as ecco’s counterpart in French, voici and voilà, has been explored in Morin (1985), where it is argued that voici and voilà are subjectless verbs restricted to a single tense and mood, the present indicative.

Here I will pursue a different strategy and seek a better understanding of ecco-sentences like those in (1) by focusing on their similarities with locative ci-sentences, like those in (3):

(3) a. C’è Maria.

‘Maria is here.’

b. C’è Maria che perde la pazienza.

‘Here’s Maria losing her patience.’

c. C’è che Maria perde la pazienza.

‘What’s happening is that Maria is losing her patience.’

I will argue that both types of sentences contain a small clause with a locative predicate, though they differ both in structural terms and in the nature of the locative element.

Nov 14     Tricia Irwin (UPenn)

                 How does 'a man' become 'the man'? Argument structure and existential propositions at the syntax-discourse interface

In this talk I'll show that recent work from two independent lines of research can shed light on an asymmetry in the interpretation of indefinite DP subjects of intransitive sentences. I'll argue that one type of intransitive sentence has the structure and meaning of an existential proposition. As is well-known, one discourse function of existential there sentences is to introduce new entities into a discourse. I'll show that this function can be explained by an approach based on the notion of referential anchoring (von Heusinger 2002 and following), and that the insights of referential anchoring are compatible with recent work on the context-dependence of existential sentences (Partee & Borschev 2002; Francez 2007; McCloskey, to appear). From these two lines of research, I argue that sentences with existential predications have a built-in referential anchor that other sentences lack, and that this anchor is what allows existential sentences to serve the important discourse function that they do. This analysis predicts that other types of sentences are able to serve the discourse function of existential sentences, so long as they have the relevant syntactic and semantic existential predication. I'll argue that a subset of unaccusative VPs has such a predication and that we can see these effects at the interface with discourse.

Oct 24     Neda Todorovic (UConn)

                   TP or not TP: On the presence of TP in an aspectually rich language

Over the last couple of years, a number of languages that lack overt temporal markers have been argued to also lack the structural part directly related to temporal properties, i.e. TP (e.g. Bohnemeyer 2002 for Yukatek Maya, Lin 2003, 2006 for Chinese, Wiltschko 2003 for Halkomelem Salish, Tonhauser 2011 for Paraguayan Guaraní, inter alia). In this talk, I propose that Serbian, despite having rich verbal morphology, actually lacks true temporal morphology, and, consequently, lacks a TP layer. Exemplifying it on two seemingly unrelated phenomena, i.e. availability of VP-ellipsis under finiteness mismatches and aspectual distribution in aspectual tenses, i.e. Aorist and Imperfectum, I argue that a TP-less analysis of Serbian can account for verbal behavior in these cases. Furthermore, cross-linguistic differences regarding these two phenomena can be accounted for under a parametric variation in the presence of a TP-layer, i.e. its presence versus its absence in a language.

Further preliminary investigations concern co-occurrence of perfective aspect and past tense, and perfective aspect and future. Regarding the former, a cross-linguistic tendency is for perfective aspect and past tense not to co-occur, i.e. perfective usually expresses a completed event, making the use of past redundant in languages which have overt realization of perfective. In Serbian, however, forms that have been traditionally analyzed as past seem to equally easily occur with either imperfective or perfective. In the light of this, I intend to question the status of past tense in Serbian. Finally, I propose that the absence of TP does not present a problem for temporal interpretations, since those can be alternatively derived by the means of perfective and imperfective aspect, and aspectual component Perfect.

Oct 10     Jason Kandybowicz (KU)

                  There’s No Wrong Way to Front a Predicate (in Krachi)

Many languages allow predicate fronting.  In some of those languages (e.g. Spanish, Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian, Yoruba), there is more than one way to front the predicate – either the verb or the verb phrase moves to the left periphery and an additional copy of the verb is realized lower in the clause.  Krachi, an endangered North Guang language of eastern Ghana, is one such language, but unlike many of these languages, it allows a third distinct way to front the predicate.  This third fronting strategy involves what looks like verb phrase movement with object-verb inversion and distinct semantics.

In this talk, I argue that all instances of predicate fronting with verb doubling in Krachi are characterized by a form of parallel chain formation (Chomsky 2008) in which different probes (Foc and T) target the same goal (V) and only the heads of the two resulting chains are realized at PF (i.e. the default chain resolution strategy).  In this way, Krachi predicate focus provides additional support for analyses like Kandybowicz 2008 and Aboh & Dyakonova 2009 that attempt to derive verb doubling from narrow syntactic mechanisms like parallel chain formation rather than multiple copy spell-out at PF.  The interesting wrinkle in the case of Krachi is that although different probes may target the same goal (i.e. V), they do not always target the same copy of that goal.  I show that all three copies of V scattered throughout the verb phrase may be targeted by the Foc probe, giving rise to three distinct ways of fronting the predicate.  Despite the fact that two of these three probe-goal relations violate considerations of minimal search, there appears to be no wrong way to front a predicate in Krachi.

Sept 19     Lucas Champollion (NYU)

                     Putting events into your trees

The success of event-based semantic analyses in the wake of Davidson's seminal 1967 paper has not yet been matched by a clear picture of how events fit into the syntax-semantics interface. Allegedly, compositional accounts of various scope-taking elements are either problematic or require nontrivial theoretical commitments once events are introduced (as suggested by Beaver and Condoravdi (2007) for quantification,  Krifka (1989) for negation, and Lasersohn (1995, chapter 14) for conjunction). 

I suggest a novel perspective on event semantics that overcomes these difficulties. The main innovation is that the event quantifier is part of the lexical entry of the verb. The resulting framework combines with standard treatments of scope-taking elements in a well-behaved way. It is compatible with simple and intuitive accounts of the syntax-semantics interface of quantification, negation and conjunction. This result is relevant to syntacticians and semanticists who are interested in the extent to which a commitment to events favors various analyses of scope-taking expressions, or who would simply like to use events without taking sides in ongoing semantic debates.

The talk summarizes recent NASSLLI and ESSLLI courses (lecture notes here) and previews a planned Fall 2015 course at NYU. A companion paper is under review at Linguistics & Philosophy. A dynamic extension that includes ideas from Simon Charlow's recent NYU dissertation is in preparation. Roger Schwarzschild and I are currently exploring the interaction of this system with recent work of mine on distributivity in algebraic semantics, which will be at the focus of this year's mereology seminar on Nov 4 and 11.

The talk will feature a demonstration of Version 2.0 of the lambda calculator, which Dylan Bumford and I updated over the summers of 2013 and 2014, thanks to a NYU CDCF grant and departmental matching funds.

Sept 12     Itamar Kastner and Vera Zu (NYU), 2 pm

                     The Syntax of Paradigm Gaps

Based on two case studies in Hebrew and Latin, we argue that paradigms are not morphosyntactic primitives. Contrary to Lexicalist approaches to inflectional paradigms, we show that systematic paradigm gaps in these languages have their source in other parts of the grammar. For Hebrew, we demonstrate that the lack of synthetic non-finite passive forms is not a result of competition with their periphrastic counterparts. For Latin, we revisit previous analyses of the passive (Embick 2000; Kiparsky 2005) and show that a locality-sensitive, item-and-arrangement approach (Halle and Marantz 1993) is superior both empirically and conceptually to a theory that generates forms in a putative lexicon and has them compete against each other. Paradigm gaps are thus shown to be the result of syntactic structure building.

Spring 2014

May 2       Marcel den Dikken (CUNY GC), 2 pm

                   The attractions of agreement

Agreement in specificational copular sentences is a complex matter, empirically as well as theoretically. Patterns that are attested are often not easy to make fall out from a restrictive theory of Agree relations; patterns that are not attested would sometimes seem hard to exclude. In this paper, I will try my hand at coming to terms with a number of prima facie problematic φ-feature agreement patterns in specificational copular sentences, with particular emphasis on pseudo-clefts and their close relatives (though double-NP specificational copular sentences will also be addressed, in section 3). In section 2, the spotlight will be on specificational pseudo-clefts and semi-clefts whose syntax arguably features a full clause in the complement of the copular pivot, and on the question of how to allow this copula to agree in φ-features with the focus of the construction (which is contained inside the copula’s clausal complement), under specific circumstances that will be made more precise. We will see that the structural configuration in which the copula of such pseudo-clefts and semi-clefts can φ-agree with the focus closely resemble the circumstances under which ‘out of the ordinary’ agreement phenomena are found elsewhere in Universal Grammar: circumstances which I will unify under the rubric of ‘agreement attraction’, defined as agreement with the finite verb controlled by a constituent that is not an A–dependent of that verb. By ‘A–dependent’ I mean a constituent that occupies an A–position and is a direct dependent of the agreeing verb or the clause that it projects. What unifies the cases of ‘agreement attraction’ that we will encounter in section 2 is that in none of these cases does the agreeing verb engage in an A–dependency with the constituent that it φ-agrees with; rather, in each of these cases, the agreeing constituent is in an A'–position at the point at which the Agree relation between it and the agreeing verb is established. It is these cases from which the paper derives its title.

The ‘agreement attraction’ cases that figure centrally in the discussion in section 2 are almost always confined to number (and sometimes gender) agreement. ‘Person agreement attraction’ is extremely rare — though, if the analysis of a subtype of semi-clefts presented here is correct, not entirely nonexistent. That ‘agreement attraction’ is usually for number (and sometimes gender) and not for person falls out from what Baker (2008, 2011) has dubbed the Structural Condition on Person Agreement (SCOPA). I will derive SCOPA from the syntactic representation of person in the noun phrase and the workings of agreement in syntax, and carefully isolate the exception that proves the rule.

In section 3, the empirical scope of the investigation will be broadened to include φ-agreement in copular inversion constructions — constructions in which the predicate of the copular sentence raises into the structural subject position, and strands its subject in its base position. The special status of person will be seen to be very much in evidence in this domain as well. But in addition we will see (based on a detailed investigation of the facts of φ-feature agreement in Dutch copular inversion constructions, including clefts) that it is impossible for the inverted nominal predicate to control φ-agreement with the copula. This is made to fall out from a particular analysis of the fronted predicate of copular inversion constructions, as a pro-predicate unspecified for φ-features.

