DOCSLIB.ORG

381 Embedding the Antecedent in Gapping: Low Coordination

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
381 Embedding the Antecedent in Gapping: Low Coordination SQUIBS AND DISCUSSION 381 Schlenker, Philippe. 2014. Iconic features. Natural Language Seman- tics 22:299–356. Schlenker, Philippe. To appear. Super monsters–Part I. Semantics and Pragmatics. Schlenker, Philippe, Jonathan Lamberton, and Mirko Santoro. 2013. Iconic variables. Linguistics and Philosophy 36:91–149. Schwarzschild, Roger. 1999. GIVENness, AvoidF and other con- straints on the placement of accent. Natural Language Seman- tics 7:141–177. Vallduvı´, Enric. 1992. The informational component. New York: Garland. Wilbur, Ronnie B. 1999. Stress in ASL: Empirical evidence and lin- guistic issues. Language and Speech 42:229–250. Wilbur, Ronnie B. 2012. Information structure. In Sign language: An international handbook, ed. by Roland Pfau, Markus Stein- bach, and Bencie Woll, 462–489. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Wilbur, Ronnie B., and Aleix M. Martı´nez. 2002. Physical correlates of prosodic structure in American Sign Language. In Papers from the 38th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Soci- ety, ed. by Mary Andronis, Erin Debenport, Anne Pycha, and Keiko Yoshimura, 693–704. Chicago: University of Chicago, Chicago Linguistic Society. Wilbur, Ronnie B., and Cynthia Patschke. 1998. Body leans and mark- ing contrast in ASL. Journal of Pragmatics 30:275–303. EMBEDDING THE ANTECEDENT IN 1 Introduction GAPPING: LOW COORDINATION Gapping removes the finite element (T and its host), possibly along AND THE ROLE OF PARALLELISM with additional material, in the second and subsequent coordinates of Maziar Toosarvandani a coordination structure, leaving behind two remnants. (The material University of California, that has gone missing—in (1), the finite auxiliary had and the main Santa Cruz verb ordered—is represented with ⌬.) (1) Some had ordered mussels, and others ⌬ swordfish. Building on a long tradition of earlier work, Johnson (2009:293) identifies three unique properties that distinguish gapping from super- I am grateful to Nate Clair, Elizabeth Coppock, Annahita Farudi, Danny Fox, Kyle Johnson, Laura Kertz, Ben Mericli, David Pesetsky, Craig Sailor, Bern Samko, and audiences at Cornell University, MIT, Northwestern Univer- sity, the University of California, Santa Cruz, the University of Rochester, and Wayne State University for their helpful questions and suggestions. I also appreciate the comments of two anonymous reviewers, which greatly improved the squib. This research was assisted by a New Faculty Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Linguistic Inquiry, Volume 47, Number 2, Spring 2016 381–390 ᭧ 2016 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology doi: 10.1162/ling_a_00216 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LING_a_00216 by guest on 01 October 2021 382 SQUIBS AND DISCUSSION ficially similar elliptical constructions, such as pseudogapping (e.g., Some had ordered mussels, and others had ⌬ swordfish). First, gapping is restricted to coordination structures (2) (Jackendoff 1971:22, Han- kamer 1979:18–19). Second, the gap in gapping cannot be embedded (3) (Hankamer 1979:19). Third, the antecedent in gapping cannot be embedded (4) (Hankamer 1979:20). (2) *Some had eaten mussels, because others ⌬ shrimp. (3) *Some had eaten mussels, and she claims that others ⌬ shrimp. (4) *She’s said Peter has eaten his peas, and Sally ⌬ her green beans, so now we can have dessert. Intended: ‘She has said that Peter has eaten his peas; Sally has eaten her green beans.’ (Johnson 2009:293) Crucially, (4) is ungrammatical under an interpretation in which only the antecedent clause—not the gapped clause—is embedded. (The sentence is grammatical with a different interpretation, one that is not relevant here, where the entire conjunction is embedded.) There are a number of theories of gapping that successfully ac- count for at least the first two of these properties (Coppock 2001, Lin 2001, Johnson 2004, 2009). These all share one analytical ingredient: they appeal to low coordination of small verbal constituents, such as vPs, under a single T head. (See Kubota and Levine to appear, though, for a different approach within Categorial Grammar.)1 T goes missing in the second and subsequent coordinates because it was never present inside them to begin with. Some other mechanism gets rid of any additional material that goes missing: