DOCSLIB.ORG

Right Dislocation As a Biclausal Phenomenon Evidence from Romance Languages

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Right Dislocation As a Biclausal Phenomenon Evidence from Romance Languages ADVERTIMENT. Lʼaccés als continguts dʼaquesta tesi queda condicionat a lʼacceptació de les condicions dʼús establertes per la següent llicència Creative Commons: http://cat.creativecommons.org/?page_id=184 ADVERTENCIA. El acceso a los contenidos de esta tesis queda condicionado a la aceptación de las condiciones de uso establecidas por la siguiente licencia Creative Commons: http://es.creativecommons.org/blog/licencias/ WARNING. The access to the contents of this doctoral thesis it is limited to the acceptance of the use conditions set by the following Creative Commons license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/?lang=en Right dislocation as a biclausal phenomenon Evidence from Romance languages Javier Fernández-Sánchez Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Departament de Filologia Espanyola Centre de Lingüística Teòrica PhD Thesis supervised by Prof. Dr. Maria Lluïsa Hernanz Carbó Javier Fernández-Sánchez M. Lluïsa Hernanz Carbó Submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor in Cognitive Science and Language Bellaterra, May 2017 A mis padres, por vuestro constante apoyo y amor incondicional A la memoria de la yaya Aurora, por la devoción que nos teníamos. Acknowledgements There is something quite comforting in writing the acknowledgements of a dissertation: realizing this is the end. The end not only of a piece of research, but of a period of life too. As I write these lines I become aware that despite the hectic and turbulent last months of the writing process, my years as a PhD student have been an amazing experience. And of course, this is due to the fact that the sometimes turtuous road to the end is fortunately not a lonely ride. Maria Lluïsa Hernanz deserves to appear first in the acknowledgements without any sort of doubt. I want to thank her for constantly challenging me, for sharing with me her vast knowledge, for always reminding me of "the bigger picture", for her endless generosity and, above all, for supporting me and believing in me. If I could travel back in time I would choose the Centre de Lingüística Teòrica again for my PhD. It is an honour for me to have been part of this intellectually stimulating and very friendly environment. I want to thank all its members, in particular Gemma Rigau, Carme Picallo, Anna Bartra, Jaume Mateu, Cristina Real, Eulàlia Bonet, M. Teresa Espinal, Anna Gavarró, Joan Mascaró, Ángel Gallego, Josep M. Brucart and Xavier Villalba. I thank Anna Gavarró, Montse Capdevila, Carme Picallo, Mireia Llinàs and Anna Bartra for having instilled in me their passion for linguistics and syntax as an undergraduate student and Josep Maria Brucart and Xavier Vil- lalba for keeping an eye on my progress as a PhD student and having guided me, supported me and contributed to make this thesis way better. Finally, Ángel Gallego deserves special thanks among the CLT people. He is an end- less source of knowledge, and I feel deeply honoured by all the support, trust, i ii help and generosity he has granted me throughout these years. I found true friendship among my fellow students at the CLT. For many years of laughs, tears, drinks, trips, love, weddings and children, I thank Yurena Gutiérrez, Elías Gallardo, Isabel Castro (¡alter higo!), Carlos Rubio, Adriana Fasanella, Ekaterina Chernova, Eduard Artés, Lucía Medea, Teresa Blasco and Marina Roman. Further, I would like to thank the younger gen- erations of PhD students at the CLT for creating such a great and fun atmo- sphere: Pablo Rico, Alba Cerrudo, Ares Llop, Anna Paradís, Isabel Crespí, M. Pilar Colomina, Qiuyue Zhong, Eloi Puig, Sílvia Serret, Marta Khouja. Mireia Llinàs deserves special thanks. She was the person who intro- duced me into linguistics back when I was in highschool and for