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The Syntax, Semantics and Processing of Agreement and Binding Grammatical Illusions The Syntax, Semantics and Processing of Agreement and Binding Grammatical Illusions by Hezao Ke A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Linguistics) in The University of Michigan 2019 Doctoral Committee: Professor Samuel David Epstein, Co-Chair Professor Acrisio Pires, Co-Chair Associate Professor Jonathan Brennan Professor Richard Lewis “Always rejoice, unceasingly pray, in everything give thanks.” -1 Thessalonians 5: 16-18 Hezao Ke [email protected] ORCID iD: 0000-0003-0873-0684 © Hezao Ke 2019 This thesis is dedicated to my wife and my children. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am now with the complete dissertation in hand, which is the result of six years of work at the University of Michigan. It is time to express my gratitude to the people who have made this dissertation possible. I should first thank my committee members: Samuel Epstein, Acrisio Pires, Richard Lewis and Jonnathan Brennan. I feel especially indebted to the co-chairs of my committee, and my advisors, Sam and Acrisio. Sam is not only a mentor who is always supportive, but also a friend who never gets tired of offering his warm en- couragement and unreserved trust. Tim Chou in fact said what I want to say, “Sam is the kind of advisor and friend that everybody wants.” Sam generously provided his insightful comments on every paper I wrote. His contribution to the dissertation is central and enormous. Many of the ideas were inspired by the meetings with him (and Rick) such that it is impossible to single out his every contribution in the dissertation. I should thank Acrisio for his valuable comments on every chapter of the disser- tation. We have collaborated in several research projects and co-authored several papers. It was a delightful experience to work with him. As a supervisor, Acrisio is very patient and kind. There were times when I approached him with a paper or an abstract that was under a tight deadline, he never complained but generously offered his detailed revisions, which usually made that piece of work ready to submit. I should also thank Acrisio for his care and help on various grant applications and many other administrative issues. This work would be impossible without the support from the other two members of iii my committee, Richard Lewis and Jonathan Brennan. Rick is a great scientist: he is clear, sharp and precise in thinking. Meetings with him have been very stimulating. I greatly benefited from Rick’s expertise on the cue-based retrieval theory and on psycholinguistics in general. I should thank Jon for allowing me to participate in his lab meetings. I received much help from him regarding psycholinguistics and statistics. I enjoyed the time teaching and meeting with him. I can clearly recall that in many meetings with him, a most exciting topic was about his and my little children. I want to thank other faculty members in the linguistic department at the Univer- sity of Michigan who spent time discussing with me various topics in this dissertation: Ezra Keshet, Marlyse Baptista, Emily Atkinson and Natasha Abner. Special thanks go to Ezra for his significant contribution to the semantic component of the disserta- tion. I should also thank Patrice Beddor, San Duanmu, Julie Boland, Steve Abney, Savithry Namboodiripad, Robin Queen, and Andries Coetzee for their help and sup- port at different points of my studies at Michigan. Thanks also go to staff members Jennifer Nguyen, Sandie Petee and Talisha Reviere-Winston for their assistance. This dissertation would be not possible without the generous help and support from my fellow students and graduates from the University of Michigan. I would espe- cially like to mention Andrew McInnerney, Jae-Young Shim, Sujeewa Hettiarachchi, Yushi Sugimoto, Marcus Berger, Pyeong Cho, Chia-Wen Lo, Lucy Chiang, Danielle Burgess, Joy Peltier, Aliaksei Akimenka, Fahad Alrashed, Dong Yan, Jian Zhu, Peter Lindes, Marjorie Herbert, Will Nediger, Tim Chou, David Medeiros, Hisatsugu Kita- hara, and Miki Obata. Thank you for making my time at the University of Michigan such an enjoyable and memorable experience! I am especially grateful to Andrew for his proofreading this dissertation and several of my papers. I want to thank friends and researchers who are not at the University of Michigan for their discussion and comments on different parts of the dissertation: Lin Yu, Zahra iv Mirrazi, Yasutada Sudo, Giorgos Spathas and Quan Wan. I would also like to extend my gratitude to my church friends for their support, even reading my work, especially Caroline, Ryan, Alex, EJ and Ching-shih. For my linguistic training in China, I would