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Anaphora, Inversion, and Focus University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations Dissertations and Theses November 2016 Anaphora, Inversion, and Focus Nicholas J. LaCara University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2 Part of the Syntax Commons Recommended Citation LaCara, Nicholas J., "Anaphora, Inversion, and Focus" (2016). Doctoral Dissertations. 746. https://doi.org/10.7275/9060123.0 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/746 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]. ANAPHORA, INVERSION, AND FOCUS A Dissertation Presented by NICHOLAS LACARA 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 2016 Linguistics c Copyright by Nicholas LaCara 2016 All Rights Reserved ANAPHORA, INVERSION, AND FOCUS A Dissertation Presented by NICHOLAS LACARA Approved as to style and content by: Kyle Johnson, Chair Luiz Amaral, Member Jeremy Hartman, Member Ellen Woolford, Member John Kingston, Department Chair Linguistics DEDICATION Dedicated to the memory of my grandparents, Charles Thomas Cooper (1936–2011) and Hazel Marie Stanley (1936–2016). Cuando quieras hablar, quédate mudo. Jorge Luis Borges ACKNOWLEDGMENTS There is probably no right way to write a dissertation, but I’m pretty sure I did it the wrong way. I can’t exactly recommend changing your topic less than a year before you have to defend, especially after committing no small amount of time and energy to the previous topic. I can’t say I treated my committee very well, either. They no doubt spent a good deal of time wondering where I was and what I was doing, as the emails I sent them were far and few between. Bear this in mind when I say that my committee has exercised extreme patience and forbearance with me and my creative process, and that I am deeply indebted to them for their guidance and wisdom and for their support. Jeremy Hartman probably had it the worst. He was the last member of the committee to be added and, regrettably, the member with whom I communicated almost the least, and yet it is because of him that this dissertation looks so completely different from prospectus that came before it. It is almost completely to his credit that Chapter 2 bears no resemblance to the analysis that I had intended to simply revise, and the rest of the dissertation is an attempt at explaining how this analysis works. Without Jeremy’s insightful questions, his attention to detail, and his commitment to finding better answers, this would never have happened. I am indebted to Luiz Amaral for agreeing to be on my committee despite his barely knowing me. We did not get to meet as much as I would have liked, and I deeply regret that. His comments on the discussion of Spanish and Portuguese in Chapter 2, especially, improved that argument and made it a lot stronger than it otherwise was, and I appreciate the time he took to go over the work I present below. Ellen Woolford has managed to be on every one of my committees since I came to UMass, in spite of her assertion, the day I met her, that I work on “Kyle things.” This vi was no accident on my part. Ellen has an extraordinary gift for explaining complicated ideas succinctly and clearly, and it comes with the equally unusual capacity for teaching people how to do so. Ellen’s holding me to a high standard of clarity and detail has no doubt cost me whole nights of sleep over the years, but the result has always been a marked improvement in my writing and argumentation. Finally, I cannot explain how valuable my relationship with Kyle Johnson has been. The conversation I had with Kyle after I was admitted was instrumental in my decision to come to UMass. Although we do not have official advisors in our department, Kyle has fulfilled this role for me since I arrived in Massachusetts. He has always treated me as a peer and as somebody to be learned from. During my time at UMass, Kyle has been a pillar of support not just for me but for all of the graduate students in the department. His mark on this dissertation is unmistakable – I would never have attempted to write anything like Chapter 3 except at his behest, and he spent countless meeting agonizing with me about the best way to approach it. His commitment to improving this work extended well past the defense, even to the point that he agreed to meet me in Northampton several times so that I would not have to make the journey to Amherst. I also owe a great deal of gratitude to the many other faculty members with whom I’ve worked