A Cross-Linguistic Study of So-Called ''Locative Inversion''
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Alignment in Syntax: Quotative Inversion in English
Alignment in Syntax: Quotative Inversion in English Benjamin Bruening, University of Delaware rough draft, February 5, 2014; comments welcome Abstract This paper explores the idea that many languages have a phonological Align(ment) constraint that re- quires alignment between the tensed verb and C. This Align constraint is what is behind verb-second and many types of inversion phenomena generally. Numerous facts about English subject-auxiliary inversion and French stylistic inversion fall out from the way this Align constraint is stated in each language. The paper arrives at the Align constraint by way of a detailed re-examination of English quotative inversion. The syntactic literature has overwhelmingly accepted Collins and Branigan’s (1997) conclusion that the subject in quotative inversion is low, within the VP. This paper re-examines the properties of quotative inversion and shows that Collins and Branigan’s analysis is incorrect: quotative inversion subjects are high, in Spec-TP, and what moves is a full phrase, not just the verb. The constraints on quotative inver- sion, including the famous transitivity constraint, fall out from two independently necessary constraints: (1) a constraint on what can be stranded by phrasal movement like VP fronting, and (2) the aforemen- tioned Align constraint which requires alignment between V and C. This constraint can then be seen to derive numerous seemingly unrelated facts in a single language, as well as across languages. Keywords: Generalized Alignment, quotative inversion, subject-in-situ generalization, transitivity restric- tions, subject-auxiliary inversion, stylistic inversion, verb second, phrasal movement 1 Introduction This paper explores the idea that the grammar of many languages includes a phonological Align(ment) con- straint that requires alignment between the tensed verb and C. -
Topicalization in English and the Trochaic Requirement Augustin Speyer
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by ScholarlyCommons@Penn University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics Volume 10 Article 19 Issue 2 Selected Papers from NWAVE 32 1-1-2005 Topicalization in English and the Trochaic Requirement Augustin Speyer This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. http://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/vol10/iss2/19 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Topicalization in English and the Trochaic Requirement This working paper is available in University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: http://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/ vol10/iss2/19 Topicalization in English and the Trochaic Requirement• Augustin Speyer 1 The loss of topicalization The verb-second constraint (V2), which is at work in all other modem Ger manic languages (e.g. Haeberli 2000:109), was lost in English in the course of the Middle English Period. In other words: The usual word order in today's English is as shown in example(!). In earlier stages of English, however, one could also form sen tences examples like (2a). This sentence shows V2: The verb is in second position, and is preceded by some constituent which can be something other than the subject. At a certain time sentences like (2a) became ungrammatical and were replaced by examples like (2b), which follow a new constraint, namely that the subject must precede the verb. Sentences like (!) are unaf fected, but not because they observe the V2-constraint but because they hap pen to observe also the subject-before-verb-constraint. (I) John hates beans. -
Interpreting and Defining Connections in Dependency Structures Sylvain Kahane
Interpreting and defining connections in dependency structures Sylvain Kahane To cite this version: Sylvain Kahane. Interpreting and defining connections in dependency structures. 5th international conference on Dependency Linguistics (Depling), Aug 2019, Paris, France. hal-02291673 HAL Id: hal-02291673 https://hal.parisnanterre.fr//hal-02291673 Submitted on 19 Sep 2019 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Interpreting and defining connections in dependency structures Sylvain Kahane Modyco, Université Paris Nanterre & CNRS [email protected] Abstract This paper highlights the advantages of not interpreting connections in a dependency tree as combina- tions between words but of interpreting them more broadly as sets of combinations between catenae. One of the most important outcomes is the possibility of associating a connection structure to any set of combinations assuming some well-formedness properties and of providing a new way to define de- pendency trees and other kinds of dependency structures, which are not trees but “bubble graphs”. The status of catenae of dependency trees as syntactic units is discussed. 1 Introduction The objective of this article is twofold: first, to show that dependencies in a dependency tree or a similar structure should not generally be interpreted only as combinations between words; second, to show that a broader interpreta- tion of connections has various advantages: It makes it easier to define the dependency structure and to better under- stand the link between different representations of the syntactic structure. -
