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The Syntax and Semantics of Relative Clause Attachment The Syntax and Semantics of Relative Clause Attachment Inauguraldissertation zur Erlangung des Grades einer Doktorin der Philosophie im Fachbereich Neuere Philologien der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität zu Frankfurt am Main vorgelegt von Heike Walker aus Leer 2017 1. Gutachter: Prof. Dr. Gert Webelhuth 2. Gutachter: Prof. Dr. Manfred Sailer Tag der mündlichen Prüfung: 10. Juli 2013 Contents Acknowledgments v 1 Introduction 1 2 Empirical Facts and Generalizations 6 2.1 Construal ................................... 7 2.1.1 EmbeddedAntecedents. 7 2.1.2 ConjoinedandSplitAntecedents. 11 2.1.3 ObligatoryRelativeClauses . 12 2.1.4 RelativeClauseswithEllipticalNPs . ... 13 2.1.5 ExtrapositionfromFrontedPhrases . .. 14 2.2 Locality.................................... 17 2.2.1 LocalityConstraints .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 18 2.2.2 EmpiricalEvidenceonLocality . 23 2.3 BindingEffects ................................ 33 2.3.1 Principle C Effects of Relative Clause Extraposition ........ 33 2.3.2 VariableBinding ........................... 38 2.3.3 Anti-ReconstructionEffects . 39 2.4 ScopeEffectsofRelativeClauseExtraposition . ........ 40 2.5 Conclusion .................................. 43 3 A Psycholinguistic Experiment 44 3.1 Introduction.................................. 45 3.2 ElicitingJudgmentData . 45 3.3 RestrictionsonExtraposition . .... 47 3.3.1 TheDefinitenessRestriction . 47 3.3.2 ThePredicateRestriction. 50 3.3.3 TheGrammaticalFunctionoftheAntecedentNP . ... 51 3.4 TheExperiment................................ 52 3.4.1 Predictions .............................. 52 3.4.2 Method ................................ 53 ii CONTENTS iii 3.4.2.1 Subjects .......................... 53 3.4.2.2 MaterialsandDesign . 53 3.4.2.3 Procedure ......................... 55 3.4.3 Results ................................ 57 3.4.3.1 Definiteness ........................ 57 3.4.3.2 VerbClass ......................... 59 3.4.3.3 GrammaticalFunction. 60 3.4.3.4 ComparisonwithFillerSentences. 60 3.5 Discussion................................... 60 3.6 Conclusion .................................. 65 4 Previous Approaches 67 4.1 CoreMovement................................ 68 4.1.1 RightwardMovement . .. .. .. .. .. .. 68 4.1.2 RightwardMovement+Deletion . 72 4.1.3 LeftwardMovement ......................... 77 4.1.4 LeftwardMovement+Deletion . 81 4.2 TheorieswithoutCoreMovement . 83 4.2.1 BaseGeneratedAdjunct . 84 4.2.2 BaseGeneratedConjunct. 86 4.2.3 BaseGeneratedConjunct+Deletion. 88 4.2.4 PFMovement............................. 90 4.3 SummaryandConclusion........................... 93 5 Relative Clauses in HPSG 95 5.1 HPSG:Background.............................. 95 5.2 RelativeClauses................................ 104 5.2.1 PollardandSag(1994) . 104 5.2.2 Sag(1997) .............................. 107 5.3 RelativeClauseExtraposition. .... 112 5.3.1 ExtrapositionviaComplexDomainFormation . ... 113 5.3.2 Relative Clause Extraposition as a Nonlocal Dependency...... 115 5.3.3 GeneralizedModification. 119 5.3.3.1 TheTheory ........................ 120 5.3.3.2 Problems.......................... 131 5.3.4 An Integration of Generalized Modification with the Nonlocal De- pendencyAnalysis . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 133 5.4 Conclusion .................................. 136 CONTENTS iv 6 Lexical Resource Semantics 137 6.1 TheTheory .................................. 137 6.2 RelativeClausesinLRS ........................... 150 7 A New Theory of Generalized Modification 155 7.1 Preliminaries ................................. 156 7.1.1 FactstobeAccountedfor . 156 7.1.2 Recapitulation of Kiss’ (2005) Theory of Generalized Modification 158 7.1.3 OutlineoftheNewProposal . 159 7.2 TheAnchor .................................. 160 7.2.1 The Structure of the NP: The Head-Functor-Phrase . ..... 161 7.2.2 TheIntroductionoftheAnchor . 163 7.2.3 ThePercolationoftheAnchor . 167 7.3 TheAttachmentoftheRelativeClause . .... 170 7.3.1 Picking up the Anchor: The Schema of Generalized Modification . 170 7.3.2 Anchor-Modifiersvs. CanonicalModifiers . 178 7.3.3 TheAnchorsSaturationPrinciple . 182 7.3.4 An Example Analysis of Relative Clause Extraposition ....... 185 7.3.5 RelativeClauseswithEllipticalAntecedents . ...... 188 7.3.6 The Relative Clause Extraposition Scope Constraint . ....... 198 7.3.7 TheSchemaofGeneralizedModification(final). .... 207 7.3.8 ExtrapositionfromFrontedPhrases . 210 7.3.9 LocalityConstraints . 214 7.4 Summary ................................... 215 8 Adjuncts and the HPSG Binding Theory 217 8.1 BindingTheoryinPollardandSag(1994) . .... 218 8.2 Problems with Pollard and Sag’s (1994) Binding Theory . ........ 219 8.3 AValence-basedBindingTheory. 223 8.4 Further Consequences of the Revised Binding Theory . ........ 