Announcements INTD0111A „ Assignment #2 has been posted. It’s due next Monday March 16th in class, or by e-mail no later than 5pm. The Unity and Diversity „ Please notice that since the midterm will be also assigned on Monday, I cannot grant of Human Language extensions for Assignment #2. I do need to post the solutions, so everyone can look at them before the midterm. Lecture #9 „ Bottom line: START EARLY. That means March 9th, 2009 TODAY.

Announcements Initial reaction to Assignment #1

„ You should be now thinking about the language you „ Things look fine so far. will work on for the LAP. „ That said, those of you who are still unclear on th „ The one-page LAP proposal is due April 6 . how to draw a syntactic tree for a sentence „ Given lack of resources on many endangered and should definitely come and talk to me in office unfamiliar languages, you do want to start looking for hours. a language now, if you haven’t chosen one already. „ Syntax is essential to the class. And there is no „ Once you make a choice, e-mail me. Remember that no two LAPs can be on the same language. So, the knowledge of syntax if you can’t analyze a early chooser catches the language. sentence into its constituents.

Summary of Morphological typology: Index of synthesis

„ Morphology is the study of structure in human language. „ Languages differ with regard to the index of „ The main unit in morphology is the , synthesis, understood as a continuum, with isolating which is the “minimal unit of meaning or languages at one end, and polysynthetic languages at grammatical function in the language”. the other. „ can be derivational or inflectional. „ Morphemes can also be free or bound. Isolating <--x------x------x----x-> Synthetic „ Bound morphemes are further divided into four types depending on their position with regard to the : Yay English Oneida Mohawk , , , and circumfix.

1 Morphological typology: Index of fusion Head-marking vs. dependent-marking

„ One final morphological variation has to do „ Languages differ with regard to the index of fusion, with whether languages mark grammatical understood as a continuum, with agglutinative functions such as “subject of’ and “object of” languages at one end, and fusional languages at the on the head or on the dependents (i.e., other. specifiers and complements in our syntactic terminology). Agglutinative <--x------x------x--> Fusional English Greek „ Compare Japanese with Mohawk:

Head-marking vs. dependent-marking Head-marking vs. dependent-marking

a. John-ga Mary-o butta Japanese John-SU Mary-OB hit “John hit Mary.” b. Sak Uwári shako-núhwe’s Mohawk „ To distinguish between these two types of Sak Uwari he/her-likes languages, we call the Mohawk-type a head- “Sak likes Uwari.” marking language, and the Japanese-type a c. Sak Uwári ruwa-núhwe’s Mohawk dependent-marking language. Sak Uwari she/him-likes “Uwari likes Sak.”

Now, back to Mohawk Subject and object drop in Mohawk

„ Mohawk has three distinctive properties that a. ranuhwe’s ne atya’tawi (subject drop) we need to explain. likes the dress “He likes the dress.” „ First, it does not seem to place any restrictions b. Sak ranuhwe’s (object drop) on , as we saw last time. Sak likes „ Second, it’s polysynthetic with complex word “Sak likes it.” structure, also discussed last time. c. ranuhwe’s (subject and object drop) „ Third, it allows both subjects and objects to likes drop, as in the examples on the next slide: “He likes it.”

2 Making sense of polysynthetic word incorporation structure: Incorporation

„ Noun incorporation is pretty common in „ The key to understanding why in polysynthetic Mohawk: languages tend to be long and complex is the syntactic operation of noun incorporation. Consider: Wa’eksohare’. “She dish-washed.” (ks “dish” + ohare “wash”) a. Owira’a wahrake’ ne o’wahru (plain version) baby ate the meat Wa’kenaktahninu’. “I bed-bought.” (nakt “bed” + a + hninu b. Owira’a waha’wahrake’ (incorporation version) “buy”) baby meat-ate Wahana’tarakwetare’ “He bread-cut.” (na’tar “bread” + a + . kwetar “cut”)

Noun incorporation Noun incorporation

„ A similar pattern to Mohawk-style noun „ In English only objects can appear inside incorporation actually appears in English compounds; subjects cannot: compounding, e.g., dishwasher, dishwashing, stamp-collecting, housekeeping, etc. a. The husband washed the dishes. „ The only difference between English and b. The husband enjoys dishwashing./The Mohawk is that the latter uses incorporation in a husband is a good dishwasher. larger number of contexts. c. *She appreciates husband-washing (of „ Interestingly, though, the two languages behave dishes)./*He is a good husband-washer (of similarly when it comes to restrictions on incorporation. dishes).