that I will eternally be grateful to her. She has been caring, supportive and helpful since the very first day we met. Along the years in the academia I have met (many) people who have made me a better linguist, some who have helped me be- come a better person and some other who have contributed to both. Mireia clearly belongs in the latter group. My master year at University College London had an undenying im- pact on me. I was very fortunate to have thought-provoking and inspir- ing professors and lecturers there, especially Ad Neeleman, Klaus Abels and Matthew Reeve. UCL is a thrilling place to do linguistics, and I am happy to have shared my master experience with Zoë Belk, Garret Giffin, Georg Höhn, Kristina Starikova and Ezekiel Panitz. Special thanks from my experience at UCL are of course due to Vieri Samek-Lodovici for having accepted to supervise my MRes thesis, and for having generously shared all his immense knowledge about syntax, infor- mation structure and right dislocations with me. Every single correction and comment he made me in my master thesis drafts helped me become a better linguist. I would like to thank Mark de Vries, for having accepted me as a visiting student at the University of Groningen and for always being available to meet and discuss parts of this dissertation. The Department of Linguistics there is such a cool place, and I am happy to have discussed about linguistics, as well as shared laughs and drinks, with Jan-Wouter Zwart, Craig Sailor, Marlies Kluck, Pavel Rudnev, Charlotte Lindenbergh, Bernat Bardagil, and iii especially James Griffiths and Güliz Güneş. I am thankful to Ángel Gallego, Dennis Ott, Aritz Irurtzun, Josep M. Brucart and Francesc Roca for having accepted to be part of the defense committee. I am highly indebted in particular to Dennis for commenting parts of this dissertation with me. This thesis is undoubtedly better because of his advice, wisdom and criticism. I am happy to have met great people at conferences and courses around the globe: Antonio Fábregas, Ángel Jiménez-Fernández, Julio Villa-García, Ivan Ortega-Santos, Roberta d’Alessandro, Vidal Valmala, Jordi Fortuny, Is- abel Oltra, Alfredo García-Pardo, Andy Murphy, Aaron Doliana, Patrick El- liot, David Erschler, Tanya Philippova, Alejo Alcaraz, Juan Romeu, Melania Masià, Irene Tirado, Jenny Tan, Jan Casalicchio, Hana Gruet-Skrabalova and many more. My friends outside the academic world also deserve some words. I want to thank Mónica for all our years of deep and honest friendship and un- derstanding. And for the red velvets, of course. Thank you to my becudos friends, especially Sara, Rocío and Duna. Even though the distance and my dissertation have kept as somewhat apart, I swear to you I bear all the cro- quetas moments we have shared deep in my heart. Thanks, and ¡un saludo! to my favourite roadtrip friends: Andrea, Aida, Raúl, Nuria and Guillem. Finally, I thank my family, and especially my father, my mother, my sis- ter and la tata, for all the love and support they have given me. My mother is the most generous person I know in this planet and I would need another life to thank her for all she has done (and continues to do) for me. I also thank Basti, my favourite photographer, the best teacher of Polish I could ever imagine (and the most patient one, especially for every time I came say- ing mam małe pytanie), and the person who I decided to share my life with. Bellaterra, May 2017 Javier Fernández-Sánchez iv The completion of this thesis has been economically supported by the fol- lowing projects: • FFI2011-29440-C03 "Rasgos y periferias: variación en la arquitectura de las categorías funcionales". PI: Dr. Maria Lluïsa Hernanz. • FFI2014-56968-C4-2-P "La variación en la interfaz sintaxis-discurso". PI: Dr. Ángel J. Gallego, Dr. Maria Lluïsa Hernanz. • 2014SGR 1013 "Lingüística Teòrica". PI: Dr. Gemma Rigau. Contents 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Word order and Information-Structure . 