ECO-5

Program

Handouts available at this dropbox link: https://tinyurl.com/eco5handouts

10.30-11.30 Breakfast

11.30 Tarcisio Dias (UConn) - Hyper-raising and the subject position in Brazilian Portugese

12.00 Fedya Golosov (UMD) - Semantics of the light verb tok `leave' in Poshkart Chuvash: telicity and distributivity

12.30 Polina Pleshak (UMD) - Finno-Ugric genitive: A problem for current theories of case assignment?

13.00-14.00 Lunch

14.00 Polina Kasianova (UMass) - (Not) Deriving a Hierarchy for Plains Cree

14.30 Shrayana Haldar (MIT) - Dissolving matching

15.00 Zixi Liu (UConn) - Agent interpretation in Locative Inversion in Chinese

15.30 Angelica Hill (UMass) -  What about About to?

16.00-16.15 Coffee break

16.15 Luisa Seguin (UMD) - A dedicated whP in the Low Left Periphery: Evidence from clause-internal wh-words in Valdôtain Patois

16.45 Özge Bakay (UMass) - Logophoric readings in Long-distance binding of Turkish Reflexives

Abstracts

Hyper-raising and the subject position in Brazilian Portugese

Tarcisio Dias (UConn)

I propose Brazilian Portuguese (BP) subjects occupy a mixed A/A' position above Spec,TP and below Spec,CP and argue that hyper-raising constructions are derived via movement to this position. This analysis allows us to capture the mixed A/A' properties of subjects and the unavailability of inverse scope reading in the language. I also claim freezing effects are voided (only) if feature checking involves the A/A' projection.

Semantics of the light verb tok `leave' in Poshkart Chuvash: telicity and distributivity

Fedya Golosov (UMD) 

In Poshkart Chuvash (< Turkic < Altaic), the verb tok 'leave' is grammaticalized into an aspectual operator. It forms complex predicates denoting a completeness of coverage of the object by the action. The proposed sketch of analysis predicts different interesting effects caused by this meaning, such as contextual separability of the object, pluractionality of the event and thoroughness of the action. 

Finno-Ugric genitive: A problem for current theories of case assignment?

Polina Pleshak (UMD) 

In this talk, show that the case that marks adnominal possessors in some Finno-Ugric languages depends on the syntactic position and case of the enclosing noun phrase. These data are problematic for the current theories of case, because neither genitive case assignment by agreement of the D head, nor configurational assignment of genitive as the unmarked case of the nominal domain predict this behavior. I will outline the problem in more detail, with the exact predictions of each theory, walk through some impossible solutions, such as case concord or movement to the specifier of DP, and present some ideas that can be developed to account for the data. In particular, I will show that if we accept that not all nominals are necessarily DPs, we can eliminate some problems.

Agent interpretation in Locative Inversion in Chinese

Zixi Liu (UConn) 

Locative Inversion (henceforth LI) in Mandarin Chinese is characterized by an inverted locative taking the subject position, thus Loc V DP. It is particularly interesting that the availability of agent in LI has been noted to depend on aspectual markers: when marked by the imperfective stative aspect marker -zhe, the agent in LI is not recoverable. Previous analysis has treated this inaccessibility of agent in stative-zhe marked LI as a ‘stativization’ effect (Pan, 1996), or simply described LI-zhe as ‘denoting a non-agent-controlled state’(Paul et al., 2019), but I will show that none of them is an accurate account of why such phenomenon arises.

What about 'about to'?

Angelica Hill (UMass)

In this paper I provide a semantic analysis of proximate futures, focusing on English’s 'be about to.' The various ways we are able to reference future eventualities has been discussed extensively in the semantic literature, yet little to no focus has been on proximate future expressions.  I argue that the three components contributing to the meaning of proximate futures are temporal closeness, ongoingness provided by modality, and futurity. This analysis considers 'be about to' compared with other future such as 'will/would' and in particular, 'be going to,' as well as its relation to the measurement adverbial, 'almost.' I claim that `be about to’ differs from `be going to’ not just in terms of temporal closeness, but also in terms of modality. Previous analyses of future expressions, such as 'be going to' have treated them as idiomatic expressions. I too provide an idiomatic analysis, but then attempt to "take compositionally seriously" and argue that it is worth trying to derive the meaning of the proximate future, compositionally. Finally, one motivation for this project is to provide a semantics of proximate futures that can account for similar expressions in other languages, in particular, Spanish, Italian, and Gitksan. 

A dedicated whP in the Low Left Periphery: Evidence from clause-internal wh-words in Valdôtain Patois

Luisa Seguin (UMD)

The existence of a number of A' position in the periphery of vP dates back to Belletti's (2004) Low Left Periphery (LLP), which comprises iterable TopP and one FocP. In the literature, the latter is assumed to be targeted by wh-elements (Bonan, 2019; Kahnemuyipour, 2001, a.o.), just like its higher counterpart in the CP domain (Rizzi, 1990, a.o.). New data from clause internal wh-words in Valdôtain Patois however demonstrates the existence of a dedicated whP in the highest portion of the LLP. The data further shows that in Patois clause internal wh-words do not stop in the LLP, but move up to the highest A’ position, most likely in the syntax with consequent copy deletion at PF. Finally, the present research questions the long-held assumption that wh-words and Foci share a single [FOC] feature.

Logophoric readings in Long-distance binding of Turkish Reflexives

Özge Bakay (UMass) 

Logophoricity has long been considered as a characteristic of long-distance anaphora across languages (e.g., Sells, 1987). A recent analysis for logophoricity in long-distance anaphora is by Charnavel (2019). Building on the idea that the referents of long-distance anaphora must be logophoric, Charnavel argues that the logophoric centers that are relevant for long-distance anaphora are required to have a mental state, and thus, be animate. In this analysis, I show that the logophoric centers of the long-distance anaphor kendi in Turkish must also be animate, similar to what has been suggested for English (Charnavel & Zlogar, 2016) and French (Charnavel, 2019).

Contact people

Keely New (knew@mit.edu)

Yadav Gowda (ysg@mit.edu)