Some Observations on the Hebrew Desiderative Construction – a Dependency-Based Account in Terms of Catenae1
Thomas Groß Some Observations on the Hebrew Desiderative Construction – A Dependency-Based Account in Terms of Catenae1 Abstract The Modern Hebrew (MH) desiderative construction must obey four conditions: 1. A subordinate clause headed by the clitic še= ‘that’ must be present. 2. The verb in the subordinate clause must be marked with future tense. 3. The grammatical properties genus, number, and person tend to be specified, i.e. if the future tense affix is underspecified, material tends to appear that aids specification, if contextual recovery is unavailable. 4. The units of form that make up the constructional meaning of the desiderative must qualify as a catena. A catena is a dependency-based unit of form, the parts of which are immediately continuous in the vertical dimension. The description of the individual parts of the desiderative must address trans-, pre-, and suffixes, and cliticization. Catena-based morphology is representational, monostratal, dependency-, construction-, and piece-based. 1. Purpose, means and claims The main purpose of this paper is to analyze the Hebrew desiderative construction. This construction is linguistically interesting and challenging for a number of reasons. 1. It is a periphrastic construction, with fairly transparent compositionality. 2. It is transclausal, i.e. some parts of the construction reside in the main clause, and others in the subordinated clause. The complementizer is also part of the construction. 3. The construction consists of more than one word, but it does not qualify as a constituent. Rather the construction cuts into words. 4. Two theoretically 1 I want to thank Outi Bat-El (Tel Aviv University) and three anonymous reviewers for their help and advice. -
Clitics in Dependency Morphology
Clitics in Dependency Morphology Thomas Groß Aichi University, Nagoya, Japan [email protected] tured in much the same fashion as sentences was Abstract proposed first in Williams (1981), and further discussed in the famous “head-debate” between Clitics are challenging for many theories of grammar Zwicky (1985a) and Hudson (1987). In contem- because they straddle syntax and morphology. In most porary morphological theories that attempt to theories, cliticization is considered a phrasal pheno- inform syntax (predominantly within the genera- menon: clitics are affix-like expressions that attach to tive framework) such as Di Sciullo (2005) and whole phrases. Constituency-based grammars in par- the theory of Distributed Morphology (Halle and ticular struggle with the exact constituent structure of such expressions. This paper proposes a solution Marantz 1993, Embick and Noyer 2001, 2007, based on catena-based dependency morphology. This Harley and Noyer 2003, Embick 2003), words theory is an extension of catena-based dependency are now seen as hierarchically structured items. syntax. Following Authors et.al. (in press), a word or Seen in the light of this development, it is time a combination of words in syntax that are continuous for dependency grammar (DG) to make up for its with respect to dominance form a catena. Likewise, a neglect of morphological matters. The assess- morph or a combination of morphs that is continuous ment by Harnisch (2003) that the development of with respect to dominance form a morph catena. Em- a dependency-based morphology requires imme- ploying the concept of morph catena together with a diate attention is accurate. -
Interpreting and Defining Connections in Dependency Structures
Interpreting and defining connections in dependency structures Sylvain Kahane Modyco, Université Paris Nanterre & CNRS [email protected] Abstract This paper highlights the advantages of not interpreting connections in a dependency tree as combina- tions between words but of interpreting them more broadly as sets of combinations between catenae. One of the most important outcomes is the possibility of associating a connection structure to any set of combinations assuming some well-formedness properties and of providing a new way to define de- pendency trees and other kinds of dependency structures, which are not trees but “bubble graphs”. The status of catenae of dependency trees as syntactic units is discussed. 1 Introduction The objective of this article is twofold: first, to show that dependencies in a dependency tree or a similar structure should not generally be interpreted only as combinations between words; second, to show that a broader interpreta- tion of connections has various advantages: It makes it easier to define the dependency structure and to better under- stand the link between different representations of the syntactic structure. We will focus on the possible syntactic combinations (what combines with what), without considering the fact that combinations are generally asymmetric, linking a governor to a dependent. We use the term connection to denote a dependency without the governor-depen- dency hierarchy. Section 2 presents the notions of combination and connection, which are based on the notion of catena (Osborne et al. 2012). The properties of the set of catenae are studied and used to define an equivalence relation on the set of combinations, which is used to define the connections. -
On the Loci of Agreement: Inversion Constructions in Mapudungun Mark
