Speaker: Adam Szczegielniak (Harvard)
Title: Relativizing two types of degrees
Date/Time: Thursday, Apr 5, 12:30-1:45p
Location: 32-D461
This talk will propose an alternative to Carlson (1977) and Grosu and Landman (1998) derivation of (1) and (2) that combines a raising analysis of DegP and a matching analysis of NP. Support for this claim will come from head noun reconstruction facts, as well as scope contrasts between degree relatives and comparatives. DegP will be argued to have its denotation built via subsequent overt raising within CP, where it undergoes Maximization and then moves out of CP to a position modifying the external NP. Differences between (1) and (2) will be attributed to differences in the type of DegP (based on work in Szczegielniak 2012). Following Neelman, Koot & Doetjes (2004), I will argue that there are two DegP’s: one that projects, and the other that merges in Spec-XP.
In what time remains, I will examine the impact of the above analysis for other types of relative clauses, especially restrictive relatives and argue that we should revisit the intuition developed in Quine (1960) that they are clausal adjectives.
(1) It would take us all year to drink the champagne that you spilled at the party
A. the amount of champagne
#B. the actual champagne(2) John took the books that there were on the table