The Syntax and Semantics of Do So Anaphora by Michael John Houser
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
The Syntax and Semantics of Do So Anaphora By Michael John Houser 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 Alice Gaby Professor Andrew Garrett Professor Johanna Nichols Fall 2010 Abstract The Syntax and Semantics of Do So Anaphora by Michael John Houser Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics University of California, Berkeley Professor Line Mikkelsen, Chair Do so anaphora is a fairly widely used in English, but has received relatively little treat- ment in the literature (especially when compared with verb phrase ellipsis). There are, how- ever, two aspects of this anaphor that have gained prominence: i) its use as a test for con- stituency within the verb phrase, and ii) the semantic restriction it places on its antecedent. Though these two properties have been the most prominent, their analyses have not been uncontroversial. In this dissertation, I investigate these properties and give them a more complete analysis. The first part of the dissertation is devoted to a discussion of the the use of do so as a test for constituency in the verb phrase, and the second part is devoted to understanding the semantic restriction that do so places on its antecedent. The behavior of do so anaphora has been used to argue both hierarchical structure (Lakoff and Ross 1976) and flat structure within the verb phrase (Culicover and Jackendoff 2005). In chapter 2, however, I argue that do so does not have any bearing on the debate about the internal structure of the verb phrase. The arguments put forth by these authors are predicated on do so being a surface anaphor in terms of Hankamer and Sag (1976). Instead I argue that do so is in fact a deep anaphor and that its purported surface anaphor properties fall out from independent semantic and pragmatic properties of the anaphor. As a deep anaphor, do so does not replace any structure in the verb phrase, but rather forms a verb phrase in its own right from the beginning of the derivation. Therefore, the use of do so to argue for or against hierarchical structure in the verb phrase has been misguided. I approach the semantic restriction that do so places on its antecedent from two angles. In chapter 3, I review the previous analyses of this restriction, and test their claims against a corpus of over 1000 naturally occurring examples extracted from the American National Corpus. None of the previous analyses are supported by the data, and I present a novel analysis that utilize three semantic parameters (agentivity, aktionsart, stativity) to predict which antecedents are possible with do so. One striking property of the counterexamples found in the corpus is that they instantiate particular syntactic structures. The majority of them contain do so in a nonfinite form (usually in the infinitive), and in others, the antecedent is contained in a relative clause modifying the subject of do so. In chapter 4, I present experimental evidence that shows that these two syntactic environments lessen the effects of the restriction that do so normally places on its antecedent. I attribute this amelioration of the semantic restriction to the unavailability of verb phrase ellipsis in these 1 syntactic environments. The analysis falls out from the nonmonotonic interaction of the two restrictions: the syntactic restrictions on ellipsis force the use do so to the detriment of the semantic restriction that do so normally places on its antecedent. I then situate this amelioration effect into the typology of coercion effects in general and argue that do so displays a novel type of coercion: subtractive coercion. 2 Contents Acknowledgements iii 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Verbal anaphora in English . 1 1.2 Do so anaphora . 1 1.2.1 Part I: Do so and verb phrase constituency . 2 1.2.2 Part II: Semantic restriction on the antecedent of do so . 3 1.3 Preliminaries . 4 1.3.1 The category of so ............................ 4 1.3.2 The category of do ............................ 7 1.3.3 Do and so in combination . 8 1.3.4 An alternative analysis . 8 2 The anaphoric status of do so 10 2.1 Introduction . 10 2.2 Deep vs. surface anaphora . 13 2.3 The facts . 18 2.3.1 Pragmatic control . 18 2.3.2 Syntactic identity . 19 2.3.3 Extraction . 21 2.3.4 Summary . 22 2.4 Addressing the evidence against the surface anaphora analysis . 23 2.5 Addressing the evidence against the deep anaphora analysis . 31 2.6 Consequences . 36 2.7 Summary . 