The Place of Slifting in the English Complement System Jane Grimshaw, Rutgers University GIST 3: May 12 2011

Section 1. Introduction: Examples like these were labeled “Slifting” for Sentence-Lifting in Ross (1973).

(1) Mary is a talented singer, (they say / I’m sure / it’s clear / the teacher explained to me). (2) Mary, (they say / I’m sure / it’s clear / the teacher explained to me), is a talented singer.

Host (Slifted) clauses, bolded in (1) and (2), contain a parenthetical IP in which there is an A or V which lacks its normal clausal argument. I will refer to the parenthetical IP as the (Slifting Fragment).

(3) say (x, P); clear (x, P), explain (x, y, P)

Host (Slifted) clauses combine main and subordinate properties. Core hypothesis: Slifting is inevitable given the theory of clauses, arguments etc. etc. I.e. nothing special needs to be said about it.

I assume that the Slifting fragment (e.g. they say, I’m sure, it’s clear, the teacher explained to me in (1) and (2)) is adjoined to any XP that is part of the extended projection of the verb in the host clause. (See tree below.) E.g. It can adjoin to VP, to TP and so forth. However, it may be that the Slifting fragment is paratactically related to the host clause (de Vries 2007). The Slifting fragment cannot appear in initial position. *They say / I’m sure / it’s clear / the teacher explained to me, Mary is a talented singer. Hypothesis: this is because what precedes it must be focused.

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Scene Setting: Slifting resembles, but is distinct from, several other constructions. These include: direct quotations, contrastive complement preposing, complements with that omission, Slifting with subject inversion, clauses introduced by as. Not all predicates which take clausal complements can be Slifting predicates. This is due to semantic/pragmatic requirements. Slifting predicates include those which have “say” as a component of their meaning, and the cognitive semi-factives such as realize, and know. More later.

Section 2: Host clauses are arguments (directly or indirectly) of the predicate in the Slifting fragment

A. Some Slifting fragments e.g. (the teacher explained to me), are grammatical only when a Slifted clause is present, because the predicate in the fragment must have its argument. B. Slifting is impossible if another expression satisfies the argument position of the predicate. C. The Slifted clause is selected.

2. A Obligatoriness All predicates with the right / are grammatical as Slifting predicates. I.e. there is no lexical variation. Note: in this respect Slifting contrasts with that omission, where there are semantically appropriate predicates which, as argued in Grimshaw (in prep.) do not allow omission due to register affiliation. E.g. surmise. These predicates all allow Slifting.

In particular Slifting is possible with “embedding” predicates which otherwise take an obligatory complement. See (3) for representation of such predicates.

(4) *They surmised. *The papers reported. *I take it. (5) Bill: Mary is a talented singer. Sam: *They surmised. *The papers reported. *I take it. (6) They surmised / the papers reported / I take it that Mary was a talented singer. (7) Mary was, (they surmised / the papers reported / I take it), a talented singer (8) Mary was a talented singer, (Susan said / they surmised).

Even parentheticals which do not contain a predicate which takes clausal complements must combine with an argument. They (all?) behave like predicates which allow Null Complement (Grimshaw 1979).

(9) *In John’s opinion. *According to Fred. (10) Bill: Mary is a talented singer. Sam: In John’s opinion. According to Fred, I know. Sue told me. (11) Mary is a talented singer, (in John’s opinion / according to Fred).

Hypothesis: these too require an argument, which is satisfied by the main clause.

(12) in opinion (x, P) Mary is a talented singer, in John’s opinion (x, P) (13) according (x, P) Mary is a talented singer, according (x, P) to John

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These are items which take semantic arguments but not syntactic complements.

Hypothesis: the requirement that verbs such as surmise, report, take (it) combine with an argument is satisfied in the Slifting context, by the host clause.

2. B Slifting is impossible if another expression satisfies the argument position. There must be a gap corresponding to the clausal argument: pro-forms which are otherwise grammatical are impossible. *it, *so, *that, *this.

Some predicates occur both with a clausal complement alone and (slightly marginally) with both it and a clausal complement (at least an apparent complement). In such cases, Slifting is fine when it is not present but impossible when it is;

(14) The students figured (?it) out that she was a talented singer. (15) Mary was, (the students figured (*it) out), a talented singer.

