Other publications

In preparation: Who am I to (dis)agree? Interpretation Sensitive Agreement: Experimental Evidence from French relatives (with Anouk Dieuleveut, David Müller, Tom Meadows and Dominique Sportiche). Proceedings of SALT35.
To appear: Meaningful Agreement Features: Evidence from Indexical Binding (with Tom Meadows and Dominique Sportiche). Proceedings of NELS 55.

To appear: Le subjonctif le plus mystérieux qui soit - Subjunctive with Superlative. In Anne-Elisabeth Donzé, Eric Haeberli, Tabea Ihsane and Wenli Tang (eds), GG@G (Generative Grammar in Geneva) 12, 41-53.

The goal of this note is to discuss the licensing of subjunctive in relative clauses modifying NPs with superlatives (as in French le subjonctif le plus mystérieux qui soit 'the subjunctive the most mysterious there is[SUBJ]'), which remains poorly understood . Mainly on the basis of French data, it is argued that the most promising hypothesis is to analyze this subjunctive use as a subjunctive of polarity licensed by the superlative. But many details remain mysterious, which this note leaves open for further research.

To appear: Taking a Strong Position on Strictly Read Reflexives (with Dominique Sportiche). Proceedings of the 39th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL39). In Shweta Akolkar, Amber Galvano, Akil Ismael, Kang Franco Liu, and Line Mikkelsen (eds), Proceedings of the 42nd West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL 42). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. Prepublication version. Slightly extended lingbuzz version.

This article proposes a novel account of English reflexives by focusing on one specific puzzle: how can reflexives trigger strict readings in ellipsis and focus constructions? The first goal is to provide a descriptively adequate statement of the distribution of strictly read reflexives by exploiting prosodic clues: only “strong” reflexives can give rise to strict readings, because “weak” reflexives behave as if they were part of self-predicates, which only trigger sloppy readings. The second goal is to propose an analysis of strict readings that also addresses two other crucial binding issues, namely how to derive Condition A and how to explain the link between reflexives and intensifiers. Our solution relies on the idea that self is the identity function used as a predicate nominal, yielding a two-place relation of identity, and that the antecedent of the reflexive – one of the arguments of self – moves to various positions, thus yielding intensifier or reflexive constructions from the same basic structure; antecedent movement derives the locality constraint imposed by Condition A and the availability of strict readings.

2024: Indexical binding, presupposition and agreement (with Dominique Sportiche). In Geraldine Baumann, Daniel Gutzmann, Jonas Koopman, Kristina Liefke, Agata Renans, and Tatjana Scheffler (eds.), Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 28 (SuB28). Bochum: Ruhr-University Bochum, 235-253. Pre-publication version. Published version.

This paper focuses on bound readings of first and second person pronouns, which challenge Kaplan’s (1977/1989) fixity theory of indexicals. It first reviews the virtues and problems of the two main previous analyses: morphosyntactic approaches exploiting binding and agreement, and semantic approaches exploiting focus and presupposition. Next, it proposes a novel account combining all these ingredients based in part on new French data.

2024: The superlative clause hypothesis. Proceedings of WCCFL 40. In Jiayi Lu, Erika Petersen, Anissa Zaitsu, and Boris Harizanov (eds), Proceedings of the 40th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL40), 42-51. Cascadilla Proceedings Project, Somerville, MA, USA. Published version.

The general goal of the paper is to argue for the hypothesis that just like comparative morphemes (e.g. English -er), superlative morphemes (e.g. English -est) can take a degree clause as argument, which denotes the domain of comparison. The specific goal consists in showing that this hypothesis provides a novel solution to two controversial empirical puzzles: how to derive (i) the low reading of intensional superlatives (e.g. the reading of the longest book that John said that Tolstoy had written when John – not the speaker – evaluates the lengths of the books under consideration), and (ii) upstairs de dicto readings (e.g. the reading of John wants to climb the highest mountain when John has a specific desire of climbing achievement without any comparative content). In both cases, the superlative clause hypothesis solves previously unsolved problems because it allows split scope between -est and the gradable adjective as well as (variously partial) ellipsis of the degree clause.

2023: One SELF only (with Dominique Sportiche). In Suet-Ying Lam & Satoru Ozaki (eds.), Proceedings of the 53d annual meeting of the North East Linguistics Society (NELS 53), Volume 1, 149-162. Prepublication version.

