UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Perspectives on Syntactic Dependencies Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1dg340gf Author Gluckman, John Daniel Publication Date 2018 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Perspectives on Syntactic Dependencies A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics by John Gluckman 2018 © Copyright by John Gluckman 2018 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Perspectives on Syntactic Dependencies by John Gluckman Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics University of California, Los Angeles, 2018 Professor Dominique L Sportiche, Chair This dissertation examines how intensional content, i.e., belief ascription, constrains antecedent- gap chains. I defend the proposal that antecedent-gap chains are intensionally uniform: the an- tecedent and the gap must refer to the same thing. The core focus is defective intervention (Chom- sky, 2000, 2001). Previous accounts have attributed defective intervention to syntactic mechanisms (Chomsky, 2001; Nevins, 2004; Preminger, 2014). These accounts are shown to be at best entirely stipulative and at worst empirically inadequate. I make two new generalizations concerning defective intervention. The first is that defective interveners are all attitude holders. I support this generalization by closely examining the class of tough-predicates, which permit various kinds of arguments to be projected in the syntax be- tween the antecedent and the gap. The second generalization is that defective intervention only arises when the antecedent-gap chain connects two thematic positions. I justify this generalization by looking broadly at all the cases of defective intervention reported in the literature, and more closely at the tough-construction, which has itself inspired decades of research. I illustrate that the antecedent-gap chain in the tough-construction is “mitigated” by beliefs. The two core theoretical results of this dissertation are, I) a principled and explanatory account of defective intervention, and II) a principled and explanatory account of the tough-construction. ii The dissertation of John Gluckman is approved. Roumyana Pancheva Jesse Aron Harris Timothy A Stowell Yael Sharvit Dominique L Sportiche, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2018 iii For my family, Mom, Dad, and Jeff. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 Defective Intervention and Tough-Constructions ..................... 1 1.1 A history of Defective Intervention ............................ 1 1.2 Review of approaches to defective intervention ..................... 11 1.2.1 Features and Agree ................................ 11 1.2.2 Prepositional shielding and countercyclicity .................. 17 1.2.3 Alternatives .................................... 22 1.2.4 The right and the wrong ............................. 24 1.3 Why tough? ......................................... 25 1.3.1 Properties of Tough-Constructions ....................... 26 1.4 Review of previous analyses ............................... 32 1.4.1 Movement vs. Predication ............................ 34 1.4.2 Full vs. reduced clause .............................. 43 1.4.3 Result: predication Å full CP .......................... 50 2 Attitudinal Intervention .................................... 51 2.1 Introduction ......................................... 51 2.2 An overview of defective intervention .......................... 52 2.3 What does tough mean? .................................. 58 2.4 Diagnosing intervention .................................. 62 2.4.1 Experiencers and judges ............................. 65 2.4.2 An aside about the syntax of judge-dependence ................ 69 2.4.3 The Take-TIME Construction ........................... 73 2.4.4 Psych-verbs .................................... 74 v 2.4.5 Generalized judge intervention ......................... 78 2.4.6 An aside on tough intervention in Romance .................. 82 2.5 Intensional Chain Uniformity ............................... 86 2.5.1 Theoretical assumptions ............................. 86 2.5.2 Formalization of ICU ............................... 92 2.5.3 The importance of identifying yourself ..................... 99 2.5.4 Exocentric readings ................................ 104 2.5.5 Embedding in attitude environments ...................... 106 2.5.6 The de se addendum ............................... 108 2.6 When do attitude holders intervene? ........................... 109 2.6.1 Tough is an intensional island .......................... 111 2.6.2 Raising in Spanish ................................ 116 2.6.3 Raising in English ................................. 121 2.6.4 Raising in Italian and French ........................... 