Noun incorporation The verb-object constraint

„ Interestingly, the same subject-object asymmetry with „ An explanation of the subject-object asymmetry with regard to incorporation holds in Mohawk: regard to compounding in English and incorporation a. Owira’a wahrake’ ne o’wahru (plain version) in Mohawk follows from a universal principle of baby ate the meat grammar, that is, what Baker calls the verb-object constraint below (from Baker 2001:95): b. Owira’a waha’wahrake’ (object incorporation ok) “The object of a verb must be the first NP to baby meat-ate combine with the verb; the subject NP cannot c. *Wahawirake’ ne o’wahru (subject incorporation *) combine with the verb until after the object does.“ baby-ate the meat

3 Verb incorporation Verb incorporation

„ Mohawk, however, shows not only noun incorporation, but also what Baker calls verb „ While Mohawk causativization is not possible incorporation. Consider the following pair: in languages like English, causative a. Ashare’ tuhsu’ne’. morphemes are not that uncommon in English, knife fell-down e.g., -ify in beautify, clarify; -ize in modernize, “The knife fell.” industrialize. b. Uwari tayúhsuhte ne ashare’ Uwari made-fall the knife “Uwari made the knife fall.”

Why do subjects and objects drop in Conclusion #1 Mohawk then?

„ Complex word structure in polysynthetic a. ranuhwe’s ne atya’tawi languages is the result of using the same kind likes the dress of word formation processes used in languages “He likes the dress.” like English, though with much more b. Sak ranuhwe’s frequency and in more varied contexts. Sak likes „ Importantly, the use of such word-formation “Sak likes it.” processes is subject to universal principles that c. ranuhwe’s hold of all languages (e.g., the verb-object likes constraint). “He likes it.”

The null subject parameter revisited The null subject parameter revisited

„ This should sound familiar, right? „ A plausible explanation for the occurrence of null subjects, at least in Italian-type languages, ties it to „ It’s obviously reminiscent of the null subject parameter the presence of “rich” verbal morphology, which that we talked about earlier. Remember Italian? makes the reference of the subject “recoverable” from a. Gianni verrá. the form of the verb. Gianni will-come. „ To see this, compare the verbal conjugation b. Verrá Gianni. paradigms of the Spanish verb “com” and the will-come Gianni. corresponding verb “eat” in English in the present c. Verrá. tense: will-come.

4 The null subject parameter revisited The null subject parameter revisited

Spanish conjugation of “com” English conjugation of “eat” yo como I eat „ As in Spanish, Mohawk verbs do inflect for tu comes you (sg.) eat with their subjects. Unlike Spanish, el come he eats though, they also inflect for agreement with nosotros comemos we eat their objects. Consider the following vosotros comeís you (pl.) eat conjugation paradigms for the verb root ellos comen they eat nuhwe’ (=like):

The null subject parameter revisited Conclusion #2

„ Subject and object drop in Mohawk follows kenuhwe’s “I like it” rakenuhwe’s “he likes me” from the rich morphological head-marking that senuhwe’s “you like it” yanuhwe’s “he likes you” verbs always show with both their subjects and ranuhwe’s “he likes it” ronuhwe’s “he likes him” objects. yenuhwe’s “she likes it” shakonuhwe’s “he likes her” yakwanuhwe’s “we like it” shukwanuhwe’s “he likes us”

How about free word order then? Mohawk

a. Sak ranuhwe’s ne atya’tawi (SVO)

„ This was the initial question: Why is it that Sak likes the dress. Mohawk allows this freedom in its word order in a way that other languages (e.g., English) do b. ranuhwe’s ne atya’tawi (ne) Sak (VOS) not? likes the dress (the) Sak.

„ Here are the data again: c. ranuhwe’s ne Sak ne atya’tawi (VSO) likes (the) Sak the dress.

5 Mohawk Introducing “dislocation”

d. Sak atya’tawi ranuhwe’s (SOV) „ To understand why Mohawk has freedom of word order, we need to discuss first the phenomenon of “dislocation” common Sak dress likes in many, or perhaps all, natural languages.

e. atya’tawi Sak ranuhwe’s (OSV) „ Baker illustrates this with data from English: dress Sak likes. a. That dress, John really likes it. (object left-dislocation) b. John really likes it, that dress. (object right-dislocation) c. John, he really likes that dress. (subject left-dislocation) f. atya’tawi ranuhwe’s (ne) Sak (OVS) d. He really likes that dress, John. (subject right-dislocation) dress likes (the) Sak.

