Movement Out of Focus OF TECHNMLOGy E by SEP 18 2014 Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine A.B., University of Chicago (2007) LIBRARIES A.M., University of Chicago (2007) 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 2014 2014 Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine. All rights reserved. The author hereby grants to MIT permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of this thesis document in whole or in part in any medium now known or hereafter created. Signature redacted Au th or ................................................................................. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy Signature redacted August29,2014 Certified by................................... :......... Irene Heim Professor of Linguistics /*O' Thesis Supervisor Certified by.....................Signature ..................... David Pesetsky Ferrari P. Ward Professor of Linguistics /Thesis Supervisor Accepted by .................. Signature redacted r David Pesetsky Head, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy Movement Out of Focus by Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine Submitted to the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy on August 29,2014, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Abstract This dissertation investigates the consequences of overt and covert movement on associationwith focus. The interpretation of focus-sensitive operators such as only and even depends on the pres- ence of a focused constituent in their scope. I document the complex conditions under which operators are able to associate with a focused constituent which has moved out of their scope. In particular, I concentrate on the ability of English even but not only to associate "backwards" in this configuration. I propose a theory based on the Copy Theory of movement which predicts the attested patterns of backwards association. When an operator gives the appearance of associating backwards, it is in fact associating with focus in the lower copy of the movement chain, within its scope. This is possible with even but not only due to independent differences in their compositional semantics: only uses focus alternatives to compute new truth conditions, whereas even uses the alternatives to introduce a presupposition without modifying the truth conditions. I furthermore argue that neither syntactic reconstruction nor covert movement of even (the scope theory) are adequate as a general solution to the problem of backwards association. This analysis supports a view where focus is represented in the narrow syntax and then interpreted at the interfaces. The analysis is built upon a general framework for focus interpretation based on Kratzer (1991) which I apply to structures involving copy chains, combined with new facts regarding the projec- tion behavior of the scalar inference of even. After presenting my proposal, I discuss its implications for the internal structure of DPs and show that it offers a new structural diagnostic for the deriva- tional path of movement. Moreover, the inbty of scope reconstruction to feed focus association in English motivates a new approach to syntactic reconstruction. The proposal developed here explains a range constraints on patterns of focus association, and more generally contributes to our understanding of the interaction of syntactic operations such as movement with the semantic and information-structural notion of focus. Thesis Supervisor: Irene Heim Title: Professor of Linguistics Thesis Supervisor: David Pesetsky Title: Ferrari P. Ward Professor of Linguistics 3 Preface There's a part of me that is amused by the fact that I work on this phenomenon called "focus," as focus may be the skill I have lacked the most as a grad student. I'm glad, though, that my dissertation concerns a problem which has bothered me throughout my entire time at MIT. The problem I investigate here originated with a terribly confusing squib that I wrote for Kai von Fintel in my first year, on the interpretation of Japanese sentences with two only particles stacked on the same argument. It's transformed quite a bit over the years, sometimes as my most active project and many times not. I suspect that this dissertation has a certain quality in common with my MA thesis: when Chris Kennedy read it, his first comment was "I can tell that you thought about this for a year, and wrote it in a month." In this case, just multiply that through by three or so. This result is largely due to the helpful and generous contributions of others, as well as their encouragement, to stay on track and to push forward. First and foremost I thank my committee: Irene Heim, David Pesetsky, Martin Hackl, and Kai von Fintel. It frankly seems odd that they are not co-authors; whether they like it or not, this is as much theirs as it is mine. This is especially true of my co-chairs, Irene and David. Any and all good theoretical ideas here probably came out of a meeting with Irene, while any and all interesting