Apr 30    Jaklin Kornfilt (Syracuse), 4th Floor Lab, 5 pm

                 Similarities and differences between N-complement and Relative Clause constructions in two Turkic languages

Recent formal research (e.g. Kayne 2008, 2010; Krapova & Cinque 2012) has claimed that the structure of post-nominal finite N-complement constructions and of RCs is similar, i.e. is that of RCs. Likewise, recent typological studies of “east Asian” (and largely pre-nominal) N-complement constructions and of RCs is the same—even that they are one and the same construction (e.g. Comrie 1996, 1998, Matsumoto 1997). 

In this informal talk, I present two Turkic languages, Turkish and Sakha, whose N-complement constructions and RCs are, I claim, distinct structurally. In Turkish, this distinction is immediately obvious, given different placements of agreement morphology in the two constructions, as well as different morphemes on the clause’s predicate. In Sakha, no such morphological distinctions are observed. Nonetheless, in both languages, the two constructions are similarly distinct: RCs are more rigid syntactic islands than N-complement constructions. The talk will argue against the typological claim that in Sakha, an example of “East Asian” languages, the two constructions are actually a single one, with only apparent gaps in RCs. Instead, I will show that those gaps are genuine (i.e. not due to discourse-dictated ellipsis) and island-sensitive. The question of whether N-complement constructions indeed involve clausal complements or whether these clauses have a different structural relation to the nominal head, more similar to that of the clausal modifier as in RCs, will be left to future research.

Apr 11      Rahul Balusu (EFLU Hyderabad), 3:30 pm

                   The overt predicator -gaa in Telugu

The morpheme -gaa in Telugu has been labelled the adverbial suffix (Krishnamurti & Gwynn 1985) or an adjectivalizer (Subbarao & Bhaskararao 2004), because -gaa suffixed to Property Concept nouns or ‘bound adjectival roots’ forms adverbs, or occurs in adjectival constructions. 

Based on its distribution, I propose that -gaa is actually the instantiation of Pred0 and shows up as a phrasal affix on the non-verbal predicate. It occurs in small-clause complements of stative and dynamic raising verbs and ECM verbs –including intensional, causative and nomination verbs. In small-clauses of primary predication (-gaa’s adjectival use), it gives the interpretation of a temporary state, or stage-level meaning. Without -gaa, primary predication is individual-level or permanent. This is similar to the time-stable vs. transient interpretation of copular predicates marked with nominative vs. essive case in Finnish and nominative vs. instrumental case in Russian (Matushansky 2012). It also patterns with the absence or presence of lifetime effects in predicate nominals, without the indefinite article vs. with the indefinite article, in French and German (Roy 2005). I analyze this difference with and without -gaa as eventive vs. non-eventive predication.

Besides argument small clauses, -gaa always occurs in adjunct small clauses –depictive and resultative secondary predicates. Its distribution is thus cross-linguistically parallel to the distribution of Essive & Translative cases in Finno-Ugric languages like Finnish and Estonian (Matushansky 2012, de Groot 2013) and predicate Instrumental case in Russian (Bailyn 2012). 

-gaa also occurs in verbal small clauses where it attaches to an uninflected verb. These verbal small clauses have meanings like ACC-ing constructions (Cinque 1995) in English, and pseudo relatives (Cinque 1995) and prepositional infinitival constructions (Raposo 1989) in Romance languages, and express an event or state in progress. This verbal aspect I argue is again due to the eventive nature of the small clause predication. Through reduplication and with the emphatic clitic, the Vinf-gaa clauses establish various temporal relations.

Returning to adverbs formed with -gaa, I propose that they have the internal structure of a small clause, with an event-controlled PRO as the implicit argument subject of the small clause. This is a robust generalization cross-linguistically as a number of languages (Russian, Welsh, Hungarian, Maithili, Basque) employ the same morphosyntactic device for adverb formation and non-verbal predication.

Apr 11      Liliana Sánchez (Rutgers)

                    Differences between the left and the right periphery in Southern Quechua

In Southern Quechua, a language with null subjects and SOV canonical word order, constituents that convey new information (focus) or old information (topic) are marked with specific morphological endings. In left peripheral positions, topics are marked with the suffix –qa and focused constituents are marked with focus/evidential particles –mi ~ -n (-si ~-s, chá):

(1) [Qan-qa]     allin     warmi       ka-nki                              (Cusihuamán 2001)

      [You-TOP] good     woman     be-2S

      “(As for you), you are a good woman”

(2) [Tanta-ta-m]                       Luis     miku-yka-n             (Cerrón-Palomino 1989) 

      [Bread-acc-FOC/EVID]    Luis     eat-PROG-3S

       “It is bread that Luis is eating” (1st hand information)

Muysken (1995) points out that focused/evidential elements can be marked in situ: 

(3)   Pidru     [wasi-ta-n]                             ruwa-n.

        Pidru     [house-ACC-FOC/EVID]   build-3S

        “It is the house that Pedro builds"

In addition to in situ and left-edge material, there are also right-edge constituents (subjects and objects) that are not morphologically marked for focus/evidentiality or topic. Objects are marked for case (Cuzco Quechua database):

(4)   Pero,     kiriq-mi                 ka-sqa             [chay pajaru-cha]

        But,       sick- FOC/EVID  be-PST.REP   [this bird-DIM]

        “But this little bird was sick”

(5)   Hina-spa-n                                  tariru-spa             ka-ra-n                 [huk pajaru-cha-ta]     [qillu-cha-ta]

        Such-ADV.NOM-FOC/EVID  find-ADV.NOM    be-PST.ATT-3S  [a bird-DIM-ACC]       [yellow-DIM-ACC]

        “Then (she) found a little yellow bird”

Sánchez (2010) proposed that in Quechua morphological markings of topic and focus or evidentiality on constituents in the left periphery are the spell-out of AGREE between functional features (evidentiality, topic and focus) in the CP-area and constituents in situ or merged in specifier positions in the C-domain. This proposal accounts for the restrictions on these morphemes: a) they are attached only to constituents, b) only one per clause is allowed, c) they are not allowed in nominalizations and d) they cannot occur in imperatives (Muysken 1995). On the other hand, discontinuous DPs in the right periphery have no contrastive interpretation in discourse and are adjoined to IP-internal positions. In fact, some right peripheral constituents are external to the intonational contour. In example (6), the subject and the object are uttered with voiceless vowels. Their referents have been previously introduced in discourse (Cuzco Quechua data) and are not contrastive:

(6)   Hinaspa                 wasi-n-man     apapu-sqa           [chay biyiha-cha]             [chay pichingu-cha] 

        Such-ADV.NOM  house-3-DAT  bring-PST.REP  [that old woman-DIM]    [that bird-DIM]

        “Then the old woman took the little bird to her house”

In this talk I will show that while focused and topicalized constituents at the left edge are licensed by an AGREE relationship, constituents at the right edge are either stranded or subject to a linear rule at the PF/conceptual interface. This indicates that only the left-periphery is active at the interface between syntax and informational structure in Quechua.

Apr 4        Andrei Antonenko (Stony Brook)

                   Binding theory and feature valuation

In this talk I propose how the distribution of anaphors can be explained within the minimalist framework.  The first goal is to propose an analysis of anaphoric binding based on a feature-checking mechanism (Pesetsky & Torrego 2007), by introducing a feature <ρ>, responsible for establishing a coreference between an anaphor and its antecedent. I argue that this feature is present on a reflexive and some phrasal head and its valuation using Agree results in introduction of a λ-operator, which binds a reflexive variable thereby establishing the coreference between an anaphor and its antecedent.  The second goal of this talk is to revise the definition of a binding domain. Previous definitions could not uniformly account for the possibility of long-distance binding when an anaphor is bound by an element from outside of its clause. I argue that binding domains can be defined based on their feature content and whether features within such domains are valued or unvalued.  As a result, domains with a defective tense such as infinitives and subjunctives can be closed for binding at a later stage, permitting binding into them.  I show how this definition of binding domain can account for cross-linguistic differences in long-distance binding possibilities.  Finally, if time permits, I briefly consider interaction of A’-movement (such as scrambling and wh-movement) and anaphoric binding and show how it affects the status of binding domains. 

Mar 28     Francisco Ordóñez (Stony Brook)

                   Differential Object Marking and Differential Clitic Marking

There are two important different approaches to Differential Object Marking (D.O.M.) in languages like Spanish. The first considers that D.O.M. is just a manifestation of inherent case (Torrego 1998). The second assumes that D.O.M. is accusative case and that a is its specific morphological realization with animate specific DP’s, and it is introduced by late insertion. In this paper, we provide an alternative analysis of D.O.M. in which it is treated as a regular preposition in the syntax.

From this new perspective, one of the properties of languages like Spanish is that they provide DP-objects with the preposition a because little v fails to assign accusative case to certain type of objects which are [+anim, +spec] (Zdrojewski 2013). In those languages the lack of source for case assignment to causee argument with transitive verbs requires the insertion of a preposition a in order to save the derivation. The specific analysis we will adopt is the one of preposition as probes (Kayne 2005) and we generalize it to all v in Spanish with animate DP’s: a is part of the functional spine of the sentence and is a probe for case assignment above v.  This analysis explains that a is a preposition, but it also makes natural the parallelism with French and Italian.

In addition, our analysis also explores the important issue of the interaction of clitics with D.O.M. objects. While it is the case that most Spanish systems show the same sets of clitics for the D.O.M. and their non-D.O.M. counterparts, some Peninsular varieties, for example, Basque Spanish (Ormazábal & Romero 2013) and Catalonian Spanish (CS) present different paradigms.  In other words, these varieties have differential clitic marking.

