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Resumption As Resource Management

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Resumption As Resource Management RESUMPTION AS RESOURCE MANAGEMENT A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS AND THE COMMITTEE ON GRADUATE STUDIES OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Ash Asudeh March 2004 c Copyright by Arshia Asudeh 2004 All Rights Reserved ii I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Peter Sells (Principal Co-Adviser) I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Mary Dalrymple (Principal Co-Adviser) I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. David Beaver I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. James McCloskey Approved for the University Committee on Graduate Studies. iii Abstract This dissertation presents a theory of resumption based on semantic composition. The theory achieves a unified explanation of resumptive pronouns and copy raising. The basis is two key claims: 1) the pronouns in resumption are ordinary pronouns, 2) natural language is resource-sensitive. The latter is the guiding hypothesis of the dissertation: Resource Sensitivity. It is the claim that elements of semantic combination cannot be reused or discarded and is derived from the resource logical ap- proach to the syntax–semantics interface and semantic composition, in particular Glue Semantics. The hypothesis is general, but with respect to semantics it is the claim that elements of semantic combinatorics cannot be reused or discarded. Resource logics yield a useful perspective on linguis- tic combinatorics in general (phonology, syntax, semantics), but must be constrained by linguistic theory in order to maintain a linguistically useful notion of Resource Sensitivity. It is argued that a number of proposals in the literature can be reduced to Resource Sensitivity while maintaining their insights. The hypothesis is investigated empirically with respect to resumptive pronouns. A detailed de- scriptive overview of resumptive pronouns is presented. I argue that resumptives are ordinary pro- nouns based on their morphological exponence, their interpretation, and their behaviour in a number of syntactic tests. Resumptive pronouns challenge Resource Sensitivity, since they seem to consti- tute surplus resources for semantic composition. A resource management theory of resumption is presented, which introduces the licensing mechanism of manager resources. Manager resources remove a pronoun from composition through lexical specifications associated with complementiz- ers. Cross-linguistic variation for grammaticized resumptives is explained as lexical variation. The resource management theory of resumption is integrated in a Lexical Functional Grammar syntax and architecture. The theory is applied to analyses of resumptive pronouns in Irish, Swedish and Hebrew. The analysis of Irish treats both resumptive dependencies and filler-gap dependencies, including diffi- cult mixed patterns. The analysis of Swedish achieves a novel unification of the Swedish resumptive v system with those of Irish and Hebrew. In each case, a manager resource that is specified as part of a complementizer’s lexical entry licenses the resumptive pronoun. The key difference between Swedish on the one hand and Irish and Hebrew on the other is not the licensing mechanism, but whether the mechanism is local to the top of the unbounded resumptive dependency (Irish, Hebrew) or to the bottom (Swedish). Apparently problematic Swedish weak crossover, reconstruction, para- sitic gap, and across-the-board extraction data are shown to in fact support the resource management theory. A processing model for production and parsing is proposed that explains certain resumptive-like pronouns in English and Swedish which are not fully grammaticized. The production component explains how non-grammaticized resumptives are produced, both in positions that are inaccessible to fillers and in positions where fillers may freely occur. The explanation rests on the LFG treat- ments of fragments, unbounded dependencies, and island constraints. The parsing model explains a number of effects observed for English and Swedish resumptive-like pronouns. It provides a model of incremental, partial interpretation that explains why the English pronouns cannot be bound pro- nouns. It also provides a notion of complexity that explains certain amelioration effects for English and Swedish resumptives. The resource management theory is extended to copy raising in English. Copy raising pronouns are argued to constitute a problem for composition, like