Decomposing Path
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Decomposing Path The Nanosyntax of Directional Expressions Marina Blagoeva Pantcheva A thesis submitted for the degree Philosophiae Doctor University of Tromsø Faculty of Humanities, Social Sciences and Education CASTL May, 2011 ii Acknowledgments When I told my father a couple of years ago that I got a PhD position at the University of Tromsø, first thing he did was to try to locate Tromsø on the world map. As it happens to many people who face the same task, he glided his finger along the Norwegian coastline, going north, and more north, and more north, passing the Polar Circle, and then even more north, while the expression on his face was changing from slightly amused to deeply worried. When his finger finally stopped its journey at the 69th parallel, he said: “This town is on the edge of the world! Be careful not to fall off.” This little Norwegian island on the edge of the world turned out to be a marvelously exciting, enriching and vibrant place to live. And, more importantly, it had CASTL — the Centre for Advanced Study in Theoretical Linguistics where I got friends for life, a husband, two kids, and, last, but surely not least, a Dissertation. The last feat required a great deal of knowledge and skills which I acquired thanks to so many people. It is these people that I wish to thank now. First and foremost, I want to express my deep gratitude to my super- visor Peter Svenonius. There are so many things I want to thank him for that I really do not know where to begin. Let me start by thanking Peter for accepting into his Moving Right Along project a PhD student who knew nothing about generative grammar. I thank him for teaching me the things I know about it now. Peter is a great teacher, incredi- bly patient and always capable of explaining the most intricate linguistic issues, even to a beginner. I am also grateful to Peter for being such a devoted and supportive supervisor and for always finding time in his busy schedule to read my numerous drafts and meet me. Peter’s as- tonishing knowledge of linguistics and his constructive and often critical comments (yet always presented with an amazing delicacy) improved this work greatly. Finally, I wish to thank Peter for being a wonderful friend in addition to being a terrific supervisor. Second, I want to thank Pavel Caha, the person with whom I could iii iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS discuss linguistic any time of the day. Pavel’s huge linguistic knowledge, intelligence and insightful comments helped me clarify many questions I asked myself concerning syntax in general and Nanosyntax in particular. I am also grateful to Michal Starke, Tarald Taraldsen and Gillian Ramchand for the inspiring seminars they held and the fruitful linguistic discussions (among all others). I greatly acknowledge the feedback I got from linguists I met at con- ferences in Tromsø and abroad. Among others, I would like to thank Marcel den Dikken, Joost Zwarts, Sander Lestrade, Patrik Bye and all the participants of the Workshop on Locative Case in Nijmegen in 2008, where I presented the ideas developed in this thesis for the first time. I would like to thank Klaus Abels for the exciting class in Mathemat- ical Linguistics. This was the best term I had in Tromsø. I want to thank all the people at CASTL for making it such a nice place to be, where both linguistics and friendships thrive. I am particu- larly grateful to CASTL’s ex-director Curt Rice and its present director Marit Westergaard for creating such an outstanding working environ- ment. I also thank the people who work(ed) at the the Faculty of Human- ities, Social Sciences and Education and at the administration of CASTL for quickly and efficiently helping me solve administrative and practical problems. I want to especially mention Ståle Berglund, Christin Kristof- fersen, Tore Benzt, Kaori Takamine, Jorun Nordmo, Elisabeth Eriksen and Jan Helge Bergheim. The last five years of my life would have been much less exciting and enriching had I not shared them with my wonderful fellow PhD stu- dents: Monika Bader, Pavel Caha, Björn Lundquist, Kaori Takamine, Peter Muriungi, Zhenya Romanova, Yulia Rodina, Éva Dékány, Kristine Bentzen, Mai Tungseth, Nayouki Yamato, Dragana Šurkalović, Chris- tine Østbø, Peter Jurgec, Andrea Márkus, Inna Tolskaya, Islam Youssef, Marleen van de Vate, Sandya Sundaresan, Rosmin Mathew, Pavel Iosad, Sylvia Blaho, Anna Wolleb, Alexander Pfaff, Helene Andreassen, and Violeta Martínez-Paricio. The years at CASTL were great fun also because of the following colleagues: Christian Uffmann, Martin Krämer, Antonio Fábregas, Min- jeong Son, Thomas McFadden and Irene Franco. Thank you for the nice time we spent together. I greatly appreciate having the possibility of sharing an office with Kaori, Björn, and Éva. Having them as office