1 1.2 Outlineofthedissertation . 8 2 Monoclausal analyses 15 2.1 Introduction.......................... 15 2.1.1 The loci of analytical disagreement . 15 2.1.2 Organization of this chapter . 18 2.2 RD in situ:Kayne’sLCA.................... 19 2.2.1 Right dislocation as LF movement . 20 2.2.2 Problems ....................... 22 2.3 Peripheralapproaches. 27 2.3.1 Two analyses . 27 2.3.2 Problems for base-generation approaches . 32 2.3.3 Problems for movement approaches . 35 2.3.3.1 The right roof constraint (RRC) . 36 2.3.3.2 Remnant movement . 38 2.3.4 Summary ....................... 41 2.4 Middlefieldapproaches. 42 2.4.1 The low periphery of the clause . 42 2.4.1.1 Asymmetry 1: Extraction . 44 2.4.1.2 Asymmetry 2: ECP effects in French . 46 2.4.1.3 Asymmetry 3: Aux-to-Comp in Italian . 48 2.4.1.4 Asymmetry 4: Obviation effects . 50 v vi Contents 2.4.1.5 Asymmetry 5: Reconstruction and Prin- cipleC................... 54 2.4.1.6 Asymmetry 6: variable binding . 58 2.4.1.7 Asymmetry 7: NPI licensing . 60 2.4.2 Problems for clause-internal approaches . 62 2.4.2.1 All-focus contexts . 62 2.4.2.2 The (lack of) Right Roof Constraint . 63 2.4.3 Summary ....................... 64 2.5 RDoutsidetheclause . .. 65 2.5.1 Marginalization vs Right dislocation . 65 2.5.2 A problem: C-command relations . 67 2.5.3 My proposal . 69 3 A tale of two clauses 71 3.1 Introduction.......................... 71 3.2 A type of clausal ellipsis . 73 3.2.1 δ asafragment .................... 73 3.2.2 Specifying coordination . 79 3.3 Deriving the properties . 81 3.3.1 Clause internal properties . 81 3.3.2 Clause external properties . 85 3.4 Against derivational theories to the κ-δ link . 86 3.4.1 RD as a doubling phenomenon . 87 3.4.2 Right dislocation isn’t agreement .
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Contrasting Contrastive Left-Dislocation Explications Marcel Den Dikken Bala´Zs Sura´Nyi
    Contrasting Contrastive Left-Dislocation Explications Marcel den Dikken Bala´zs Sura´nyi Of the three logically possible approaches to contrastive left-disloca- tion (CLD) (base-generation cum deep anaphora; movement cum sur- face anaphora; elliptical clausal juxtaposition cum resumption), two are represented prominently in the recent literature. Ott’s (2014) ac- count treats CLD uniformly in terms of clausal juxtaposition, the first clause being stripped down to its contrastive topic via an ellipsis opera- tion said to be akin to sluicing. He argues that this analysis is superior to Grohmann’s (2003) approach, featuring movement within a single prolific domain and late spell-out of a resumptive element. Using data mainly from Hungarian and Dutch, we reveal problems for Ott’s biclausal account that undermine its apparent conceptual appeal and compromise its descriptive accuracy. We show that the ellipsis oper- ation required is sui generis, that the approach fails to assimilate the crosslinguistic variation attested in the availability of multiple CLD to known cases of parametric variation in the left periphery, and that it undergenerates in several empirical domains, including P-stranding and ‘‘floated’’ arguments. Grohmann’s movement-cum- surface-anaphora analysis as it stands also cannot handle all these data, but it can be fixed to fit the facts. For Ott’s analysis, no patches seem available. Some further empirical properties of CLD appear underiva- ble from either of these approaches. For these, the base-generation- cum-deep-anaphora analysis can be considered. Keywords: contrastive left-dislocation, topicalization, right-disloca- tion, resumption, deep vs. surface anaphora, ellipsis, P-stranding, mor- phological connectivity, Dutch, Hungarian 1 Contrastive Left-Dislocation within the Landscape of Left-Dislocation Phenomena 1.1 The Empirical Landscape Contrastive left-dislocation (henceforth CLD1) is a member of a family of left-dislocation phenom- ena that also includes ‘‘ordinary’’ topicalization (TOP) and hanging-topic left-dislocation (HTLD).