37 3 Semantics I: Corpus 38 3.1 Introduction . 38 3.2 Previous analyses . 39 3.3 The corpus . 45 3.4 Analysis . 53 3.5 A further observation . 60 i 4 Semantics II: Experiment 62 4.1 Introduction . 62 4.2 Methodology . 63 4.2.1 Participants . 63 4.2.2 Task . 63 4.2.3 Stimuli . 64 4.2.4 Statistical analysis . 65 4.3 Results . 65 4.4 Discussion . 69 4.5 Coercion . 71 4.6 Summary . 75 5 Conclusion 76 5.1 Summary of findings . 76 5.2 Future research . 77 Bibliography 79 Appendix A: Corpus examples 84 Appendix B: Experiment stimuli 168 Appendix C: Summary of statistical analysis 169 ii Acknowledgements During my time at Berkeley I have had many wonderful experiences and met many wonderful people. I will always look back on my time as a student here with great fondness. Line Mikkelsen has been the best advisor I could possibly imagine. Her advise and support has gotten me to where I am today, and I have learned more from her than anyone about how to be a scholar and an educator. I also thank the other members of my dissertation committee: Alice Gaby, Andrew Garrett, and Johanna Nichols. Their guidance and critique challenged me to think harder and delve deeper. Finally, a very special thank you goes to my friends and family for their love and support. You mean more to me than I could possibly express here. iii Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 Verbal anaphora in English In English, we have various strategies for avoiding the repetition of identical verb phrases. If we would like to express that both Steve and John have eaten an apple, it is not necessary to utter a sentence as in (1) where both conjoined clauses contain full VPs. In fact, this sounds quite unnatural. (1) Steve has eaten an apple, and John has eaten an apple, too. Instead, we have a number of verbal anaphors that can be used in the second clause to express that the same type of event has occured as that expressed in the first clause. These verbal anaphors include Verb Phrase Ellipsis (2a), do it anaphora (2b), do that anaphora (2c), and do so anaphora (2d). In each case, the anaphor stands in for a full verb phrase, often referred to as the target of anaphora. (2) Steve has eaten an apple, and . a. John has, too. b. John has done it, too. c. John has done that, too. d. John has done so, too On their own, these verbal anaphors have very schematic meanings. For instance, if I utter out of the blue John has done that, we know that John has enacted some event, but the exact nature of that event is a mystery. For verbal anaphors to be used felicitously, they must be preceded by an antecedent verb phrase, such as eaten an apple in (2). The anaphor can then refer back to the antecedent and take on its meaning. In this work, I will examine one of these verbal anaphors|do so and will provide an analysis of its syntactic and semantic properties. 1.2 Do so anaphora Do so anaphora is a fairly widely used in English, but has received relatively little treatment in the literature (especially when compared with verb phrase ellipsis). There are, however, 1 two aspects of this anaphor that have gained prominence: i) its use as a test for constituency within the verb phrase, and ii) the semantic restriction it places on its antecedent. Though these two properties have been the most prominent, their analyses have not been uncontro- versial. Here I investigate these properties and give them a more complete analysis. The first part of the dissertation is devoted to a discussion of the the use of do so as a test for con- stituency in the verb phrase, and the second part is devoted to understanding the semantic restriction that do so places on its antecedent. The content of the parts is described in the following subsection. 1.2.1 Part I: Do so and verb phrase constituency Lakoff and Ross (1976) were the first to use do so to motivate internal constituency in the verb phrase. At the time, the verb phrase was taken to have a flat structure with verb having as its sisters complements and adjuncts alike. However, as they showed, do so is able to replace a verb, its complement(s), and some or all of its adjuncts, or it can replace a verb and its complement(s) to the exclusion of adjuncts, but it cannot replace the verb alone. This is illustrated by the sentences in (3), where the antecedent of do so is bracketed. (3) a. I [ate an apple yesterday in the park], and Moira did so, too. b. I [ate an apple yesterday] in the park, and Moira did so, in the garden c. I [ate an apple] yesterday in the park, and Moira did so today in the garden.