either some kind of ellipsis (for Coppock and Lin) or across-the-board movement (for Johnson). As Johnson (2009:296–300) observes, low coordination easily derives the first property of gapping, because two or more vPs can be embedded under a single T head only through coordination. It also derives the second property: a single T head cannot be shared with a vP that is embedded inside a coordinate. But deriving the third property 1 As a consequence, the subject of the first coordinate must raise asymmet- rically to Spec,TP, while the subjects of other coordinates stay in situ. This accounts for Siegel’s (1987) observation that the subject of the first coordinate c-commands—and hence can bind into—the subject of subsequent coordinates. (i) No woman1 can join the army, and her1 girlfriend ⌬ the navy. (Johnson 2009:293) Lin (2002:58–94) offers one way of understanding this asymmetrical subject movement (see also Johnson 2004:41–49): if the Coordinate Structure Con- straint holds of LF representations (Fox 2000:51–58), and if A-movement can reconstruct, it will not be subject to the island constraint in the first place. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LING_a_00216 by guest on 01 October 2021 SQUIBS AND DISCUSSION 383 is less straightforward. Under any theory of gapping that uses low coordination, the notion of an ‘‘antecedent’’ is a complex one. Since T is removed through a different mechanism than any additional mate- rial that goes missing, the antecedent of T is analytically distinct from the antecedent of additional missing material. I will take a closer look here at the third property of gapping in light of low-coordination theories of gapping. In section 2, I show that while the syntax of low coordination can explain why the antecedent of T cannot be embedded inside the first coordinate, it has nothing to say about why the antecedent of any additional missing material also cannot be embedded. Then, in section 3, I propose a new generalization about what can be embedded inside the first coordinate, which I call the No Correlate Embedding Generalization, whose source does not lie in the syntax of low coordination. In section 4, I suggest that this generalization arises from a constraint on the focus structures of the coordination structures in which gapping appears, Low-Coordinate Parallelism. Finally, in section 5, I examine a prediction of this ac- count: Low-Coordinate Parallelism should be satisfied when the embedding material in the first coordinate is itself contained inside a focus. 2 Taking a Closer Look at the Third Property In its traditional formulation, the third property of gapping is usually stated along the following lines: the antecedent in gapping cannot be embedded inside the first coordinate (see, e.g., Hankamer 1979:20). Theories of gapping that appeal to low coordination remove T and any additional material in different ways. Consequently, the antecedent of T is analytically distinct from the antecedent of any additional miss- ing material. Does the third property of gapping hold for both antecedents? We can start by looking at an example in which only T goes missing. In (5), the antecedent of T cannot be located inside an embedded clause in the first coordinate. (Here and below, the antecedent of T is underlined.) (5) *She will say that Peter has eaten his peas, and Sally ⌬ eaten her green beans. Intended: ‘She will say that Peter has eaten his peas; Sally has eaten her green beans.’ It is easy to see how this follows from the syntax of low coordination. T2 in (6), contained within the embedded clause in the first coordinate, cannot be shared with the second vP coordinate. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LING_a_00216 by guest on 01 October 2021 384 SQUIBS AND DISCUSSION (6) TP ϭ (5) Ј DP3 T she T1 vP will vP & vP Ј Ј t3 v DP v v VP Sally v VP VCPVDP say C TP eaten her green beans that DP TЈ Peter T2 vP has eaten his peas To test whether the antecedent of any additional missing material can be embedded, we need an example like Johnson’s (2009) sentence in (4). In the simplified version in (7), the additional missing material in the second coordinate—the main verb eaten—is identical to mate- rial that is contained within an embedded clause in the first coordinate. (The antecedent of additional missing material is boxed.) (7) *She has said that Peter has eaten his peas, and Sally ⌬ her green beans. Intended: ‘She has said that Peter has eaten his peas; Sally has eaten her green beans.’ Since (7) is ungrammatical under the intended interpretation, it appears that any additional material that goes missing also cannot be embedded inside the first coordinate. Importantly, the syntax of low coordination does not account for this fact. In (7), the second coordinate can share the T of the matrix clause. So, the restriction on embedding the antecedent of additional missing material must arise from another source. This might, in princi- Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LING_a_00216 by guest on 01 October 2021 SQUIBS AND DISCUSSION 385 ple, be a product of the operation that removes this material, namely, ellipsis or across-the-board movement. But I suggest below that it is in fact a specific case of a more general constraint on gapping, which prevents correlates from being embedded inside the first coordinate. 3 The No Correlate Embedding Generalization With this understanding from the syntax of low coordination of why T’s antecedent cannot be embedded inside the first coordinate, the sentence in (8)—which is parallel to (7) except that the main verb does not go missing in the second coordinate—should be fully grammatical.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Amount Superlatives and Measure Phrases
    City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 9-2018 Amount Superlatives and Measure Phrases E. Cameron Wilson The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/2949 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] AMOUNT SUPERLATIVES AND MEASURE PHRASES by E. CAMERON WILSON A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Linguistics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2018 © 2018 E. CAMERON WILSON All Rights Reserved ii Amount Superlatives and Measure Phrases by E. Cameron Wilson This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Linguistics in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. _____________________ ________________________________ Date Sam Al Khatib Chair of Examining Committee _____________________ ________________________________ Date Gita Martohardjono Executive Officer Supervisory Committee: Sam Al Khatib William McClure Jon Nissenbaum Yael Sharvit THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii ABSTRACT Amount Superlatives and Measure Phrases by E. Cameron Wilson Advisor: Sam Al Khatib This dissertation provides a novel analysis of quantity superlatives by bringing together research on three interrelated topics: superlative ambiguity, semantic constraints on measure constructions, and the internal structure of the extended nominal phrase. I analyze the quantity words, most, least, and fewest as superlatives of quantificational adjectives (Q-adjectives), but argue that these are often embedded inside a covert measure construction, rather than directly modifying the overt noun.
    [Show full text]
  • UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations
    UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Association with Foci Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0ns534g1 Author Toosarvandani, Maziar Doustdar Publication Date 2010 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Association with Foci by Maziar Doustdar Toosarvandani A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Line Mikkelsen, Chair Professor Andrew Garrett Professor Johanna Nichols Professor Christopher Potts Spring 2010 Abstract Association with Foci by Maziar Doustdar Toosarvandani Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics University of California, Berkeley Professor Line Mikkelsen, Chair Association with focus has, since Jackendoff’s (1972) dissertation, been the object of intense study. Most researchers, however, have concentrated on explaining the semantic variability of only and even, whose truth conditions vary with the position of focus. I take as my starting point another property of associating expressions. Both only and even restrict the distribution of focus, a prop- erty that, I argue, they share with a range of other lexical items. But, while only and even take a single argument and require there to be a focus somewhere inside that argument, expressions like adversative but and let alone take two arguments, thereby associating with two foci. Associating expressions, of both the one- and two-place varieties, have two things in common. First, they are crosscategorial in their syntax, taking arguments of a variety of different types. Second, they evoke multiple alternatives— different possible answer to a question.