Similarly the predicates which occur with so (Cushing 1972) do not allow so when they are unambiguously Slifting predicates:

(16) Mary was, (the students said/thought (*so)), a talented singer. (17) Is Mary a talented singer? The students said/thought so.

If it and so are the arguments here, there is no way to connect the main clause to the Slifting predicate: a theta criterion violation.

The same is true for Slifting fragments with subject inversion (e.g. “said Susan”), and predicates which combine with direct quotes:

(18) Mary was a talented singer, (said (*so) Susan). (19) “Mary is a talented singer” said (*so) Susan

An apparent exception:

(20) The textbook, (I take it), discusses evolution.

But I take it differs from (15) in three ways: The it is obligatory; the predicate is not (semi-) factive; and it allows that omission in its complement, which other verbs do not, when they occur with it. (It is also limited to the 1st person and most natural in the present tense).

(21) I take it/*Ø that the textbook discusses evolution. (22) I take it (that) the textbook discusses evolution.

The verb is really take+it, and the main clause is the argument of take+it.

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2. C Selection

The main clause can be propositional or : A selectional relationship holds between the Slifting predicate and the Slifted clause. E.g. believe vs. wonder.

(23) a. Harry would like the film, (Mary believed / #wondered). b. Would Harry like the film, (Mary wondered / #believed).

(24) a. Mary believed / #wondered (that) Harry would like the film b. Mary wondered / #believed whether Harry would like the film

Other verbs which combine with Slifted questions: ask, want to know, inquire, try to find out…..

The generalization: Only predicates which allow interrogative complements combine with interrogative clauses in slifting. Only predicates which allow propositional complements combine with declarative clauses in slifting. But in both cases there are predicates which combine with true complements but do not allow Slifting. i.e. Selectional compatibility is necessary but not sufficient. More later.

Note: There is at least one selectional discrepancy to be investigated: These Vs don=t take interrogative complements. But they are “say” verbs, and can quote: ACan I retake the exam?@ he begged. (Grimshaw in prep.)

(25) Could he retake the exam, (he begged/implored). (*hoped, *wished)

Section 3: Host clauses are not complements of the Slifting predicate. Evidence from syntactic form

The Slifted clauses are indistinguishable in form from a main clause without an argument-taking parenthetical. i.e. removing the Slifting fragment yields a grammatical result.

(26) Mary, (they say / I’m sure / it’s clear / the teacher explained to me), is a talented singer.

The evidence: A. Host clauses must be finite, like main clauses. B. The that and whether cannot occur. C. Inversion is required in . D. Extraction from the host clause is impossible. E. C-command does not seem to hold between material in the host clause and the argument(s) of the Slifting predicate.

A. Only finite clauses are possible, not infinitives, -ing, subjunctive complements: (27) a. I promised them to leave. *To leave, (I promised them). b. I arranged for Mary to learn to sing. *For Mary to learn to sing, (I arranged).

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c. I prevented them from leaving *From leaving, (I prevented them). d. I insisted that she learn to sing *That she learn to sing, (I insisted).

B. The complementizers that and whether cannot occur.

(28) a. It was raining hard, (they thought / they said / they were sure / it seemed / the papers reported). b. *That it was raining hard, (they thought / they said / they were sure / it seemed / the papers reported). c. *That it was raining hard. It was raining hard.

When the Slifted clause is a question, we find I to C (inversion), not whether.

(29) a. Had she made a mistake, (he wondered). b. *Whether she had made a mistake, (he wondered). c. *Whether she had made a mistake? Had she made a mistake?

Note: there exists another construction in which that or whether occurs and inversion is not possible. These examples must be contrastive. In this construction, the embedding complex (subject + V or A) must follow the complement. The clause cannot be discontinuous. See (31)

(30) a. They may have reported that it was raining hard, but that it was snowing they definitely didn’t say. b. They studied hard but whether they’ll pass the exam I don’t know.

(31) a. *That it was, (they said), raining hard. b. *Whether the students, (I wonder), will pass the exam.

Hence, a C can never be present if the embedding predicate is clause internal.

(32) a. The committee, (I think), will approve the request. b. *That the committee, (I think), will approve the request.

