Scottish Gaelic Clefts: Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics By Christine M. Sheil A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Line Mikkelsen, Chair Professor Peter Jenks Professor Mairi McLaughlin Fall 2016 Abstract Scottish Gaelic Clefts: Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics by Christine M. Sheil Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics University of California, Berkeley Professor Line Mikkelsen, Chair This dissertation investigates the syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of clefts in Scottish Gaelic, and represents the first in-depth look at Scottish Gaelic clefts. It also examines the Propositional Cleft. While the Propositional Cleft is acknowledged in Scottish Gaelic grammars, a thorough description and analysis has not been done. The Propositional Cleft is noteworthy for the presence of cleft morphosyntax—the copula, a pro-form, and the relative complementizer—but the absence of a clefted constituent. This lack of a clefted constituent is puzzling if the Propositional Cleft is to be included in the cleft paradigm, since it is the clefted constituent which is typically interpreted as the focus, and the interpretation of focus is typically assumed to be derived from the focus-background bipartite structure created by the cleft construction. This property of lacking a bipartite structure makes the Propositional Cleft, at first glance, an unlikely candidate for membership in the cleft paradigm. Over the course of the dissertation I describe and analyze the pragmatic effect of the Propositional Cleft, and I argue that the Propositional Cleft is in fact a member of the cleft paradigm, but that it instantiates a typologically rare combination of broad sized identificational focus. The syntactic and semantic analysis of clefts proposed here extends straightforwardly to derive the particular meaning and structure of the Propositional Cleft, and shows that broad focus is not incompatible with cleft meaning. I argue that A-bar dependencies in Scottish Gaelic are movement based, and propose a syntactic account of focus movement in clefts which involves the checking of focus features in C by the movement of the focus phrase to its specifier. This syntactic account of focus allows us to understand the absence of movement in the Propositional Cleft, since the broad size of focus means that the focus constituent is the complement of CP, and so can check the focus features of C in situ. 1 Contents 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Overview.......................................... 1 1.1.1 TheScottishGaelicData ........................... 2 1.2 An Introduction to the Propositional Cleft . ..... 3 1.3 What the Propositional Cleft is Not . .. 5 1.3.1 The It is that Construction .......................... 5 1.3.2 VerumFocus................................... 7 1.3.3 SentenceFocus.................................. 8 1.4 Summary ......................................... 10 2 The Meaning of Clefts in Scottish Gaelic 12 2.1 Scottish Gaelic Clefts as Focus Constructions . ...... 12 2.2 Exhaustivity in Scottish Gaelic Clefts . .. 14 2.3 Analysis of Cleft Meaning . 17 2.3.1 AStructuredDiscourse............................. 18 2.3.2 TheCLEFTOperator ............................. 20 2.3.3 An Analysis of Scottish Gaelic Clefts . 21 2.4 Summary ......................................... 24 3 The Propositional Cleft 26 3.1 The Propositional Cleft as a Cleft Construction . ..... 26 3.1.1 Contrast in the Propositional Cleft . 27 3.1.1.1 Variability in Location of Contrast . 29 3.1.1.2 AbsenceofContrast ......................... 31 3.1.2 The Propositional Cleft as a Focus Construction . .. 33 3.1.3 Summary: Whatmustbeexplained . 34 3.2 QUDRedux........................................ 35 3.3 The Pragmatic Effect of the Propositional Cleft . ..... 39 3.3.1 Creating a New Line of Inquiry . 40 3.3.2 The Non-contrastive Propositional Cleft . .. 44 3.4 PragmaticEffectviaCLEFTandBroadFocus . ... 47 3.4.1 CLEFTRecap.................................. 47 3.4.2 TheContextSet................................. 48 3.4.3 TheCLEFTOperatorandBroadFocus. 50 i CONTENTS 3.5 Summary ......................................... 53 4 Scottish Gaelic A-bar Dependencies 55 4.1 TheComplementizerSystem............................ .. 55 4.2 TheCaseAgainstA-barMovement. ... 60 4.2.1 Non-IdentityEffects............................... 61 4.2.1.1 Failure of Selection . 61 4.2.1.2 Anti-Agreement ........................... 62 4.2.1.3 CaseMismatches........................... 63 4.2.1.4 Idiom Interpretation Failures . 64 4.2.1.5 Condition C (Non-)Reconstruction . 65 4.2.1.6 Summary ............................... 65 4.2.2 A Base-Generation Analysis . 