Whamit!

David Pesetsky was a speaker at a roundtable organized by ABRALIN. the Brazilian Linguistics Society, as part of their ongoing series “Abralin ao Vivo – Linguists Online”.  The topic of the roundtable, organized by former visitor Cilene Rodrigues, was “The Minimalist Program: Achievements and Challenges”, and also featured talks by Marcel den Dikken and Norbert Hornstein.  You can watch the event by clicking below.

Speaker: Yadav Gowda (MIT)
Title: The long and short of tense in Kannada and English
Time: Thursday, June 25th, 12:30pm - 2pm

Abstract: Across languages, simple present tense forms commonly exhibit two properties, which I will call Non-perfectivity and Presentness:

Speaker: Suzana Fong (MIT)
Title: The A/Ā Distinction as an Epiphenomenon (Safir 2019)
Time: Thursday, June 18th, 12:30pm - 2pm

Abstract: ”This article demonstrates that the A/Ā distinction is an epiphenomenon that emerges from independently necessary properties of Merge and the interpretive components. A true explanation of the A/Ā distinction requires that the distinction between the two classes of structures must emerge from a conspiracy of independently motivated principles and that the distinction should explain why the contrasts between A- and Ā-constructions are precisely the ones they are. I argue that certain moved constituents must be structurally altered on the way to their landing sites; otherwise, they will interfere with Case and agreement relations. I propose that an optional instance of Merge, late attachment of a prepositional head to the moved DP, “insulates” that DP from Case and agreement, but has consequences for what an insulated DP can antecede and/or license. Insulation is optional, but limited by independently motivated interface requirements that determine its distribution. The distribution of insulation explains why A- and Ā-structures differ in just the ways they do and not in other ways.”

Download:
https://doi.org/10.1162/ling_a_00305.
Pre-publication draft: https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/002798.

Speaker: Boer Fu (MIT)
Title: Negative Yes/No Questions in Mandarin
Time: Thursday, June 11th, 12:30pm - 2pm

Abstract: An utterance in the shape of a negative yes/no question in Mandarin Chinese can have 4 different readings, depending on its prosody.

(1) zhe bu shi burudongwu ma

this neg is mammal ma

Reading A: “Isn’t it a mammal?” Biased question reading

Reading B: “It’s not a mammal?” Surprised question reading

Reading C: “It’s a mammal. (It’s obvious.)” Rhetorical “question” reading

Reading D: “It’s not a mammal. (It’s obvious.)” ​Negative obvious statement

Two prosodic cues disambiguate between the 4 readings, boundary tone and focus. Readings A & B have a high boundary tone, and are thus real questions. Whereas readings C & D have a low boundary tone, are are thus assertions. Readings A & C place the focus on the content word “mammal”, while readings B & D place it on negation. I argue that the difference in focus placement corresponds to a scoping difference of negation. Negation can occupy two syntactic positions in Mandarin (Xiang 2013). Focused negation is lower, while unfocused negation is higher. In the real question readings A & B, the relative position of negation and the VERUM operator (Romero & Han 2004) determines which preposition (p or ¬p) is being double-checked, just like preposed negative yes/no questions in English. In the assertion readings C & D, negation scopes relative to a mystery obviousness operator, which leads to two opposite assertions, p and ¬p.

Speaker: Rafael Abramovitz (MIT)
Title: Deconstructing Inverse Case Attraction 
Time: Thursday, May 28, 12:30pm-2pm EST

Abstract:

In this talk, I will try to give a unified analysis of inverse case attraction (ICA), a phenomenon best known from a variety of extinct Indo-European languages whereby the head of a relative clause bears the case assigned to the relative pronoun inside the relative clause, rather than the case it would be assigned by the matrix verb. Pace pretty much everyone who has written about this, I will argue that relative clauses with ICA are in fact a kind of internally-headed relative clauses (rather than being externally-headed or correlatives), whereas relative clauses that do not display ICA are externally headed. The data will primarily drawn from Koryak (Chukotko-Kamchatkan), though I will show that all of the other languages with ICA for which sufficient data exists (Ingrian Finnish, Bessermyan Udmurt, Moksha, Mari, Dari, etc.) pattern like Koryak in the relevant respects. Having proposed a syntax for ICA generally, I then point out that exactly this syntax has been defended by Hiraiwa and colleagues for so-called `left-headed internally-headed relative clauses’ in the Gur languages of West Africa (Buli, Dagaare, Kabiye, Moore etc.), which have no case-marking on noun phrases. ICA, I argue, falls out when a language has both overt case-marking and Gur-like relative clauses.