C. Inversion is required in interrogatives, even for speakers who do not allow it in subordinate interrogatives.

(33) a. Had she made a mistake, (he wondered). b. Had she made a mistake? c. *He wondered (whether) had she made a mistake.

(34) a. How many people, (Mary asked), could Fred beat in the competition? b. *Mary asked How many people could Fred beat in the competition. c. Mary asked how many people Fred could beat in the competition.

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D. Extraction from a slifted clause is impossible:

(35) a. Mary was saying [Fred would buy some kind of car] b. What kind of car was Mary saying [Fred would buy ]?

(36) a. [Fred would buy some kind of car], Mary was saying. b. *What kind of car [Fred would buy ] was Mary saying?

E. C-command: Judgements are not easy, and the full paradigm has not been investigated, but I tentatively conclude that no c-command relation holds between the elements of the clause and arguments of the Slifting predicate. A variable in the clause cannot be bound by an argument of the Slifting predicate, or vice versa. But (38) seems good. Position?

(37) a. ??Shei liked the film, (every girli said). ??Every girli liked the film, (shei said). b. Every girli said that shei liked the film. *Shei said that every girli liked the film.

(38) Every womani should, (shei believes), own a few diamonds and a fur

A pronoun in one of the clauses can be coreferential with an antecedent in the other, in either direction. (Many speakers have a strong preference)

(39) a. Shei liked the film, (Maryi said).

b. Maryi liked the film, (shei said). c. *Shei said that Maryi liked the film; Maryi said that shei liked the film

Section 4. Analysis.

1. S(entence) Lifting (Ross 1973): (40) [Mary is a talented singer]i, (the teacher explained [ t ]i to me)

 Predicts that the host clause should have subordinate .  Doesn’t allow for discontinuity of host.

2. Null pronominal complement (Jackendoff 1972, Emonds 1976): (41) [Mary is a talented singer]i, (the teacher explained proi to me)  If a null pronominal complement can occur why can’t an overt pronominal complement? See (14)-(19). Perhaps because the null one must occur, but why?

3. Ellipsis: (42) [Mary is a talented singer]i, (the teacher explained (that) Mary is a talented singer) A case of “deep anaphora” Hankamer and Sag 1976. it does not require identity to its antecedent. (See inversion and that.)  Principal problem: Null complement anaphora for finite clauses is lexically restricted. (Grimshaw 1979) Slifting is not. See the verbs surmise, report, take it in (5)-(8). [Also: Does NCA really allow discourse antecedents?]

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4. of argument, host clause as restriction: (based on Kratzer 2006, Moulton 2011)

(43) [Mary is a talented singer]xc, (∃xc the teacher explained xc to me) (44) λev.∃xc [the teacher explained (xc )(ev) & fcont(xc ) = that Mary is a talented singer] (based on Moulton 2011).

 Inherits problem of the Kratzer-Moulton analysis: all clausal complements which restrict content should be optional.

5. Argument satisfied by host clause: (45) [Mary is a talented singer]x, (the teacher explained x to me)  Host clause is an argument but not a complement of the Slifting predicate.

Section 5. Apparent complement properties of the host clause

There are two respects in which host clauses resemble subordinate clauses and not main clauses: The Slifted clause shows sequence of tense; some indexicals shift as in subordinate and not main clauses.

(46) Scenario: Mary says “it will rain”. Report: Mary said “it will rain”. Direct quote Mary said it would rain. Complement clause It would rain, Mary said. Slifting

(47) Scenario: Mary says “I am angry” Report: Mary said “I am angry”. Direct quote Mary said she was angry. Complement clause She was angry, Mary said Slifting

I in a host clause refers to the speaker not to the subject. To show this we need examples that cannot be direct quotes. predicates do not allow quotes, so this is a good test.

(48) *Ii would approve the request, Maryi was sure (*I = Mary)

Challenge: if Slifted clauses are main clauses why do they have these properties? They are both properties of Free Indirect Discourse. See Schlenker (2004), Sharvit (2008), for recent discussion. FID reports the content of thoughts or speech or other linguistic events without using subordination or quotation. FID clauses have main clause syntax (Banfield 1992).

