The Structure of Attitude Reports: Representing Context in Grammar by Carolyn Spadine B.A., University of Minnesota (2013) Submitted to the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY September 2020 c Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2020. All rights reserved. Author............................................................. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy January 17, 2020 Certifiedby......................................................... David Pesetsky Professor of Linguistics Thesis Supervisor Acceptedby......................................................... Kai von Fintel Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Linguistics Linguistics Section Head, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy 2 The Structure of Attitude Reports: Representing Context in Grammar by Carolyn Spadine Submitted to the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy on January 17, 2020, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Abstract This dissertation argues for a view of grammar that encodes certain facts about the dis- course context in the narrow syntax. In particular, the recurring claim that there are clause peripheral elements that correspond to a kind of perspectival center is supported by novel evidence that this perspectival element can be overt in certain languages. This is shown using data from attitude reports in Tigrinya (Semitic, Eritrea), which overtly realizes a perspective holder, as well as a diverse collection of other languages, including Ewe and Malayalam. In analyzing this construction, I propose that the certain complementizers have a sec- ondary use as a marker of reported speech. I unify this use of complementizers with their more common clausal subordination use by adopting the proposal in Kratzer (2006), which argues that the modal quantification component of attitude reports is in the complementizer, rather than the attitude predicate, as is commonly assumed. I also analyze two unique prop- erties of these reportative complementizer constructions, indexical shift and logophoricity. In Tigrinya, indexical shift can be accounted for by allowing these reportative com- plementizers to quantify over contexts, rather than worlds, and by introducing a context- shifting operator. From a morphosyntactic perspective, I find evidence from indexical shift that person features must be assigned throughout the course of the derivation, rather than at the point of lexical insertion. I also find that these constructions create contexts for matrix clause indexical shift in Tigrinya, something that has not previously been observed. Evi- dence from Ewe and other languages suggests a correlation between logophoric domains and the presence of a complementizer with reportative properties. Based on this distinction, I argue that Condition A-violating reflexives in languages like French and English are not reducible to logophors, based on their distribution, as well as other syntactic properties. Thesis Supervisor: David Pesetsky Title: Professor of Linguistics 3 4 Acknowledgments I would like to thank my committeemembers, David Pesetsky, Norvin Richards, and Sabine Iatridou, for their generosity with their time and ideas, as well as their inexhaustible pa- tience with me. I also owe a huge debt of gratitude to my friends and colleagues at both MIT and Harvard, as well as my family and friends. Without my Tigrinya consultants, Ruth Worrede and Lwam and Amanuael Gidey, well as Athulya Aravind, Abby Bimpeh and Es- ther Desiadenyo Dogbe, this dissertation would not have been possible. Finally, Gunnar Lund, Liz Johnson, and Dylan Baker deserve special acknowledgement. 5 6 Contents 1 Introduction 11 1.1 Contextingrammar,andwhyitmatters . ... 11 1.2 Mainproposal................................. 17 1.3 Notes on data collection, glosses, and transcription . ........... 19 2 The role of complementizers in attitude reports 21 2.1 Complementizersandverbsofspeech . ... 21 2.2 Thedata.................................... 23 2.3 Properties of perspectival clauses in Tigrinya . ......... 26 2.3.1 VerbalMorphology. 27 2.3.2 Indexicalshift............................. 29 2.3.3 Distribution.............................. 31 2.3.4 Binding................................ 33 2.3.5 Summary: Pil- vs. k1m-z1- clauses .................. 35 2.4 Pil- clausescontainattitudeholders. 35 2.4.1 Adverbialmodification. 36 2.4.2 Agreement .............................. 42 2.4.3 Proposal ............................... 44 2.4.4 Embedded Pil- ............................ 44 2.4.5 Perspectival complementizers cross-linguistically.......... 48 2.4.6 Evidence against a complementizer/reportative markerhomophony 53 2.5 Discourseprojectionsinsyntacticstructure . ......... 