Mar 7        Tom Leu (UQAM), 12:30 pm

                    Metamorphology: Comparative morph-ology

The notion of morpheme is useful (Bloomfield, 1914) and debated (Anderson, 1992). Traditionally, morphemes are minimal saussurian signs: language-particular minimal relations of phonological form and semantico-grammatical content which constitute building blocks of linguistic structure. But which side of the morphemic coin should guide the linguist in identifying morphemes? In a world of allomorphy, homophony, and silence, the answer, one would think, has got to be content, especially in comparative work, given the language-particular character of the form side. But there’s a snag: the content is inaudible. 

In this talk, I will argue that we needn’t and mustn’t rush to the content side too quickly. Work of mine on determiners (Leu, 2010) and complementizers (Leu, forthcoming), and on German ein and French on (Leu, 2012, in preparation) will be presented as illustrations of the potential usefulness of inter-linguistic comparison before determining content and category of a given morph. In order to facilitate a comparative approach to morpheme identification based primarily on the morphemes’ form(s), I propose the concept of meta-morpheme: a non-language particular abstraction from language-particular allo-morphemes as identified by their form(s).

Feb 28      Christina Tortora (College of Staten Island & Graduate Center)

                    Evidence for the non-finiteness of English "present" and "past" verb forms

Exploring evidence from a number of English varieties, I pursue the idea that those English verb forms traditionally characterized as finite — i.e., present and past tense verbs (We love / loved New York) — are actually non-finite. I begin with an analysis of non-regular verbs in Appalachian English, which differ from those found in Standardized Englishes. Standardized Englishes exhibit two distinct forms for the simple past and past participle (e.g. They drank vs. They've drunk); however, literature on English speaker use observes a levelling of such forms (e.g., They drunk and They've drunk). Despite the apparent levelling, the many studies on the topic still assume that such speakers mentally represent "past" and "participle" as distinct categories, following the Standard English model. In-progress work with Frances Blanchette and Teresa O'Neill challenges the validity of this idea, at least for the grammars of some Appalachian English speakers. The Audio-Aligned and Parsed Corpus of Appalachian English (AAPCAppE) reveals that, in the Appalachian speech under study, there is no evidence for the mental representation of paradigms which conceptually distinguish the categories "past" vs. "participle." The fact that speakers exhibit variation in the forms used within the simple past or compound tenses (e.g., He saw that – He seen that – He's saw that – He's seen that) is argued to be an independent reflex of the otherwise commonly accepted idea that speakers readily allow for equivalent variants of verb forms, or, "morphological doublets" (e.g., the more normatively accepted He dreamed – He dreamt and He's dreamed – He's dreamt). This leads me to explore the idea that this "collapsed" category is participial, so that even in simple past tense contexts (e.g., they loved / drank your wine), the verb is a participle. Cross-dialectal variation in use of auxiliaries further suggests that such apparently simple past clauses are bi-clausal (aux+participle). I extend the idea to the present tense (they love your wine), where I take the verb form to be infinitival.

Feb 26      Yohei Oseki (NYU), WCCFL practice talk, 5 pm, 4th Floor Lab

                    Eliminating Pair-Merge

One of the fundamental distinctions in linguistic computation is an asymmetry between arguments and modifiers. Various proposals have been made to capture this asymmetry. On the syntactic side, Chomsky (2000) puts forth two primitive structure-building operations; Set-Merge and Pair-Merge. In direct contrast, Heim & Kratzer (1998) advocates two modes of semantic composition; Functional Application and Predicate Modification.

In this talk, thoroughly reconsidering two pieces of Chomsky's (2004, 2008) motivation for Pair-Merge - island for extraction (Huang 1982; Uriagereka 1999; Johnson 2003) and Condition C reconstruction (Lebeaux 1988; Fox & Nissenbaum 1999) - it is argued both empirically and conceptually that Pair-Merge should be eliminated from syntax; i.e. there is only one unitary Merge in syntax. The core proposal to be developed is that, on minimal assumptions about phrase structure geometry (Kayne 1994, 2013) and projection/labeling (Collins 2002; Hornstein 2009; Chomsky 2013), Merge automatically generates the dichotomy between "two-peaked" and "one-peaked" structures (Epstein, Kitahara, & Seely 2012), which in turn explains the above-mentioned facts, as well as their exceptions.

From the theoretical perspective, elimination of construction-specific stipulation like Pair-Merge is a welcome result under the spirit of Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1995). Furthermore, the current proposal suggests that the distinction between arguments and modifiers should be semantic in nature.

Feb 21      Jon Nissenbaum (Brooklyn College)

                    Purpose clauses, adjectival passives and un-prefixation

Infinitival VP-adjunct clauses often show the following alternation, one version with and the other without a non-subject gap:

(1)       Someone left this snow here [for me to shovel _ ]

(2)       Someone left this snow here [for me to shovel it ]

The presence or absence of a gap correlates with a difference in meaning. The gapped version (1), dubbed "purpose clause" in Faraci’s (1974) seminal work on the construction, implies only that the speaker needs to shovel the snow that has been left (perhaps by happenstance). The gapless (2), on the other hand — a "rationale clause" — carries an entailment about the intent of the root-clause agent. Unlike (1), the snow in (2) cannot have been left by happenstance; it can only have been left as part of the agent’s plan for the speaker to end up shoveling it. This difference in meaning has proven intractable. The absence of an adequate explanation — for either the meaning difference itself or its puzzling correlation with the presence/absence of a gap — has left us with the uncomfortable prospect that the two constructions, similar though they seem, are unrelated, or that the observed differences simply need to be stipulated.

In this talk I will report on progress toward genuine unification of these constructions. I build on recent advances in our understanding of verb phrase structure, and develop a set of arguments that both differences follow from a difference in the attachment site of the infinitival clause. After spelling out the details of the proposal, I will discuss several surprising additional consequences. First, I will show that that a simple theory of adjectival passives follows from the picture that I present without further stipulation, thus paving the way toward a great simplification of passive morpho-syntax. As a second consequence, I will argue that the picture allows a reduction of the two "un-" prefixes (verbal and adjectival) to a single, adjectival one.

(Click here for the long abstract)

Feb 7        Francisco Ordóñez & Lori Repetti (Stony Brook), joint with the PEP Lab

                   Clitics of Romance Languages (CRL) database

Clitics in Romance Languages (CRL) is a searchable database that allows users to examine one of the rare patterns involving a class of pronouns (clitics) that are normally stressless, but which, in the languages under investigation, exhibit or modify stress. This pattern is found in some minority Romance languages spoken in the South of France, the South and North of Italy, the Balearic Islands, and the islands of Corsica and Sardinia. In all cases they are endangered, under-studied Romance varieties being supplanted by the standard national languages. The researchers, Prof. Francisco Ordóñez and Prof. Lori Repetti, have done extensive fieldwork in these regions in order to obtain a thorough picture of the interactions between stress and these pronominal elements. In this talk, we will introduce the database and show how it can be used to perform queries.

Jan 31      Heather Burnett (Montréal), joint with the Semantics Group

                    Diachronic Investigations into Compositional Semantics: The Rise and Fall of Resultative Secondary Predication Constructions in the History of French

This talk outlines a new research program that investigates the contributions that studies of linguistic microvariation (i.e. variation between closely related varieties of a single language) can make to linguistic theory, and, in particular, to the construction of theories of the semantic module of the grammar and the syntax-semantics interface. Since the 1960s, studies of dialectal, historical and sociolinguistic variation have made enormous empirical contributions to theories of the phonological and morphological components of the grammar; however, it is only relatively recently that syntactic microvariation phenomena have entered the domain of study of theoretical linguistics (cf. Vinet & Roberge (1989), Kroch (1989), Kayne (1996), among others). Furthermore, as observed by von Fintel and Matthewson (2008), up to this point, studies of dialectal, historical or sociolinguistic variation have not played a large role in the construction of formal semantic theories. Therefore, the main goal of the research program is to exploit the (as yet largely untapped) resource that are variation studies with the aim of advancing semantic theory. As a concrete illustration of this methodology, I present a diachronic study of the evolution of resultative secondary predication constructions (ex. to hammer the metal flat, or to float under the bridge (directional interpretation)) from Latin to Modern French, with a particular focus on the resultative system of Old and Middle French (11-14th centuries). I show how, using a series of quantitative corpus-based diachronic studies, we can test the predictions of current analyses in the theoretical literature concerning the compositional semantics and typological distribution of resultative constructions and, in doing so, arrive at a better understanding of the grammatical foundations of causal and telic interpretations in natural language.

Fall 2013

Dec 6        Neil Myler (NYU)

                    Predicative Possession via Predicativization of the Possessee

In this talk, I discuss the following predicative possession construction from Quechua.  Most of the data discussed will be from Cochabamba Quechua (Bolivia), but the construction in question occurs in dialects from every subgroup in the family (irrespective of what other possession constructions the dialect might have), and I have never read of any dialect that lacks it.:

(1)   Noqa   wawa-yoq      ka-ni.

         I         child-YOQ      be-1s

        "I have a child."

The construction involves a copular predication of which the possessor is the subject.  The possessee, marked by the suffix -yoq, is the predicate.       

I will show that -yoq-marked phrases are nominal in category, rather than being adjective phrases or PPs, so that -yoq cannot be assimilated directly to things like English They are blue-eyed or Icelandic þeir eru með blá augu (lit. 'They are with blue eyes.').  I argue that the –yoq suffix in (1) is a derivational morpheme which attaches to a DP and starts a new nominal extended projection. Semantically, it takes a possessed DP ‘missing’ its possessor and returns something with the denotation of a common noun, which can then be predicated of the possessor as in (1) (or embedded in a DP structure and used as an argument, as I will show).  I will sketch how a theory that allows such mechanisms can be extended to the broader typology of possession.