The goal of the paper is to argue that there is a unique lexical item self underlying all its behaviors: as intensifier, anaphor, logophor and in self-predicates.

2022: Unifying intensifiers ourselves (with Dominique Sportiche). In Ö. Bakay et al. (eds), Proceedings of NELS 52, 139-148.. Pre-publication version. Slightly extended lingbuzz version.

Focusing on English herself, we propose a unified analysis of all its usages as intensifier, despite the different meaning contributions it displays, by exploiting the complex structure of VPs and the possibility for focus to project. We extend this analysis to own as in his own book which qua intensifier, displays the same range of meaning contributions. Furthermore, given that intensification and reflexivity triggers are often morphologically identical (e.g. reflexives), we briefly sketch how this analysis can also unify intensifiers with reflexives.

2022: The latest take on intensional superlatives. In D. Gutzmann & S. Repp (eds), Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 26 (SuB26), 206-224. Prepublication version.

This work presents a new solution to the debate whether superlative adjectives can reconstruct within relative clauses containing an intensional predicate. I propose that that clauses can be construed as superlative clauses corresponding to the domain argument of -est and involving degree relativization. This approach provides new ways to address the various issues of the debate related to interpretation, intervention effects, NPI licensing, and specificity of superlatives as compared to other adjectival modifiers.

2021: Demystifying Picture Noun Anaphors (with Shannon Bryant). Proceedings of the 37th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL37), 98-106. Cascadilla Proceedings Project. Published version.

Our goal is to show that reflexive anaphors in picture nouns phrases standardly obey Condition A of Binding Theory, contrary to what is usually assumed about their binding exceptionalism. This result relies on the following combination of independently-motivated hypotheses: (i) Condition A is defined on domains delimited by subjects (see Charnavel & Sportiche 2016); (iii) Anaphors can be bound by implicit logophoric binders located within their binding domain (see Charnavel 2020, to appear); (iiii) Implicit logophoric binding is never available for anaphors with a syntactic coargumental subject due to a weak/strong competition principle that is fully independent of Condition A (cf. Charnavel 2020); (iv) Picture noun phrases (PNPs) can, and sometimes must, contain potentially implicit nominal subjects.

2020: Effects of Creator Role on Binding into Picture Noun Phrases (with Shannon Bryant). Proceedings of the 55th Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society (CLS55), 71-86. Prepublication version.

To account for the specific behavior of reflexives within Picture Noun Phrases, the Chomskian Binding Theory hypothesizes the possible presence of an agentive DP-internal PRO, while predicate-based theories assume that these reflexives are exempt from Condition A. The goal of this study is to mediate between these two accounts by experimentally testing the acceptability of reflexives within Picture Noun Phrases depending on the interpretation of the antecedent, i.e. whether it is construed as an agent (creator of the picture) or not. This leads us to discover that nouns behave differently when they take a theme argument (picture of) or a goal argument (letter to): only the latter obligatorily project a subject.

2020: The Syntax of Concessive Clauses: Evidence from Exempt Anaphora (with Gunnar Lund). Proceedings of the 43rd annual Penn Linguistics Conference (PLC43), Penn Working Papers in Linguistics (PWPL), volume 26.1, article 19. Prepublication version.

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

2018: Deictic Perspective and Logophoric Exemption from Condition A. Proceedings of the 35th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL35), 124-131. Cascadilla Press. Prepublication version. Published version.

This paper examines the role of spatial perspective in logophoric exemption from Condition A. It is known that anaphors are generally exempt from locality requirements under logophoric conditions, i.e. when they are anteceded by perspective centers. I show that deictic centers (spatial reference points) do not qualify as logophoric centers for exemption: only mental perspective licenses exemption. This derives from the fact that exempt anaphors must occur in clauses expressing the perspective of their antecedent and spatial perspective lacks clausal content. Deictic perspective nevertheless interacts with logophoric exemption in some cases: when deictic motion verbs cooccur with exempt anaphors, they force their antecedents to be at the goal of motion, because deictic motion verbs have an implicit logophoric argument, and two logophors in the same domain must corefer.