Speaker: Danfeng Wu (MIT)
Title: Can there be a unified meaning for but? 
Time: Thursday, May 21th, 12:30pm - 2pm

Abstract: In English, but as a coordinator has at least three different uses/meanings: counterexpectation, semantic opposition, and correction (Toosarvandani 2014). Each example below illustrates one use:

WAFL 16 in Mongolia has been postponed for one year, to September 23-25, 2021. The deadline for abstract submission will be announced in the summer. 

Speaker: Mitya Privoznov (MIT)
Title: Transparent subjects in Russian and Balkar
Time: Tuesday, May 12th, 1pm - 2pm

We are delighted to announce that Hadas Kotek (Ph.D. 2014, now at Apple Inc) will give a special talk on jobs for linguistics outside academia. This will take place on Thursday, May 14, in the usual Ling-Lunch time slot.

Speaker: Donca Steriade (MIT)
Title: Uniformity in intersecting paradigms: evidence from A. Greek accent
Time: Monday, May 4th, 5pm - 6:30pm

Abstract: I analyze paradigm uniformity effects that affect accent placement in Ancient Greek nominals. Some of the generalizations have been known since Herodian, in the 2nd cent. AD. What may be new is that a general correspondence system, governing all nouns, adjectives and participles, underlies the known uniformity cases, and others.

The Greek system is interesting because it combines aspects of cyclic inheritance (Base Priority effects, in the sense of Benua 1997) with properties sometimes considered incompatible with cyclicity: the Greek Bases are not contained in their Derivatives; each Derivative has multiple competing Bases, as well as a non-Base input; and uniformity competes with paradigmatic distinctness constraints (Kenstowicz 2005, Löfstedt 2010).

There are three important mechanisms in the analysis. A paradigm is a set of lexically related forms sharing one or more syntactic features. Paradigm uniformity stems from the requirement that such a set of forms must have correspondent stems, in a phonological sense. Such correspondence requirements may compete, because paradigms overlap, and their conflict is resolved by ranking. Base Priority arises when faithfulness to the unmarked realization of one form in the set (a notion to be defined) outranks faithfulness to the unmarked realization of other forms in the set.

How the Base of a paradigm is selected remains a mystery, but see Albright (2002, 2011).

Speaker: Philip Shushurin (NYU/MIT)
Title: Syntax of NP-internal possessors in Russian
Time: Tuesday, May 5th, 1pm - 2pm

Abstract: Genitive phrases with possessor semantics are found at the right periphery of Russian NPs.

(1)zarjadka dlja ajfona Dimy charger for iPhone Dima.gen `Dima’s iPhone charger’

(2)*zarjadka Dimy dlja ajfona charger Dima.gen for iPhone int. `Dima’s iPhone charger’

(3) *Dimy zarjadka dlja ajfona Dima.gen charger for iPhone
int. `Dima’s iPhone charger’

I suggest that genitive possessor arguments are right-adjoined to nominal structures. I discuss properties of non-concording external arguments in Russian Noun Phrases, such as Instrumental Agents and Dative Goals and propose that such arguments are best analyzed as adjuncts which can either left- or right-adjoin as long as they linearly follow the head noun. I suggest an account of this generalization, suggesting that the LCA holds for concording phrases, while all remaining unordered pairs of nodes are linearized postsyntactically, in a uniform fashion. I argue against Pereltsvaig (2015) who analyzes Instrumental Agents as verbal specifiers, showing that her analysis fails to derive the correct distribution of attested word order permutations in ditransitive eventive nominalizations. I show how the proposed account can be further extended to derive certain well-known crosslinguistic tendencies in word order in N-initial languages, such as Adjacency Effects (Adger 2012) and PP-Peripherality (Belk and Neeleman 2017).