    [Show full text]
  • Defining Left-Dislocation
    chapter 2 Defining Left-Dislocation 2.1 Syntactic and Pragmatic Aspects of Left-Dislocation in Latin In this section, I present the syntactic definition for left-dislocation in Latin. This is followed by an exposition of the pragmatic framework that will be used in the analysis of this book. I then take a closer look on Latin relative clause syntax and its implications for Latin left-dislocation in section 2.2. Left-dislocation is a sentence structure in which a referential constituent that could function as an argument or adjunct within the predicate-argument structure of the clause occurs outside the left-peripheral boundaries of the clause containing the predicate. This dislocated constituent is prototypically followed by a grammatically complete clause, in which a co-referential pro- nominal element typically occurs.This pronominal element represents the role of the referent of the dislocated phrase as an argument or adjunct of the pred- icate (Lambrecht 1994: 182; Lambrecht 2001: 1050; Westbury 2014: 98).1 The following four attributes have been used to define prototypical left- dislocation (Lambrecht 2001:1050, modified in Westbury 2014: 101):2 1. The extra-clausal position of a constituent preceding the matrix clause. 2. A possible canonical intra-clausal position for the dislocated constituent within the matrix clause. 3. Anaphoric co-indexation between the dislocated constituent and an overt pronoun within the matrix clause. 4. A separate intonation contour for the dislocated constituent. A Latin example of a prototypical left-dislocation is (1): (1) Epidamniensis ill’ quem dudum dixeram geminum illum puerum qui surrupuit alterum, ei liberorum nisi diuitiae nil erat Plaut.
    [Show full text]
  • Some New Observations on the Cartography of Topic and Focus
    SOME NEW OBSERVATIONS ON THE CARTOGRAPHY OF TOPIC AND FOCUS Anna Cardinaletti Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia Abstract: The goal of this paper is to discuss the cartography of Topic and Focus in Italian left periphery, to show that Topics can occur on either side of Focus, as in Rizzi’s (1997) original proposal. The data provided by Benincà and Poletto (2004) to argue against this possibility are shown to raise both empirical and theoretical questions. Additional evidence is provided to support the view that Foci can be followed by Familiar Topics, as in Frascarelli and Hinterhölzl’s (2007) typology of Topics. The discourse contribution of left- and right-dislocated Familiar Topics is also discussed. Keywords: Cartography, Left Periphery, Focus, Familiar Topics, Right Dislocation 1. Introduction1 In the cartographic approach to the left periphery of the clause, the relative order of the Topic and Focus projections in Italian is debated. While Rizzi (1997) suggested that Topics can freely occur in the left periphery and, in particular, that they appear both before and after Foci, Benincà and Poletto (2004) suggested that no free occurrence of Topics is possible and that the order is fixed: Topics always precede Foci. When a Topic appears to follow a Focus, it should be analysed as a Focus itself, and although it is not intonationally marked, it enters a Focus Field together with the (intonationally) focused constituent. In this paper, I put together two apparently unrelated observations by Rizzi (2001) and Benincà and Poletto (2004) to show that Rizzi (1997) was correct in proposing that topicalised elements can both precede and follow focused elements.
    [Show full text]
  • Left Dislocation in Hungarian
    Left Dislocation in Hungarian Peter´ Szucs˝ University of Debrecen Proceedings of the LFG’19 Conference Australian National University Miriam Butt, Tracy Holloway King, Ida Toivonen (Editors) 2019 CSLI Publications pages 293–313 http://csli-publications.stanford.edu/LFG/2019 Keywords: left dislocation, left peripheral constructions, syntactic integration, Hun- garian Szucs,˝ Peter.´ 2019. Left Dislocation in Hungarian. In Butt, Miriam, King, Tracy Holloway, & Toivonen, Ida (Eds.), Proceedings of the LFG’19 Conference, Aus- tralian National University, 293–313. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications. Abstract This paper investigates left dislocation constructions in Hungarian (whereby some discourse-prominent entity is placed at the left periphery of the clause, with a subsequent co-referential pronoun). Two subtypes are distinguished: a) “topic left dislocation”, which is a syntactically integrated construction, sharing properties with Germanic-type left dislocation and clitic left dislocation in certain Romance languages; b) “free left dislocation”, which is a loosely integrated structure, similar to various hanging topic left dislocations. The paper explores the structures’ morphosyntactic and semantic properties, how an LFG-theoretic account of them can be formulated as well as the cross- linguistic implications of Hungarian left dislocation. 1. Introduction Left dislocation (LD)1 is a common label for constructions whereby some discourse-prominent entity is placed at the left periphery of the clause, with a subsequent co-referential pronoun. The term itself originates in Ross (1967), who used it for sentences like (1). As usual in the literature, “left dislocation” will be used as a descriptive label here, without commitment to a particular analysis. Furthermore, I will use the label “host” for the prominent entity itself (John in (1)) and “associated pronoun” or “pronominal associate” for the co- referential pronoun.
