Speech Acts, Root Phenomena and Truncation

Carlos de Cuba Queens College-CUNY [email protected]

Speech Acts, Root Phenomena and Truncation Introduction: Krifka (2014) argues that illocutionary acts can be embedded in certain circumstances, one of them being under predicates that allow root phenomena (see Heycock 2006) such as argument fronting, as in (1). Krifka proposes a semantics that allows speech acts to be embedded under lexical predicates that can select for asserted clauses. (1) Carl told me that [this book, it has recipes in it]. (Krifka 2014:61) In this paper I argue that Krifka’s analysis fits more naturally with a truncation analysis (TRN) for restrictions on embedded root phenomena (McCloskey 2006, Haegeman 2006, de Cuba 2007, Bentzen et al. 2007, de Cuba & Ürögdi 2009, a/o), than with operator movement (OM) accounts (Haegeman & Ürögdi 2010, Haegeman 2012, a/o). In addition, I propose a slight modification of Krifka’s system, expanding out from “assertion” to better fit the data. Krifka’s system: Krifka (2014) proposes that there are sentence radicals, which denote propositions, and speech acts, which are formed when illocutionary operators are applied to sentence radicals. He argues that speech acts are distinct from regular semantic objects and that this greatly restricts (but does not completely rule out) the embedding of speech acts. For Krifka, sentence radicals do not involve illocutionary force. He also notes that sentence radicals have more syntactic restrictions, citing examples of embedded root phenomena (Heycock 2006) being restricted to contexts following predicates which typically embed clauses with illocutionary force operators. He notes that the three speech act operators he discusses (ASSERT, QUEST and DIRECT) are often grammaticized in languages. Focusing here on ASSERT, Krifka sees an assertion as a speech act in which the speaker takes on the social commitment that the content of the assertion is true (i.e. to be included in the common ground). He argues that in a speech act the speech act operator ASSERT is added to a sentence radical. Truncation vs. Operator Movement: TRN and OM accounts have been proposed to account for differences in the availability of root phenomena like argument fronting (AF) under non-asserted (2a) vs. asserted (2b) predicates (see Hooper & Thompson (1973) for discussion). (2) a. *Mary realizes that this book, John read. (Haegeman 2012:257) b. Mary believes that this book, John read. While TRN analyses differ in implementation, they share the intuition that embedded root clauses like (2b) have an extra syntactic projection (an extra CP, a ForceP, or similar type projection), as in (3b), that is tied to illocutionary force. Embedded clauses that do not allow root phenomena (2a) are argued to be impoverished, lacking this extra projection (3a) and thus lacking landing sites required for root phenomena like AF. (3) a. [CP] / [FinP] b. [CP [CP]] / [ForceP [FinP]] On the other hand, OM accounts claim that in embedded clauses that disallow root phenomena (2a) there is relative clause type OM, as in (4), which causes intervention effects that block embedded root phenomena. (4) [CP OPi C… [FP ti [TP… ]]] (Haegeman & Ürögdi 2010) In other words, the truncation account proposes that there is extra syntactic structure needed to facilitate AF while the operator movement account proposes that an extra syntactic movement is necessary to block AF. I argue that TRN analyses fit with Krifka’s (2014) semantic analysis better, as the semantic complexity of “asserted” speech act clauses is matched by syntactic complexity in the truncation account, providing a cleaner compositional match between the syntax and semantics. On the other hand, in the OM account Krifka’s semantically less complex sentence radicals would be more syntactically complex, and semantically more complex speech acts would be syntactically less complex, an unexpected compositional result. Another Truncation Advantage: While Haegeman’s (2012) OM account focuses mostly on AF restrictions in clausal complements to verbs (and adverbial clauses, which I will not discuss in detail here for space reasons), she briefly speculates on a possible OM account for so-called “complements of N” (NCCs), and notes that they generally disallow AF, as in (5b,d). (5) a. I resent the fact that he had to examine each part carefully. b. *I