Speaker: Mitya Privoznov (MIT)
Title: Structural islands and discourse anaphora
Time: Wednesday, May 6th, 1pm - 2pm

Abstract: Let us define discourse anaphora as a referential dependency between an indefinite noun phrase and a pronoun like in (1) which could be established across a sentence boundary. Descriptively speaking, the indefinite introduces a discourse referent that the pronoun picks up.

(1) a. A person who came in with a woman1 offered her1 drinks.

b. *A person who came in with her1 offered a woman1 drinks.

Looking at the contrast in (1) one might think that for this relation to hold the indefinite must linearly precede the pronoun. However, it is an established fact in the quite extensive literature on anaphora that discourse cataphora is also in principle possible, like in (2a), but not in all syntactic configurations, as (2a) stands in a contrast to (2b).

(2) a. The teacher said that she called his1 parents, after she caught a student1 smoking.

b. *His1 parents said that they went to the teacher, after they caught a student1 smoking.

The question of interest to me in this talk is when discourse anaphora is in principle possible and when it is not? That is, what explains the contrasts like (1-2)? There are theories of binding (especially within the dynamic framework) which can explain examples like (1-2). However, to my knowledge they provide different explanations for each contrast. This view seems to me to be missing or rather not taking into account one potentially important syntactic generalization. Namely, that discourse anaphora always obeys one structural condition. For a pronoun to be discourse anaphoric to an indefinite the constituent that contains the indefinite and c-commands a pronoun must be a maximal projection (aka structural island under a strict view of Condition on Extraction Domains: specifier, adjunct or conjunct). In my talk I will try to formulate, defend and explain this condition.

It is possible, of course, that this generalization is accidental and that the core explanation is semantic and different for each case. But I will try to see the data like (1-2) from a syntactic perspective, which seems to me to be an experiment worth undertaking. The data will come from Russian and English (elicited with small samples of speakers).

Speaker: Philip Shushurin (NYU/MIT)
Title: On the lack of Direct Marking of NP-internal arguments.
Time: Thursday, May 7th, 12:30pm - 2pm

Abstract: I suggest a novel account of the well described lack of Accusative and Dependent Dative marking in the nominal domain. Based on Richards’ (2010) observations of Distinctness Violations, I suggest that no two nodes can merge directly if they both bear visible phi-features. This constraint can account for, on one hand, severe limitations on Structural Case in the nominal domain (Baker 2015, a.o.) and, on the other hand, near absence of predicative Agreement with NP-internal arguments. I show that the proposed approach can be further be extended to account for the lack (or the near absence) of Structural Dative in nominal structures, suggesting that Structural Dative can only be licensed in transitive structures. Adopting several insights in Deal (2010), Nie (2017) a.o., I show that transitivity alternations can arise at two places of the verbal structure (Voice/T) and (v/CAUS). I suggest that opaqueness for agreement of certain nominals is due to a formal feature rather than any lexical/syntactic category.

Speaker: Danfeng Wu & Yadav Gowda (MIT)
Title: Practice Talks for Speech Prosody 2020
Time: Monday, April 27th, 5pm - 6:30pm

Abstract: Zoom link: https://mit.zoom.us/j/97125338615?pwd=Q1VIcFJjVXNlRit4ZzBoYStjRmR1UT09
Password: 003447

Title: Focus and penultimate vowel lengthening in Zulu
Authors: Danfeng Wu and Yadav Gowda
Abstract:
Many Bantu languages exhibit fixed placement of focus at the Immediately-After-the-Verb (IAV) position, which has been argued to be related to this position’s prosodic prominence. Elements in this position appear at the right edge of a prosodic phrase, and are subject to penultimate vowel lengthening, which we take to be a form of phrasal stress which occurs at the right edge of every prosodic phrase. Previous literature has claimed that in Zulu, focus cannot be the most prominent element in a sentence. We present evidence from a production study in Zulu showing the contrary, i.e. the degree of penultimate vowel lengthening at the IAV/vP-final position is greater than at any other prosodic phrase edge, lending phonetic support to the claim that this position is prosodically prominent in a sentence. We further show that the vP-final position is prominent regardless of whether or not it is focused, which implies that Zulu has a fixed position that realizes sentential prominence.