at UMass: Rajesh Bhatt, Seth Cable, Brian Dillon, Tom Ernst, Lyn Frasier, Lisa Green, Alice Harris, Angelika Kratzer, John McCarthy, Magda Oiry, Barbara Partee, Joe Pater, Tom Roeper, Peggy Speas, and Kristine Yu. Before I came to UMass, I got my start at the Universityof California, Santa Cruz. Jorge Hankamer introduced me to both syntax and to ellipsis, and I sometimes think I learned more from Jorge than anybody else I have ever met. I will always seek to emulate his critical eye, his appreciation of good clear data, and his wry sense of humor. Judith Aissen, too, taught me a great deal about syntax, and oversaw some of the first independent work on ellipsis that I ever did, way back when I was an undergraduate. (That work, incidentally, was about the same sort of parenthetical relative discussed by Potts (2002a), a construction vii closely related to the one I analyze in this dissertation!) And, of course, I will always be indebted to Jim McCloskey for basically forcing me to take an independent study on sluicing with him in the Spring of 2010 after I had defended my masters thesis. Jim was on my MA committee, and working with him exposed me to a great breadth of theoretical approaches to ellipsis that I would have spent years trying to understand on my own. I am also indebted to all the faculty at UCSC while I was there, including Pranav Anand, Adrian Brasoveanu, Sandy Chung, Donka Farkas, Junko Itô, Grant McGuire, Armin Mester, and Jay Padgett. I have had amazing support from countless friends over my time in graduate school. While at UMass, I’ve made some of the best friends I could ask for. Mike Clauss is a man after my own heart. Few are those who are willing to go to Worcester to see a death metal show, but Mike would go with me. His puns, though frequently deployed, have been a constant and welcome source of relief, and it is to his credit that I now spend far too many nights singing karaoke. I owe Jyoti Iyer, my long-suffering officemate, a lot of gratitude for putting up with my chronic state of stress and disorganization over the last couple years. We tend to fight like a couple of old people who can’t quite hear each other, but despite this Jo has gone out her way to support me and to check in and make sure I’m doing OK. Jon Ander Mendia has always had my back. He’s always happy to talk to me about my bike, to indulge my weird questions about Spanish, and to just goof around when things are otherwise boring. I can always count on him to grab a beer when I need one, and he has always been just a really solid dude. Fernanda Mendes, despite being from UNICAMP, was as much a part of my UMass experience as anybody else was. She is one of the friendliest and most outgoing people I’ve ever met, even if forces me to be friends in Portuguese. It was because of Fernanda that I ended up becoming such good friends with Megan Somerday, who has become one of the few people I can talk to about anything. Megan kindled my fledgling love of sour beers, and it is to her credit, more than anybody else, that I ever went outside and did anything fun in the last four years. (We’ll always have Las Vegas!) viii My cohort at UMass was also wonderful. Tracy Conner jokes that I taught her syntax, but, having both chosen to write dissertations on ellipsis at the same time, I feel like I’ve certainly ended up learning just as much from her. Lena Fainleib has been gone for a few years now, but I used to pride myself on getting her to laugh at something dumb, and I miss her dry humor daily. Alex Nazarov (my old house mate!) is one of the brightest people I’ve ever met, and his unique insights and positive look at the world often brightened my day. Last, but not least, is Yangsook Park. I have always enjoyed hanging out with Yangsook, and her amazing mix of subtle wit and overt snark is endlessly entertaining. And, of course, there are just so many others at UMass to thank for their support and friendship: Caroline Andrews, Joaquín Atria, Elizabeth Bogal-Allbritten, Michael Becker, Maria Biezma, Thuy Bui, Chris Davis, Minta Elsman, Ilaria Frana, Alex Goebel, Christo- pher Hammerly, Clint Hartzell, Ivy Hauser, Lisa Hofmann, Hsin-Lun Huang, Coral Hughto, Rodica Ivan, Stefan Keine, Wendell Kimper, Leland Kusmer, Claire Moore-Cantwell, Andy Murphy, Jason Overfelt, Deniz Özyıldız, Jérémy Pasquereau, Presley Pizzo, Ethan Poole, Amanda Rysling, Georgia Simon, Walter Sistrunk, Shayne Slogget, Brian Smith, Robert Staubs, Martin Walkow, and Andrew Weir.
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