    [Show full text]
  • Contrastive Topic: Meanings and Realizations
    University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations Dissertations and Theses Fall November 2014 Contrastive Topic: Meanings and Realizations Noah Constant University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2 Part of the Linguistics Commons Recommended Citation Constant, Noah, "Contrastive Topic: Meanings and Realizations" (2014). Doctoral Dissertations. 171. https://doi.org/10.7275/5694973.0 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/171 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations and Theses at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. CONTRASTIVE TOPIC: MEANINGS AND REALIZATIONS A Dissertation Presented by NOAH CONSTANT Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY September 2014 Department of Linguistics © Copyright by Noah Constant 2014 All Rights Reserved CONTRASTIVE TOPIC: MEANINGS AND REALIZATIONS A Dissertation Presented by NOAH CONSTANT Approved as to style and content by: Angelika Kratzer, Chair Elisabeth Selkirk, Member Seth Cable, Member Adrian Staub, Member John Kingston, Department Head Department of Linguistics ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The ideas in these pages—all the good ones at least—are the fruit of conversations. The most numerous and the most enjoyable of these were conversations with my committee members, so first and foremost, I’d like to thank them. It’s hard to convey the extent to which my committee provided all the essential seeds, from which the work grew.
    [Show full text]
  • Alternative Semantics, Focus Domains and Contrast Annotating Corpora with Information Structure ESSLLI 2014
    Philosophische Fakultät Sonderforschungsbereich 732 Seminar für Sprachwissenschaft Institut für Maschinelle Sprachverarbeitung Alternative Semantics, Focus Domains and Contrast Annotating Corpora with Information Structure ESSLLI 2014 Kordula De Kuthy and Arndt Riester August 21, 2014 Two important theoretical contributions in the past (1) a. Who is laughing? b. JOHNfocus [is laughing]given=background . I Of the two most influential focus frameworks in the past 30 years, one concentrates on the focus part, the other on the given part. I Mats Rooth’s Alternative Semantics (Rooth 1985, 1992, 1996, 2010) is based on the idea that focus triggers (contrastive) alternatives. I Roger Schwarzschild (Schwarzschild 1999) develops a technical givenness notion. I Contemporary theories of information structure, such as Büring (2008); Beaver & Clark (2008); Wagner (2012) and others, mainly build on, and combine, ideas from Rooth and Schwarzschild. 2 | Kordula De Kuthy and Arndt Riester c 2014 Universität Tübingen, Universität Stuttgart Mats Rooth (Cornell University) 3 | Kordula De Kuthy and Arndt Riester c 2014 Universität Tübingen, Universität Stuttgart “Ordinary” semantic values, as known from Montague semantics S: like(m; s) ((hh (((( hhhh (((( hhhh DP: m VP: λx[like(x; s)] ``` ```` Mary V: λy[λx[like(x; y)]] DP: s likes Sue Notation: [[Mary]]o = m [[likes Sue]]o = λx[like(x; s)] etc. 4 | Kordula De Kuthy and Arndt Riester c 2014 Universität Tübingen, Universität Stuttgart Alternative semantic values (focus semantic values) Idea: focusing adds an “alternative” semantic value (a set). “the focus semantic value for a phrase of category S is the set of propositions obtainable from the ordinary semantic value by making a substitution in the position corresponding to the focused phrase.” (Rooth 1992, p.76) o (2) a.
    [Show full text]
  • Surprise-Predicates, Strong Exhaustivity and Alternative Questions∗
    Proceedings of SALT 25: 225–245, 2015 Surprise-predicates, strong exhaustivity and alternative questions∗ Maribel Romero University of Konstanz Abstract Factive emotive verbs like surprise and disappoint disallow the strongly exhaustive reading of wh-questions and do not embed alternative questions (nor polar questions) (Guerzoni & Sharvit 2007; Lahiri 1991; a.o.). This paper develops a novel account of this correlation by exploiting a property of surprise-type verbs so far overlooked in the question literature: their focus-sensitivity. These verbs are treated as degree constructions where the comparison term –the selected type of answer to the question– must be a member of the comparison class C shaped by focus. Strongly exhaustive answers of wh-questions do not match the comparison class and are thus ruled out. Alternative questions fail to produce a suitable C both for strongly and for weakly exhaustive answers and are, hence, entirely disallowed. Keywords: question, focus, exhaustivity, alternative question, embedding predicates, factive emotive verbs 1 Introduction When comparing verbs that embed interrogative complements, two restrictions have been noted to apply to factive emotive predicates like surprise, disappoint and annoy. The first restriction concerns the readings of embedded wh-questions (WhQs) in terms of degrees of exhaustivity. Wonder- and know-V(erbs) allow for the strongly exhaustive reading of a WhQ (Groenendijk & Stokhof 1984), under which the interrogative [who (out of set S) walks] is assigned the denotation in (1) and inference (2) is valid. But factive emotive verbs do not allow for the strongly exhaustive reading (Sharvit 2002; Guerzoni & Sharvit 2007; a.o.; pace Klinedinst & Rothschild 2011: fn.