Nov 12      Sjef Barbiers (Meertens Instituut)

                     Landing sites and stranding sites

There is a growing body of evidence for Chomsky’s claim (Chomsky 1986 and subsequent work) that vP is an intermediate landing site for long distance (LD) movement, cf. Barbiers (2002) for Dutch, Rackowski and Richards (2005) for Tagalog, Den Dikken (2009) for Hungarian and Koopman (2010) for West Ulster English and Dutch. Traditionally, embedded SpecCP is taken to be an intermediate landing site as well. The first claim of this talk, extending Barbiers (2002), is that these two types of intermediate landing sites behave categorically distinct on a series of stranding tests (P-stranding, Dutch floating quantifier  zoal ‘so all’, Dutch floating quantifier allemaal ‘all’, focus particle maar ‘only’, wat voor ‘what for’ split and remnant indefinite DP). Stranding is never possible in embedded SpecCP and always possible in vP, both embedded and matrix. With doubling we find the opposite pattern: doubling is possible in embedded SpecCP but never in vP (cf. Barbiers, Koeneman and Lekakou 2009). I argue that (sub-)extraction from embedded SpecCP of propositional clauses is impossible because there is no selectional relation between the matrix verb and the embedded interrogative clause. (Sub-)extraction from embedded SpecCP  can only give rise to a converging derivation if the offending copy in SpecCP is spelled out, yielding doubling (cf. Boef 2013 and van Craenenbroeck and van Koppen 2008). The second claim of this talk is that the picture according to which vP is an intermediate landing site for movement is too simple. Using the hierarchy of projections as proposed in Cinque (1999) I show that at least 4 different intermediate landing sites have to be distinguished. Which one is chosen depends on the type of constituent that moves through it, as can be made visible with stranded material.

Nov 8        Thomas Graf (Stony Brook)

                    Optionality Implies Islandhood

The idea that phrases do not necessarily surface in the position where they are interpreted is a cornerstone of generative syntax. In GB and Minimalism this is realized via the operation Move, but other accounts have also been proposed such as GPSG's slash feature mechanism. Irrespective of the technical instantiation, though, displacement exhibits a peculiar technical property that so far has gone unnoticed in the literature, namely that it is always deemed ungrammatical by the grammar if the following two conditions are satisfied:

1) displacement is necessary to satisfy a dependency at the target site, and

2) the phrase that is being extracted from is optional (in a specific technical sense).

As the first condition holds for almost all generative theories (in particular Minimalism), the theorem above entails that all optional phrases are islands. This result is both exciting and worrying. On the one hand it makes it possible to derive the Adjunct Island Constraint and the Coordinate Structure Constraint from the optionality of adjuncts and conjuncts while still allowing for parasitic gaps and across-the-board extraction. On the other hand it also blocks a large number of licit cases of extraction. Necessarily, then, one of the two conditions above does not hold for these constructions. I argue that the culprit is optionality --- once one also takes semantic factors into account, the constructions that allow for extraction no longer qualify as optional and thus do not constitute islands. Hence a sophisticated understanding of optionality that draws on both syntactic and semantic considerations derives and unifies a variety of island constraints while still allowing for exceptions where necessary.

Oct 24        Phoevos Panagiotidis (U Cyprus)

                     Are nouns the default lexical category? 

Kayne (2009) argues that nouns are the unmarked lexical category. He applies antisymmetry (Kayne 1994) to the lexicon in order to claim that there are lexical items of category x and lexical items of the category y. Lexical items of the category x form an open class, only contain valued features and they are not the locus of parametric variation – these are the nouns. Nouns, by virtue of having no unvalued features, are also the only lexical elements that can actually denote. Lexical items of the category y form a closed class, they enter the derivation with unvalued features, and are the locus of parametric variation – these are ‘non-nouns’, i.e. a category containing at least verbs and aspectual heads. Effectively, Kayne (2009) takes nouns to be the only (open) lexical category, whereas verbs are made of light verbs (a closed class, akin to v) with nominal complements, as in Hale and Keyser (1993, 55)

A consequence of the above is that ‘verbs’ are all denominal, nouns are the only lexical category and something like v (Kayne’s y) verbalizes them. Moreover, I think it would not be far removed from the spirit of Kayne’s proposal to claim that roots are nominal by default.

In this talk I will argue that roots are not inherently nominal (and, consequently, that verbs are not all denominal). Going beyond conceptual arguments, I will draw on evidence from Farsi 'Complex Predicates' (i.e. periphrastic verbs): these structures contain lexically unspecified words (Karimi-Doostan 2011), which are not nouns. At the same time, I will claim that Kayne captures a true generalisation, already hinted at in Arad (2005): there exists a true asymmetry between nouns and verbs on at least two levels: a) v and n seem to have completely different semantic roles to play and b) as structures verbs are 'bigger' (i.e. richer / more complex) than nouns.

Oct 11        Richard S. Kayne (NYU)

                      The Silence of Projecting Heads

A great many projecting heads in the syntax appear to be silent.  I explore the possibility that all projecting heads are silent, and ask why that might be so.

Oct 4        Edwin Williams (Princeton)

                   The Syntax-Semantics Correspondence

Two case studies will be presented to illustrate the explanatory virtues of a model of grammar in which syntax and semantics are both generative, but coupled by this principle:  syntactic functions are paired with semantic functions, and the arguments of a syntactic function are limited to exactly the expressions of the arguments of the semantic function it is paired with.  One case study leads to a rethinking of the difference between adverbs of quantification and determiner quantifiers.  The other case study concerns the positioning of clauses related to quantifiers like more, too, etc.

Sept 27       Helen Koulidobrova (Central Connecticut State University)

                       Elide me bare: null arguments (and related phenomena) in American Sign Language.

I examine the nature of the null arguments (subjects and objects) in American Sign Language (ASL) and argue that the traditional analyses must be abandoned.  It is typically assumed that in the presence of agreement, the null argument is a silent pronoun (pro, e.g. Rizzi 1986), while with lack thereof, the null argument is a topic-bound variable (e.g. Huang 1984). I introduce novel data that pose a problem for the traditional view.  As the null argument is subjected to a variety of diagnostics, I demonstrate that it is best analyzed as an instantiation of ‘surface anaphora’ – namely, ellipsis of the bare NP argument.  Along the way, a few other phenomena are addressed, such as VP-ellipsis,  syntax of bare NPs, and the contribution of space to agreement in Sign Languages.

Sept 6    Itamar Kastner (NYU)

                  Factivity Puzzles without Factivity

A number of syntactic puzzles arise when speakers embed a clause under verbs like know or remember, which are traditionally termed "factive verbs." For one, these verbs are weak islands, allowing only complements to be extracted (1). Another puzzle is that argument fronting is by and large impossible (2):

(1a) What do you remember (that) John stole __?

(1b) *Who do you remember __ stole the cookies? 

(2a) John thinks that this book, Mary read.

(2b) *? John remembers that this book, Mary read.

This talk makes a few points, drawing mainly on novel evidence from English, Hebrew, Greek, Persian and American Sign Language. First, factivity is not actually at issue here: even nonfactive verbs like agree and deny pattern with factive verbs. We call the entire class presuppositional verbs and suggest that they embed a silent definite determiner, leading us to an analysis of (1) and (2).

The idea, then, is that verbs taking a definite element (DP) can be presuppositional, but verbs that take a proposition (CP) are not; the selectional properties of the matrix verb thus determine whether an embedded clause is presupposed. This view receives support from the fact that complements of the same verb can be interpreted differently depending on whether they are an individual (DP) or a proposition (CP). To test our analysis we extend the discussion to sentential subjects, deriving existing generalizations regarding their nominalhood and factivity. We end with some speculations about the difference between sentential subjects in English and other languages.

Spring 2013

May 10      Friederike Moltmann (Paris/NYU)

                     Proper Names, Sortals, and the Mass-Count Distinction

Focusing on German, I will address the question why languages may use different sorts of proper names for different types of entities (e.g. for people, locations, times, buildings, numbers), for examples proper names with or without a definite determiner and proper names that classify as mass rather than count. I will argue in favor of a non-merological view of the mass-count distinction and for a particular 'quotational' role of names in a number of contexts.

May 3      Steven Foley (NYU)

                   Relative Clauses in Georgian

Georgian is notable for exhibiting many relativization strategies. Relative clauses may contain a wh-phrase, or the complementizer rom, which occurs in a non-inital position. They may occur directly after the modified nominal head, extraposed to the right edge of the matrix clause, or preposed in a correlative construction. The nominal head may appear inside the relative, outside it, or both. Despite this variation, I propose that all relative clauses in Georgian are derived from a single underlying structure, with the relative CP generated in the complement of D/N (cf. Kayne 1994, Hulsey & Sauerland 2006). The whole array of relative clauses is derived via movement through escape hatches provided by Phase extension (Bošković 2010, Bobaljik & Wurmbrand 2005). This approach challenges analyses of very similar phenomena in Hindi by Mahajan (2000) and Bhatt (2003); I argue that the few crucial differences between Hindi and Georgian permit a unified Phase-based derivation of relative clauses in the latter.

Apr 26      Coppe van Urk (MIT)

                   On case alternations in Dinka

Dinka (Nilotic; South Sudan) is a V2 language with several case alternations that are puzzling from the perspective of case theory (Andersen 1991; 2002). In particular, PPs arguments and adjuncts as well as subjects occur in different case forms depending on whether they are topicalized. In this talk, I argue that this system arises because, in Dinka, the head that encodes V2, C, is also a case assigner. As a result, topicalization of an XP requires the "undoing" of previous instances of case assignment. I then propose that Dinka's case alternations reflect two different ways of solving this problem. For PPs, I show that topicalization is accompanied by incorporation of the P head into the verb, thus actually removing the case layer. For subjects, I posit a phase-based rule of default case assignment (Coon & Preminger 2011; Imanishi 2013; cf. Marantz 2000; Baker and Vinokurova 2010), which licenses subjects but is bled by topicalization. In this way, Dinka sheds light on the mechanisms natural language can employ to arrive at a case alternation.

