A Unified Analysis of Reflexives and Reciprocals in Synchronous Tree Adjoining Grammar A DISSERTATION PRESENTED BY CRISTINA AGGAZZOTTI TO THE DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE SUBJECT OF LINGUISTICS HARVARD UNIVERSITY CAMBRIDGE,MASSACHUSETTS APRIL 2019 ©2019 – CRISTINA AGGAZZOTTI ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Dissertation Advisor: Stuart Shieber Cristina Aggazzotti A Unified Analysis of Reflexives and Reciprocals in Synchronous Tree Adjoining Grammar ABSTRACT Reflexives and reciprocals share a similar syntactic distribution so are often grouped together under the term anaphor, even though they differ semantically. They are a challenging test case for any theory due to their reliance on either context or another word, which can sometimes be non-local, to supply their meaning. An approach that preserves the antecedent-anaphor dependency without requiring extra computational power, and can additionally generalize these two phenomena into one mechanism, is desirable. This dissertation provides one such unified analysis. Using the framework of synchronous tree adjoining grammar, I present a parallel analysis for reflexives and reciprocals that captures their syntax, semantics, and morphology. The analysis builds on a previous STAG analysis of reflexives by Frank (2008) to not only provide the first STAG account of reciprocals, but also unify this account with one for reflexives. By employing semantic operators, the analysis abstracts out the notions of reflexivity and reciprocity into a formalization that captures the various possible readings of each anaphor. I also propose a novel extension of the STAG framework in which the basic unit, a lexicalized elementary tree, is decomposed into smaller units—morphological elementary trees. These word level trees obey the same rules to form lexicalized trees as phrase level STAG trees do to form sentences. English reflexives are used as a test case but future work will apply the analysis crosslinguistically to languages with morphologically richer anaphors. Additional contributions include a clarification of the vast literature on reflexives in particular and a corpus investigation into the distribution of reflexives and any differences across the reflexives. Through a combination of corpus, computational, and theoretical work investigating the syntax, semantics, and morphology of anaphors, this dissertation provides a comprehensive and versatile model of both reflexives and reciprocals as unified phenomena. iii Contents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS viii LIST OF FIGURES x LIST OF TABLES xii 1 THE LANDSCAPE:PRESENTING THE CHALLENGE 1 1.1 Goals and contributions . 1 1.2 Three sides of anaphors . 2 1.2.1 Syntax . 2 1.2.2 Semantics . 4 1.2.3 Morphology . 7 1.3 Synchronous tree adjoining grammar . 7 1.4 Dissertation outline . 8 2 THE FOREST:UNDERSTANDING THE DATA 10 2.0.1 Terminology . 11 2.0.2 Contributions . 12 2.1 Survey of the range of reflexives . 13 2.1.1 Reflexive anaphors . 13 2.1.2 Intensifiers . 14 2.1.3 Override reflexives . 16 2.1.4 Previous taxonomies . 22 2.2 Corpus overview . 27 2.2.1 Data . 27 2.2.2 Method . 27 2.3 Survey and corpus results . 28 2.3.1 A new reflexive taxonomy . 28 2.3.2 Reflexive corpus findings . 36 2.3.3 Reciprocals . 40 2.4 Summary and future work . 41 3 THE TREES:INTRODUCING THE MODEL 43 3.0.1 Why STAG? . 43 3.0.2 Notation and terminology . 45 3.1 Background . 46 3.1.1 Synchronous Tree Adjoining Grammar . 46 3.1.2 Previous work on reflexives in TAG . 52 3.1.3 The analysis of Frank (2008) . 56 3.2 Multiple link MCTAG . 59 3.3 A new analysis . 60 3.3.1 Frank’s analysis revised . 60 3.3.2 Comparison of analyses . 62 3.3.3 Adding reciprocals . 64 3.3.4 Anaphor properties in the analysis . 65 3.4 Applications . 67 iv 3.4.1 Cataphora . 67 3.4.2 Anaphors with object control verbs . 68 3.4.3 Anaphoric arguments of ditransitive verbs . 71 3.5 Extensions with delayed tree-locality . 77 3.5.1 Anaphors in picture-DPs . 77 3.5.2 Anaphors in adjuncts . 79 3.5.3 Anaphors with raising verbs . 80 3.5.4 Anaphors with ECM verbs . 81 3.5.5 Anaphors with subject control verbs . 82 3.5.6 Multiple anaphors . 84 3.6 Summary and future work . 85 4 THE LEAVES:REFINING THE MODEL 87 4.0.1 Reciprocity . 87 4.0.2 Notation and terminology . 89 4.1 The phenomena . 89 4.1.1 Extended readings . 90 4.1.2 Weakened readings . 91 4.2 Capturing extended readings . 95 4.2.1 Simple cases . 96 4.2.2 Allowing for across-group readings . 96 4.2.3 Allowing for within-group readings . 97 4.2.4 Combining extended readings . 98 4.3 Capturing reflexives . 98 4.3.1 Reflexive readings . 99 4.3.2 Reflexives as operators . 99 4.4 Capturing weakened readings . 101 4.4.1 Unifying the analysis . 106 4.4.2 Comparison with previous analyses . 107 4.5 Summary and future work . 108 5 THE ROOTS:DIGGING DEEPER INTO THE MODEL 109 5.0.1 Previous related work . 110 5.1 Building up the framework . 111 5.1.1 Morphology as syntax . 111 5.1.2 Derivational morphology . 114 5.1.3 Inflectional morphology . 119 5.1.4 Interplay between derivational and inflectional morphology . 130 5.2 Bracketing paradoxes . 131 5.2.1 Morphological bracketing paradoxes . 132 5.2.2 Attribute phrase bracketing paradoxes . 135 5.3 Capturing anaphors . 139 5.3.1 Brief history of the English reflexive form . 139 5.3.2 Current status of the English reflexive form . 140 5.3.3 Morphology of English reflexives in STAG . 141 5.4 Summary and future work . 145 v 6 BEYOND TREES:EXPANDING THE MODEL 146 6.1 Future directions . 146 6.1.1 Preliminary crosslinguistic expansion . 146 6.1.2 Machine learning approaches . 152 6.2 Conclusion . 154 BIBLIOGRAPHY 164 vi In dedication to my dog Hercules for helping me keep perspective, forcing me to go outside, and reminding me to get excited about the little things vii Acknowledgments A Ph.D. is a marathon, not a sprint. You have to pace yourself and take water breaks so you don’t burn out, it’s more pleasant when you look at the scenery passing by and have others around you, and the planning fallacy almost always ensures you go faster near the end. This was certainly true for me. I often forgot that the key was endurance, but many people in various ways helped me remember. On the academic side, this dissertation would not have been possible without my advisor, Stuart Shieber. I serendipitously took his computational.