Title: Durational cues to stress and phrasing in post-focal contexts in English
Author: Danfeng Wu
Abstract:
I study two questions in English prosody through an investigation of post-focal contexts: i) whether an intermediate phrase must have a pitch accent; and ii) whether phrasal stress should be distinguished from pitch accent. The post-focal contexts are good test grounds for these questions because they are claimed to undergo ‘deaccentuation’, i.e. they lack pitch accents. This paper shows with results from a production study that intermediate phrase boundaries are preserved post-focally, implying that intermediate phrases do not have to contain pitch accent. Furthermore, there is no durational evidence that indicates the existence of phrasal stress in the absence of pitch accent.​

Speaker: Filipe Hisao Kobayashi (MIT)
Title: Interleaving A’- and A-movement in Brazilian Portuguese
Time: Tuesday, April 28th, 1pm - 2pm

Abstract: In this (very informal) presentation, I discuss configurations found in Brazilian Portuguese in which A’-movement of a DP across a clause-embedding unaccusative verb triggers phi-agreement with it. I show that verbal agreement is actually a reflex of there being an A-movement step in the derivation of these sentences. We therefore seem to be faced with a violation of the Ban on Improper Movement: A-movement can be shown to have applied to a DP that has already been A’-moved. I discuss two possible analyses of these facts: one in which the Ban on Improper Movement is relaxed, and another which resorts to composite A/A’-movement.

Speaker: Tanya Bondarenko & Itai Bassi (MIT
Title: In favor of identity semantics of clausal embedding: Evidence from Russian
Time: Wednesday, April 29th, 1pm - 2pm

Abstract: In this talk we argue with evidence from CP disjunction and CP conjunction that complementizer that (and its counterparts in Russian and Hebrew) is not semantically vacuous, contra some theories of clausal embedding, and (therefore) that the meaning of ‘that TP’ isn’t equal to ‘TP’. Specifically, we show that CP disjunction lacks a reading it is expected to have if complementizer that were vacuous; likewise for conjunction (at least in Russian and Hebrew). We propose that these data call for a theory of clausal embedding that assigns meanings to complementizers, treats CPs as predicates of Contentful entities (Kratzer 2006, 2013) and takes the relation between the content of Contentful entities and embedded propositions to be that of equality (Elliott 2017). Such a theory gives the correct meaning for a CP disjunction, and predicts CP conjunctions to be strictly impossible: strings of the form “V COMP p and COMP q”, on this theory, could only arise from an underlying matrix-verb conjunction reduction parse: “V COMP p and V COMP q”. Finally, we will discuss that English is different from Russian in sometimes allowing unexpected readings for the “V COMP p and COMP q” strings. We will sketch a solution to this puzzle that links the unexpected reading to the ability of English CPs to undergo nominalization without any overt nominal morphology.

Speaker: Rafael Abramovitz (MIT)
Title: Person and predication in Koryak
Time: Wednesday, April 29th, 5pm - 6:30pm

Abstract: Linguists across theoretical persuasions have noted that person has a more limited distribution of agreement possibilities than number and gender. Baker (2008) proposes that this has a universal structural explanation: the subject of adjectival or nominal predication, he argues, does not merge directly with an adjectival or nominal head, but instead with a higher head Pred(icate). The lack of person agreement on non-verbs emerges when that structural assumption is combined with the Structural Condition on Person Agreement (SCOPA), which bans 1/2 person agreement on a head if the bearer of those features does not merge with that head. In this paper, I present novel data from Koryak (Chukotko-Kamchatkan), which I argue to be the most plausible attested counterexample to SCOPA, as nouns (1) and adjectives (2) (among others) in predicative position do show covarying person morphology.