Apr 19      Moreno Mitrovic (University of Cambridge)

                   The composition of logical constants

This talk will meditate on a unified syntactic/semantic treatment of coordinate, quantificational, (focal) additive and polar question constructions, which are cross-linguistically handled by a single set of morphemes, as Szabolsci 2010 et seq. and Kratzer & Shimoyama (2002), among many others, have shown. I will first argue for a refinement of the binary syntactic structure for coordination and then subject this structure to compositional interpretation, which will derive the semantics. I will propose that questions, (ex-/inclusive) coordination, (NPI-type) quantification, and additive focus are structural partitions of the proposed structure, making the latter constructions different to one another only in derivational size.

Apr 12     Thomas Grano (UMD)

                   Verb meaning, restructuring, and the grammar of complement control

Landau (2000; 2004) draws a distinction between P(artial) C(ontrol) and E(xhaustive) C(ontrol): whereas PC predicates like “hope” admit a subset relation between the controller and controllee, EC predicates like “try” do not. (e.g., "Kim hoped to gather at noon." [controllee = Kim and contextually salient others] vs. "*Kim tried to gather at noon.") This talk explores the consequences of Cinque’s (2006) suggestion that whereas PC instantiates ‘true’ biclausal control, EC predicates realize functional heads that instantiate monoclausal raising structures. I show that this view makes accurate predictions about a number of correlates of the EC/PC split, including the crosslinguistic distribution of restructuring (monoclausality effects), the distribution of finite complements (in English), and the distribution of overt embedded subjects (crosslinguistically). I furthermore show how a uniform raising analysis of EC predicates like “try” can be reconciled with their apparent ‘control’ properties via the proposal that such predicates are semantically anchored to an individual that must be represented in the syntax, and I argue that this proposal sheds new light on an old question in the restructuring literature: why a predicate’s (in)ability to restructure is largely predictable from its semantics. The conclusion is that the restructuring status of EC predicates follows from an interaction between their lexical semantics and general constraints on clausal architecture.

Mar 15      Inna Livitz (NYU)

                    Optionally null: Control into finite and infinitival clauses in Russian

In Russian, overt pronouns appear to alternate freely with null pronouns (ec) in both finite and infinitival embedded clauses. 

(1)       Petja skazal,  [čto ec/on         kupit            mašinu].

           Petja  said     that ec/he.nom   will-buy.3sg   car

           ‘Petjai said that hei will buy a car.’                                                   Finite

(2)       Petjai znaet    [kak ec/emu    vyigrat’ vybory].

           Petja  knows  how ec/he.dat  win.inf  election

           ‘Petjai knows how hei can win the election.’                                      Infinitival

This talk focuses on two properties of the above alternation.  The first is the obligatory referential dependence of the silent pronoun in (1) on the matrix subject, despite the presence of a finite clause boundary between the embedded subject and its antecedent.   The second is the possibility of an identical interpretation for overt and silent pronouns in the embedded clause in (1) and (2), which is unexpected given proposals that overt pronouns must be distinct in interpretation from silent pronouns in the same context.

I argue that a derivational approach to pronominal silence, in conjunction with the role of phases in the syntactic derivation, is able to account for both of the above properties. Combining the notion of defective goal from Roberts (2010) with Landau’s (2004, 2008) Agree-based theory of control, I propose that both the referential dependence and silence of a pronoun are the result of an Agree relation between a pronoun with unvalued φ-features and its antecedent, mediated by clausal functional heads.   This Agree relation can cross a phase boundary only if the phase head itself is part of the Agree chain.  The embedded CP is a phase in both (1) and (2), but it is the nature of the embedded subject—whether it has valued or unvalued φ-features—that determines whether C blocks or mediates the control relation.  When control is blocked, an overt pronoun can be referentially dependent on the matrix subject, just as in English (3).

(3) Johni said [CP that hei will buy a car].

I also address a number of differences between control into finite and infinitival clauses, specifically the interpretation of the silent pronoun under ellipsis and the availability of object control.   I propose that these differences follow from the presence of an additional D-layer in the complementation structure of finite clauses in Russian.  This property of Russian also explains several differences between control into finite clauses in Russian and Brazilian Portuguese.

Mar 1    Gary Thoms (University of Edinburgh)

                Predicate movement and the linearization of chains

In this paper I argue that remnant movement is subject to a constraint which generally prevents reordering a pronounced element X with respect to an unpronounced copy of X. I motivate this constraint by reassessing VP-preposing, which is typically taken to be a  a clear case of remnant movement: 

(1) John said he would be arrested, and [VP arrested t] John was indeed.

The bulk of the paper is concerned with showing that examples like (1) are not derived by VP/vP-movement but rather by base-generation of the higher VP and ellipsis of the lower one, with operator movement linking the two; I call this a 'matching' analysis for VP-preposing, comparing it to proposals for the structure of relative clauses. The matching analysis motivated by evidence from extraction restrictions, unexpected extraction possibilities, morphological mismatches and apparent 'reconstruction effects', all of which follow from the proposed account but not from a "true VP-movement" analysis; I therefore conclude that English lacks true VP-movement. With this established, I then reconsider the distribution of possible and impossible remnant movement derivations and show that the relevant generalization must be stated in terms of the linear order of the pronounced copy of movement with respect to deleted copies. I conclude by proposing that the observed constraint is also operative in regular non-remnant movement chains, and that it may be derived from the more general condition that the grammar may not operate on discontinuous objects. 

Spring 2013

May 10      Friederike Moltmann (Paris/NYU)

                     Proper Names, Sortals, and the Mass-Count Distinction

Focusing on German, I will address the question why languages may use different sorts of proper names for different types of entities (e.g. for people, locations, times, buildings, numbers), for examples proper names with or without a definite determiner and proper names that classify as mass rather than count. I will argue in favor of a non-merological view of the mass-count distinction and for a particular 'quotational' role of names in a number of contexts.

May 3      Steven Foley (NYU)

                   Relative Clauses in Georgian

Georgian is notable for exhibiting many relativization strategies. Relative clauses may contain a wh-phrase, or the complementizer rom, which occurs in a non-inital position. They may occur directly after the modified nominal head, extraposed to the right edge of the matrix clause, or preposed in a correlative construction. The nominal head may appear inside the relative, outside it, or both. Despite this variation, I propose that all relative clauses in Georgian are derived from a single underlying structure, with the relative CP generated in the complement of D/N (cf. Kayne 1994, Hulsey & Sauerland 2006). The whole array of relative clauses is derived via movement through escape hatches provided by Phase extension (Bošković 2010, Bobaljik & Wurmbrand 2005). This approach challenges analyses of very similar phenomena in Hindi by Mahajan (2000) and Bhatt (2003); I argue that the few crucial differences between Hindi and Georgian permit a unified Phase-based derivation of relative clauses in the latter.

Apr 26      Coppe van Urk (MIT)

                   On case alternations in Dinka

Dinka (Nilotic; South Sudan) is a V2 language with several case alternations that are puzzling from the perspective of case theory (Andersen 1991; 2002). In particular, PPs arguments and adjuncts as well as subjects occur in different case forms depending on whether they are topicalized. In this talk, I argue that this system arises because, in Dinka, the head that encodes V2, C, is also a case assigner. As a result, topicalization of an XP requires the "undoing" of previous instances of case assignment. I then propose that Dinka's case alternations reflect two different ways of solving this problem. For PPs, I show that topicalization is accompanied by incorporation of the P head into the verb, thus actually removing the case layer. For subjects, I posit a phase-based rule of default case assignment (Coon & Preminger 2011; Imanishi 2013; cf. Marantz 2000; Baker and Vinokurova 2010), which licenses subjects but is bled by topicalization. In this way, Dinka sheds light on the mechanisms natural language can employ to arrive at a case alternation.

Apr 19      Moreno Mitrovic (University of Cambridge)

                   The composition of logical constants

This talk will meditate on a unified syntactic/semantic treatment of coordinate, quantificational, (focal) additive and polar question constructions, which are cross-linguistically handled by a single set of morphemes, as Szabolsci 2010 et seq. and Kratzer & Shimoyama (2002), among many others, have shown. I will first argue for a refinement of the binary syntactic structure for coordination and then subject this structure to compositional interpretation, which will derive the semantics. I will propose that questions, (ex-/inclusive) coordination, (NPI-type) quantification, and additive focus are structural partitions of the proposed structure, making the latter constructions different to one another only in derivational size.

Apr 12     Thomas Grano (UMD)

                   Verb meaning, restructuring, and the grammar of complement control

Landau (2000; 2004) draws a distinction between P(artial) C(ontrol) and E(xhaustive) C(ontrol): whereas PC predicates like “hope” admit a subset relation between the controller and controllee, EC predicates like “try” do not. (e.g., "Kim hoped to gather at noon." [controllee = Kim and contextually salient others] vs. "*Kim tried to gather at noon.") This talk explores the consequences of Cinque’s (2006) suggestion that whereas PC instantiates ‘true’ biclausal control, EC predicates realize functional heads that instantiate monoclausal raising structures. I show that this view makes accurate predictions about a number of correlates of the EC/PC split, including the crosslinguistic distribution of restructuring (monoclausality effects), the distribution of finite complements (in English), and the distribution of overt embedded subjects (crosslinguistically). I furthermore show how a uniform raising analysis of EC predicates like “try” can be reconciled with their apparent ‘control’ properties via the proposal that such predicates are semantically anchored to an individual that must be represented in the syntax, and I argue that this proposal sheds new light on an old question in the restructuring literature: why a predicate’s (in)ability to restructure is largely predictable from its semantics. The conclusion is that the restructuring status of EC predicates follows from an interaction between their lexical semantics and general constraints on clausal architecture.

Mar 15      Inna Livitz (NYU)

                    Optionally null: Control into finite and infinitival clauses in Russian

In Russian, overt pronouns appear to alternate freely with null pronouns (ec) in both finite and infinitival embedded clauses. 

(1)       Petja skazal,  [čto ec/on         kupit            mašinu].

           Petja  said     that ec/he.nom   will-buy.3sg   car

           ‘Petjai said that hei will buy a car.’                                                   Finite

(2)       Petjai znaet    [kak ec/emu    vyigrat’ vybory].

