SPECIFICITY AND AGREEMENT IN STANDARD WESTERN ARMENIAN by MICHELE SIGLER B.A. in Philosophy Princeton University (1982) 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 October, 1996 © Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1996 Signature of Author .. 1- Department Qhnguistics\f and Philosophy October 11, 1996 Certified by 1 _ t Kenneth L. Hale Professor of Linguistics Thesis Supervisor Accepted by Wayne O'Neil Head, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy MAR~ 9 1997 Specificity and Agreement in Standard Western Armenian Michele Sigler Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics Abstract This thesis is a study of specificity and agreement in Standard Western Armenian (SWA) within the framework of the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1993). As it is a language that has a rich nominal and verbal morphology, SWA provides us with overt signs, in both the nominal and verbal domains, of the underlying structural relations that constitute agreement as it is understood in this theoretical model. The thesis has two parts. In the first part I examine the distribution and interpretation of nominal suffixes, paying particular attention to bare singular count noun phrases, mass indefinites, bare plurals, and specific noun phrases, which bear the definite article suffix. I show that the definite article is in fact a marker of specificity and attribute this to its being associated with the 4-feature Person. I argue that bare (singular count and mass) NPs lack 4- features altogether. Assuming the split DP structure proposed by Ritter (1992), I argue that 4-features are checked within DP and propose a feature-based characterization of the types of noun phrases distinguished by the nominal suffixes. In the second part I discuss the nonagreement construction, a construction in which nonspecific plural noun phrases do not trigger plural agreement on non-transitive verbs. I show that this can be accounted for using the feature checking mechanism of the Minimalist Program, by assuming that the subject is specified for Number only and not for Person and that number features are checked in the specifier position of TP. In this derivation AgrP is absent, as neither the subject nor the verb has person features to check there. Positing an Agr-less derivation allows us to account for the fact that transitives and unergatives are unacceptable in non-agreement constructions: In a derivation whose sole functional projection is TP, there is no place for a DP object to check its Case features, hence transitive non-agreeing derivations do not converge. Non-agreeing unergatives are ruled out on the assumption that their subjects are licensed in a position external to the predicate (following Hale and Keyser 1993). By assuming that the predicate is represented by TP rather than VP, I conclude that the subject of an unergative or transitive is licensed in an external position only, where this means specifier of AgrP. We see that the proposed Agr-less analysis of nonagreeing sentences permits an account of their interpretation based on Diesing's (1992) Mapping Hypothesis, a general account of the mapping of syntactic representation onto semantic representation. 2.5.1.5 The indefinite article on adverbs .......................... 102 2.5.1.6 Plural noun with the indefinite article ................. 104 2.5.2 C onclusion ............................................................................... 105 2.6 The Definite Article ..................................... 106 2.6.0.1 Basic facts about the article .................................... 107 2.6.0.2 Definite article marks specific indefinite as well as definite noun phrases ................................................ 111 2.6.0.3 Definite article in relative clauses ............................ 117 2.6.1 Definite article as an agreement marker in DP .................. 118 2.6.1.1 Inherently definite expressions that require the definite article........... ................... 118 2.6.1.1.1 Proper names ............................................ 118 2.6.1.1.2 Deictic expressions ................................... 120 2.6.1.1.3 The pronoun ink ....................................... 121 2.6.2 Agreement inside DP................................................................ 123 2.6.2.1 Basic facts of nominal agreement........................... 124 2.6.2.1.1 Pro-drop and nominal agreement ............ 125 2.6.2.1.2 Nominal agreement in PPs ..................... 126 2.6.2.1.3 Nominal agreement in participial relative clauses ........................................................... 127 2.6.3 Derivations of DP-internal agreement ................................... 127 2.6.3.1 Nominal agreement in Miskitu ................................ 131 2.6.3.2 Agreement with wh expressions in specDP ........... 134 2.6.3.2.1 Agreement with quantifiers....................... 135 2.6.3.2.2 Agreement with pro subject in specDP: proper names ............................................. 137 2.6.3.2.3 Agreement with indefinite possessors ........................................ .......................... 138 2.6.3.3 The definite article as evidence of concord (Szabolsci 1994) ................................................................... 140 2.6.4 C onclusion .................................................................................. 142 2.7 P lurals ......................................................................................................... 144 2.7.1 The plural suffix ........................................................... 145 2.7.2 Nouns that refer to a plurality are not always marked p lu ral ......................................................................................................... 146 2.7.3 Specific (plural) noun phrases require overt plural markin g ............................................................................................ 151 2.7.4 Plurals and pronominal reference .......................................... 152 2.7.5 Bare plurals ................................................................................ 154 2.7.5.1 Bare plural subjects cannot be generic ............... 1....155 2.7.5.2 Bare plural subjects of accusative vs unaccusative verbs ................................................................... 157 2.7.6 C onclusion................................................................................. 161 3 The Non-agreement Construction .............................................................. 163 A bbreviationss................................................................................................................ 7 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 12 2 Specificity in the noun phrase ............................4.............................. .............. 16 2.1 Introduction ........................................................................................ 16 2.2 Specificity ................................................................................................... 21 2.2.1 Specificity and scope............................................................ 26 2.2.2 Specificity and pronominal reference ................................ 26 2.3 N um P ......................................................................................................... 27 2.3.1 Ritter (1992): the case for NumP ......................................... 28 2.3.2 NumPs in SWA....................................................................... 38 2.3.3 QF-features: Number and Person ............................. 41 2.3.3.1 The &feature Number ................................ 45 2.3.3.2 The interpretation of number specification ........................................ ......... 45 2.4 Bare N Ps ................................................................. ............................. 51 2.4.1 Scope and bare NPs .................................................. 54 2.4.2 Bare NPs and pronominal reference ................................... 55 2.4.3 Bare NPs in object position .............................. .............. 57 2.4.4 Interpretation of bare NPs as mass indefinites .................. 60 2.4.5 Bare NPs in internal subject position ..................................... 63 2.4.6 Bare NPs are not permitted in external subject position ......................... ......................................................... 65 2.4.7 Bare NPs as predicates ........................................ 66 2.4.8 Bare NPs in SWA do not incorporate................................... 71 2.4.8.1 Mithun (1984) ...................................... ........ 72 2.4.8.2 SWA does not have morphological incorporation ............. ......................................... 73 2.4.8.3 Incorporation and truth conditions ........................ 76 2.4.8.4 Structural difference between incorporated objects and non-incorporated objects................................... 79 2.4.8.5 Bare Ns can be modified ................................. ...... 81 2.4.8.6 Bare NPs and conjunction ...................................... 83 2.4.8.7 Phonological evidence that bare NP subjects rem ain in VP ............................................................................. 86 2.4.9 C onclusion....... .........................................................................