(1) (ɣəmmo) čawčəva-jɣəm
1SG.ABS Koryak-1SG.PRED
‘I am a Koryak.’

(2) (ɣəčči) n-ə-mejŋ-iɣi
2SG.ABS ADJ-EP-big-2SG.PRED
‘You are big.’

However, I will argue that in Koryak, Pred itself bears uninterpretable phi-features, and once it has agreed with the subject of predication, these features spread to Pred’s complement by concord, thus defusing a possible counterexample to Baker’s theory.

Speaker: Dmitry Privoznov and Justin Colley (MIT)
Title: On the topic of subjects
Time: Thursday, April 30th, 12:30pm - 2pm

Abstract: In this talk we will focus on two seemingly unrelated phenomena. These are (a) passive construction in Khanty (Uralic, Finno-Ugric), similar to Voice Marking in Austronesian languages, e.g. Atayal; and (b) local A-scrambling in Balkar (Altaic, Turkic), i.e. SOV vs. OSV word order alteration, similar to local A-scrambling in Russian or Yiddish. We will argue that both phenomena involve the same kind of movement with mixed A- and A’-properties, which has the same effect on the information structure (promotes Topics) and targets the same syntactic position - Spec,TP. We will propose an analysis that relies on Composite Probes and accounts for the properties of individual languages, as well as the cross-linguistic variation. In a nutshell, the Probe for Topics, which is situated above the subject position in languages like English (i.e. the C head), is attached lower on the clausal spine in languages like Khanty or Balkar. Namely, in Khanty and Balkar the Probe for Topics forms a Composite Probe with T (responsible for the subject position). The difference between Khanty and Balkar comes from the two sub-Probes of T probing together vs. separately.

Speaker: Athulya Aravind (MIT)
Title: Locality in Malayalam anaphor binding
Time: Tuesday, April 21st, 1pm - 2pm

Abstract: Dravidian long-distance anaphors (LDAs) pose a locality puzzle. Though they generally show strong anti-locality in binding — they cannot be bound by a local antecedent — in select environments, this requirement seems to be relaxed, licensing what looks like local binding. Drawing primarily on data from Malayalam, I will show that this apparent exceptionality is only apparent. The relevant environments involve a periphrastic progressive construction, comprising of a light verb and a PP embedding a nominalized complement. This bifurcation of the clause means that there is no selective “anti-anti-locality” in Dravidian LDA: LDA in these languages is uniformly anti-local.

Speaker: Ido Benbaji, Omri Doron, Margaret Wang (MIT)
Title: Reduplication in Hebrew as a Diagnostic for Antonym Decomposition
Time: Wednesday, April 22nd, 1pm - 2pm

Abstract: Abstract: In recent years, it has become increasingly common to decompose what have been called marked members of antonym pairsinto a negation operator and the corresponding unmarked pair member (henceforth: negative and positive adjectives, cf. Büring 2007, Heim 2006; 2008). This approach contrasts with theories that, at least implicitly, assume the negative component in adjectives is lexicalized in their core meaning. We argue, based on evidence from Modern Hebrew reduplication, that we need a mixed analysis incorporating both approaches: some negative adjectives must be syntactically decomposable, while others are necessarily syntactically simplex. This approach makes testable predictions regarding constructions that have been argued to involve syntactic decomposition of the adjectives they contain, such as cross-polar anomalies and Rullmann ambiguities. We show that, as predicted if they indeed require decomposition, non-decomposable adjectives are unavailable in such constructions.