(49) Scenario: Fred is walking across the park, thinking about his situation. He thinks to himself: “Am I making a mistake?” Report: Fred walked across the park, thinking about his situation. Was he making a mistake? (FID) Was he making a mistake, he wondered. (Slifting)

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Proposal: FID is a special case of Slifting in which the Slifting fragment is implied. Note: Slifting is ordinary English, FID is generally thought of as a literary device, raising learning problems. If FID is a special case of Slifting, the learning issue reduces to discovering that the Slifting fragment can be omitted in certain styles.

Section 6. The discourse status of the clause

The slifted interrogative clauses are not used to ask a question and the declaratives are not used to make an assertion / answer a question.

Interrogatives:

(50) Q: What, he wondered, was going to happen next? A: #I haven’t a clue. (51) Q: What, he asked her, was going to happen next? A: It would rain, she told him.

Hypothesis: They have the semantics of a main clause interrogative. (More below) But they do not have the pragmatics of a main clause interrogative. They do not address a question to the hearer. They report an event in which another speaker addressed a question to another hearer. Like true subordinate clauses.

Declaratives: The Slifted clause is not an assertion, and cannot answer questions. (Other evidence: felicitous challenges, tags).

(52) Q: What did Fred say?

(53) A: Fred said AI=m an idiot@ (See de Vries 2006 on Dutch) (54) A: He said he was an idiot. A: That he was an idiot.

(55) A: #He was an idiot, he said. A: #He was, he said, an idiot.

Section 7: The meaning of the host clause

7.1

Slifting reports, indirectly, the content of a source=s (not necessarily a person) beliefs, thoughts, or words. Thus it cannot report what was not said, thought, or believed. This is why negation has a special effect on Slifting, which is nonsensical when the subordinating reporting predicate is negated, while complements with and without that are unaffected.

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(56) a. *It was raining hard, they didn’t think / they didn’t say / they weren’t sure / it didn’t seem / the papers didn’t report. (57) b. They didn’t think / they didn’t say / they weren’t sure / it didn’t seem / the papers didn’t report it was raining hard. (58) a. *Was it raining, they didn’t ask / wonder. b. They didn’t ask / wonder whether it was raining.

They are similarly bad with, for example, no-one as the subject, or with never in the Slifting material:

(59) a. *It was raining hard, no-one thought b. It was raining hard, they never said.

Direct quotes show the same effect, but only when they are “preposed”:

(60) a. *“I’m tired”, he didn’t say. *“It rained” no-one said” b. He didn’t say “I’m tired”. No-one said “It rained”

Is this due to Relativized Minimality? (Rizzi p.c.). Not a syntactic restriction:

(61) a. He was tired, he couldn’t deny. b. He was tired, they didn’t doubt.

Seems more like #Mary knows it’s raining and it isn’t. Speaker is committed to the “reality” of the clause, though not its truth. The clause was formulated by some Source. Cf. I’m giving you a million dollars, not!

7.2 The predicates/contexts which allow Slifting (Hooper 1975, Grimshaw in prep.).

7.2.1 Propositional clauses: The obvious hypothesis is that predicates which allow omission of that in their complements allow Slifting. This is false.

Predicates which are not in the grammar of the neutral (non-formal) register of English do not allow omission, but do allow Slifting. This is due to the grammar of the formal register or the syntax of the sub-vocabulary or the prosody of the embedding predicate. (All correlated.)

(62) a. They ascertained / surmised that/*Ø it was raining hard b. It was raining hard, they ascertained / surmised

Predicates which do not report events of assertion (in a strict sense involving being “at issue” or affecting the common ground) do not allow that omission but do allow Slifting. The same is true for predicates with complex meanings, such as bitch, and the manner of speaking predicates. (63) a. They commented / bitched /replied that/*Ø it was raining hard b. It was raining hard, they commented / bitched / replied

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Some predicates which allow that omission do not allow Slifting:

(64) a. Mary wished that/Ø Fred would go away. b. *Fred would go away, Mary wished.

True factive predicates allow neither:

(65) a. They were irritated that/*Ø it was raining hard 7. *It was raining hard, they were irritated

Partial generalization: all predicates which have “say” or “believe” as part of their meaning allow it. Others – hypothesis under construction.

7.2.2 Interrogative Clauses: They occur only with predicates that take true questions (rather than sets of ) as their complements.