           Petja  knows  how ec/he.dat  win.inf  election

           ‘Petjai knows how hei can win the election.’                                      Infinitival

This talk focuses on two properties of the above alternation.  The first is the obligatory referential dependence of the silent pronoun in (1) on the matrix subject, despite the presence of a finite clause boundary between the embedded subject and its antecedent.   The second is the possibility of an identical interpretation for overt and silent pronouns in the embedded clause in (1) and (2), which is unexpected given proposals that overt pronouns must be distinct in interpretation from silent pronouns in the same context.

I argue that a derivational approach to pronominal silence, in conjunction with the role of phases in the syntactic derivation, is able to account for both of the above properties. Combining the notion of defective goal from Roberts (2010) with Landau’s (2004, 2008) Agree-based theory of control, I propose that both the referential dependence and silence of a pronoun are the result of an Agree relation between a pronoun with unvalued φ-features and its antecedent, mediated by clausal functional heads.   This Agree relation can cross a phase boundary only if the phase head itself is part of the Agree chain.  The embedded CP is a phase in both (1) and (2), but it is the nature of the embedded subject—whether it has valued or unvalued φ-features—that determines whether C blocks or mediates the control relation.  When control is blocked, an overt pronoun can be referentially dependent on the matrix subject, just as in English (3).

(3) Johni said [CP that hei will buy a car].

I also address a number of differences between control into finite and infinitival clauses, specifically the interpretation of the silent pronoun under ellipsis and the availability of object control.   I propose that these differences follow from the presence of an additional D-layer in the complementation structure of finite clauses in Russian.  This property of Russian also explains several differences between control into finite clauses in Russian and Brazilian Portuguese.

Mar 1    Gary Thoms (University of Edinburgh)

                Predicate movement and the linearization of chains

In this paper I argue that remnant movement is subject to a constraint which generally prevents reordering a pronounced element X with respect to an unpronounced copy of X. I motivate this constraint by reassessing VP-preposing, which is typically taken to be a  a clear case of remnant movement: 

(1) John said he would be arrested, and [VP arrested t] John was indeed.

The bulk of the paper is concerned with showing that examples like (1) are not derived by VP/vP-movement but rather by base-generation of the higher VP and ellipsis of the lower one, with operator movement linking the two; I call this a `matching' analysis for VP-preposing, comparing it to proposals for the structure of relative clauses. The matching analysis motivated by evidence from extraction restrictions, unexpected extraction possibilities, morphological mismatches and apparent `reconstruction effects', all of which follow from the proposed account but not from a ``true VP-movement'' analysis; I therefore conclude that English lacks true VP-movement. With this established, I then reconsider the distribution of possible and impossible remnant movement derivations and show that the relevant generalization must be stated in terms of the linear order of the pronounced copy of movement with respect to deleted copies. I conclude by proposing that the observed constraint is also operative in regular non-remnant movement chains, and that it may be derived from the more general condition that the grammar may not operate on discontinuous objects. 

Fall 2012

Nov 16      Ane Odria (University of the Basque Country/NYU)

                     Differential Object Marking and Object Case/Agreement Checking in Basque Dialects

In this talk, I analyze the Differential Object Marking (DOM) that is attested in certain Basque dialects. In these dialects, animate direct objects of transitive verbs are marked dative case (1) –the same case assigned to indirect objects– instead of the canonical absolutive (2) (Fernández & Rezac 2010, 2012, Mounole 2008, Odria 2012):

(1)    Ni-k     zu-ri         ikusi     d-i-zu-t

        I-ERG    you-DAT        see      expl-(root)-DF-2sgD-1sgE

‘I saw you’

(2)   Ni-k   zu-ø        ikusi      z-a-it-u-t

       I-ERG  you-ABS    see       2A-ep-2pl-root-1sgE

       'I saw you’

The aim of the talk is twofold: (i) to analyze the syntactic nature of DOM objects like zuri ‘you-DAT’ in (1), and (ii) to put forward a novel case/agreement checking for both DOM and indirect objects.

I propose that there is a single functional head in charge of checking structural dative agreement with both DOM and indirect objects. The main evidence suggesting a structural agreement checking for both objects comes from the impossibility of having two dative agreement markers in the same auxiliary verb (3):

(3)  Ni-k      amama-ri              umie-ri          eruan *d-i-o-e-t

      I-ERG grandmother-DAT children-DAT  carry   expl-(root)-DF-3sgD-3pl-1sg

      ‘I carried the children to the grandmother’

Even if marginal, one of the repair strategies in (3) is to mark both the DOM object and the indirect object with dative case and to have one dative agreement marker agreeing with the DOM object (4):

(4)  Ni-k  umie-ri             amama-ri              eruan    d-i-e-t

      I-ERG children-DAT   grandmother-DAT carry    expl-(root)-DF-3pl-1sg

         ‘I carried the children to the grandmother’

Since the position between the indirect object and the subject is not the canonical position of direct objects in Basque –their canonical position is between the indirect object and the verb–, I propose that animate direct objects move from their original position to a higher position where they can check dative agreement. The fact that DOM objects undergo some kind of movement can be additionally supported by (5), where only the DOM object can move to a topic position above the subject (Bhatt & Anagnostopoulou 1996):

(5)  a. Umie-ri,      ama-k      eruan    d-i-e                                     amama-ri

  children-DAT mum-ERG   carry     expl-(root)-DF-3plD-(3sgE)        grandmother-DAT

          ‘The child, the mum carried to the grandmother’

      b. *Amama-ri,              ama-k      eruan     d-i-e                             umie-ri

           grandmother-DAT     mum-ERG   carry      expl-(root)-DF-3plD-(3sgE) children-DAT

           ‘To the grandmother, the mum carried the child’

Even though DOM objects and indirect objects receive agreement in the same way, I propose that case is assigned to them in different ways. Given that dative marked indirect objects can appear without dative agreement (4), I suggest that dative case in indirect objects is inherent. As for dative case in DOM objects, I propose that it is structural, since dative case marking is out when there is no dative agreement in the auxiliary verb (6):

(6)    a. *Zu-ri ikustera etorri d-a

    you-DAT see come expl(3A)-root

    ‘He came to see you'

b.  Zu-ri ikustera etorri j-a-t-zu

     you-DAT see come expl(3A)-(root)-ep-DF-2D

             ‘He came to see you’

Nov 9     Stephanie Harves and Neil Myler (NYU)

                Licensing NPIs and Licensing Silence: the case of have/be yet to in English

In this talk, we discuss the following constructions in English:

(1) a. John has yet to eat dinner.

     b. John is yet to eat dinner.

As pointed out by Kelly (2008), these constructions pose a number of puzzles relative to their paraphrases in (2).

(2) a. John hasn't eaten dinner yet.

     b. John didn't eat dinner yet.

These puzzles can be summarized as follows:

(3) a. How is the NPI yet licensed in (1)?

     b. Why is (1a) interpreted like a have + past participle construction, given that it contains an infinitive?

     c. What accounts for the apparent free alternation between have and be in (1)?

We propose that the constructions in (1) each involve a silent raising predicate which takes an infinitive as its complement.  This silent predicate has negative implicative semantics (corresponding to the past participle of the verb failed in the case of (1a), and the adjectival passive form of a verb with no overt English counterpart in the case of (1b)).    The NPI yet is merged inside this embedded clause (in which position it can be licensed by the negative implicative predicate), and then raises into the specifier of the silent negative implicative predicate. This dependency between the raising of an NPI and the silence of a negative element is reminiscent of the behavior on NPIs in Spanish.  The analysis is illustrated for (1a) in (4).

(4) John has yeti FAILED to eat dinner ti.

This analysis yields solutions to each of the puzzles in (3).  The NPI yet is licensed straightforwardly by the negative implicative matrix predicate.  Example (1a) is interpreted like the perfect construction because it is an instance of that construction with a silent past participle.  The apparent free alternation between have and be turns out to be illusory: the category of the silent predicate can be shown to be different in each case in a way that is to be expected given independent c-selectional properties of have and be in English.  A further consequence of this analysis is that there is no sentential negation in (1), as opposed to the paraphrases in (2).  This is a desirable conclusion, as we will show with reference to various tests for the presence of sentential negation standard since Klima (1964).

Oct 26      Arhonto Terzi (Institute of Patras)

                   Licensing Silent Structure: The Spatial Prepositions of Shupamem (joint work with Abdoulaye Laziz Nchare)

In this talk we will present our joint work (with Abdoulaye Laziz Nchare) on the spatial expressions of Shupamem. Shupamem is a Grassfields Bantu language that has very few items clearly identified as spatial prepositions, a good number of nouns that are used to denote locational relations, and a small and well-defined set of items in the extended projection of spatial Ps that denote speaker’s point of view, but often give the impression of locative or directional Ps. It is proposed that the structure of Shupamem locative PPs consists of two core components: (a) a functional head, PLoc, and (b) a nominal complement. Either component may surface without phonetic content once specific requirements are met, namely, once the Edge of the PP is minimally overt. We claim that the nouns denoting location, unlike referential nouns, depend on PLoc for their interpretation, as a result of which they may move to its Edge and license a silent P. A silent P is also licensed by the elements that denote speaker’s point of view, via movement of the silent P to the point of view head; this results in phase extension, and explains the obligatory presence of view markers in some contexts, giving the impression they are locative or, in most cases, directional Ps. The account proposed for Shupamem offers a unified treatment of the functional structure of spatial Ps across typologically different languages, while it investigates how silent parts of the spatial P structure are licensed.

Oct 12       Gísli Har∂arson (UConn)

                     Layercake- Cyclic domains and semantic hierarchies in Icelandic compounds

Generally, compounds have been considered to be (relatively) simple structures where, e.g. N  is added onto another N, forming a structure such as [N N]N. Evidence from Icelandic indicates, however, that such structures are too simple. In this talk, I argue that Icelandic compounds show evidence for two cyclic domains, in which modifiers are merged according to their type and a third one which closes off the word. Furthermore I argue that, within each domain, modifiers are ordered according to the relationship they bear with the head of the compound. This hierarchy is repeated at each domain but does not hold between domains.

