Features and Categories in Language Production Inauguraldissertation zur Erlangung des Grades eines Doktors der Philosophie im Fachbereich Neuere Philologien der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität zu Frankfurt am Main vorgelegt von: Roland Pfau aus Wasserlos (Alzenau) 2000 * * * “Piglet,” said Pooh a little shyly, after they had walked for some time without saying anything. “Yes, Pooh?” “Do you remember when I said that a Respectful Pooh Song might be written about You Know What?” “Did you, Pooh?” said Piglet, getting a little pink round the nose. “Oh, yes, I believe you did.” “It’s been written, Piglet.” The pink went slowly up Piglet’s nose to his ears, and settled there. “Has it, Pooh?” he asked huskily. “About - about - That Time When? - Do you mean really written?” “Yes, Piglet.” 2 The tips of Piglet’s ears glowed suddenly, and he tried to say something; but even after he had husked once or twice, nothing came out. So Pooh went on: “There are seven verses in it.” “Seven?” said Piglet as carelessly as he could. “You don’t often get seven verses in a Hum, do you, Pooh?” “Never,” said Pooh. “I don’t suppose it’s ever been heard of before.” (A.A. Milne, Winnie-the- Pooh) * * * 3 Acknowledgements You might say this is my ‘Hum’. It is, of course, not nearly as ingenious as the Respectful Pooh Song, that Pooh composed to pay tribute to Piglet’s bravery. Moreover, Pooh - talented by nature - completed his masterpiece all on his own. This, however, is something I do not claim for myself. Quite the opposite is true: many people have contributed in one way or the other to the completion of this thesis as well as to my time at Frankfurt University and to my well-being in and out of linguistics. I would like to take a few words to thank them - albeit quite insufficiently - for their various contributions. First, I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor Helen Leuninger. She was my first linguistics teacher at Frankfurt and it was her enthusiasm and her exciting teaching style that piqued my curiosity and set me off in the right direction. The completion of my thesis coincides with the termination of my assistantship at Frankfurt University. Collaborating with Helen during these five years was extremely fruitful and stimulating. I would like to thank her for her invaluable inspiration and guidance and for always finding time for a discussion, a chat, and a laugh - even when her Filofax was packed with dates and the aisle in front of her office was packed with students. She was a great boss and I am grateful for having had the privilege to write my thesis under her supervision. I am also indebted to my second supervisor Rosemarie Tracy. In spite of her tight schedule, she did not hesitate to offer her support. The same is true for the other members of the committee: Günther Grewendorf, Jacob Ossner, and Ede Zimmermann. To everyone of them, I am very grateful. People would usually stare in disbelief every time I showed them the building I worked in at Frankfurt University, a run-down old cinema that makes the infamous Building 20 look like Sanssouci. Still, my office in the “Camera” was quite a pleasant place to work (except for those days when the heating system broke down or rain came through the ceiling). Above all, the nice atmosphere was due to the presence of wonderful and supportive colleagues: my officemates Susanne Glück, Bânû Ergünal, and Annette Schlindwein, as well as the people next door: Daniela Happ, Annette Hohenberger, Claudia Meindl, and Eva Waleschkowski. Thank you all for the collaboration, for continuous encouragement, and for all the fun we had together. I had a marvellous time with all of you. Certainly, this thesis would not be what it is without the advice and guidance of a number of linguists. I was so lucky to have been able to discuss some of the key arguments presented here with colleagues in personal communication and by email. For a couple of 4 specific suggestions and comments on various parts of this thesis, I am particularly indebted to Heidi Harley, Annette Hohenberger, Bettina Seifried, and Jochen Zeller. I am also very grateful to Christine Erb, Markus Steinbach, and Dagmar Wiegand who have listened patiently to and commented on my reports on the latest developments and problems. Talking to Tine on the phone when we were both getting closer to the completion of our theses was especially encouraging. After all, there were people out there struggling with the same problems and frustrations! Moreover, I would like to thank those who have helped me with the data. Bânû Ergünal came back from a holiday in Turkey with a small collection of Turkish slips of the tongue. She and Meltem Kelepir have also willingly assisted in the analysis. The same is true for