View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by DSpace@MIT Case in Uyghur and Beyond by Alevtina (Alya) Asarina B.S., Linguistics and Philosophy; B.S., Mathematics Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2006 Submitted to the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics at the MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY September 2011 c Alevtina (Alya) Asarina, MMXI. All rights reserved. The author hereby grants to MIT permission to reproduce and distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of this thesis document in whole or in part. Author............................................. ................ Department of Linguistics and Philosophy August 25, 2011 Certifiedby......................................... ................ David Pesetsky Ferrari P. Ward Professor of Linguistics Thesis Supervisor Acceptedby......................................... ................ David Pesetsky Ferrari P. Ward Professor of Linguistics Head, Linguistics Section 2 Case in Uyghur and Beyond by Alevtina (Alya) Asarina Submitted to the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy on August 25, 2011, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics Abstract The focus of this dissertation is the syntax and morphology of case, and how case interacts with A-movement and agreement. In chapter 1, I argue on the basis of novel data from Uyghur that noun phrases bearing structural case can still be eligible for raising. I show that raising in Uyghur is EPP-driven, and does not trigger overt agreement. Thus, we must either conclude that pure EPP movement does not depend on Agree (cf. Richards 2009, a.o.), or abandon the Activity Condition proposed by Chomsky (1998, 2001). I suggest that phenomena that have been attributed to the Activity Condition can be reanalyzed by means of other principles, such as the Phase Impenetrability Condition (Chomsky 1998, 2001). In chapter 2 (based on joint work with Jeremy Hartman), I argue in favor of Chom- sky’s (2001) weak version of the Phase Impenetrability Condition, and against Chomsky’s (1998) stronger version of the Phase Impenetrability Condition more commonly assumed. The argument is based on case assignment and agreement in n Uyghur genitive subject con- structions. I furthermore suggest that adopting Chomsky’s (2001) version of the Phase Im- penetrability Condition makes the concept of a weak phase head unnecessary (cf. Richards 2009). In chapter 3, I propose that quirky case in Faroese is not assigned immediately when a noun phrase enters the derivation. Rather, Faroese quirky case depends on a higher func- tional projection. This helps explain why quirky case-marked noun phrases in Faroese can trigger number agreement and dependent case licensing, and why quirky case can fail to be assigned in Faroese passive and raising constructions. In chapter 4, I present the results of a study of multiplecase assignment in Russian Right Node Raising constructions. I show that the morphological system can rule out multiple case assignment when no systematically syncretic form is available, and propose a way of extending Distributed Morphology to capture this phenomenon. Thesis Supervisor: David Pesetsky Title: Ferrari P. Ward Professor of Linguistics 3 4 Acknowledgments I want to begin by thanking the members of my dissertation committee – David Pesetsky, Norvin Richards and Shigeru Miyagawa. David has been my mentor both in research and in other aspects of academic life since my undergraduate years at MIT. I cannot express how much he has taught me about the field of linguistics, syntax, asking the right questions, writing papers, giving talks, etc., etc. Norvin made me fall in love with fieldwork as an un- dergraduate. He has been my guide in doing fieldwork-based syntactic research throughout, and has pored over pages and pages of field notes with me. Shigeru has given me perspec- tive, both theoretical and cross-linguistic, for the work I’ve been doing on Uyghur. I have also learned much from other MIT faculty members. The work presented in chapter 4 would not have been possible without Adam Albright, whom I want to thank for some of the most fun meetings I’ve had in grad school. Thanks to Sabine Iatridou for always asking me tough questions. I’m also grateful to Kai von Fintel, Danny Fox and Irene Heim for their guidance in my various semantics pursuits. Infinite thanks goes to my Uyghur consultant, Mettursun Beydulla, without whom the first half of this dissertation would not have been possible. Mettursun has spent countless hours answering my questions about Uyghur, and has taught me much else besides. In my time at MIT, I have always felt that I’m surrounded by incredibly smart