On the Loci of Agreement: Inversion Constructions in Mapudungun Mark C. Baker Rutgers University 1. Introduction: Ordinary and Unusual Aspects of Mapudungun Agreement “Languages are all the same, but not boringly so.” I think this is my own maxim, not one of the late great Kenneth Hale’s. But it is nevertheless something that he taught me, by example, if not by explicit precept. Ken Hale believed passionately in a substantive notion of Universal Grammar that underlies all languages. But this did not blind him to the details—even the idiosyncrasies—of less-studied “local” languages. On the contrary, I believe it stimulated his famous zeal for those details and idiosyncrasies. It is against the backdrop of what is universal that idiosyncrasies become interesting and meaningful. Conversely, it is often the fact that quite different, language particular constructions obey the same abstract constraints that provides the most striking evidence that those constraints are universal features of human language. It is in this Halean spirit that I present this study of agreement on verbs in Mapudungun, a language of uncertain genealogy spoken in the Andes of central Chile and adjoining areas of Argentina.1 Many features of agreement in Mapudungun look 1 This research was made possible thanks to a trip to Argentina in October 2000, to visit at the Universidad de Comahue in General Roca, Argentina. This gave me a chance to supplement my knowledge of Mapudungun from secondary sources by consulting with Argentine experts on this language, and by interviewing members of the Mapuche community in General Roca and Junin de los Andes, Argentina. -
Defining Dependencies (And Constituents)
Gerdes K., Kahane S. (2013) Defining dependency (and constituency), in K. Gerdes, E. Hajičová, L. Wanner (éds.), Computational Dependency Linguistics, IOS Press. Defining dependencies (and constituents) a b Kim GERDES and Sylvain KAHANE a LPP, Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris b Modyco, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre Abstract. The paper proposes a mathematical method of defining dependency and constituency provided linguistic criteria to characterize the acceptable fragments of an utterance have been put forward. The method can be used to define syntactic structures of sentences, as well as discourse structures for texts, or even morphematic structures for words. Our methodology leads us to put forward the notion of connection, simpler than dependency, and to propose various representations which are not necessarily trees. We also study criteria to refine and hierarchize a connection structure in order to obtain a tree. Keywords. Connection graph, dependency tree, phrase structure, syntactic representation, syntactic unit, catena Introduction Syntacticians generally agree on the hierarchical structure of syntactic representations. Two types of structures are commonly considered: Constituent structures and dependency structures (or mixed forms of both, like headed constituent structures, sometimes even with functional labeling, see for example Tesnière’s nucleus [34], Kahane’s bubble trees [21], or the Negra corpus’ trees [6]). However, these structures are often rather purely intuition- based than well-defined and linguistically motivated, a point that we will illustrate with some examples. Even the basic assumptions concerning the underlying mathematical structure of the considered objects (ordered constituent tree, unordered dependency tree) are rarely motivated (why should syntactic structures be trees to begin with?). In this paper, we propose a definition of syntactic structures that supersedes constituency and dependency, based on a minimal axiom: If an utterance can be separated into two fragments, we suppose the existence of a connection between these two parts. -
Stylistic Inversion in French: Equality and Inequality In
Subject Inversion in French: Equality and Inequality in LFG Annie Zaenen and Ronald M. Kaplan Palo Alto Research Center {Kaplan|Zaenen}@parc.com Abstract: We reanalyze the data presented in Bonami, Godard and Marandin (1999), Bonami & Godard (2001) and Marandin (2001) in an LFG framework and show that the facts about Stylistic Inversion fall out of the LFG treatment of equality. This treatment, however, necessitates a different approach to object-control and object- raising constructions. We treat these as cases of subsumption and suggest that subsumption, not equality, might be the default way of modeling this type of relation across languages 1. Subjects in object position in French1 It is by now well known that French exhibits a number of constructions in which the subject follows rather than precedes the verb it is a dependent of. Examples of this are given in (1) through (5).2 (1) Comment va Madame? “How is Madame doing?” (2) Voici le texte qu’a écrit Paul. (BG&M) “Here is the text that Paul wrote.” (3) Sur la place se dresse la cathédrale. (B&G) “On the square stands the cathedral.” (4) Je voudrais que vienne Marie. (M) “I wished that Marie would come.” (5) Alors sont entrés trois hommes. (M) “Then came in three men.” These various cases, however, do not all illustrate the same phenomenon. In this paper we will restrict our attention to what has been called Stylistic Inversion (Kayne, 1973), which we will contrast with what Marandin (2001) has called Unaccusative Inversion. Stylistic Inversion is illustrated above with the examples (1) and (2) and arguably (3) (see Bonami, Godard, and Marandin, 1999). -