55 2.5.1 Background: pragmatic projections in syntactic structure . 55 7 2.5.2 The author argument and perspective-sensitive phenomena . 58 2.6 Optionalityofattitude-holders . ..... 60 2.7 Semanticsofperspectivalclauses. ..... 62 2.7.1 Decompositionofattitudepredicates. .... 63 2.7.2 Proposal ............................... 65 2.7.3 Reportative complementizers without author arguments....... 69 2.7.4 ReportativeEvidentiality . 70 2.8 Conclusion .................................. 76 3 Indexical Shift 77 3.1 Overview ................................... 77 3.1.1 Whatisanindexical?. 79 3.1.2 Backgroundonindexicalshift . 84 3.2 Variation in indexical shift cross-linguistically . ............. 86 3.2.1 Syntacticconstraintsonindexicalshift. ...... 92 3.2.2 Summary: Cross-linguistic constraints on indexical shift . 97 3.3 IndexicalShiftinTigrinya . .. 98 3.3.1 Summary:IndexicalshiftinTigrinya . 121 3.4 Formalmodelsofindexicalshift . .122 3.4.1 Contextshifttheoriesofindexicalshift . .129 3.4.2 ThesemanticsofTigrinyaindexicalshift . .137 3.5 Themorphosyntaxofindexicalshift . .146 3.5.1 The division of labor between syntax, semantics, and morphology . 146 3.5.2 Mismatchesinverbalmorphology . 146 3.5.3 Analysis ...............................162 3.6 Conclusions..................................175 A Logophoricity 185 A.1 IntroductiontoLogophoricity. .185 A.2 Logophoriccontextsandcomplementizers . .. ..189 A.3 LogophoricityinEwe. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..191 8 A.4 FormalmodelsofLogophoricity . 197 A.5 Logophoricityvs.ExemptAnaphora . .199 A.5.1 Malayalam ..............................201 A.5.2 ConditionAandexemptanaphora . 202 A.5.3 Distinguishingexemptanaphors from logophors . .208 A.5.4 De re blocking ............................213 A.5.5 BacktoMalayalam. .217 9 Glossing conventions ABS absolutive ACC accusative ALLO allocutive ALLOfem allocutive - feminine agreement ALLOmasc allocutive - masculine agreement ALLOvouv allocutive - plural or formal agreement APPL applicative AUX auxiliary verb COMP complementizer COP copula DET determiner DIR direct DOM differential object marking ERG ergative FUT future F feminine HON honorific LOG logophoric M masculine NEG negative NOM nominative PST past PERF perfective PL plural PREP preposition PRS present Q question QUOT quotative REFL reflexive REL relative REP reportative SG singular SBJ subject TOP topic 10 Chapter 1 Introduction This dissertation argues for a model of grammar where the narrow syntax has access to certain discourse-contextual properties in the course of the derivation. Specifically, the au- thor of a proposition can be encoded in a position of the clause periphery, and that author argument can interact with other elements of the syntax. The proposal that syntactic struc- ture includes some kind of clause peripheral point-of-view argument is not novel, but this dissertation describes a construction where this kind of argument is overt. These configurations, where an author argument is present overtly in the clause periph- ery, correlate with two morphosyntactic processes that have been considered point-of-view phenomena: indexical shift and logophoricity. 1.1 Context in grammar, and why it matters A recurring but controversial suggestion in syntactic research is that some kind of con- textual information needs to be represented in syntactic structure, and accessible to mor- phosyntactic processes. This proposal is at odds with the prevailing understanding of the distribution of labor in grammar: we typically think of syntax being extremely constrained, in that the only information it can interact with is the content of the lexicon, without any access to information about discourse context. Context, on this model, interacts with gram- mar only on the pragmatic level, which filters out certain sentences after they have been constructed, based on whether they are contextually appropriate. However, there is ev- 11 idence that the introduction of contextual information cannot be post-syntactic, and this dissertation adds to that body of evidence. In particular, it is important to differentiate between the (widely adopted) assumption that the meaning of lexical items can make reference to context, and the claim (which I advocate for in this dissertation) that some contextual factors are represented as syntactic objects. The difference between these two positions is can be clarified by looking closely at two different types of analysis of exempt reflexives in English. Exempt reflexives (also called long-distance reflexives, perspectival reflexives) are those that appear to be exempt from Condition A of binding theory, which requires that all re- flexive pronouns are bound within their local domain. For example: (1) Criticisms of