Speaker: Mitya Privoznov (MIT)
Title: Partial concord and the noun phrase structure
Time: Wednesday, April 22nd, 5pm - 6:30pm

Abstract: This paper is devoted to the phenomenon of partial concord. Partial concord in a feature F is a situation when the noun phrase contains an element distinct from the head noun (e.g. a cardinal numeral or a determiner) such that modifiers c-commanding this element always realize F, while modifiers c-commanded by this element only realize F if the element itself does not. The paper assumes that this element introduces F into the noun phrase structure and calls it the locus of F. The paper argues that two well known morpho-syntactic phenomena, which have been previously treated in different ways, both fall under the same generalization and constitute a single phenomenon: partial concord. These are the lack of Number marking in noun phrases with cardinal numerals in Estonian and some other languages and the strong vs. weak distinction in adjectival paradigms in German (and Icelandic). The former phenomenon is captured as partial concord in Number and the latter phenomenon is captured as partial concord in Case. The paper puts forward a theory that derives partial concord building on the feature realization mechanism from Schlenker (1999) and the rule of feature deletion from Distributed Morphology (Halle & Marantz 1993). Building on Bayırlı (2017), the paper proposes two cross-linguistic parameters that determine whether a language has full concord, partial concord or no concord in a given feature.

Speaker: Suzana Fong (MIT)
Title: Feature licensing and the number interpretation of bare nominals in Wolof
Time: Thursday, April 23rd, 12:30pm - 2pm

Abstract: Several languages allow for their nominals to occur without any functional morphology, including determiners and number. They are dubbed ‘bare nominals’ (BNs). BNs are often number-neutral, i.e., there is no commitment to a singular or plural interpretation. In Wolof, however, BNs are singular. This can be argued based on, e.g. the impossibility of saturating a collective predicate, on the fact that they must be referred to by a singular pronoun and that they cannot be the antecedent of plural reflexives. However, a plural interpretation becomes available when a nominal-internal plural feature is exponed in the form of complementizer or possessum agreement. The generalization is that BNs in Wolof are singular, unless plural morphology is exponed. I propose an extension of Béjar & Rezac’s (2003) Person Licensing Condition to number: a marked number feature (i.e. plural) must be licensed by Agree. BNs in Wolof can in principle be singular or plural. In the absence of a nominal-internal probe that Agrees with the plural feature of the BN, the Number Licensing Condition (NLC) is violated, causing the derivation to crash. Unmarked number, i.e., singular, is stipulated not to obey the NLC, so the derivation converges, yielding a singular BN. However, if there is a number probe, which is realized as complementizer or possessum agreement, the NLC is satisfied, allowing a derivation to converge where the BN is plural. If correct, this analysis accounts for the typologically unusual behavior of BNs in Wolof and provides empirical support for the view that valued features are responsible for nominal licensing (Kalin: 2017; 2019).

Speaker: Cater Chen (MIT)
Title: Quantifier Spreading Under Negation
Time: Friday, April 24th, 2pm - 3pm

Abstract: Much research on children’s acquisition of universal quantification has observed a prevalent type of errors children make in response to a sentence like (1), which involves the universal quantifier every in the subject position and an indefinite object, in a scenario where every girl is riding a bike, but there is an “extra” bike that no girl is riding.

(1) Every girl is riding a bike.

Children, unlike adults, often judge a sentence like (1) to be wrong, and justify this answer by pointing to the “extra” object (Roeper & Matthei 1975; Roeper & de Villiers, 1991; Roeper et al. 2004; Philip 1995, 2011; Crain et al. 1996; Drozd 1996, 2001; Drozd & von Loosbroek 2006; Geurts 2004; Aravind et al. 2017; a.o.). We refer to this observation as quantifier-spreading (henceforth q-spreading) and this type of errors children make as exhaustive pairing (henceforth EP) errors. When the same sentence is used to describe a scenario where every girl except one is riding a bike, children can make another type of errors, which we refer to as underexhaustive errors, by judging the sentence in (1) to be right. Aravind et al. (2017) report from a longitudinal study that the disappearance of underexhaustive errors is accompanied by the emergence of EP errors. This finding suggests that children respond to the “extra” object scenario and the “extra” agent scenario alike: at early stages of development, they judge a sentence like (1) to be right in both “extra” object and “extra” agent scenarios, but as they age, they judge the same sentence to be wrong in both scenarios.