    [Show full text]
  • Emily A. Hanink* Postsyntactic Inflection of the Degree Phrase in German Keywords. Concord; German; Inflection; Degree Phrases;
    2018. Proc Ling Soc Amer 3. 23:1-15. https://doi.org/10.3765/plsa.v3i1.4308 Postsyntactic inflection of the degree phrase in German Emily A. Hanink* Abstract. Recent treatments of concord contend that adjectival inflection occurs postsyntactically through the insertion of Agr nodes onto individual, concord-bearing heads after Spell-Out (i.a. Norris 2012, 2014). I examine these claims through the lens of degree modification in German, which demonstrates that current formulations of this approach are untenable. I argue however that a postsyntactic treatment of (ad- jectival) concord can in fact be maintained if Agr node insertion occurs phrasally at DegP, and not at adjectival heads. This account explains i) an observed difference be- tween the inflection of analytic vs. synthetic degree expressions in both simple and complex modifiers, and ii) a puzzle involving across-the-board inflection of coordi- nated adjectives, which I argue to involve pointwise attachment of Agr. Keywords . concord; German; inflection; degree phrases; degree modification 1. Introduction . Recent accounts of concord advance the view that inflection in the nominal domain is re-alized in the postsyntactic component of the grammar (building on i.a. Halle and Marantz 1993; Bobaljik 2008). In particular, Norris (2012, 2014) contends that DP-internal agreement is real-ized by the insertion of Agr nodes – a type of dissociated mopheme (Noyer 1997) – onto individ-ual, concord-bearing heads after Spell-Out (see also i.a. Baier 2015; Sigurðsson 2015; Deal 2016; Pietraszko 2017). A consequence of this proposal is that inflection is realized on heads only, and that if a head can realize inflection, it necessarily does so.
    [Show full text]
  • Left-Dislocations and Their Contribution to Information Structure Steven E
    Left-Dislocations and their Contribution to Information Structure Steven E. Runge Scholar-in-Residence, Logos Bible Software Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics Section SBL Annual Meeting, Nov. 22-25, 2008 1. Traditional explanations Left-dislocations have been referred to by NT grammarians using various terms, among them cleft constructions,1 hanging nominatives,2 pendent nominatives,3 casus pendens,4 or independent nominatives.5 There have also been various claims made about their function: Wallace: either emotion or emphasis6 Young: emphasis7 Porter: highlighting8 or a topic shifter9 2. Linguistic Explanation There is a significant cognitive constraint on the introduction of new entities to the discourse, posited by Wallace Chafe.10 He claims that there is a cross-linguistic preference to only introduce “one new concept at a time”, which has been confirmed by several other linguists.11 Example 1 Presentational clause There is a guy from the office. He asked me… Topic/Comment clause I know a guy from the office. He asked me… 1 Richard A. Young, Intermediate New Testament Greek: A Linguistic and Exegetical Approach (Nashville, Tenn.: Broadman & Holman, 1994), 15. 2 Ibid., 15. 3 Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics - Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament (Zondervan Publishing House, 1999), 52. 4 Friedrich Blass et al., A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), 244. 5 Stanley E. Porter, Idioms of the Greek New Testament (Sheffield: JSOT, 1999), 85. 6 Wallace, Greek Grammar, 52. 7 “A cleft construction is a focusing device that highlights information at the beginning of a sentence that is repeated later in the same sentence.” Young, Intermediate New Testament Greek, 15.