122 2.6.5 Raising-to-Object/ECM ............................. 128 2.6.6 Passivization out of finite clauses ........................ 135 2.6.7 Raising in Icelandic ................................ 137 2.7 Conclusion ......................................... 140 3 The syntax and semantics of the Tough-Construction .................. 145 3.1 Overview of the chapter .................................. 145 3.1.1 Recap of properties and analyses ........................ 147 3.2 Events and the tough-construction ............................ 151 3.2.1 Events and Tough-predicates ........................... 151 3.2.2 Events and for-CPs ................................ 153 vi 3.2.3 For-CPs are modifiers, not arguments ...................... 157 3.2.4 Two problems: modal-quantification and counting events .......... 163 3.2.5 Taking stock .................................... 175 3.3 The tough-subject ..................................... 180 3.3.1 Thematic underspecification ........................... 181 3.3.2 Tough-subjects are proleptic objects ....................... 186 3.3.3 The argument/adjunct distinction ........................ 191 3.3.4 Formalization ................................... 194 3.3.5 Taking stock, again ................................ 201 3.4 Defective intervention revisited .............................. 207 3.5 Another look at raising predicates ............................ 215 3.6 Conclusion ......................................... 219 4 Speculations about variation ................................. 221 vii LIST OF TABLES 2.1 Distribution of raising and control with “seem” across three Romance languages .... 127 viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I will keep this short. Any contribution that this dissertation makes probably has as its source one of the many people that have helped me along the way. Foremost, my committee has been outstanding. Thanks to Roumi, Jesse, Tim, Yael, and Dominique. It is not possible to over-state how intelligent and insightful all of these people are. Not only have they taught me about good linguistics, they have all taught how to be a good linguist. I hope that I can live up to their example. In my time at UCLA, I’ve had the benefit of being involved with a number of organizations that have had a profound impact on me, including Semantics Tea, Syntax/Semantics seminar, PsyRG, and last but not least, UCLA’s Morphology Reading Group (MoRG), which I founded and helped run for the majority of my time here. That said, without doubt the most instructive hour of my week has always been Pam Munro’s American Indian Seminar. Every week I was exposed to new, and often baffling data, which defied explanation. AIS never ceased to inspire in me a sense of awe about the diversity of human language. Moreover, Pam herself is a wealth of knowledge. I feel fortunate to know her and to have benefitted from her expertise. Though this dissertation doesn’t reflect it, my career has been defined by fieldwork. Thanks to Anita Silva, Fidel Sontay, Abigail Sanya, Walter Kigali, Benard Lavussa, and especially Beni Indire. Thank you, Beni, for responding to our Craigslist ad four years ago. I’m honored to call you a friend. I am also indebted to my undergraduate department and the University of Pennsylvania. Gene Buckley in particular has had an important impact on my career. I was lucky to be able to help him on the Kashaya project, which has by far been my favorite fieldwork experience. I am also grateful that he introduced me to Anita and Conrad Silva. It was an absolute pleasure and honor to be able to share time with Gene, Anita, and Conrad in Santa Rosa. I’m lucky to be surrounded by great colleagues and friends. Thanks to Chiara and Ryan for asking to me be a place-holder in their friend group. And thanks to Tony and Sam for humoring me during dinners. Sam, I’m sorry if we talk about linguistics too much. Thanks also to Jesse, Nico, Sözen, Iara, Marju, Deb, Maayan, Travis, Stephanie, Adam Chong and Adam Royer, Natasha, Nina, Robert, Megha, Hilda, Anoop, Harold, and Carson. (I’m sure I"m forgetting people.) I am ix also indebted to Olga Ivanova and the participants in the Swahili class, which was always a wel- come respite in my final year of grad school. Lastly, it has been a pleasure getting to know Mike Diercks. His kindness and generosity in all things Luhya was so welcoming as we started on our new language project. Beatrice has been with me throughout my entire academic career. Words cannot express how happy I am to see her every morning and every evening. This dissertation is dedicated to my family because they have supported me through two non- traditional careers. Without your help, I have been able to pursue not