Cornelia Helle who answered my questions concerning the Arabic slips. As for the data, I am particularly thankful to Eva Waleschkowski who is responsible for the maintenance of the Frankfurt corpus of speech errors. It is her merit that I had access to a well-organized and extensive database. My deepest thanks to Susanne Glück and Katharina Hartmann who have very thoroughly proofread the final version and have definitely used up a lot of time and red ink in doing so. Both of them have made a wealth of invaluable comments and suggestions and I can hardly imagine what the result would have looked like without their kind and patient help. Katharina was not only a meticulous proof-reader; for five years now, she has also been the most wonderful flatmate. I am especially grateful to her for the great time we had and still have together; for the delicious dinners, clean (!) dishes, late night drinks and music, and, well, some occasional chat about linguistics, of course. This brings me to the ‘nonlinguistic’ support. Inge Hornischer was my ‘second boss’ while I was writing my dissertation. Working part-time in her lawyer’s office really was a lot of fun. She has always handled my working hours extremely flexibly and I wish to thank her for her continuous encouragement, her great sense of humour, and generosity. Thanks are also due to my dear colleague Martin Schendzielorz. In the past five years, many friends have contributed to my life - and thus to the writing of this thesis - in different ways. Thanks to all of you for inviting me round for dinner, for taking me to the movies, or for simply making an occasional call to check out if I am still amongst the living. Special thanks to Andrea Gerk, friend for many years, who accompanied me to the public swimming pool every now and again. It is impossible to find the right words to appropriately thank Claus Withopf for his manifold contributions to the completion of this thesis. All I want to say is that he was 5 always there, supporting me in every possible way, and uncomplainingly bearing my changing moods. In him, I have found the best friend one could hope for. I have reserved this last paragraph for the two people who deserve the most mention of all. Beyond all expression is my gratitude to my beloved parents Renate and Klaus. They have generously supported me through it all. I thank them for never telling me where to go and for providing nothing but unquestioning encouragement. This thesis is dedicated to them. 6 Table of Contents Acknowledgements 2 Table of Contents 4 Abbreviations 6 Outline of the Thesis 7 1 Introduction: Grammar in Use 11 1.1 On Mentalism and Psychological Reality 12 1.2 The Processing of Phonological and Syntactic Structure 17 1.2.1 Segments and Their Internal Structure 18 1.2.2 Syntactic Transformations 23 2 The Speech Error Data 31 2.1 The Error Corpus 32 2.2 Anti-Agreement in Speech Errors 35 2.2.1 Feature Mismatch between Subject and Verb 36 2.2.1.1 Experimental Studies on Proximity Concord 37 2.2.1.2 SVA-Errors in Spontaneous Speech 43 2.2.2 Feature Mismatch within DP 51 2.3 Errors of Subcategorization 57 2.4 On Accommodation and Stranding 60 2.4.1 Affixes vs. Features in Stranding Errors 61 2.4.2 Resolving Conflicts by Means of Accommodation 67 3 Distributed Morphology: A Sketch of the Framework 77 3.1 The Structure of the Grammar 79 3.2 Morphological Structure and Phonological Form 83 3.2.1 The Status of Morphemes 83 7 3.2.2 Morphological Operations 88 3.2.3 Vocabulary Insertion 95 3.2.4 Readjustment Rules 98 4 Speech Errors and Distributed Morphology 101 4.1 Multi-Level Models of Language Production 103 4.2 Semantic Features in Language Production 111 4.2.1 Non-Random Insertion: Distinguishing Cats from Dogs 112 4.2.2 Semantic Features in Speech Errors 114 4.2.3 A Short Note on Compositional Semantics 119 4.2.4 A Special Case: The NEG Feature 123 4.3 Processing of Grammatical Gender 128 4.3.1 Definition and Assignment of Gender 129 4.3.2 Underspecification of Grammatical Gender 130 4.3.3 Gender Accommodation 142 4.4 Copying Agreement Features 146 4.4.1 Taking the Short Way: Local Agreement 147 4.4.2 Taking the Long Way: Long-Distance Agreement 156 4.4.3 Transformations and Feature Copy 164 4.5 Local Licensing of l-Nodes in Language Production 171 4.5.1 Local Licensing of Vocabulary Items 173 4.5.2 Licensing and Spell-out of Roots in Speech Errors 175 4.5.3 Accounting for Categorial Identity 181 4.6 Feature Shift and Feature Stranding 191 4.7 Rethinking Accommodation 205 4.7.1 Against Repair Strategies 206 4.7.2 Adaptation Failures 213 4.8 Three Complex Cases 220 5 Conclusion: The Grammar as Processor 230 6 References 246 8 Abbreviations The following abbreviations find use in this dissertation: 1, 2, 3 first, second, third IMP imperative (i.e.