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Agreement As a Fallible Operation by Omer Preminger Agreement as a Fallible Operation by Omer Preminger B.Sc., Computer Science and Linguistics, Tel-Aviv University, M.A., Linguistics, Tel-Aviv University, Submitted to the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology September © Omer Preminger. All rights reserved. The author hereby grants to MIT permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of this thesis document in whole or in part in any medium now known or hereafter created. SignatureofAuthor .................................. ........................................... Omer Preminger Department of Linguistics and Philosophy Certifiedby ......................................... ............................................ Sabine Iatridou Professor of Linguistics Thesis Supervisor Certifiedby ......................................... ............................................ David Pesetsky Professor of Linguistics Thesis Supervisor Certifiedby ......................................... ............................................ Norvin Richards Professor of Linguistics Thesis Supervisor Acceptedby ......................................... ........................................... David Pesetsky Professor of Linguistics Chair of the Linguistics Program Agreement as a Fallible Operation by Omer Preminger Submitted to the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy on July th, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics Abstract In this thesis, I argue that the obligatory nature of agreement in ϕ-features (henceforth, ϕ-agreement) cannot be captured by appealing to “derivational time-bombs”—elements of the initial representation that cannot be part of a well-formed, end-of-the-derivation structure, and which are eliminated by the application of ϕ-agreement itself (as in Chomsky’s , uninterpretable features approach, for example). Instead, it requires recourse to an operation— one whose invocation is obligatory, but whose successful culmination is not enforced by the grammar. I then discuss the implications of this conclusion for the analysis of defective intervention by dative nominals. These results lead to a novel view of the interaction of ϕ-agreement with case, furnishing an argument that both ϕ-agreement and so-called “morphological case” must be computed within the syntactic component of the grammar. Finally, I survey other domains where the same operations-based logic proves well-suited to model the empirical state of affairs; these include Object Shift, the Definiteness Effect, and long-distance wh-movement. The thesis examines data from the Kichean languages of the Mayan family (primarily from Kaqchikel), as well as from Basque, Icelandic, and French. Thesis Supervisor: Sabine Iatridou Title: Professor of Linguistics Thesis Supervisor: David Pesetsky Title: Professor of Linguistics Thesis Supervisor: Norvin Richards Title: Professor of Linguistics Contents Abbreviations Overview Failed agreement, and why we should be interested in it . What we mean when we say “agreement” . . Agreement and the logic of obligatoriness . .. The Obligatory Operations model ....................... .. The Derivational Time-Bombs model ..................... .. The Violable Constraints model ........................ . Failed agreement ..................................... Omnivorous agreement in the Kichean Agent-Focus construction . An introduction to omnivorous agreement: Number in Georgian . . Person agreement in the Kichean Agent-Focus construction . ...... .. Some basic facts about Kichean, and about Agent-Focus in Kichean . .. Relativizedprobing .............................. .. Some alternative approaches . . Number inKicheanAgent-Focus. .. Thebasicpattern................................ .. The morpho-phonology of Kichean agreement morphology . . A derivational account of absolutive agreement in Kichean . .. The PCC, and Béjar and Rezac’s ()accountofit . .. On the featural coarseness of clitic-doubling . .. Applying Béjar and Rezac’s ()accounttoKichean . .. Absolutive agreement in regular transitives and intransitives . .. On scales and “salience” hierarchies . .A Appendix: Evidence from Tzotzil for separate person and number ......... Why uninterpretable features (and other derivational time-bombs) won’t work . Failed person agreement in Kichean Agent-Focus . . Failed number agreement in Kichean Agent-Focus . . Against selectively-present inducers of agreement . ....... CONTENTS . Taking stock: Obligatory operations and violable constraints . ......... .A Appendix: How did we get here? A historical interlude . Datives, defective intervention, and case-discrimination . The inability of datives to value features on a ϕ-probe ............... . The Dative Paradox: Datives as defective interveners . ..... . Existing treatments of the Dative Paradox . .. The Activity Condition ............................. .. FunctionalShells ................................ .. Case-Discrimination .............................. . Case-discrimination and failed agreement . . Against a violable constraints alternative ....................... . Summary......................................... Where’s ϕ? In syntax. . The argument for morphological case and ϕ-agreement as post-syntactic operations ........................................ . The missing evidence: Non-quirky-subject languages . . Case-competitioninsyntax . .. Case assignment in Sakha (Baker and Vinokurova ) ......... .. Asyntacticcasecalculus. . Summaryandreview.................................. Another case-study in failed agreement: Basque unergatives . The case for the implicit object conjecture ....................... . Simplex unergatives as true intransitives . .... . Summary......................................... Conclusions, Extensions, and Outlook . Thethesis,reviewed .................................. . Extensions: The logic of ϕ-agreement as an exemplar of syntactic computation . .. Object Shift ................................... .. The Definiteness Effect ............................. .. Long-distance wh-movement ......................... . Outlook: What is left for uninterpretable features?.................. References Acknowledgements One of my professors, who shall remain nameless for a brief moment, has always been relentless in reminding me that research papers and presentations should not be written autobiographically: “Your audience doesn’t necessarily care in what order the discoveries were made, especially if it makes the flow of the argument more confusing.” I think the one exception that even this person would endorse is writing one’s thesis acknowledgements. I will therefore begin at what is, as far as my life in linguistics, the beginning. I first learned what generative linguistics is from Tal Siloni at Tel-Aviv University, and my suspicion is that this has more than a little to do with the fact that today, almost years later, I am still in this field. Tali was the person who impressed upon me just how exciting it was that there were things in language that were irreducible to properties of meaning and/or sound; and for the most part, this is what I still find most exciting about linguistics, to this day, and it probably shapes a lot of my choices about what to work on. That has a lot to do with Tali’s personality, and her phenomenal teaching; but perhaps most of all, it has to do with her unrivaled ability to impart an understanding of the “big picture”, even to an audience of hundreds of undergrads who have never heard of generative linguistics before. Despite this crowded beginning, I later had the opportunity to work more closely with Tali, both as a teaching assistant, and as an M.A. advisee, not to mention taking every single advanced class with her that was offered. Though I have told her this in person, it bears repeating: if I can call myself a linguist today, I owe that to her, first and foremost. Tali was not the only professor at TAU who influenced me greatly. In my second semester as an undergrad, I had the privilege of taking a Foundations of Linguistics course taught by Tanya Reinhart. If there was any doubt in my mind, at this point, that linguistics was the coolest thing ever (and there was little of it), this course did away with that doubt. It’s hard to explain, to someone who was not there, how someone can teach in a style that is somehow simultaneously fire-and-brimstone and amusing, but that’s exactly what that course was like. Tanya later co-advised my M.A. thesis, which was situated within an approach to argument- structure that she had created, the Theta System. My third syntax teacher at TAU was Julia Horvath. To this day, there has been no single course in which I learned as much as I did in her Contemporary Linguistics class. The notes that students took in class that semester were circulated among TAU linguistics grad students under the heading, “the syntax bible”. Irena Botwinik was a senior teaching assistant when I got to TAU, but was teaching her own courses by the time I was an M.A. student. Unfailingly encouraging, challenging and insightful as a teacher and linguist, today I have the privilege of calling her a friend. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Finally, those years at TAU would have been much more difficult, and not nearly as fun, without the friendship and support of my fellow grad students and teaching assistants
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