2018: Inanimate ziji and Condition A in Mandarin (with Yujing Huang). Proceedings of the 35th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL35), 132-141. Cascadilla Press. Prepublication version. Published version.

The distribution of Mandarin ziji, just like that of many other anaphors, is complicated by logophoricity: ziji need not be locally bound (as predicted by Condition A) when it sits in a clause expressing the perspective of its antecedent. It is therefore necessary to disentangle logophoric from non-logophoric instances of ziji to determine its binding requirements. The goal of this paper is to do so by examining inanimate ziji, thus challenging the common assumption that ziji cannot be inanimate. It is experimentally shown that inanimate ziji is acceptable when locally bound. As inanimates cannot be logophoric since they lack a mental state, the behavior of inanimate ziji can thus be investigated for examining the binding properties of ziji independently of logophoricity. The distribution of inanimate ziji revealed by our experimental study supports a Chomskian definition of Condition A and shows that subcommand is an artifact of logophoricity, while subject orientation is independent of it.

2017: Simplex yet Local (with Dominique Sportiche). Proceedings of the 47th annual meeting of the North East Linguistics Society (NELS47), Volume 1, 157-172. Prepublication version.

Should Binding Theory be parameterized and to what extent? In this paper, we examine in detail one case previously argued to require parametrization and show that parametrization is not needed. More specifically, we show that the simplex Icelandic reflexive sig is subject to the same locality constraints as the English complex reflexive x-self: they are both subject to the standard Condition A, except under universally available conditions of exemption from Condition A, namely logophoric construal.

2017: Perspective on Causal Clauses. Proceedings of the 47th annual meeting of the North East Linguistics Society (NELS47), Volume 1, 147-156. Prepublication version.

Although it has long been known that perspective sensitive elements such as logophoric pronouns or long distance reflexives can occur in adjunct clauses, no account of this possibility has been provided so far. The goal of this paper is to propose one by arguing that such adjuncts are intrinsically perspectival: an adjunct conjunction (e.g. because) expresses a relation (e.g. cause) between an argument A (roughly, the main clause) and its complement B established by a judge. The identity of the judge depends on the nature of A (event/state, proposition, speech act): ultimately, the correlations between possible types of A and possible types of judges show that the perspective parameter (the judge) can be analyzed as a silent argument of the conjunction that must be bound within its clause. This is demonstrated based on the case study of causal clauses (with because/since) in English.

2017: Non-at-Issueness of since-clauses. Proceedings of the 27th Conference on Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT27), 43-58. Published version.

This paper explores the discourse status of English causal clauses introduced by since. Tests for non-at-issueness demonstrate that neither the relation (between the subordinate and the superordinate clause) expressed by since nor the content of the subordinate clause is at-issue. Other diagnostics further show that these two not-at-issue contents triggered by since belong to two different classes of projective content. This can be accounted for by attributing two different sources to their non-at-issueness: the relation expressed by since is not-at-issue for structural reasons, i.e. because since-clauses modify high evidential or speech act phrases, which are not-at-issue; the content of the subordinate clause is not-at-issue because since lexically selects factive clauses. More generally, this study (and future comparative studies on other subordinators) promises to shed further light on the constraints on different contents projected by the same trigger and the role played by structure in non-at-issueness.

2017: Perspective on Korean Anaphors: Comparing Inanimate cachey vs. Animate caki-casin (with Dorothy Ahn). Proceedings of the 34th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL34), 16-23. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. Published version.

While anaphors are usually analyzed as requiring local binders (Condition A), some instances of anaphors in many languages do not need local, c-commanding antecedents. The boundary between anaphors subject to Condition A and those exempt from it is thus unclear. The goal of this paper is to pinpoint the effect of logophoricity, i.e. perspective, on Korean anaphors by comparing inanimate cachey with animate caki-casin.

2016: Unifying Long Distance Binding: Icelandic reflexive sig is clause-bounded, or logophoric (with Dominique Sportiche). Proceedings of the 42th annual meeting of the Berkeley Linguistic Society (BLS42), 47-62. Published version.

The goal of this paper is to show that under closer scrutiny, it is warranted to treat the English and the Icelandic anaphors alike, once we carefully take into account the perspectival properties of these anaphors: there is no difference in binding domain size, but the only condition exempting anaphors from locality requirements (namely from Condition A) is logophoricity. This removes a major obstacle to adopting a parsimonious theory based on a unique binding domain for all anaphors: binding domain parameterization based on morphological complexity may not be warranted after all.