Introducing “dislocation” Tree for dislocation structures

„ As you can see from these English sentences, (14) AuxP dislocated elements are typically linked to a ru NP AuxP pronoun in the “core” clause (“it” in a-b, and that dress ru “he” in c-d). As a result, they come to enjoy NP Aux’ more freedom with regard to their positioning John ru in the sentence. Aux VP present ru „ The standard analysis for dislocation structures Adv V' is that the dislocated element is attached to really ru AuxP, either to the left or the to right. V NP like it

The Pronominal Argument Hypothesis The Pronominal Argument Hypothesis

„ But how does this help us explain the Mohawk facts?

„ Under this analysis, syntactic trees for „ Suppose that the agreement on verbs in Mohawk are actually subject and object pronouns. If Mohawk OSV and OVS orders, for example, so, then the NPs these pronouns refer to will be able are as in the following two trees: to appear dislocated almost in any position in the sentence, thereby giving rise to what looks like absence of restrictions on word order in the language.

„ This is the so-called Pronominal Argument Hypothesis, which was first proposed by Jelinek (1984) .

6 Deriving OSV order in Mohawk Deriving OVS order in Mohawk

AuxP AuxP ru ru NP AuxP NP AuxP ¼ atya’tawi ru ¼ atya’tawi ru NP Aux’ Aux’ NP ¼ Sak ru ru Sak » Aux VP Aux VP ru ru NP V' NP V' – ru – ru (he) V NP (he) V NP ranuhwe’s – ranuhwe’s – “he/it-likes” (it) “he/it-likes” (it)

Evidence for the dislocation Evidence for the dislocation analysis: (1) Binding analysis: (1) Binding

„ There are two principles governing binding of anaphors and pronouns in human languages: a. Johni likes himselfi. (“himself” has to refer to “John”) b. Johni says that [Barryj likes himself*i/j]. „ Binding Condition A: “Anaphors (such as reflexives and reciprocals) have to be bound (“himself” has to refer to “Barry”, not to “John”) by a higher NP within the smallest AuxP they c. John likes him . (“him” cannot refer to “John”) are in.” i *i d. Johni says that [Barryj likes himi/*j/k]. „ Binding Condition B: “Pronouns cannot be (“him” can refer to “John”, but not to “Barry”) bound by a higher NP within the smallest AuxP they are in.” Note: Subscripts are linguists’ convention to indicate coreference or lack thereof.

Evidence for the dislocation Reflexives in Mohawk analysis: (1) Binding

„ Now, if the dislocation analysis of Mohawk word order „ Dislocation of reflexive pronouns is not is correct, then we should predict that the language possible in English, however: contains no reflexive NPs, which is true:

*Johni really likes himi, himselfi. *Saki ronuhwe’s rauhai Sak likes himself „ Can you see why?

„ To express reflexivization, Mohawk relies on its polysynthetic affixation again: Sak ratatenuhwe’s Sak self-likes

7 Evidence for the dislocation Quantificational NPs in Mohawk analysis: (2) Quantificational NPs

„ If the dislocation analysis of Mohawk word order is correct, then we should predict that non-referential „ Quantificational NPs such as everybody, quantifiers are not possible in Mohawk, which is nobody, etc., in English, cannot be associated again borne out by the data: with pronouns, due to their lack of *Sak teshakokv yah-ukha referentiality, hence they are “non- Sak he/her-saw no+body dislocatable”: a. Chris, I saw her in the market yesterday. „ To express the intended meaning here, the negative b. *Nobody, I saw her in the market yesterday. element “yah” has to appear on the verb instead.

Conclusion #3 The polysynthesis parameter

„ Freedom of word order in polysynthetic „ It’s the polysynthetic morphology on Mohawk languages like Mohawk is due to the frequent verbs then that gives rise to this surface use of the syntactic strategy of dislocation, freedom of word order. which in turn is sanctioned by the presence of subject and object pronouns as prefixes on the „ Lack of head directionality in Mohawk, then, verb in the “core” sentence structure. is a consequence of its polysynthetic nature. The difference between Mohawk and English „ There is good evidence from the facts of reflexives and quantificational NPs in Mohawk can then be expressed in terms of one in support of this dislocation analysis. parameter: the “polysynthesis parameter”

The polysynthesis parameter Agenda for next class

„ “Verbs must include some expression of each „ Polysynthesis cont. Baker Chapter 4.

of the main participants in the event described „ Optional polysynthesis: Baker Chapter 5 (pp. by the verb (the subject, object, and indirect 143-156) object).” „ Also, verb serialization, Chapter 5, pp. 140- 143).

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