    [Show full text]
  • Presupposition & Root Transforms in Adjunct Clauses
    LSA SATURDAY 4.JANUARY ’03 Presupposition & Root Transforms in Adjunct Clauses Richard K. Larson (Stony Brook Univ.) and Miyuki Sawada (Ming Chuan Univ.) Hopper & Thompson (1973: hereafter H&T) observe an interesting syntax-pragmatics correlation in adverbial clauses. As shown in (1a), adverbial , before- and after- clauses resist root transformations like Left Dislocation; correspondingly their content is presupposed (1b). By contrast, because-clauses like those in (1b) allow Left Dislocation (2a), and their content is asserted not presupposed: (1) a. *Mildred bought a Mercedes [ when/before/after her son, he purchased stock in Xerox ]. b. Mildred bought a Mercedes [ when/before/after her son purchased stock in Xerox ]. Presupposes: Mildred’s son purchased stock in Xerox. (2) a. Mildred drives a Mercedes [ because her son, he owns stock in Xerox ]. b. Mildred drives a Mercedes [ because her son owns stock in Xerox ]. Asserts: Mildred’s son purchased stock in Xerox. The robustness of the correlation between root transform availability and presupposition is shown by (3). Here presupposition is forced on the because-clause by association with negation; notice now that Left Dislocation is blocked. (3) *Sam is going out for dinner [ not because his wife, she can’t cook ], but because he wants to discuss Q-magic with Stella. (= H&T’s (245)) Presupposes: Sam’s wife can’t cook Hopper & Thompson’s observations raise some simple, but intriguing questions: • Why should a semantic/pragmatic phenomenon like presupposition be correlated with the possibility
    [Show full text]
  • Subject Doubling in Spoken French by Eleonore Blanquart a Thesis
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by ASU Digital Repository Subject Doubling in Spoken French by Eleonore Blanquart A Thesis Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts Approved April 2012 by the Graduate Supervisory Committee: Helene Ossipov, Co-Chair Mariana Bahtchevanova, Co-Chair Elly Van Gelderen ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY May 2012 ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to explore the syntax and pragmatics of subject doubling in spoken French. Many prescriptivists have considered it a redundant and ungrammatical form, but over the years, it has gained more interest from syntacticians. It is widely acknowledged that dislocations involve topics, but the position of these structures is very disputed. Some linguists believe in base generation while others state there is movement. The status of subject clitics also comes into play and their role as arguments or agreement markers is crucial to understanding the issues at stake with a topic analysis. It is often argued that the clitics are undergoing a linguistic cycle whereby they lose their function of argument, and need to be reinforced by disjunct pronouns. In this study, I examined which analyses support my data and I attempted to determine what structures tend to be most dislocated by looking at the environment of the discourse in a corpus of spoken French. i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am greatly indebted to the patience, knowledge and support of Dr. Elly Van Gelderen and Dr. Mariana Bahtchevanova throughout this experience. I am also very grateful to Dr. Helene Ossipov.
    [Show full text]
  • Clitic Left Dislocation in Absence of Clitics: a Study in Trilingual Acquisition
    University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics Volume 18 Issue 1 Proceedings of the 35th Annual Penn Article 6 Linguistics Colloquium 5-2012 Clitic Left Dislocation in Absence of Clitics: a Study in Trilingual Acquisition Megan Devlin University of Ulster Raffaella Folli University of Ulster Alison Henry University of Ulster Christina Sevdali University of Ulster Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl Recommended Citation Devlin, Megan; Folli, Raffaella; Henry, Alison; and Sevdali, Christina (2012) "Clitic Left Dislocation in Absence of Clitics: a Study in Trilingual Acquisition," University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: Vol. 18 : Iss. 1 , Article 6. Available at: https://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/vol18/iss1/6 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/vol18/iss1/6 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Clitic Left Dislocation in Absence of Clitics: a Study in Trilingual Acquisition Abstract This paper discusses an unusual structure in the English of a trilingual child acquiring English, Italian and Scottish Gaelic. The child uses a structure where it appears that an object DP is “dou-bled” by a pronoun for an extended period of time (10 months): (1) He don't like it dinosaur (2) He forget it the teddy In Italian, sentences that contain old information take two possible structures: they might contain a left dislocated topic resumed by a clitic: (3) Il libro, l'ho letto the book it-have.1SG read 'The book, I have read it' These are called Clitic Left Dislocation (CLLD) structures in the literature. Alternatively, the topic (the given information) can be introduced as a right dislocated element, again linked to a clitic: (4) L'ho letto, il libro It-have.1SG read the book ‘I have read it, the book’ These are called clitic right dislocation (CLRD) structures.