    [Show full text]
  • The Pragmatic Ingredients to Get Perfect Biscuits1 María BIEZMA — University of Konstanz Arno GOEBEL — University of Konstanz
    [To appear in Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 21.] The pragmatic ingredients to get perfect biscuits1 María BIEZMA — University of Konstanz Arno GOEBEL — University of Konstanz Abstract. Building on previous work, we present a proposal for a pragmatic account of biscuit conditionals (BCs). We present a new phenomenon that we dub biscuit perfection to support our proposal and argue that differences between BCs and hypothetical conditionals can be explained once we consider the relation between if -constructions and discourse. Keywords: Biscuit conditionals, contrastive topic, inferences in conditionals, causality. 1. Introduction There is a contrast between the two if -constructions in (1): (1) a. If you are hungry, I’ll give you some biscuits. b. If you are hungry, there are biscuits on the sideboard. In its most prominent reading, an utterance of (1a) conveys that whether I give you biscuits or not depends on you being hungry. If -constructions with this reading are often called hypothet- ical conditionals, (HCs). In contrast, by uttering (1b) the speaker conveys that there are biscuits on the sideboard regardless of whether you are hungry or not, and in addition conveys a sug- gestion to eat the biscuits to still hunger. If -constructions with this reading are called biscuit conditionals after Austin’s (1956) original example or, e.g., relevance conditionals (although in these cases the consequent is not at all ‘conditional’ on the antecedent). This contrast has been characterized as a difference in information update within a Stalnakerian model of com- munication (Stalnaker, 2002, 2014): the consequents in HCs update only the temporary context created by the antecedent clause, while in BCs the consequents update the entire context set.
    [Show full text]
  • Association with Foci
    Association with Foci by Maziar Doustdar Toosarvandani A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Line Mikkelsen, Chair Professor Andrew Garrett Professor Johanna Nichols Professor Christopher Potts Spring 2010 Abstract Association with Foci by Maziar Doustdar Toosarvandani Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics University of California, Berkeley Professor Line Mikkelsen, Chair Association with focus has, since Jackendoff’s (1972) dissertation, been the object of intense study. Most researchers, however, have concentrated on explaining the semantic variability of only and even, whose truth conditions vary with the position of focus. I take as my starting point another property of associating expressions. Both only and even restrict the distribution of focus, a prop- erty that, I argue, they share with a range of other lexical items. But, while only and even take a single argument and require there to be a focus somewhere inside that argument, expressions like adversative but and let alone take two arguments, thereby associating with two foci. Associating expressions, of both the one- and two-place varieties, have two things in common. First, they are crosscategorial in their syntax, taking arguments of a variety of different types. Second, they evoke multiple alternatives— different possible answer to a question. Together, these two independent properties of associating expressions interact with the question under discussion (Roberts 1996, 2004) to give rise to the restriction on the distribution of focus. My approach to association with focus departs from previous ones in important ways.