resent the fact that each part he had to examine carefully. c. The claim that a portrait of Mao hangs on the wall is still unsubstantiated. d. *The claim that on the wall hangs a portrait of Mao is still unsubstantiated. (Hooper & Thompson 1973:479,486) For clausal complements of V (VCCs), we’ve seen that Haegeman (2012) argues that event operator movement (EOM) blocks AF in factive complements in sentences like (2a), and the lack of this EOM allows AF in (2b). Haegeman (2012:273) cites Nichols (2003) in support of her speculative OM proposal for NCCs. Nichols proposes that NCCs are formally relative clauses, and argues that these structures involve event operator relativization, as in (6). (6) [DP The claimi [CP Øi [that [IP Sonia [ei [had bought the lottery ticket]]]]]] (Nichols 2003) For Nichols, all attitude nominals (fact, claim, belief, etc.) both factive and non-factive, involve EOM. On the other hand, Haegeman (2012) cites as predecessors to the EOM account in VCCs both Aboh (2005), who claims that EOM results in factivity, and Melvold (1986, 1991), who claims that complements of factive predicates are “event arguments” that contain an operator in CP licensed by the functional element definiteness which binds “an open event-position”. Note that there is a mismatch here between when we see EOM in NCCs vs. VCCs. The interpretation of the complement clause is not factive or definite in the NCC example in (5c), given the non-factive nature of the head noun claim, yet AF is still blocked in (5d). In other words, in order to block AF in NCCs we would need to follow Nichols and propose OM for all attitude nominals, including non-factives. However, in order to account for the root phenomena facts in VCCs we would need to propose EOM in factive VCCs to block AF but no EOM in non-factive VCCs to allow AF. Of course one could propose that there are two different operators at work in NCCs and VCCs that appear for different semantic reasons, but this would need to be spelled out. On the other hand, in a TRN account following the semantic analysis of Krifka (2014), the non-asserted status of all NCCs would mean no extra structure, correctly allowing AF in (2b) and ruling out AF in (5b,d) with only one semantic notion needed. I see this as another advantage for TRN analyses over OM. Fixing a Problem with Assertion: As discussed above, the general nature of the assertion analysis of Krifka (2014) is attractive in that is captures the class of embedded clauses that allow root phenomena under the umbrella of a single general semantic notion. However, the notion may need to be expanded to be broader than assertion. Krifka notes that embedded clauses under predicates like believe and think in (7) are not necessarily asserted by the speaker. (7) Trump thinks/believes that diplomacy is easy (but I think it isn’t). In addition, embedded verb-second (another root phenomena) has been shown by Wiklund et al. (2009:1924-5) to be possible in complements to semifactive verbs, and they report that the complement remains presupposed (and crucially, not asserted), as in their example in (8). (8) Vi upptäckte faktiskt inte att den bloggen läste han inte varje dag. [Swedish] we discovered actually not that that blog-the read he not every day “We actually didn’t discover that this blog he didn’t read every day.” Thus, it is not clear that “assertion” fully captures the patterns of embedded root phenomena. I propose instead that the extra structure appears in non-referential clauses, defined in (9). (9) Non-referential CP: a speech act which introduces a proposition (or an open question) which is not yet accepted (or pre-established) in the existing discourse. This definition includes asserted clauses, but does not necessarily rule out non-asserted (7) or presupposed (8) clauses from allowing root phenomena. As far as I can tell, this change would not require a major change in Krifka’s (2014) analysis, but would fit the data better. References: Haegeman 2012. Adverbial Clauses Main Clause Phenomena and the Composition of the Left Periphery. OUP. Haegeman 2006. Conditionals factives and the left periphery. Lingua. Krifka 2014. Embedding illocutionary acts. In: Recursion: Complexity in cognition. Hooper & Thompson. 1973. On the applicability of root transformations: L.I. Heycock 2006. Embedded root phenomena. Blackwell companion to syntax. Blackwell.