65 4.2.3 Summary ..................................... 68 4.3 Identity Effects in A-bar Dependencies . ..... 68 4.3.1 Selection ..................................... 68 4.3.2 Agreement .................................... 69 4.3.3 ConditionC ................................... 71 4.3.4 Variable Binding . 71 4.3.5 Reciprocals.................................... 72 4.3.6 TheInterpretationofBareNPs. 73 4.3.7 Summary ..................................... 73 4.4 A Movement Account of A-bar Dependencies . ..... 75 4.5 Summary ......................................... 78 5 The Structure of Clefts 79 5.0.1 TheMorphosyntax ofCopularStructures . ... 79 5.1 CleftSyntax....................................... 80 5.1.1 TheAugment .................................. 81 5.1.1.1 Variation in the Form of the Augment . 82 5.1.1.2 A Semantic Account of the Augment: Adger (2011) . 86 5.1.1.3 Pronominal Subjects of Copular Structures . 89 5.1.2 ACleftSyntax.................................. 93 5.1.2.1 TheSyntaxoftheAugment . .. ... .. .. .. ... .. .. 94 5.1.2.2 The Nature of Agreement with the Augment . 95 5.1.2.3 FocusMovementinClefts . .101 5.1.3 Summary .....................................104 5.2 Implications for Copula Clauses . 104 5.2.1 Structure of the Augmented Copula Clause . 105 5.2.2 AdgerandRamchand(2003) .........................106 5.2.2.1 TheInvertedCopulaClause(ICC) . 106 5.2.2.2 The Augmented Copula Clause (ACC) . 109 5.2.2.3 Summary ...............................112 5.2.3 Comparison....................................112 5.2.3.1 TheCopulaandInversion . .113 ii CONTENTS 5.2.3.2 TheAugment.............................123 5.2.3.3 Position of the Predicate DP . 124 5.2.3.4 Summary ...............................125 5.2.4 StructurefortheInverted CopulaClause . 126 5.3 Summary .........................................127 6 The Syntax of the Propositional Cleft 128 6.1 CleftMeaningandStructure........................... 128 6.1.1 TheMeaningofClefts .............................128 6.1.2 CleftSyntax ...................................130 6.1.3 Summary .....................................131 6.2 ThePropositionalCleft ............................... 131 6.2.1 The Meaning of the Propositional Cleft . 131 6.2.2 The Predicted Structure for the Propositional Cleft . .....131 6.2.3 The Syntax of the Propositional Cleft . 132 6.2.4 Summary .....................................134 6.3 Restrictions on the Propositional Cleft . .....134 6.3.1 Embedding ....................................136 6.4 Summary .........................................138 7 Conclusion 139 7.1 DissertationSummary................................ 139 7.2 Implications for Focus and the Syntax-Pragmatics Interface . ..........140 7.2.1 TheSyntaxofFocus ..............................140 7.2.2 BroadFocus ...................................141 7.2.3 A Cross-Linguistic Look at Broad Identificational Focus . 141 7.2.3.1 Propositional Assertion in East Asian Languages . 141 7.2.3.2 Discourse Particles . 143 7.3 Summary .........................................143 Bibliography 145 Source Abbreviations 151 A Corpus of the Propositional Cleft 152 iii List of Tables 1.1 Summary of Interpretations Unavailable to the PC . ..... 11 4.1 Complementizers’EffectonVerbForm. .... 60 4.2 DerivationofA-bardependencyviaMove . .... 68 4.3 DerivationofA-bardependencyviaAgree. ..... 68 4.4 Summary of (Non-)Identity Effects in Scottish Gaelic A-bar Dependencies . 74 5.1 The Form of the Augment and Type of Clefted Constituent . ...... 86 5.2 FormandSemanticTypeoftheAugment . ... 87 5.3 EmphaticPronouns .................................. 89 5.4 The Form of the Augment and Category of the Subject . ....... 95 5.5 Independent-Dependent Pattern and the Null Form of the Copula .......116 5.6 Environments for tu ...................................117 iv List of Figures 3.1 Partition on the Context Set: Narrow Informational Focus . ......... 49 v Glossing conventions 1 first person 2 second person 3 third person C complementizer COND conditional mood COP copula C.REL relative complementizer DEF definite DEM demonstrative DEP dependent form of the verb EMPH emphatic particle F feminine gender FREE.REL free relative particle FUT future tense GEN genitive case IMP impersonal passive INF infinitive INDEP independent form of the verb M masculine gender NEG negation OPTL object shift particle PAST past tense PASS passive PERF perfect aspect POSS possessive pronoun PRES present tense PROG progressive aspect PTCL particle Q interrogative particle REL relative form of the verb SG singular number TOP topic PL plural number VN verbal noun VOC vocative vi Acknowledgments First and foremost, I thank my committee for their guidance, suggestions, and encourage- ment. Line Mikkelsen has been an incredible