2016: Addressing Supersloppiness. Proceedings of the 46th annual meeting of the North East Linguistic Society (NELS46), 185-199. Prepublication version. Published version.

The goal of this paper is to provide novel data from English that further refute Kaplan's 1977 Fixity Thesis of indexicals. Crucially, the new contribution is to show that there is an intrinsic grammatical dependency between the two context parameters "speaker" and "addressee": first person pronouns can bind second person pronouns and vice versa. This is so because I and you can be understood as descriptions (e-type pronouns), i.e. resp. “your addressee” and “my addressee”.

2016: English Reflexive Logophors (with Chrissy Zlogar). Proceedings of the 51st annual meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society (CLS51), 83-97. Published version.

The goal of this paper is to examine in English the issue of anaphors that seem to be exempt from the locality requirements imposed by Condition A of the Binding Theory. We strengthen the empirical evidence for English exempt anaphors and propose an account for them based on logophoricity: the antecedents of exempt anaphors have to be perspective centers, which come in three different kinds (attitude holders, empathy loci and deictic centers) and are syntactically represented by logophoric operators. Ultimately, this means that seemingly exempt anaphors are in fact not exempt, but locally bound by silent logophoric operators; that’s why they have the same form as plain anaphors standardly subject to Condition A.

2015: Let You Be Bound to Me (and Me to You). 33rd WCCFL Poster Session Proceedings. SFU’s Working Papers in Linguistics, 18-27. Published version.

The goal of this paper is to account for previously overlooked readings involving first and second person pronouns in VP-ellipsis and constructions with focus particles like only. Akin to sloppy readings, these ‘supersloppy’ readings reveal, I claim, the existence of a grammatical dependency between I and you. As existing analyses of indexicals cannot predict these readings, I argue that I and you can be construed as specific e-type pronouns, namely as definite descriptions dependent on each other based on the relation ‘interlocutor’. This construal licenses binding of you by I and vice versa. These facts not only further argue against the Kaplanian Fixity Thesis about indexicals, they also suggest that the context parameters ‘speaker’ and ‘addressee’ are not independent of each other: the intrinsic relation holding between discourse participants is built into the grammar.

2015: Antilogophoricity in Clitic Clusters (with Victoria Mateu). In Ulrike Steindl et al. (eds), Proceedings of the 32nd West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL32), 1-10. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. Published version.

The goal of this paper is to account for specific restrictions on clitic clusters observed in French and Spanish. Based on new empirical evidence we show that the correct generalization capturing the facts is that when a third person dative clitic and an accusative clitic co-occur in a cluster, the accusative clitic cannot be anteceded by a logophoric center. We claim that these antilogophoricity effects derive from perspective conflicts: two logophoric centers cannot co-occur in the same domain; formally, this creates an intervention effect as there is only one logophoric operator in the relevant domain. This hypothesis furthermore provides new insight into the Person Case Constraint, which we propose also derives from a similar kind of perspective conflict.

2012: On her own - Parsimonious Compositionality: Probing Syntax and Semantics with French propre. UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Dissertation.

This dissertation focuses on the French word propre roughly meaning ‘characteristic-of’ and corresponding to English own found in ‘her own thesis’. This adjective makes extremely varied and complex contributions to the meaning and properties of sentences it occurs in. This work addresses the question of how these contributions arise. Parsimoniously assuming a unique lexical entry for propre, these contributions are compositionally derived by a specific DP-internal structure and different interactions with focus. Thus (son) propre gives insights into focus theory, binding theory and their interaction.

2012: En deçà de la frontière de Frege ? (with Dominique Sportiche). In T. Graf, D. Paperno, A. Szabolcsi and J. Tellings (eds.), Theories of Everything: In Honor of Ed Keenan, 59-65. UCLA Working Papers in Linguistics 17. Published version.

We discuss (French) sentences involving two instances of different and we show that they have more interpretations than Keenan argues. If this is right, the (different… different) type 2 function is reducible and is "en deçà" of the Frege boundary.