226 8.4.1 (Anti)reconstructionEffects . 226 8.4.2 Extraposition ............................. 229 8.4.3 VP-topicalizationandVPComplements . 232 8.5 IsPrincipleCPragmaticinNature? . ... 234 8.6 Conclusion .................................. 238 9 Conclusion 239 Bibliography 259 Acknowledgments This dissertation would not have been possible without the professional and personal support of a number of people. First of all, I would like to express my most sincere gratitude to Gert Webelhuth for his unfailing support, encouragement and guidance during all stages of this project. I have largely benefited from his great expertise and enlightening instruction. I could not have imagined having a better adviser and mentor. I am also sincerely grateful to my other adviser, Manfred Sailer, who supported and encouraged me throughout my dissertation project. His insightful comments, advice, and help, especially with the semantic aspects of the project, have been invaluable to me. I am deeply indebted to Bob Levine for his interest in my work, for stimulating discus- sions, valuable feedback, and for joining the dissertation committee. I am also grateful to my colleagues and friends at the Departments of English Linguistics of the Universities of Frankfurt and Göttingen who contributed in one way or other, either discussing or commenting on my work, offering support and help, or providing welcome distraction. I would especially like to thank Janina Radó, Michaela Menken, Dirk Buschbom, Pia Weber, Dianne Jonas, Hildegard Farke, and Regine Eckardt. My special thanks go to my friends, among whom Gesa Rombald, Yvonne Karacic, Stefanie Müller, and Claudia Georgi deserve a special mention, and, of course, my family. v Chapter 1 Introduction This book is concerned with the grammatical phenomenon of relative clause extraposition in English. An extraposed relative clause is a relative clause which appears to the right of the position where–given its grammatical and semantic functions–it is expected to occur. An example is shown in (1). In (1a), the relative clause is adjacent to its antecedent; this position is referred to as the canonical position. In (1b), the relative clause appears to the right of its canonical position at the end of the sentence, and the verb phrase intervenes between the relative clause and the antecedent it modifies; this position is referred to as the extraposed position.1 (1) a. A girl who was singing a song came in. b. A girl came in who was singing a song. There is a long and sophisticated research tradition on the topic of relative clause ex- traposition in generative grammar. Traditionally, starting with Ross (1967/1986), it has been assumed that an extraposed relative clause is derived in terms of rightward movement. However, the attempts to subsume relative clause extraposition under a general theory of movement face important problems. One point of criticism has been that relative clause extraposition displays properties that are distinct from those of leftward movement. As a consequence, various efforts have been made to find a proper analysis of the phenomenon, and a wide range of diverse theories have been proposed. Among others, these include ap- proaches that base-generate a relative clause in extraposed position, approaches in terms of leftward movement (i.e., the antecedent is moved leftward and the relative clause is stranded in the “extraposed” position), post-syntactic movement accounts, and combinations of sev- eral methods like movement and deletion, or base-generation and deletion. The state of re- search is nicely characterized by Haider: “Current analyses of extraposition have exhausted all options compatible with the generative theory of grammar” (1997, 115). However, as 1In this book, I restrict my attention to restrictive relative clauses, and I use the term relative clause to exclusively refer to this class. In the examples, I often mark the relative clause in italics and its antecedent NP in boldface. 1 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 2 I will show in this work, none of the theories is entirely satisfactory in capturing all the generalizations and in covering all the data of relative clause extraposition. In this book, I develop an analysis of relative clause extraposition which is able to ac- count for a number of phenomena that have been problematic for the previous theories. In fact, it is a general analysis of relative clause attachment, since the same syntactic and se- mantic constraints license relative clauses in canonical and in extraposed positions. The basic assumption is that a relative clause can be attached to any phrase which contains a suitable antecedent of the relative pronoun. The proposed theory modifies and considerably extends a prior analysis by Kiss (2005). In line with Kiss, I will call it the theory of Generalized Modi-
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