    [Show full text]
  • Probing Syntax and Semantics with French Propre A
    UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles On her own Parsimonious Compositionality: Probing Syntax and Semantics with French propre A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics by Isabelle Charnavel 2012 © Copyright by Isabelle Charnavel 2012 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION On her own Parsimonious Compositionality: Probing Syntax and Semantics with French propre by Isabelle Charnavel Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics University of California, Los Angeles, 2012 Professor Dominique Sportiche, Chair This dissertation focuses on the French word propre roughly meaning ‘characteristic-of’ and corresponding to English own found in ‘her own thesis’. This adjective makes extremely varied and complex contributions to the meaning and properties of sentences it occurs in. The present work addresses the question of how these contributions arise. Parsimoniously assuming a unique lexical entry for propre, these contributions are compositionally derived by a specific DP-internal structure and different interactions with focus. More precisely, propre is analyzed as taking as argument a possessive relation characterized as most specific. Unlike postnominal propre , prenominal propre exhibits ii three main readings called restrictive, possessor and possessum propre : restrictive propre has a standard intersective truth-conditional effect; possessor and possessum propre do not, but induce focus alternatives respectively to the possessor and to the possessum; possessum propre moreover gives rise to scalarity effects. These readings are argued to derive from a principle of minimization and different interactions with focus; in particular, the behavior of possessum propre shows the presence of a covert focus operator akin to even . When combined with a pronominal possessor like son (‘his’), the behavior of propre provides probes bearing on binding theoretic issues.
    [Show full text]
  • A New Generalization About Gapping*
    A new generalization about gapping* Maziar Toosarvandani University of California, Santa Cruz June 9, 2015 Gapping removes the finite element (T and its host), possibly along with additional material, in the second and subsequent coordinates of a coordination structure, leaving behind two remnants. (The material that has gone missing— in1, the finite auxiliary had and the main verb ordered— is represented with ‘D’.) (1) Some had ordered mussels, and others D swordfish. Building on a long tradition of earlier work, Johnson(2009:293) identifies three unique properties that distinguish gapping from superficially similar elliptical constructions, such as pseudogapping, e.g. Some had ordered mussels, and others had D swordfish. First, gapping is restricted to coordination structures (2)(Jackendoff 1971:22, Han- kamer 1979:18f.). Second, the gap in gapping cannot be embedded (3)(Hankamer 1979:19). Third, the antecedent in gapping cannot be embedded (4)(Hankamer 1979:20). (2)* Some had eaten mussels, because others D shrimp. (3)* Some had eaten mussels, and she claims that others D shrimp. (4)* She’s said Peter has eaten his peas, and Sally D her green beans, so now we can have dessert. Intended: ‘She has said that Peter has eaten his peas; Sally has eaten her green beans.’ (Johnson 2009:293) Crucially,4 is ungrammatical under an interpretation in which only the antecedent clause— not the gapped clause— is embedded. (The sentence is grammatical with a different inter- pretation, one that is not relevant here, where the entire conjunction is embedded.) *I am immensely grateful to Nate Clair, Elizabeth Coppock, Annahita Farudi, Danny Fox, Kyle Johnson, Laura Kertz, Ben Mericli, David Pesetsky, Craig Sailor, Bern Samko, and audiences at Cornell University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northwestern University, the University of California, Santa Cruz, the University of Rochester, and Wayne State University for their questions and suggestions.
    [Show full text]
  • The Role of Focus Marking in Disjunctive Questions: a QUD-Based Approach*
    Proceedings of SALT 30: 654–673, 2020 The role of focus marking in disjunctive questions: A QUD-based approach* Morwenna Hoeks University of California Santa Cruz Abstract Disjunctive questions are ambiguous: they can either be interpreted as polar questions (PolQs), as open disjunctive questions (OpenQs), or as closed alternative questions (ClosedQ). The goal of this paper is to show that the difference in interpretation between these questions can be derived via effects of focus marking directly. In doing so, the proposal brings out the striking parallel between the prosody of questions with foci/contrastive topics on the one hand and that of alternative questions on the other. Unlike previous approaches, this proposal does not rely on structural differences between AltQs and PolQs derived via ellipsis or syntactic movement. To show how this works out, an account of focus and contrastive topic marking in questions is put forward in which f-marking in questions determines what constitutes a possible answer by signaling what the speaker’s QUD is like. By imposing a congruence condition between f-marked questions and their answers that requires answers to resolve the question itself as well as its signaled QUD, we predict the right answerhood conditions for disjunctive questions. Keywords: focus, disjunction, alternative semantics, questions, contrastive topics, intonation 1 Introduction Disjunctive questions such as (1) are well-known to be ambiguous (Bartels 1999; Han & Romero 2004; Beck 2006; Pruitt & Roelofsen 2013; Roelofsen 2015; Meertens 2019). (1) Did Tony drink coffee or tea? XPolQ, XClosedQ XOpenQ Questions like (1) can be disambiguated by prosody. For example, when (1) is pronounced with a rising boundary tone and a flat intonation on the disjunction, it is interpreted as a polar question (PolQ), which allows for both “yes" and “no" responses as shown in (2) below.
