The Universality of Concord by Isa Kerem Bayirli BA, Middle East Technical University (2010) MA, Bogazigi University (2012) Submitted to the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics at the MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY September 2017 2017 Isa Kerem Bayirli. All rights reserved. The author hereby grants to MIT permission to reproduce and distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of this thesis document in whole or in part in any medium now known or hereafter created. Signature redacted Author......................... ...... ............................. Departmeyf)/Linguistics and Philosophy Sic ;nature redacted September 7,2017 Certified by...... David Pesetsky Ferrari P. Ward Professor of Linguistics g nThesis Supervisor redacted Accepted by.................. Signature ...................................... David Pesetsky Lead, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY SEP 2 6 2017 LIBRARIES ARCHiVES The Universality of Concord by Isa Kerem Bayirh Submitted to the Deparment of Linguistics and Philosophy on September 7, 2017 in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics Abstract In this dissertation, we develop and defend a universal theory of concord (i.e. feature sharing between a head noun and the modifying adjectives). When adjectives in a language show concord with the noun they modify, concord morphology usually involves the full set of features of that noun (e.g. gender, number and case). However, there are also languages in which concord targets only a subset of morphosyntactic features of the head noun. We first observe that feature combinations that enter into concord in such languages are not random. We then show that this observation can be explained with a theory of concord that has the following properties: (i) concord is obligatory whenever phasal domains are inactive (the obligatorinessclaim) and (ii) languages that lack concord have a phasal Noun Phrase (the phase claim). We provide evidence supporting these claims. The obligatorinessclaim leads to two predications: (1) idiosyncratic gender languages are gender concord languages and (2) languages with pluraliatantum nouns are plural concord languages. We show that these predictions are empirically supported. The phase claim implies that a language lacks overt manifestation of concord only if it has a phasal NP. We show that, due to the phasal status of NP, non-concord languages exhibit the following properties: (1) AP movement out of NP is not possible, (2) the Num head need not be obligatory in the extended projection of a noun (leading to number neutrality) and (3) nominal inflectional elements can be shared between coordinated nouns. We provide evidence supporting these claims. Thesis Supervisor: David Pesetsky Title: Ferrari P. Ward Professor of Modem Languages and Linguistics Acknowledgments First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to my committee members: David Pesetsky, Sabine Iatridou, Shigeru Miyagawa, and Norvin Richards. They helped me turn some intuitions into testable claims. They helped me understand the content and the consequences of these claims. They helped me express these claims in a clear and comprehensible way (thanks, David!). With their help, the final product has become more accessible ... to me! Thank you all very much! I am thankful to my informants for all the help they gave me: Suzana Fong (Brazilian Portuguese), Ishani Guha (Bangla), Anik6 Liptik (Hungarian), Takashi Morita (Japanese), Maarten Mous (Alagwa), David Nash (Warlpiri), Dmitry Privoznov (Russian), Jane Simpson (Warlpiri), Abdul-Razak Sulemana (Buli). I am grateful to people at and around MIT, who have become my family in a foreign country: Itai Bassi, Ruth Brillman, Paul Crowley, Omer Demirok, Suzana Fong, Isaac Gould, Ishani Guha, Verena Hehl, Aron Hirsch, Paloma Jeretic, Sam al Khatib, Daniel Margulis, Paul Marty, Sophie Moracchini, Despina Oikonomou (and the Artist), Deniz Ozyildiz, Dmitry Privoznov, Ezer Rasin, Yagmur Sag, Milena Sisovics, Benjamin Storme (and the Boss, and the Baby), Laine Stranahan, Abdul-Razak Sulemana, Michelle Yuan. I am thankful to my friends in and around Turkey. They always believed in me. They gave me the strength to keep working at times of uncertainty and even self-doubt. I am thankful to G6khan Dogru, Funda Bayak Drschel, Oznur Eroglu, G6khan Firat, OzgUr innalh, Lena Karvovskaya, Caner Kerimoglu, Cuma K6ygilU, Saffet Mum, Duygu Ozge, Umut Ozge. Finally, I am deeply grateful to my family: the nuclear one (Zeynep Bayirli, Mehmet Bayirli, Qagda Bayirli, Ekin Bayirli) and the extended one (Selver $ahin, Zafer $ahin). This dissertation is dedicated to my opinionated little sister, Ekin Bayirli. 5 Table of Contents CHAPTER 1:Introduction 1.1.The Universality of Concord.........................................................................13 CHAPTER 2:The Concord Hierarchy Generalization 2 .1 .Introduction ............................................................................................... 17 2.2.Syntactic Assumptions................................................................................19 2.3.Deriving the Concord Hierarchy Generalization................................................ 26 2.4.C onclusion ............................................................................................. 39 CHAPTER 3:On Concord and Gender 3 .1 .Introduction ............................................................................................... 40 3.2.Two notes on gender..................................................................................42 3.2.1 .The characterization of gender systems......................................................... 42 3.2.2.On the syntax of gender.............................................................................45 3.3.On gender concord and its absence..................................................................48 3.3.1.Semantic gender systems...........................................................................53 3.3.2.Idiosyncratic gender and gender concord........................................................58 3.3.2.1.Idiosyncratic gender languages................................................................ 59 3.3.2.2.Remarks on problematic cases..................................................................66 3.3.2.2.1.Incorporated adjectives and concord............................................................66 3.3.2.2.2.Obligatory linkers and concord...................................................................70 3.4.C onclusion ............................................................................................ 71 6 CHAPTER 4:On Concord and Movement 4 .1.Introd uction ............................................................................................... 72 4.2.Concord and movement out of NP...................................................................75 4.2.1 .Conditions on movement...........................................................................75 4.2.2.Movement out of NP.............................................................................. 79 4.3.C oncord and Q ........................................................................................ 88 4.3.1 .The polar question particle in Turkish shows Q-like behavior................................89 4.3.2.Turkish as a Q adjunction language..............................................................92 4.3.3.Explaining *Adj-Q Noun...........................................................................99 4.3.4.Strenghtening Ozyildiz's Generalization.........................................................102 4.3.5.Q inside Islands? .................................... .......... .. ................ ........108 4.3.6.Movement out of "islands" ........................................................................ 110 4.3.7.It is movement and not base generation...........................................................112 4.3.7.1 .Argument from negation sensitive items (NSIs)................................................112 4.3.7.2.Argument from the interaction of negation with universal quantifiers.....................114 4.3.7.3.Argument from reciprocals.......................................................................116 4 .4 .C on clu sion .............................................................................................. 118 CHAPTER 5: On Concord and Number 5.1.Introduction .............................................................................................. 119 5.2.PluraliaTantum and Number Concord..............................................................121 5.3.Inside the Uralic Language Family..................................................................124 5.3.1.The Pluralia Tantum Languages: Finnish, Estonian and Mordvin..............................124 5.3.2.The Non-concord Languages: Hungarian, Mari and Ostyak...................................127 5.4..English as a plural concord language.................................................................130 5.5.Number Neutrality and Number Concord...........................................................136 5.5.1 .Languages with number neutrality.................................................................140 5.6 .C onclu sion ............................................................................................... 153 CHAPTER