buddies was a truly enjoy- able experience. I wish to thank my friends “outside linguistics,” more than half of v whom accidentally happen to be linguists too: Gillian, Björn, Monika, Lucius, Lucie, Yulia, Adnan, Kaori, Tom, Tanya Boteva, Jonas, Isabelle, Pierre, Anna-Lena, Gunnar, Klaus, Luisa. Thanks for the great picnics, pleasant trips and lovely dinners. I owe a very special and very big thank to Karla. Thank you, Karla, for always finding time to visit us, for all the help with the kids and the household chores, and for driving Misha in your Golden Car. I want to especially thank my soul sister Monika. It was so nice talking to somebody who was in the same situation as me. One “Oh, last week the kids were sick again” was enough for Monika to understand all my feelings in the tiniest detail. As for people outside CASTL, I thank my friends back home for the nice time we had when I were back in Bulgaria: Maria, Joro, Ina, Momchil, Emma, Teddy, Elica, and Dani Molle. I would have never coped without Pavel. I am eternally grateful to him for the sacrifices he made in order for me to finish this thesis. Enu- merating here all the things he did for me would make this dissertation look tiny compared to its acknowledgments, so I will just say it in big letters: THANK YOU! I also thank my children Misha and Jana for be- ing there and preventing me from becoming enslaved by my thesis. The numerous joys (and occasional worries) they brought into my life left no space (nor time) for dissertation panic or despair. I owe thanks to my good old Mac for not completely crashing, despite being so overburdened that it would block about once per hour in the last months of thesis writing. I am also very grateful (but don’t know whom to thank) for the fact that there are no heat waves in Tromsø. Given that I feel sick when it is hotter than 25 ◦C, the non-winter season in Tromsø is cool enough for my brain to function. I fact, it was a marvelous experience to work until late in the “summer” and then bike home in the magic light of the Midnight Sun, full of admiration for the fantastic nature around. Talking about the weather, the winter in Tromsø is actually not cold at all. Still, I truly missed the warmth of my wonderful family. I wish to thank my mother Parvaneh Danesh and my father Blagoy Pantchev for encouraging me to drop business and go into academia, for all the support and dedication, and for always being ready to travel so far north and take care of grandchildren and household. I thank my sister Mina and my brother-in-law Ventzi for the lovely holidays we spent together. Finally, I want to thank my parents for letting me go to Tromsø despite their anxiety. I dedicate this thesis to them. vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Contents Acknowledgments iii Abstract xiii Abbreviations xv 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Background and object of study . 1 1.2 Coreproposal............................ 3 1.3 Theoretical apparatus . 4 1.4 Predictions ............................. 6 1.5 Howtoreadthethesis ....................... 8 I Path expressions: typology, syntax, and semantics 9 2 Types of paths 11 2.1 Introduction............................. 11 2.2 Paths with transition . 13 2.3 Paths without transition . 16 2.4 Orientation of paths . 19 2.5 Delimited paths . 22 2.6 The two types of Route paths . 28 2.7 Classification of paths . 30 2.8 Conclusion.............................. 33 3 Backgroundandtheoreticalassumptions 35 3.1 Introduction............................. 35 3.2 The relation between syntax and morphology . 35 3.3 Lexicalization of the structure . 41 3.4 Conclusion.............................. 44 vii viii CONTENTS 4 Decomposing Path 45 4.1 Introduction............................. 45 4.2 GoalvsSourcepaths........................ 46 4.3 Routes vs Goal and Source paths . 51 4.4 Transitional vs non-transitional paths . 55 4.5 Delimited and non-delimited paths . 58 4.6 Conclusion.............................. 62 5 Decomposed Path semantics 65 5.1 Introduction............................. 65 5.2 The semantics of Place . 65 5.3 The semantics of Goal . 67 5.4 The semantics of Source . 69 5.5 The semantics of Route . 71 5.6 The semantics of non-transitional paths . 75 5.7 The semantics of delimited paths . 87 5.8 Conclusion.............................. 90 II TheNanosyntaxtheoryofgrammar 93 6 Lexicalization of the structure 95 6.1 Introduction............................. 95 6.2 Capturing the mismatch . 99 6.3 Nanosyntax ............................. 106 6.3.1 The relationship between morphology and syntax . 106 6.3.2 Spell-out of syntactic structure . 109 6.4 The Superset Principle . 118 6.5 The Elsewhere Condition . 124 6.6 Conclusion.............................. 126 7 Spell-out driven movement 131 7.1 Introduction............................. 131 7.2 Linearization . 131 7.3 Spell-out driven movement .