Spring 2012

Apr 27    Ruth Brillman (NYU) (Special Time: 10.30am)

      Decomposing Alternations: The case of have, want and need

This is a talk about the verbs have, want, and need, and the forms these verbs can take. Within English and cross-linguistically, the verb have can serve as (at least) a transitive verb of possession, an auxiliary verb that expresses the semantics of the perfect, or a (semantically) modal verb of obligation. I argue that each of these three uses of have are morphologically complex, but built from the same pieces. Specifically, I argue that have is not a lexical primitive, but is decomposable into be plus an extended prepositional phrase, itself composed of P and a functional argument-introducing head, p. The transitive/auxiliary/modal alternations of have are reducible to phi-feature alternations of p. Using evidence from Slavic, Celtic, and recent research by Harves and Kayne (2012), I show that both want and need, like have, are not lexical primitives, and can be decomposed to be, an extended prepositional phrase (P+p) and a nominal/deadjectival element.  The distribution of want and need, each of which display (at least) three variants, can also be explained via decomposition and the properties of p.   

Apr 6      Ruth Kramer (Georgetown University) 

     The Morphosyntax of Gender: Evidence from Amharic

Within the literature on gender, morphosyntactic approaches to *natural gender* (also called biological gender or sex) are few and far between. In this talk, I will argue that natural gender should play a central role in the morphosyntax of gender, using evidence from the language Amharic (Ethiosemitic). I show how conventional analyses of gender struggle with Amharic, and develop an alternative analysis that crucially relies on an interpretable gender feature on n (cf. Lecarme 2002, Ferrari(-Bridgers) 2005, Acquaviva 2009; I assume lexical categories are decomposed into a category-defining head and a category-neutral root). Further evidence for the analysis is provided by the unusual interaction of gender and number in Amharic, as well as the morphosyntax of Amharic nominalizations.  Finally, the analysis is extended beyond Amharic to cover languages with well-studied gender systems, and the paper concludes with some discussion of the typology of gender systems across languages.

Mar 23    Meera Saeed Al Kaabi (NYU)

Rethinking templates: evidence from the Emirati Arabic verbal templates

In this talk, I will  present an analysis of the syntax-semantics of the verbal system of Emirati Arabic (EA) in terms of syntactic decomposition of argument structure in the syntax. 

In particular, I argue that verbal meaning is a combination of at least two syntactic heads: Voice and little v; and a lexical head: the consonantal root. 

I will further show that the unified syntactic structure, resulting from the interaction of the semantics and argument structure of the root with little v and Voice, captures the regularities as well as the exceptions in the interpretation of the verb forms of EA.

Mar 19    Jessica Coon (McGill)

The Role of Case in A-Bar Extraction Asymmetries: Evidence from Mayan

Many morphologically ergative languages show asymmetries in the extraction of core arguments: while absolutive arguments (transitive objects and intransitive subjects) extract freely, ergative arguments (transitive subjects) cannot. This falls under the label “syntactic ergativity” (see e.g. Dixon 1972, 1994; Manning 1996). Extraction asymmetries are found in many languages of the Mayan family, where in order to extract transitive subjects (for focus, questions, or relativization), a special construction known as the “Agent Focus” (AF) must be used. These AF constructions have been described as syntactically transitive, because they contain two non-oblique DP arguments, but morphologically intransitive because the verb appears with only a single agreement marker and takes an intransitive status suffix (Aissen 1999; Stiebels 2006).

In this talk––which presents collaborative work with Pedro Mateo Pedro and Omer Preminger––I offer a proposal for (i) why some morphologically ergative languages exhibit extraction asymmetries, while others do not; and (ii) how the Mayan AF construction circumvents this problem. We adopt recent accounts which argue that ergative languages vary in the locus of absolutive Case assignment Aldridge 2004, 2008a; Legate 2002, 2008), and propose that this variation is present within the Mayan family. Based primarily on comparative data from Q’anjob’al and Chol, we argue that the inability to extract ergative arguments does not reflect a problem with properties of the ergative subject itself, but rather reflects locality properties of absolutive Case assignment in the clause. We show how the AF morpheme -on circumvents this problem in Q’anjob’al by assigning case to internal arguments. Evidence will come from reflexive and extended reflexive constructions, incorporated objects, embedded clauses, as well as hierarchy effects in related K'ichean languages.

Mar 2    Jeffrey Watumull (University of Cambridge/MIT)

                The Computability and Complexity of Generativity

Any theory of linguistic cognition is a theory of linguistic computation and thus must posit a generative function.  The common assumption is that this function is n-ary.  I argue that this assumption cannot be maintained if the theories of computability and computational complexity are accepted: an n-ary form of the function Merge is either uncomputable or intractable.  By contrast, a form of binary Merge is computable, tractable, and computationally optimal.  From the assumption of binarity, predictions are generated as to the universality of binary branching structures and ergo the impossibility of flat-structures (and non-configurational languages).

Feb 10       Omer Preminger (Harvard/MIT)

                     Agreement in Kichean and Zulu: Filtration vs. Strict Generativity

The overarching question addressed in this talk is how the grammar selects the subset of well-formed/grammatical/acceptable utterances from among the set of all possible utterances. The two main approaches that one finds are the following:

(1) Filtration:

The grammar is capable of generating well-formed and ill-formed structure alike, and a set of late-applying filters serve to "separate the wheat from the chaff".

(2) Strict Generativity:

The grammar provides a 'recipe' -- a sequence of operations that are guaranteed (modulo the particular lexical items chosen) to ultimately yield a well-formed structure.

Historically, the debate between (1) and (2) has been waged mostly on conceptual grounds (see, for example, Frampton & Gutmann 2002, 2006). In this talk, I present an *empirical* argument in favor of Strict Generativity (2), coming from predicate-argument agreement in the Agent-Focus construction, in the Kichean languages of the Mayan family.

Predicate-argument agreement in the Kichean Agent-Focus construction, like most other types of predicate-argument agreement, is obligatory. I present and discuss the details of this particular agreement system and show that its obligatoriness cannot be captured in terms of Filtration (1). Instead, it requires an *obligatory operation* -- one whose invocation is always triggered, but whose successful culmination is not enforced by the grammar. Thus, it is shown that the facts of Kichean agreement can only be handled within a Strict Generativity model (as in (2)).

A distinct set of facts, involving the distribution of "nominal augment" in Zulu, and the "conjoint/disjoint" distinction in Zulu verbal morphology, is then examined. Building on recent work by Halpert (to appear), I show that the same analysis proposed for Kichean accounts for these Zulu facts as well, reinforcing the overall conclusion that attempted-but-failed agreement must be sanctioned by the grammar -- and that the empirical state of affairs with respect to agreement therefore requires a Strict Generativity approach (as in (2)), rather than a Filtration approach (as in (1)).

Feb 3       Jim Wood (NYU)

Icelandic Figure Reflexives and the Role of Anticausative Morphology

In this talk, I provide a new explanation for the well-known, cross-linguistically frequent phenomenon whereby anticausatives and reflexives are (or can be) expressed with the same morphology. I focus specifically on the role of the -st morpheme in the Icelandic sentences in (1) and (2).

(1) Rúðan splundraðist.

window.the shattered-ST

'The window shattered.'      (anticausative)

(2) Bjartur tróðst gegnum mannþröngina.

Bjartur squeezed-ST through crowd.the

'Bjartur squeezed (himself) through the crowd.'     (figure reflexive)

(3) * Jón barðist / rakaðist. 

John beat-ST / shaved-ST

intended: 'John beat himself / shaved himself.'

Although -st is not a general reflexive morpheme in Icelandic, as illustrated in (3), I will show that it can be used in constructions like (2), which I call "figure reflexive constructions", to derive reflexive semantics. 

I analyze -st as an argument expletive-- a valency-reducing clitic which can merge in a restricted set of argument positions, but cannot bear a thematic role. When it merges in the external argument position, no role is assigned to that position, deriving an anticausative, as in (1). When it merges lower than the external argument position, reflexive semantics is possible, as in (2). Given this analysis, the distribution of the reflexive "use" of -st will be limited by the properties of the argument positions lower than the external argument position. In (2), -st merges in the specifier of the pP, where p, as proposed by Svenonius (2007), introduces the external argument of a prepositional phrase, similarly to how Voice/v introduces the external argument of a verb phrase.

The role of anticausative morphology is to "eliminate" an (external) argument position. If this same "elimination" derives reflexive semantics for free when it applies to lower argument positions, then we expect languages to be able to use the same morphology for reflexives and anticausatives. Broadly speaking, variation in how languages do this will amount to variation in the properties of argument-introducing heads (such as Voice/v, p, and Appl(licative) heads) interacting with the properties of argument expletives (such as -st in Icelandic, -sja in Russian, reflexive clitics in much of Romance/Slavic, antipassive morphology, etc.), an interaction that can be explored productively within the current proposal.  

Fall 2011

Dec 7       Ur Shlonsky (Weds, 5pm)

                    Why is "John wonders Mary saw who" ungrammatical in French, while "John thinks Mary saw who?" is not?

The idea I would like to develop is that when a feature incorporates into a criterial head, it induces freezing of that head. This proposal is a natural extension of the format of Criterial Freezing developed in Rizzi & Shlonsky (2007). It constitutes the major component of an explanation of two phenomena, the ungrammaticality of wh in situ in indirect questions in French and the preponderance of subject clitic inversion (i.e., enclisis as opposed to proclisis of subject clitics) in interrogatives in North Italian Dialects.

Dec 2       David Basilico

                   The Antipassive and Manner/Result Interpretations

In several languages, there is a construction termed the antipassive that derives what seems to be an intransitive verb from a corresponding transitive variant.  The following Inuit (South Baffin) example is from MacDonald (2006), cited in Clarke (2009).

