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An Analysis of Pseudoclefts and Specificational Clauses in Head

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An Analysis of Pseudoclefts and Specificational Clauses in Head An Analysis of Pseudoclefts and Specificational Clauses in Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar Dissertation zur Erlangung des philosophischen Doktorgrades an der Philosophischen Fakult¨at der Georg-August-Universit¨at G¨ottingen vorgelegt von Niko Gerbl aus Hamburg G¨ottingen 2009 1. Gutachter/in ........Prof. Dr. G. Webelhuth................................. 2. Gutachter/in ........Prof. Dr. Ursula Klenk.................................. Tag der m¨undlichen Pr¨ufung .....28.08.2008........ Hiermit versichere ich an Eides statt, dass ich die eingereichte Dissertation An Ana- lysis of Pseudoclefts and Specificational Clauses in Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar selbst¨andig und ohne unerlaubte Hilfe verfasst habe. Anderer als der von mir angegebenen Hilfsmittel und Schriften habe ich mich nicht bedient. Alle w¨ortlich oder sinngem¨aß den Schriften anderer Autorinnen oder Autoren entnomme- nen Stellen habe ich kenntlich gemacht. Die Abhandlung ist noch nicht ver¨offentlicht worden und noch nicht Gegenstand eines Promotionsverfahrens gewesen. .................................................................................................. Contents Abstract i Acknowledgment ii 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Mainproposalsofthethesis . 2 1.2 Oncleftconstructions .......................... 2 1.3 Structureofthethesis .......................... 12 2 Theories to build upon 14 2.1 Ataxonomyofcopulastructures . 14 2.1.1 The distinction between specificational and predicational be . 15 2.1.2 Mikkelsen’s analysis of copular structures . 18 2.1.3 AlternativeAnalyses . 27 2.1.4 Summary ............................. 38 2.2 Head-drivenPhraseStructureGrammar . 39 2.2.1 Generalaspects .......................... 39 2.2.2 Typedfeaturestructures . 43 2.2.3 Basicconstraints ......................... 48 2.2.4 Semantics ............................. 55 2.2.5 Context modeling and information packaging . 64 3 Properties of the pseudocleft 73 3.1 Thebasicinventory............................ 73 3.1.1 What we call a pseudocleft is what we call a pseudocleft . 74 0 3.1.2 Thecleftclause .......................... 77 3.1.3 The post-copular constituent . 84 3.2 Predicational or specificational or neither . ..... 89 3.2.1 Truthconditionsandbeyond . 89 3.2.2 Is the predicational/specificational distinction sufficient? . 100 3.3 ConnectivityEffects . .110 3.3.1 Thephenomenon . .110 3.3.2 The semantic approach . 115 3.3.3 The syntactic approach . 118 3.3.4 The question in disguise approach . 121 3.3.5 Summary .............................132 3.4 Theinformationstructuralsetup . .135 3.5 Thereversepseudocleft. .144 3.6 Takingstock................................151 4 Pseudoclefts in HPSG 154 4.1 QDTinHPSG ..............................154 4.1.1 A new be .............................154 4.1.2 Yoo’sconstructions . .158 4.1.3 Solving remaining issues . 163 4.1.4 Recapitulation. .168 4.2 The new approach: free relative clause subjects . 168 4.2.1 The basic inventory of new types . 168 4.2.2 Puttingthecopulaintoaction . .176 4.2.3 The cleft clause in detail . 180 4.2.4 The matrix clause in detail . 191 4.2.5 More on connectivity and other phenomena . 201 4.2.6 Cleft clauses with wh-words as subjects . 212 4.2.7 Summary .............................215 4.3 Other pseudoclefts and specificational constructions . 216 4.3.1 Reverse pseudoclefts . 216 4.3.2 Equative and predicative pseudoclefts . 219 4.3.3 Wh-amalgam clefts . 232 4.3.4 Definite description subjects . 237 4.4 What is missing is opacity effects . 259 4.4.1 TheLRS-solution. .260 4.4.2 Opacity in Ginzburg and Sag (2000) . 265 4.4.3 NoopacityinMRS ........................267 4.4.4 Conclusion.............................271 4.5 Adding information structure, presuppositions, and implicatures . 272 4.5.1 Presuppositions and exhaustivity . 272 4.5.2 Thematicsubjects . .275 5 In Pro- and Retrospect 278 References 288 i Abstract This dissertation is concerned with a class of copular clauses known as pseudo- cleft clauses, with related constructions, and with specificational copular structures in general. The aim is a unified account of these grammatical constructions. Fol- lowing Mikkelsen (2004b), I argue that specificational clauses involve the same core predication structure as predicational clauses. They both combine a functor argu- ment and an argument for that functor, but they differ in how the predicational core is realized syntactically. Predicational copular clauses represent the canonical realization, where the functor’s argument is aligned with the subject position. Spe- cificational clauses align the functor with the subject position. For specificational pseudoclefts this means that we find a clause in subject position which