Program

Click here for a pdf of the program.

Guest Talks:

Guglielmo Cinque - "On Linearization. Toward a Restrictive Theory"

The derivation of linear order is often taken to be rather trivial as the physics of speech, it is said, leaves just two options (a head either precedes or follows its complements and modifiers). This idea however falls short of a number of generalizations concerning linear order; among which, the fact that of all the theoretically possible combinations of n elements only a specifiable subset is ever attested, and the fact that more orders are found to the right of a head than to its left (just one). The physics of speech does not help us understand any of these generalizations. An account of them and the hope of deriving the orders of all languages from one and the same hierarchical organization via the same basic principles through a restrictive theory of linear order may however be attained once we have 1) a precise understanding of the fine-grained hierarchies and sub-hierarchies that underlie the clause and its phrases, 2) a restriction on movement whereby only the head of each (sub-)hierarchy can move (by itself or in one of the two pied piping modes), and 3) Kayne’s Linear Correspondence Axiom (LCA). Here I will try to delineate a possible first implementation of a restrictive theory of linear order along these lines.

Handouts and materials: proofs of On Linearization, day one slides, day two slides, day three slides

Nobu Goto - "Genuine Free Merge and Resource Restriction-Obedient Search: Consequences and Challenges"

In this presentation, I will propose that Merge, both External Merge and Internal Merge, is totally free from Minimal Search (pace Chomsky’s 2021 assumption on Internal Merge to the contrary) and Search to determine the input of Merge is constrained by a general property of brain computation, called Resource Restriction, which reduces resources available to computation (the set of elements accessible to operations) to the minimum, thereby contributing to computational efficiency (Chomsky 2021). It will be shown that the proposal can provide a unified account of various movement phenomena, such as the subject island effect, the anti-locality effect, the that-trace effect, etc., which cannot be obtained otherwise. Under the proposal, Binary, which is part of Resource Restriction, plays an important role in determining the generativity of Merge, so I will also addresses the hitherto less clear question of why Merge must be Binary, suggesting a new possibility to answer this question in terms of Language Specific Conditions, such as Theta-Theory (Chomsky 1981, 2021) and Criterial Freezing (Rizzi 2006, 2010). In this talk I will further consider the more general operations of search and set-formation, arguing that Binary Merge is a special case of FormSet that is not constrained by the Language Specific Condition. With this segregation of Binary Merge and FormSet, I provide a principled reason why FormSet is effective in particular syntactic environments such as coordinated structures (Chomsky 2021) and multiple nominative constructions (Goto and Ishii 2021).

Click here for handout.

Lauren Eby Clemens - "Syntactic ergativity and postverbal word order variation in Tongic Polynesian"

This talk details a unified account of ergative subject extraction restrictions (a manifestation of "syntactic ergativity") and variable verb-initial word order (VSO ~ VOS) in the Polynesian languages Niuean and Tongan following Clemens and Tollan 2021. The account we advance is based on the finding that syntactic ergativity can arise from the locus of ABS case assignment (Campana 1992; Bittner & Hale 1996; Aldridge 2004; Coon et al. 2014). In this talk we demonstrate how extraction asymmetries in Tongan are the result of high ABS case assignment, whereas the absence of syntactic ergativity in Niuean is explained by 'low ABS' case assignment (Massam 2006; Legate 2008; see also Tollan 2019). Next, we compare data from coordination in Niuean and Tongan to support the connection between the locus of ABS and the presence of syntactic ergativity. While Niuean's coordination follows a consistently accusative pattern, coordination in Tongan is only accusative when XPs smaller than TP are coordinated, suggesting that syntactic ergativity stems from the presence of a relatively higher functional head. Finally, we provide a novel account of variable post-verbal word order in Tongan (VSO ~ VOS) and the absence of VOS in Niuean based again on the different position of ABS in these two languages. Object A-movement in Tongan VOS (Otsuka 2005) is a reflex of ABS case assignment: the base position of the ABS object follows the subject, while the case position precedes it. The object is pronounced in either position according to pragmatic factors. Movement is covert in VSO, which can give rise to weak crossover effects. In Niuean, the ABS object is generated and pronounced in the low position. This project contributes to research connecting syntactic ergativity and the locus of ABS, as opposed to the properties of ERG (cf. Polinsky 2015; Deal 2016). Further, the connection of syntactic ergativity to word order supports the view that ERG extraction restrictions arise from movement of the ABS, rather than the ERG argument (cf. Assmann et al. 2015).

Click here for handout.

Sunwoo Jeong - "Focus Prosody on Negative Polarity Items (joint work with Floris Roelofsen)"

Negative Polarity Items (NPIs) with emphatic prosody such as ANY or EVER, and minimizers such as 'lift a finger' or 'sleep a wink' are known to generate particular contextual inferences that are absent in the case of non-emphatic NPIs such as unstressed any or ever. It remains an open question, however, what the exact status of these inferences is and how they come about. In this paper, we analyze these cases as NPIs bearing focus, and examine the interaction between focus semantics and the lexical semantics of NPIs across statements and questions. In the process, we refine and expand the empirical landscape by demonstrating that focused NPIs give rise to a variety of apparently heterogeneous contextual inferences, including domain widening in statements and inferences of negative bias in questions. These inferences are further shown to be modulated in subtle ways depending on the specific clause-type in which the NPI occurs (e.g., polar questions vs. wh-questions) and the type of emphatic NPI involved (e.g., ANY vs. lift a finger). Building on these empirical observations, we propose a unified account of NPIs which posits a single core semantic operator, EVEN, across both focused and unfocused NPIs. What plays a central role in our account is the additive component of EVEN, which we formulate in such a way that it applies uniformly across statements and questions. This additive component of EVEN, intuitively paraphrased as the implication that all salient focus alternatives of the prejacent of the operator must be settled in the doxastic state of the speaker, is selectively activated depending on the presence of focus alternatives, and is shown to be able to derive all the observed contextual inferences stemming from focused NPIs, both in statements and in questions.

Click here for handout.

Due to technical difficulties, the following people were unable to present their papers. The handouts/posters are here for your convenience.

Andreas Blümel - poster