(1)          a.            Anguti-up           nanuq                   quqir-jaa

                              man-erg              polar.bear.abs   shoot-part.3sg/3sg

                              The man shot the polar bear.

                b.           Anguti                  quqir-si-juq                        nanu-mik

                              man.abs               shoot-ap-part.3sg            polar.bear-obl

                              The man is shooting/shot at a polar bear.

Example (1a) shows the transitive variant.  The subject is in the ergative case and the object is in the absolutive case.  The verb also shows agreement with both the subject and the object.  In (1b), we see the antipassive variant.  The verb is suffixed with the antipassive morpheme -si.  The subject is in the absolutive case and the object is in an oblique case.  The verb shows agreement with the subject only.  Thus, with the antipassive the clause is semantically transitive, in that it there are two arguments present, but syntactically intransitive, in that agreement and case morphology reflect an intransitive structure.  In addition, as can be seen from the translations, there is also an aspectual difference between the transitive and antipassive sentence.  This aspectual difference has been characterized in many different ways: the antipassive is seen as irresultative (Siegel 1999), atelic and imperfective (Spreng 2006), or durative (Clarke 2009).

In this talk, I show that the transitive/antipassive alternation involves an alternation between a result verb construction and manner verb construction, invoking the manner/result verb distinction from Levin and Rappaport Hovav (2010).  With the transitive, the verb root forms the complement to a categorizing light verb and is interpreted as a property scale. The absolutive object is a true argument and is the undergoer of the action. In the antipassive, the verb root is adjoined to a categorizing light verb and is interpreted as a manner component.   The oblique object acts as a scalar element: either as an incremental theme/extent scale or the reference object for a spatial path.

By analyzing the antipassive in this way, we can explain not only the syntactic, morphological and aspectual differences between the transitive and antipassive, but also extend the analysis to explain the ‘polyfunctionality’ of the antipassive morpheme.

Nov 4        Ane Berro-Urrizelki

                   Subject Case Variation And Auxiliary Alternation In Basque

In this talk I have two goals. The first one is to examine the relation between the case variation/auxiliary alternation in intransitive predicates and in reflexives/reciprocals.  Basque shows ergative/absolutive subject case variation and auxiliary alternation in (1) intransitive predicates and also in (2) reflexives and reciprocals. I will describe these two phenomena and discuss how they can be related so that same case marking is obtained. The second goal is to discuss Kayne’s (1993) theory about auxiliary HAVE as BE plus an incorporated D/Pº in an ergative language like Basque. As we can see in the examples, depending on the subject marking auxiliary BE or HAVE is selected: HAVE in (1a) and (2a) and BE in (1b) and (2b). The ultimate goal of my research is unifying the two aspects of this talk under a single theory of case.

(1) a. Oierr-ek dantza-tu du

        Oier-ERG dance-PRF has 

        ‘Oier has danced’

     b. Oier-ø jaio-ø da

        Oier-ABS be born-PRF is

        ‘Oier is born’

(2) a. Irune-k   bere burua-ø ikus-i du ispiluan

         Irune-ERG her head-ABS see-PRF has mirror.LOC

         ‘Irune has seen herself in the mirror’

     b. Irune-ø ispiluan ikus-i da

         Irune-ABS mirror-LOC see-PRF is

         ‘Irune has seen herself in the mirror’

Basque is an ergative language: the object of a transitive predicate and the subject of an intransitive predicate are marked alike (absolutive case, zero marking), whereas the subject of a transitive predicate is assigned a different case (ergative case, marked –k). Basque is also considered a Split-Intransitive language, because intransitive subjects are marked differently depending on the verb. It has been traditionally assumed that unaccusative verbs take absolutive subjects (1b), and unergative verbs take ergative subjects (1a). Under the structural view of ergative case in Basque, Laka (1993) and Fernández (1997) approached this division claiming that unergatives are transitive predicates in nature.

However, this division is not as clear: (i) some denominal stative verbs take an absolutive subject (ex. bizi izan ‘live’) and others ergative (ex. balio izan ‘be worth); (ii) some denominal verbs show dialectal alternation (ex. bazkaldu ‘have lunch’, borrokatu ‘fight’); (iii) other denominal verbs do not (ex. distiratu ‘glitter’, usaindu ‘smell). It is interesting to note that subject case variation in Basque correlates with auxiliary selection: BE or HAVE. The BE/HAVE alternation is similar to that found in some Romance languages like French or Italian. Therefore, both ergative case system and auxiliary BE/HAVE alternation are present in Basque: when ergative subjects are chosen, as in transitive or unergative predicates, HAVE auxiliary is used. On the other hand, in the presence of an absolutive subject, BE auxiliary is selected.

Subject case variation can also be found in reflexive and reciprocals. As many works have shown (Albizu 2009, Etxepare 2003, Artiagoitia 2003, Etxepare & Uribe-Etxebarria 2011), Basque makes use of two different strategies to express reflexive and reciprocal relations: One is the use of a body part reflexive phrase or a reciprocal phrase, in which case the sentence shows transitive morphology (ergative case is assigned to the subject, absolutive case to the reflexive or reciprocal phrase and HAVE auxiliary is selected). The second (which is used usually in south-western varieties) involves the detransitivization of the predicate. The subject is assigned absolutive case, there is no overt object and the auxiliary used is BE.

Oct 21       Jorge López Cortina  

Answers are not (exactly) Focus: Questions about the Spanish Left Periphery

In this paper I make the claim that the left periphery of the sentence includes a functional projection specific to answers, included in the Focus set of projections (Benincà & Poletto, 2004), but separate from the Focus Phrase. I call this projection Answer Phrase.

There are at least three characteristics of answers that make them recognizable to the listener. First, answers have a specific intonation pattern. The second characteristic is the prevalence of ellipsis in answers and the way such ellipsis is related to the question asked. The third one is that answers can include lexical items that are only used in answers and would not be appropriate as part of a regular declarative sentence. Take English yes, for instance. All three of these characteristics are compatible with, and suggest the existence of, a syntactic operation.

Oct 20       Pierre Pica  (Thurs, 5pm)

                   Numbers as a test case for the I-language E-language connection

Few number languages such as Mundurucu (Pica et al. 2004), (Dehaene et al. 2008) and their import for the understanding for the Successor Function have been subject to intensive discussion. We propose an analysis according to which the fact that restrictions on numeral words and numeral interpretation that can be observed on numbers and numerals in Mundurucu can be reduced to a more general constraint on object tracking and sets (Much in the spirit of Feigenson).          

This restriction, we claim, is directly observable in few number languages such as Mundurucu because numbers are projections of a SET head. We show that this analysis can then explain apparently unrelated phenomena such as the interpretation and structure of the person system and/or agreement. We contrast this type of language with languages where a determiner system is at work and stress the implication of our analysis for the emergence Successor function. We discuss the general implications of the analysis for linguistic variation and acquisition.

"Word"-internal Phrasal Movement, Spell Out and Exceptions to the Mirror Principle 

This talk identifies two novel predictions made by the combination two independently-motivated assumptions from the literature concerning the morphology-syntax interface.  One is that the Spell Out of syntactic structures proceeds from the most deeply embedded constituent (usually the lexical root) outwards (Bobaljik 2000), as motivated by the fact that phonologically conditioned suppletive allomorphy is usually triggered by ‘inner’ morphemes on ‘outer’ ones, not the other way around (see inter alia Carstairs 1987, Paster 2006, Embick 2010).   The other is that apparent violations of the Mirror Principle (Muysken 1981, Baker 1985) are to be accounted for via phrasal movement of a category containing the lexical root, within what is later spelled out as a single phonological word (Koopman 2005, Cinque 2009).

I point out that the marriage of these two assumptions gives rise to an interesting consequence for Spell Out: whenever a Mirror-Principle-violating configuration is derived via phrasal movement, the constituents that are most deeply embedded for the purposes of determining the order of Spell Out no longer correspond to those that are spelled out closest to the root in linear order.  Therefore, two predictions are made:

(1) Mirror Principle violations should give rise to exceptions to the usual constraint against outwardly-sensitive phonologically conditioned suppletive allomorphy.

(2) Mirror Principle violations should potentially allow for (morpho-)phonological processes to apply non-locally, as if an intervening Mirror-Principle-violating affix were invisible.

Although I know of no concrete instantiations of prediction (1), I go on to discuss two case studies that seem to show that at least prediction (2) is correct from Quechua (Weber 1989; Bills et. al 1986) and the Bantu language Nyakusa (Hyman 2001).  I also discuss potential counter-examples to predictions (1) and (2) from Korean (Koopman 2005) and  the Bantu language Cibemba (Hyman 1994, 1998, 2000, 2002).

A further conclusion is that the data seem to require potential interleaving of Spell Out with (morpho-)phonological processes within the same cycle- an unexpected conclusion on traditional Distributed Morphology (Halle and Marantz 1993) accounts, but expected on other theories, such as Optimal Interleaving (Wolf 2008). 

Sept 23    Mark Baltin and Jim Wood (NYU)

  FROM and AWAY: Two Types of Null Elements and Some Thoughts: On How Children Would Learn the Difference

We claim that the verbs "leave" and "avoid" select complements headed by the null prepositions FROM and AWAY, respectively, but that FROM remains in situ in the complement, while AWAY incorporates onto the verb. The question is how the child learns this distinction between the two null elements, since  the evidence for this distinction does not seem to be in the child's input.  We claim that the basis for this distinction comes from M. Baker's (2003) Proper Head Movement Generalization, which disallows incorporation of functional categories onto lexical categories.  Baker takes all adpositions to be functional, but we argue that this is too strong. Some adpositions (like "from" and its null counterpart FROM) are functional, while some adpositions (like "away" and its null counterpart AWAY) are lexical.  We distinguish independently the two types of adpositions, and motivate the distinction cross-linguistically,  by arguing that Russian incorporates lexical overt adpositions. Icelandic is contrasted with English in its expression of "away" and "from", and "avoid" and "leave".