Two classes of accounts, the Event Quantification Account (Philip 1995; Roeper et al. 2004; a.o.) and the Weak Quantification Account (Drozd 2001; Geurts 2004; a.o.), attribute q-spreading and EP errors to non-adultlike interpretation of the universal quantifier every. Both accounts are challenged by another line of research demonstrating children’s knowledge of the asymmetry in the interpretations of the subject and object of a universally quantified sentence. Specifically, 3- to 5-year old children have been shown to know that every is downward-entailing in the restrictor (NP) (Gualmini et al. 2003) and not so in the nuclear scope (VP) (Boster and Crain 1993).

We take the disappearance of underexhaustive errors as a developmental hallmark that children have acquired the basic semantic properties of every — in particular that every is construed with a restrictor and a nuclear scope and it is downward-entailing in the restrictor and not so in the nuclear scope. Because much research on q-spreading has aimed to investigate children’s acquisition of universal quantification, little attention has been paid to the indefinite object in a sentence like (1). We will pursue a hypothesis that q-spreading and EP errors emerge from the interpretation of the indefinite object. Specifically, we will first review Denić and Chemla’s (2018) account for q-spreading which attributes EP errors to distributive inferences triggered by the indefinite object. We refer to this approach as the Distributive Inferences Approach. Then we will introduce a competing account in which indefinite objects project presuppositions which give rise to EP errors. We refer to this approach as the Presupposition Projection Approach. These two approaches make different predictions about whether children make EP errors when the sentence they are asked to judge involves wide-scope negation. We will demonstrate that distributive inferences go away, while presuppositions project, under negation. Therefore, while the Distributive Inferences Approach predicts that q-spreading should not be observed with sentences like (2) which involves wide-scope negation, the Presupposition Projection Approach predicts the opposite to be the case. We will present an experiment with children that supports the Presupposition Projection Approach.

(2) Not every girl is riding a bike.

Speaker: Patrick Elliott (MIT)
Title: Discussion of Chierchia’s (2020) “Origins of weak crossover”
Time: Wednesday, April 15th, 1pm - 2pm

Abstract: Weak Crossover (WCO) has occupied a central role in syntactic theory since at least Postal’s (1971) foundational work, and remains largely mysterious to this day. An illustration of WCO is given in (1b) - interpreting the pronoun “his” as a bound variable is impossible, despite the fact that the quantifier “everyone” can take scope over the pronoun. It’s tempting to conclude that scope can’t feed binding, but (1c) shows that this can’t be quite right - scope can feed binding, just so long as the binder *precedes* the pronoun.

1. a. Everyone1 likes his1 mother
b. *his1 mother likes everyone1
c. [Everyone1’s mother] likes him1.

In a recently published Natural Language Semantics paper, Chierchia (2020) attempts to provide an explanation for WCO on the basis of an independently motivated approach to the semantics of anaphora — *dynamic semantics* (Heim 1982, Groenendijk & Stokhof 1991, etc.). In order to do so, Chierchia proposes a departure from orthodox dynamic semantics - predicates, rather than arguments, are taken to induce binding. Chierchia argues convincingly that an approach to WCO grounded in dynamic semantics is empirically superior to existing alternatives, as, in addition to the core phenomena, it can account for, e.g., the possibility of binding into adjuncts.

I’ll outline the essential components of Chierchia’s approach to WCO, as well as assessing its empirical adequacy. Ultimately, I’ll argue that Chierchia’s approach has a fatal flaw - it fails to account for the fact that existential scope can feed anaphora, while still feeding WCO effects. In the latter part of the presentation, I’ll sketch a possible way forward.

Speaker: Danfeng Wu (MIT)
Title: Stripping and but
Time: Thursday, April 16th, 12:30pm - 2pm

Abstract: Standard analyses of clausal ellipsis (sluicing, fragment answers, and stripping) involve movement (of the remnant, the element that survives ellipsis, out of the ellipsis site) and deletion. For example, in the stripping example in (1), the remnant Chris moves out of the ellipsis site and the TP gets deleted:

(1) Pat left, (but) not Chris_i [TP 〈t_i left〉].