empirical observations probably came out of a meeting with David. Martin and Kai's feedback added imporatant, complementary perspectives: Martin constantly pushed me towards the trees while Kai made me look at the forest. They were an ideal committee to push me in every direction at once, towards the data and the theory and the big and the small. This wouldn't have happened without them. Thank you. The work here has been greatly influenced by discussions with colleagues at MIT, especially Isaac Gould, Patrick Grosz, Aron Hirsch, Hadas Kotek, Miriam Nussbaum, Juliet Stanton, Yasu Sudo, and Coppe van Urk, as well as comments from Noam Chomsky, Danny Fox, Sabine Iatri- dou, Shigeru Miyagawa, Rick Nouwen, and Maziar Toosarvandani. From beyond the leaky walls of Stata, I received important comments on this work at various stages from Roni Katzir, Chris Kennedy, Jason Merchant, Chris Tancredi, Raj Singh, and Michael Wagner. We might have spo- ken just once or twice, but each of these conversations were incredibly important to me and to the resulting ideas presented here. I also thank audiences at a 2011 GLOW workshop on association with focus, Sinn und Bedeutung 2013, and the 2014 LSA. And now here comes everything else: during the past five years, I did many other things besides, well, focus. I begin with the linguists. Much of my taste in linguistic theory developed by observ- ing Norvin Richards' head-dances and Donca Steriade's vigorous nodding during other people's talks. I thank my co-conspirators, Hadas Kotek, Isaac Gould, Ted Levin, and Coppe van Urk- here's to many more! Thanks also to Sam Alxatib, Athulya Aravind, Bronwyn Bjorkman, Anthony Brohan, TC Chen, Hyesun Cho, Noah Constant, Jessica Coon, Youngah Do, Maria Giavazzi, lain Giblin, Claire Halpert, Edwin Howard, Natasha Ivlieva, Gretchen Kern, Hrayr Khanjian, Junya 4 Nomura, Sasha Podobryaev, Omer Preminger, Daeyoung Sohn, Sam Steddy, Ayaka Sugawara, Wataru Uegaki, Michelle Yuan, Suyeon Yun, Sam Zukoff, and many others for good company, food, and judgments. I also learned so much from Gennaro Chierchia, Jim Huang, Masha Polin- sky, Louis Liu, Edwin Tsai, and Yimei Xiang, down the street. One regret I have about the work I present here is the utter lack of Mandarin, Kaqchikel, and Atayal, which have been important pillars of my work. I thank Ana L6pez de Mateo and Pedro Mateo Pedro for our many discussions of Kaqchikel; the Atayal speakers who graciously worked with me in Taiwan, especially Uncle Taya; and Pamela Pan and Ning Tang for their impeccable Mandarin judgments. I also thank Edith Aldridge, Henry Chang, Daniel Hole, and Walli Paul for their continued encouragement. My life in Cambridge was further enriched by other pursuits. I was glad to be a part of the Boston Awesome Foundation and the broader Mozilla and WordPress communities, and I hope I was able to give back in some way. Thanks also to the MIT square and contra dancers, as well as the friendly staff at the Biscuit, Darwin's, Dwelltime, and 1369. I also thank my non-linguist friends (they exist!), especially Evan, Stephanie, Noah, Bailey, Sarah, for being there. Finally I thank my parents, Ron and Minako, for providing all the opportunities which brought me this far; and to Naomi, for her unbounded support. And to Hadas, too, for all of the above. I dedicate this work to the memory of my grandparents, Yoshiro and Masako Oka. 5 Contents Notation 8 1 Introduction 10 1.1 The question ....................... 10 1.2 The idea .......................... 12 1.3 Previous work on association with traces . 14 1.4 The plan .. ... .. ... ... ... ... 15 2 The framework 17 2.1 The interpretation of focus ... ... .... 17 2.1.1 Focus basics ... .. ... ... ... 17 2.1.2 Interpreting only .. ... ... ... 19 2.1.3 Computing focus . ... ... ... 22 2.2 The Copy Theory and the A/A distinction. 28 2.3 Interpreting copies of focus ........... 35 2.4 The requirements of the lower copy: evidence from ellipsis 41 2.5 Summary ........................ 49 3 Refining the semantics of even 50 3.1 The established semantics of even .......... 51 3.2 Projection through quantification ... .... 55 3.3 The projection of even through quantification . 59 3.4 Determining the domain of quantification .... 64 3.4.1 Domain restriction by the lower copy and wholesale late merger 65 3.4.2 Cross-dimensional domain anaphora . 70 3.5 Proposal .......................... 72 3.6 Summary ....................... 74 Appendix 3: A similar scalar inference .......... 74 6 4 Proposal 78 4.1 The importance of the lower copy ..... ............... ........ 8 0 4.2 A short note on syntactic reconstruction . ....... ............... .. 8 7 4.3 Only .... ........ ....... .. .......... .............. 9 1 4.4 Even .. ..... ..... ..... .... ............... ........ 10 1 4.5 Associating with the higher copy of focus ........... ............. 105 4.6 Focus association and covert movement . ...................... .. 10 8 4.7 Detecting lower copies ............ ............. ........... 1 14 4.7.1 It...that clauses ............