like to thank my MA advisor Liqun Gao and his collaborator Stephen Crain for their training in child language acquisi- tion. Fuzhen Si’s and James Huang’s classes triggered my interest in syntax: I was fascinated by the beauty of syntax. I also thank my friends Peng Zhou, Jie Ren, Zheng Shen, Haiwei Zhang and Aijun Huang for their help, support and friendship. Finally, and most importantly, I would like to thank my wife for her unconditional, ever-lasting and never-failing love. Without her love and support, the Ph.D. life would not have been this smooth and enjoyable. She is certainly always the first person I would like to share my every achievement (if there is any) and every failure with. I also thank my sons, Benjamin and Samuel, for all the joy they bring to our family. I am indebted to my mother-in-law: without her help, I would not have been able to focus on writing and finish this dissertation in time. Many thanks to my parents and other family members in China for their constant love and support. I should also thank members of my church in China and the US for their care, friendship and encouragement. v TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS :::::::::::::::::::::::::: iii LIST OF FIGURES ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: x LIST OF TABLES :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: xi ABSTRACT ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: xiii CHAPTER I. Introduction ..............................1 1.1 Illusions of grammaticality . .2 1.2 Challenges of the cue-based retrieval model . .5 1.2.1 Challenge One . .5 1.2.2 Challenge Two . 10 1.3 Solutions to the challenges . 11 1.3.1 For Challenge One . 11 1.3.2 For Challenge Two . 13 1.4 The framework . 16 1.4.1 The language model . 16 1.4.2 The vP-internal subject hypothesis . 21 1.5 Organization of the thesis . 25 II. A Minimal Search-Based Analysis of Agreement ........ 26 2.1 Introduction . 26 2.2 Previous analyses of agreement . 27 2.2.1 Agreement and Spec–head relations . 28 2.2.2 Agree . 29 2.2.3 The direction of agree . 33 2.3 The proposal . 41 vi 2.3.1 Theoretical motivation . 41 2.3.2 Defining minimal search . 42 2.3.3 An example . 46 2.3.4 Breadth-first or depth-first? . 47 2.3.5 Minimal search-based agree and labeling . 50 2.4 Theoretical implications . 56 2.5 Empirical consequences . 64 2.5.1 Upward agree . 65 2.5.2 Cyclic agree . 69 2.5.3 Subject–complementizer agreement . 80 2.6 Comparison to the upward agree analysis . 87 III. A Minimal Search-Based Analysis of Reflexive Binding ... 92 3.1 Introduction . 92 3.2 Previous analyses . 93 3.2.1 The classical binding theory . 93 3.2.2 The movement approach . 94 3.2.3 The agree approach . 98 3.3 Current analysis . 106 3.4 Implications . 115 3.4.1 The non-complementary distribution . 115 3.4.2 The complementary distribution . 117 3.5 A remaining issue . 124 IV. The Interpretability of Φ-Features ................. 132 4.1 Introduction . 132 4.1.1 The feature system . 134 4.1.2 Semantic φ-features as presuppositions . 136 4.2 A challenge: the PF Feature Transmission Approach . 138 4.3 Challenges to the challenge . 141 4.3.1 Evidence . 141 4.3.2 Possible responses to the challenges . 143 4.4 New evidence for the presupposition account . 148 4.4.1 The syntax and semantics of collective nouns . 148 4.4.2 Argument One . 150 4.4.3 Argument Two . 153 4.4.4 Argument Three . 159 4.5 Toward an explanation . 173 4.5.1 Rooth’s theory of focus . 173 4.5.2 Previous solutions . 176 4.5.3 Current solution . 177 4.5.4 Addressing remaining questions . 181 4.6 Summary . 188 vii V. Encoding Syntactic Relations as Features ............ 192 5.1 Introduction . 192 5.2 Representational c-command . 195 5.3 Previous attempts to encode c-command as a feature . 197 5.3.1 An “intuitive” approach . 197 5.3.2 The spine-based approach . 199 5.3.3 The c-command-as-content approach . 203 5.4 Proposal: derivational c-commanded-by . 205 5.4.1 Derivational c-command . 205 5.4.2 Relating derivational c-command to parsing . 207 5.4.3 C-commanded-by in parsing . 211 5.5 Simplifying the encoding system . 217 5.6 Extending to the locality feature . 220 VI. Experiments .............................. 224 6.1 Introduction . 224 6.1.1 Literature review . 226 6.1.2 Accounting for the absence of facilitatory effects . 236 6.1.3 Asymmetry of interpretability in cue-based retrieval 238 6.1.4 Predictions of the account . 243 6.2 An overview of the experiments . 247 6.2.1 Materials . 247 6.2.2 Procedure . 252 6.3 Experiment 1: judgment task with reflexive binding . 253 6.3.1 Participants . 254 6.3.2 Stimuli . 254 6.3.3 Procedure . 254 6.3.4 Results . 255 6.3.5 Discussion . 258 6.4 Experiment 2: speeded judgment task with reflexive binding .
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