(66) Was it raining, he asked / inquired / wondered / wanted to know (67) *Was it raining, he knew / discovered. (Cf He knew/discovered whether it was raining.) (68) *Is it grammatical, the theory predicted. (Cf The theory predicted whether it was grammatical.)

Note: this distribution is that same as the distribution of inversion in some dialects of English. See McCloskey 2006, Grimshaw 2006.

Hypothesis: Slifted clauses have the semantics of main clause questions.

Conclusions: The properties of Slifting follow once we hypothesize that main clauses can be arguments and assume that the theory of FID is really the theory of Slifting. Some points to highlight:

1. Slifted clauses and the predicates which combine with them have entirely systematic grammatical characteristics, and are not merely memorized sentence fragments, contra Thompson 2002. The existence and properties of Slifted clauses do not show that true subordination does not exist. (Note that Slifting fragments themselves allow subordination: “The hospital, Mary says her mother told her, will open next week.”)

2. The theory of subordination must allow separation of the properties canonically associated with main and subordinate clauses. Slifted clauses have main clause syntax and semantics, yet they are arguments and do not have the pragmatics of main clauses. Why do the properties combine in this way? Do all the logically possible combinations of properties exist? Anti-Slifting: subordinate clause syntax and semantics, but not arguments? Apparently not.

So Slifting is due to flexibility in how main clauses compose with other material. This is not found with subordinate clauses, where all relationships are restricted by syntax.

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References Banfield, A. 1982: Unspeakable Sentences (Narration and Representation in the Language of Fiction). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Bolinger, Dwight. 1968. Postposed main clauses: an English rule for Romance subjunctive. Canadian Journal of 14. 3-30. Dayal, Veneeta and Jane Grimshaw. 2009. Subordination at the Interface. (Pdf available at: http://rulinguistics101.org/page/grimshaw.html) Dehé, Nicole. 2009. Clausal parentheticals, intonational phrasing, and prosodic theory. Journal of Linguistics 45: 569-615. Emonds, Joseph. 1976. A Transformational Approach to English Syntax. Academic Press. Grimshaw, Jane. 1979. Complement Selection and the Lexicon. Linguistic Inquiry10.2 279-326 Grimshaw, Jane. 2006. Location specific constraints in matrix and subordinate clauses. Rutgers Optimality Archive 857. Grimshaw, Jane. In prep. That omission: how syntax, semantics, pragmatics, prosody and sociolinguistics determine the form of finite clauses in English. Hankamer, Jorge and Ivan Sag. 1976. Deep and surface anaphora. Linguistic Inquiry 7, 391–428. Hooper, Joan B. 1975. On assertive predicates. In J. P. Kimball ed. Syntax and Semantics, vol. 4. Academic Press, NY. 91–124. Kratzer, Angelika. 2006. Decomposing attitude verbs. Handout for presentation at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. McCloskey, James. 2006. Questions and questioning in a local English. In Cross-Linguistic Research in Syntax and Semantics: Negation, Tense and Clausal Architecture, Raffaella Zanuttini, Héctor Campos, Elena Herburger and Paul H. Portner eds.,Georgetown University Press. Moulton, Keir. 2011. CPs don’t saturate: The distribution of clausal complements. Paper presented at the Workshop on The Grammar of Attitudes, DGfS, University of Göttingen. Ross, John Robert. 1973. Slifting. In M. Gross, M. Halle, and M.-P. Schützenberger eds. The formal analysis of natural languages: Proceedings of the First International Conference. Mouton. The Hague. 133–169. Sharvit, Yael. 2008. The puzzle of free indirect discourse. Linguistics and Philosophy 31. 353- 395. Schlenker, Philippe. 2004. Context of Thought and Context of Utterance: A Note on Free Indirect Discourse and the Historical Present. Mind & Language, 19: 279–304. Thompson, Sandra. 2002. “Object complements” and conversation: toward a realistic account. Studies in Language 26:1 (2002), 125–164. Vries, Mark de. 2006. Reported direct speech in Dutch. Linguistics in the Netherlands 23, 212- 223. Vries, Mark de. 2007. Invisible constituents ? Parentheses as B-merged adverbial phrases. In Nicole Dehé & Yordanka Kavalova (eds.), Parentheticals. 203–234.

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