resumptive pronouns. Copy raising pro- nouns are licensed by manager resources like those that license resumptive pronouns, but manager resources for copy raising are specified in the lexical entries for the raising verbs involved, rather than in entries for complementizers. This explains why a language like English can have resump- tion in copy raising, but lack it in unbounded dependencies. A unified theory of resumption which covers both resumptive pronouns and copy raising is thus achieved. I also consider a class of perception verbs that apparently pattern like copy raising verbs. I argue that the crucial difference is that the perception verbs do not require pronominal copies in their complements and therefore do not constitute true copy raising verbs. The striking similarities between the two verb classes are explained by their having syntactically identical complementation possibilities, despite their differences in semantic composition with respect to copy pronouns. The syntax of the copy raising and perception verbs is investigated in detail. Their behaviour with respect to expletives is shown to be particularly challenging for linguistic theory. vi Acknowledgements It’s fitting that I’m wrapping things up in Oscars week, because it reminds me that the best acknowl- edgements are short and sweet. I’m not sure how sweet I can be, but I’ll try to be short. It takes a research community to write a thesis. In this case it took seven on three continents: Stanford University, Palo Alto Research Center, UCSC, Brandeis University, the University of Rochester, Uppsala University, and the University of Canterbury. I’d like to thank everybody at these institutions who helped me in any way. I’d especially like to thank Joan Bresnan, Daniel B¨uring, Ron Kaplan, Paul Kiparsky, Geoff Pullum, Ivan Sag, Tom Wasow, and Arnold Zwicky for helping me grow as a linguist and as a person. For the same reasons, I’d like to thank my previous advisors, Ewan Klein, Alex Lascarides, and Rob Stainton. My reading committee was drawn from three of these places: Stanford (Peter Sells and David Beaver), PARC (Mary Dalrymple), and UCSC (Jim McCloskey). Not only do they deserve my thanks for their encouragement, constructive criticism, and guidance, they also trusted me enough to let me do this on the road and were all tremendously accessible and responsive to my urgent remote communiqu´es. David pushed me to clarify my ideas and provided numerous insightful suggestions. Mary suffered through many long and confused phone calls in which she gave much excellent advice. Peter also unconfused me on several occasions, helped immeasurably in coping with the intimidating scale of thesis-writing and once met me in a park in Sheffield. Mary and Peter both play the advisor’s shepherding role peerlessly. Jim provided an invaluable alternative perspective and years of experience with the topic. He even came to New Zealand with impeccable timing. A fifth, unofficial member of my reading committee was Dick Crouch. My interest in Glue Semantics and resource logics grew out of my work under him at PARC. I’ve learnt as much from Dick as from anyone else and I’m very grateful to him for all his patient input and support. One difficulty of writing a thesis far way from your committee is the occasional feeling of iso- lation and lack of intellectual stimulation. Chris Potts helped remedy both problems through many lengthy emails and phone conversations. He read various drafts of the thesis and gave extremely vii useful criticisms and suggestions. More than this, he provided friendship and quite a few laughs. I apologize to him for holding up the joint work that we’ve been wanting to do. We can finally get cracking. For helpful discussion about issues relevant to the thesis, whether in person or over email, I’d like to thank Theodora Alexopoulou, Avery Andrews, Dorothee Beermann, Martin van den Berg, Joan Bresnan, Kersti B¨orjars, Seth Cable, Greg Carlson, Liz Coppock, Helge Dyvik, Elisabet Eng- dahl, Itamar Francez, Josef van Genabith, Veronica Gerassimova, Jonathan Ginzburg, Dani`ele Go- dard, Howard Gregory, Lars Hellan, Anders Holmberg, Ray Jackendoff, Florian Jaeger, Mark John- son, Ron Kaplan, Simin Karimi, Kate Kearns, Frank Keller, Tracy Holloway King, Paul Kiparsky, Shalom Lappin, Bob Levine, Jason Merchant, Line Mikkelsen, Glyn Morrill, Valeria de Paiva, David Pesetsky, Carl Pollard, Jeff Runner, Ivan Sag, Mark Steedman, Mehran Taghvaipour, and Tom Wasow. I’d also like to thank audiences at the New Zealand Linguistic Society, LSA, LFG, HPSG, CLS, WCCFL, Stanford Semantics
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