    [Show full text]
  • Parameters (Material Taken from Chapter 8 ‘Minimum of English Grammar’, Ms
    A Note on Parameters (Material taken from Chapter 8 ‘Minimum of English Grammar’, ms. 2008, Galasso) Generativist vs. Constructivist: A Converging Theory In brief, Constructivists’ accounts assume that grammatical knowledge initially consists of ‘constructions’ derived at by high frequency data-driven forms in the environment. While there may be internal mechanism which undergird such constructions, according to the constructivist view, the processes behind language acquisition are essential environmentally driven. The general idea is that language is built-up ‘piece-meal’ insofar as constructions (i.e., sound-to-meaning links) are based on similar phonological-to-semantic distributions found in the language input. It is their general claim that such a correlation between sound and meaning is strictly associative, and that it holds between the quantity and quality of the exemplars obtained of particular constructions with the constructions of more general schemes that underlie language use. The constructivist model therefore assumes a ‘bottom-up’ cognitive scaffolding of language learning (somewhat akin to what Piaget had earlier claimed regarding a cognitive underpinning to language development. See also Chomsky vs. Piaget: 1975). Generativists’ accounts, on the other hand, differ with constructivist models in one very simple respect—their models credit the speaker with having tacit syntactic knowledge, unrelated in any way to frequency or data-driven constructivist claims which define language as being tethered to cognition. Generativists in this sense draw upon (innate) parameter-setting mechanisms, as opposed to (environmental) data-driven mechanisms, thus continuing the debate on ‘nature vs. nurture’ with respect to language (in general) and to language acquisition (in particular).
    [Show full text]
  • Verbal Inflection at a Distance
    VERBAL INFLECTION AT A DISTANCE LINE MIKKELSEN University of California, Berkeley This paper examines inflection on fronted verbs in Danish. In both VP topicalization and VP left dislocation with resumption, the inflection on the fronted verb is governed by an in situ auxiliary, suggesting that the fronted VP originates as a sister to that auxiliary. This analysis is straightforward for VP topicalization, but fails for VP left dislocation. Yet, the two show identical patterns of inflection, down to systematic covariance in case of interspeaker variation. I take this as evidence that the two fronting constructions have the same syntax and only differ in whether the proform that mediates between the auxiliary and the fronted VP is overt or null. That in turn implies that verbal inflection can be governed at a distance, and that some mechanism other than the standard generative ones (affix-hopping, selection, and feature valuing) is involved. 1 Introduction Danish has a verbal system much like the English one in which each auxiliary determines the inflection of the following verbal element.1 In (1a), for instance, the modal må (must) requires the following auxiliary, perfect have (have), to appear in the infinitival form and have requires gemme (hide) to appear in the past participle form.2 Any other forms of have and gemme are ungrammatical in (1a). The relevant inflectional options are given in (2) below. (1) a. De må hav-e gem-t den godt. they must.PRES have-INF hide-PPC it well They must have hidden it well. b. Han kan vær-e blev-et stoppet i tolden.
    [Show full text]
  • I the PRO-DROP PARAMETER in SECOND LANGUAGE
    THE PRO-DROP PARAMETER IN SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION REVISITED: A DEVELOPMENTAL ACCOUNT Larry L. LaFond University of South Carolina i Acknowledgments A great many people have contributed to this dissertation. I first seriously contemplated pursuing a doctoral degree in linguistics as a result of the extraordinary faculty of Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. Janet Bing, John Broderick, Carole Hines, and Charles Ruhl all lent so much support and encouragement to me, not only then, but also throughout the years that followed, that I found the courage to change careers and enter into the world of academia. My sincerest thanks go to each of them. My years at the University of South Carolina brought me into contact with some outstanding scholars, mentors, and colleagues who have enriched my life in numerous ways. Of them, Rachel Hayes and Rakesh Bhatt deserve special mention. Rachel and Rakesh first sparked my interest in Optimality Theory and served as coauthors of two papers that spawned the larger concept pursued in this dissertation. Without their initial ideas and continued collaboration, this dissertation would have never been written. Thanks to Rakesh for remaining a member of my committee after joining the faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Special thanks also go to Barbara Hancin-Bhatt, whose teaching first opened up to me the field of second language acquisition, and whose frank suggestions and astute guidance went into creation of this dissertation's initial proposal. Barbara's continued friendship and mentoring have been important for my academic and professional growth. Laura Ahearn, Anne Bezuidenhout, and Ramona Lagos all graciously agreed to be members of this committee.
    [Show full text]