and motivated fellow students, who are also great company. Chapter 2 of this thesis is based on joint research with Jeremy Hartman. It’s been great working on Uyghur together with Jeremy over the past couple of years, and I want to thank him for allowing me to include our joint work in this dissertation. I would also especially like to thank my year-mates for the ling beer in our first year, and moral support in our fifth year. It has been immensely helpful to bounce ideas off many people, including Bronwyn Bjorkman, Claire Halpert, Jeremy Hartman, Omer Preminger, Kirill Shklovsky and Yasutada Sudo. I also want to thank Anisa Schardl for being my linguistics buddy since our undergrad days together. Many thanks also go to my non-linguist friends and family. Thanks to Tim Abbott for helping me stay sound of body, and Inna Zakharevich for helping me stay sound of mind (and for the thesis parties!). I also especially want to thank for their encouragement, sup- port and good company Reid Barton, Joe and Marketa Foley, Adi Greif, Yi-Hsin Lin, Yuran Lu, Cat Miller, Naomi Muscatine, Eric Price, David Roe, and Alisha Weight. Thanks to my parents for putting up with all those Russian judgments, and to my brother for having faith in me. And most of all, thanks to Michael Lieberman for always being there. Other people who have provided valuable comments, discussion and data for this dis- sertation and the work leading up to it include Vera Gribanova, J´ohannes G´ısli J´onsson, Jaklin Kornfilt, Masha Polinsky, Paul Portner and Donca Steriade. 5 6 Contents Contents 7 Overview 13 Abbreviations 15 1 Raising in Uyghur and the Activity Condition 17 1.1 Introduction .................................. 17 1.2 Background .................................. 18 1.2.1 Raising in English .......................... 19 1.2.2 Why the Activity Condition is not the only way ........... 21 1.2.3 Raising in Icelandic .......................... 23 1.3 A brief guide to Uyghur syntax ........................ 24 1.3.1 Agreement .............................. 24 1.3.2 The noun phrase ........................... 25 1.4 Nominalized embedding ........................... 26 1.4.1 Nominalized embedded clauses ................... 26 1.4.2 -ish phrase structure ......................... 28 1.4.2.1 Size of the embedded clause ................ 28 1.4.2.2 Position of the genitive subject .............. 29 1.4.3 Genitive vs. unmarked subjects of -ish phrases ........... 31 1.4.3.1 Proposed structure ..................... 32 1.4.3.2 Syntactic position of unmarked subjects of -ish phrases . 33 1.4.3.3 Semantic propertiesof genitivevs. unmarked-ish phrase subjects .......................... 37 1.4.3.4 Summary and discussion ................. 41 1.5 Nominalized clauses embedded by raising predicates ............ 43 1.5.1 Analysis of raising constructions ................... 43 1.5.2 Evidence against a control analysis ................. 47 1.5.3 Evidence for raising of -ish phrase subjects ............. 49 1.5.3.1 Embedding ......................... 50 1.5.3.2 Topicalization ....................... 54 1.5.3.3 Focus-marking ....................... 57 1.5.4 Interim Summary ........................... 59 1.6 Implications for the Activity Condition .................... 60 7 1.7 Making do without the Activity Condition? ................. 66 1.7.1 Dative intervention .......................... 66 1.7.2 Object-to-subject raising ....................... 67 1.8 Summary ................................... 68 2 Genitive subjects in Uyghur and the Phase Impenetrability Condition 71 2.1 Introduction .................................. 71 2.1.1 Raising in English and PICweak .................... 72 2.1.2 Outline ................................ 77 2.2 Background: Relative clauses and noun complement clauses in Altaic ... 77 2.2.1 Relative clauses ............................ 78 2.2.1.1 Genitive-unmarked alternation .............. 78 2.2.1.2 The-ran suffix ....................... 79 2.2.2 Noun complement clauses ...................... 82 2.2.3 Genitive subjects in Altaic ...................... 84 2.3 Uyghur genitive subjects agree with a clause-external head ......... 87 2.4 Full CP embedded clauses .......................... 92 2.4.1 -liq is a complementizer ....................... 93 2.4.1.1 Why-liq is not a nominalizer ............... 93 2.4.1.2 Optionality ......................... 94 2.4.1.3 Noun complements vs. relative clauses .......... 95 2.4.1.4 Smaller noun complement clauses ............ 95 2.4.2 CP-level adverbs ........................... 96 2.4.3 Embedded interrogatives ....................... 98 2.4.4 Summary ...............................100 2.5 Discussion and implications .........................100 2.5.1 Accessibility