2012: The Scalar Reading of son propre ('his own'): Evidence for the Existence of a Scalarity Operator. In A. Aguilar Guevara, A. Chernilovskaya and R. Nouwen (eds), Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 16 (SuB), Volume 1, 169-182. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics. Published version.

The goal of this article is to provide a new and independent argument in favor of the existence of a scalarity operator E akin to overt even, based on scalar readings of French son propre. The only way to derive the right domain of the scalarity effect induced by propre is to assume the existence of an operator; lexical and pragmatic hypotheses make wrong predictions with respect to the scope of the scalarity effect.

2011: On French un même and Antispecificity. In I. Reich, E. Horch and D. Pauly (eds.), Sinn und Bedeutung 15, Proceedings of the 2010 Annual Conference of the Gesellshaft für Semantik (SuB), 133–147. Universaar, Saarland University Press: Saarbrücken, Germany. Published version.

In this paper, I examine the definiteness problem raised by sentence-internal même ('same') in French, as in this language (vs. English), même does not only combine with the definite determiner (le même), but also with the indefinite article (un même).

2011: On the Intensifier propre ('own') in French: a Counterpart of -même ('-self') in Possessive DPs? In E. Cormany, I. Satoshi and D. Lutz (eds), Proceedings of the 19th Semantics and Linguistic Theory Conference (SALT), 73-90. eLanguage. Prepublication version.

I argue here that propre ('own') is a counterpart of the intensifier -même ('-self') in possessive DPs. More specifically, propre behaves like a flexible intensifier that can contrast either the possessor or the possessum with a contextually determined set of alternatives. Furthermore, I suggest that the parallelism between propre and même argues for a unification of the different uses of -même.

2010: On the Sentence-Internal Reading of French le même ('the same'). In Nan Li & David Lutz (eds.), Proceedings of the 20th Semantics and Linguistic Theory Conference (SALT), 216–232. eLanguage. Published version.

This article focuses on the sentence-internal reading of French le même ('the same') and addresses two main issues: the problem of definiteness and the problem of compositionality. I propose that le même is an existential quantifier over a plural event that is partitioned along participants or times.

2009: The Problem of Quantifiers in Object Position: a New Experimental Evidence against the Extra Computation that they are Supposed to Trigger. In Y. Otsu (ed.), the Proceedings of the Tenth Tokyo Conference on Psycholinguistics (TCP), 43-66. Tokyo: Hitsuji Shobo. Prepublication version.

This paper is based on Hackl's (2006) idea of handling the theoretical problem of quantifiers in object position with sentence processing methodology. I use a self-paced reading experiment to examine quantifiers in object position in the case of French causative constructions (that exhibit the property of showing subject and object in the same linear position). A 2x2 comparison of the online processing of quantifiers and definite descriptions demonstrates that quantifiers in object position do not trigger a specific processing cost in this case.

2009: The Online Processing of French Reflexives: Experimental Evidence for an Unaccusative Analysis (with Flavia Adani and Nina Hyams). In Y. Otsu (ed.), the Proceedings of the Tenth Tokyo Conference on Psycholinguistics (TCP), 67-91. Tokyo: Hitsuji Shobo. Prepublication version.

The aim of this paper is to provide experimental evidence showing that French reflexives behave like unaccusatives. Using the Cross Modal Lexical Priming technique, we compare the online processing of reflexives with that of unaccusatives and unergatives. Moreover, we argue that the VP-internal Subject Hypothesis should be integrated in the CMLP experimental investigation of languages like French that exhibit an auxiliary alternation between unaccusatives and unergatives.

2008: L’alternance avoir été/être eu dans les auxiliaires du passé surcomposé en français : un nouvel argument pour le caractère syntaxique du morphème se (‘the Alternation avoir été/être eu in Auxiliaries in French Supercomplex Past: a new Argument for the Syntactic Nature of the Morpheme se’). In S. Jones (ed.), Actes du congrès annuel de l’Association Canadienne de Linguistique (ACL) 2008/Proceedings of the 2008 annual conference of the Canadian Linguistics Association, 1-14. Published version.

In this paper, I provide a new argument in favor of a syntactic analysis of the reflexive se in French, based on novel data concerning auxiliaries in the French passé surcomposé: while unaccusatives present the auxiliary combination avoir été ('have been'), reflexives exhibit another one, namely être eu ('be had').

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