    [Show full text]
  • Issn 2531-5935
    2015, vol. 37 ISSN 2531-5935 The Rivista di Grammatica Generativa/Research in Generative Grammar (RGG) is a journal devoted to the dissemination of research within the generative paradigm. It is an open access journal, hosted by the linguistic archive LEAR (http://lear.unive.it/jspui/handle/11707/593) of the Center for Language Sciences of Ca’ Foscari University, Venice. All articles published in the journal are subject to an anonymous peer review process. Editors in Chief Guglielmo Cinque (Università Ca’ Foscari,Venezia) Luigi Rizzi (Università di Siena, Université de Genève) Associate Editorial Board Manuela Ambar (Universidade de Lisboa), Paola Benincà (Università di Padova), Adriana Belletti (Università di Siena), Luciana Brandi (Università di Firenze), Luigi Burzio (The Johns Hopkins University), Noam Chomsky (MIT), Patrizia Cordin (Università di Trento), Violeta Demonte (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid), Alessandra Giorgi (Università Ca’ Foscari, Venezia), Giorgio Graffi (Università di Verona), Richard Kayne (New York University), Michael Kenstowicz (MIT), Giulio Lepschy (UCL, London and Cambridge University), Giuseppe Longobardi (Università di Trieste), Maria Rita Manzini (Università di Firenze), Joan Mascaró (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), Nicola Munaro (Università Ca’ Foscari, Venezia), Marina Nespor (Università di Milano-Bicocca), Jean-Yves Pollock (Université Paris- Est Marne-la-Vallée), Annarita Puglielli (Università di Roma III), Andrew Radford (University of Essex), Lorenzo Renzi (Università di Padova), Alain Rouveret
    [Show full text]
  • Unalternative Semantics* Daniel Büring University of Vienna
    Proceedings of SALT 25: 550–575, 2015 Unalternative semantics* Daniel Büring University of Vienna Abstract Unalternative semantics presents a new way of deriving focus alternatives from metrically annotated syntactic phrase markers, without the mediation of [F]- markers or other diacritics. Using three simple rules, focus alternatives of the familiar type are derived, while certain problems such as over-focusing are automatically avoided. The formalism also allows for a new division of labor between focusing and givenness, which can be used to analyze convertible examples. Finally, applications to non-prosodic focus marking are explored. Keywords: focus, alternative semantics, over-focusing, unalternative semantics, F-marking 1 Introduction This paper explores a new way of calculating focus alternatives, as well as new ways of relating these alternatives to context and interpretation by way of felicity conditions. Work on this started out as an attempt to see if and how a standard Rooth- type of alternative semantics could be implemented without the use of syntactic F-markers or similar features. The present paper, however, goes beyond that: while clearly Roothean in spirit, it generates slightly different sets of focus alternatives, which, it is argued, lend themselves more naturally to the formulation of focus interpretation rules, i.e., rules that govern, in particular, what focussings can be used in what kinds of contexts, and to what pragmatic or semantic effect. Evidently, any set of rules that are to generate focus-related semantic informa- tion without F-markers must have direct access to those parts of intonation that are relevant for it, by assumption, metrical structure and stress; that is, the structure interpreted by these rules cannot be a pure Logical Form in the sense of most Mini- malist Theories and their predecessors.
    [Show full text]