acts as a functor for the post-copular constituent. Surveying properties of pseudoclefts and specificational clauses from the literature, I develop a unified analysis for these con- structions. The analysis is formulated in Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (Pollard and Sag (1994)). It is implemented into the fragment of Ginzburg and Sag (2000), which makes extended use of grammatical constructions (in the sense of Construction Grammar, Kay (1998)) to account for cross-constructional properties efficiently. The analysis’ main features are the following: a predicational free rela- tive clause in subject position of specificational pseudoclefts in which the relative pronoun shares the semantics with the post-copular constituent, a copula that is indifferent to the functor-argument order on its argument structure, and a matrix clause construction that shares the meaning of the cleft clause. With this analysis we can explain why the post-copular constituent in specificational pseudoclefts shows various properties that make it appear a constituent of the cleft clause (so called connectivity effects, Akmajian (1970)). In specificational pseudoclefts as well as in specificational clauses in general, the post-copular constituent is reconstructed in the predicate. ii Acknowledgment After I had spent several years at the university and had gotten my first degree (Staatsexamen I.), I felt very discontent with what I had learned. My thirst for knowledge had not been quenched. I could not imagine spending the rest of my life teaching other people before my own inquisitiveness was further satisfied. Luckily I had been introduced to modern linguistics and I had the opportunity to nurture my interest in this field. I would like to thank the following people (in alphabetical order), who were all part of the development of this work or part of my time at the English Department: Martin Ballmaier for the best coffee breaks. Dirk Buschbom for showing me that we need a new definition of meaning and for being the the best PhD student one could share an office with. Professor Eckardt for her advice and her razor sharp mind (which cut out innumerable pages of my thesis). Hildegard Farke for being the first of my teachers to actually show interest in what I wanted to do. Professor Gardner for stirring up my interest in linguistics. Howard Gregory for the quickest corpus- based feedback ever. Kleanthes K. Grohmann for bringing together two things that I had never expected to see brought together (PIS). Susanne Heyn for the thing with the brackets. Garrett Hubing for all his judgments. Professor Klenk for reviewing this thesis. Peter Nordhoff for showing me that one can do all kinds of things with a PhD, which have nothing to do with what you studied. Carl Pollard for his advice and the best offer anyone ever made me, which I did not accept. Manfred Sailer for more support than a human being could possibly be expected to offer. Roland Sch¨afer for all the help with LATEX and linux. Joachim Tuschinsky for teaching me linguistics and sharing his teaching experience. Heike Walker for our self-organized semantics class. Susanne Wendland for helping organize all kinds of things. Most of all I would like to thank Gert Webelhuth for his willingness to accept half a historian as his PhD student, for all his advice, for all the cake and coffee, for supporting me whenever I asked him to, and for all the things I learned from him, especially those which had nothing to do with linguistics, which I value the most. Finally, I have to thank my parents for financing my studies without ever com- prehending what I was doing and in spite of my unwillingness to explain it to them. Chapter 1 Introduction In this thesis, I examine the pseudocleft1 construction in English and propose an analysis within the framework of Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG). A typical pseudocleft is given in (1a), a related construction (a reverse pseudocleft) is given in (1b), and a specificational clause is given in (1c). (1) a. What Sue was looking for was this cat. b. This is what Sue was looking for. c. The tallest girl on the team is Sue. I argue that the pseudocleft construction as well as its related constructions and specificational clauses in general can only be understood through examining the interaction of syntax, semantics, and information structure. This introductory chapter starts with a summary of the main proposals of the thesis. The subsequent section offers an overview of cleft constructions and shows how pseudoclefts have been related to it-clefts in the literature. The last section summarizes the structure of the thesis and its line of argumentation. 1 I chose this variant of spelling to indicate that this construction is not a (pseudo) variant of the (it-)cleft. 1 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 2 1.1 Main proposals of the thesis I argue in this thesis that the specificational
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