Topicalization in English and the Trochaic Requirement
University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics Volume 10 Issue 2 Selected Papers from NWAVE 32 Article 19 2005 Topicalization in English and the Trochaic Requirement Augustin Speyer Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl Recommended Citation Speyer, Augustin (2005) "Topicalization in English and the Trochaic Requirement," University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: Vol. 10 : Iss. 2 , Article 19. Available at: https://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/vol10/iss2/19 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/vol10/iss2/19 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Topicalization in English and the Trochaic Requirement This working paper is available in University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: https://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/vol10/iss2/19 Topicalization in English and the Trochaic Requirement• Augustin Speyer 1 The loss of topicalization The verb-second constraint (V2), which is at work in all other modem Ger manic languages (e.g. Haeberli 2000:109), was lost in English in the course of the Middle English Period. In other words: The usual word order in today's English is as shown in example(!). In earlier stages of English, however, one could also form sen tences examples like (2a). This sentence shows V2: The verb is in second position, and is preceded by some constituent which can be something other than the subject. At a certain time sentences like (2a) became ungrammatical and were replaced by examples like (2b), which follow a new constraint, namely that the subject must precede the verb. Sentences like (!) are unaf fected, but not because they observe the V2-constraint but because they hap pen to observe also the subject-before-verb-constraint. -
Catena Operations for Unified Dependency Analysis
Catena Operations for Unified Dependency Analysis Kiril Simov and Petya Osenova Linguistic Modeling Department Institute of Information and Communication Technologies Bulgarian Academy of Sciences Bulgaria {kivs,petya}@bultreebank.org Abstract to its syntactic analysis. On the other hand, a uni- fied strategy of dependency analysis is proposed The notion of catena was introduced origi- via extending the catena to handle also phenomena nally to represent the syntactic structure of as valency and other combinatorial dependencies. multiword expressions with idiosyncratic Thus, a two-fold analysis is achieved: handling the semantics and non-constituent structure. lexicon-grammar relation and arriving at a single Later on, several other phenomena (such means for analyzing related phenomena. as ellipsis, verbal complexes, etc.) were The paper is structured as follows: the next formalized as catenae. This naturally led section outlines some previous work on catenae; to the suggestion that a catena can be con- section 3 focuses on the formal definition of the sidered a basic unit of syntax. In this paper catena and of catena-based lexical entries; sec- we present a formalization of catenae and tion 4 presents different lexical entries that demon- the main operations over them for mod- strate the expressive power of the catena formal- elling the combinatorial potential of units ism; section 5 concludes the paper. in dependency grammar. 2 Previous Work on Catenae 1 Introduction The notion of catena (chain) was introduced in Catenae were introduced initially to handle lin- (O’Grady, 1998) as a mechanism for representing guistic expressions with non-constituent structure the syntactic structure of idioms. -
Diercks-2014-Locative Inversion
Locative Inversion Michael Diercks, Pomona College, [email protected] Word Count: 11,192 Abstract: Locative inversion patterns are instances of a non-canonical word order where a locative phrase (in a canonically SVO language) moves to preverbal position, leaving the thematic subject postverbally. There are a wide variety of morphosyntactic variations in this basic inversion pattern crosslinguistically (and even within individual languages), and the evidence suggests that different syntactic mechanisms are used in different instances to generate the same surface word orders, both in English and in various Bantu languages. Analyses and diagnostic evidence are presented for all of these languages showing that, despite the range of variation, similar syntactic mechanisms appear to be at play across languages. The non-canonical patterns that occur in locative inversion constructions raise important questions for theoretical assumptions about Case licensing, agreement, and locality in particular, and the theoretical work in those areas is addressed as well. 1 Introduction Locative inversion has long posed significant analytical and theoretical puzzle; locative inversion as discussed here are when canonically S-V-O-(LOC) languages that invert a locative phrase in discourse-appropriate contexts, resulting in a LOC-V-S word order. 1) Down the hill roll the balls. 2) Ku-mu-dzi ku-na-bwér-á a-lendô-wo [Chichewa] 17-3-village 17S-REC.PST-come-IND 2-visitor-2those ‘To the village came those visitors.’ (Bresnan and Kanerva, 1989: 2) Locative inversion structures have been studied relatively intensely in English/Germanic and variety of Bantu languages, in addition to some Romance languages and some East Asian languages.