While movements in general respect island constraints, clausal ellipsis is known to be able to evade islands despite involving movement (especially famous is the island-insensitivity of sluicing). There have been different analyses for why sluicing and fragment answers may be island-insensitive (Merchant (2004), Griffiths and Liptak (2014) and Barros et al. (2014)). Because these analyses were proposed for clausal ellipsis in general, they should extend to stripping as well. The first part of this talk evaluates these three analyses with novel data from stripping. The data are consistent with Barros et al., but not with the other two accounts, thus supporting Barros et al.’s analysis (all movements are island-sensitive, and apparent island evasion is due to another parse that does not actually involve any island-violating movement) over the others.

The second part of the talk starts from the novel observation that while stripping without but can apparently evade islands (complex NP island in (2) and left branch island in (4)), stripping with but cannot (3) & (5).

(2) They hired someone who speaks French yesterday, not German.

(3) *They hired someone who speaks French yesterday, but not German.

(4) They bought a blue car, not green.

(5) *They bought a blue car, but not green.

I argue that it is the presence of but that causes the ungrammaticality. But in English is lexically ambiguous, and the meanings relevant to (2)-(5) are counterexpectational but (which has the implication that generally, if the first conjunct holds, the second conjunct does not) and semantic opposition but (which does not have this implication) (see e.g. Winter & Rimon (1994), Jasinskaja & Zeevat (2008, 2009), Toosarvandani (2014)). I argue that these two buts have different syntax too. Specifically, counterexpectational but (but not semantic opposition but) bans stripping, and semantic opposition but (but not counterexpectational but) requires parallel conjuncts.

The 43rd Generative Linguistics in the Old World (GLOW) conference is taking place (virtually) at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin from April 8th to 20th, 2020.  MIT is represented by many graduate students and alumni.

• Itai Bassi & Justin Colley (MIT): p-word Integrity: a new condition on ellipsis at the syntax-phonology interface
  (abstract) (project page)
• Peter Grishin (MIT): Scrapping clauses with clausal anaphors
  (abstract) (project page)
• Tatiana Bondarenko & Stanislao Zompi’ (MIT): Leftover Agreement: Spelling out Kartvelian number
  (abstract) (project page)
• Tatiana Bondarenko (MIT): Hyperraising and Logical Form: evidence from Buryat
  (abstract) (project page)
• Filipe Hisao Kobayashi & Sherry Yong Chen (MIT): Quantifying over thematic roles: Mandarin distributive numerals and reciprocals
  (abstract) (project page)
• Maša Močnik & Rafael Abramovitz (MIT): Variable-force variable-flavor attitude verb in Koryak
  (abstract) (project page)
• Danfeng Wu & Yadav Gowda (MIT): Focus and penultimate vowel lengthening in Zulu
  (project page)

MIT alumni also presented at GLOW 43 including:

• Idan Landau (PhD 1999): The Predicative Default of Controlled Adjuncts
  (abstract) (project page)
• Omer Demirok (PhD 2019) : A pied-piping theory of exceptional de re: Scoping after all                            (abstract) (project page)
• İsa Kerem Bayırlı (PhD 2017) : A new generalization over determiner denotations                           (abstract)

… plus: one of the workshops (on the legacy of Chomsky’s “Remarks on Nominalization”) was co-organized by Hagit Borer (PhD 1981).

Speaker: Aleksei Nazarov (Utrecht)
Title: Towards learning restrictive indexed-constraint accounts of opacity
Time: Monday, April 6th, 5pm - 6:30pm
Location: Zoom

Abstract: to be posted.

Speaker: Peter Grishin (MIT)
Title: Scrapping clauses with clausal anaphors
Time: Wednesday, April 1st, 1pm - 2pm
Location: Zoom

Abstract: I argue that an understudied variety of clausal ellipsis in English, in which the clausal complement of a clause-embedding verb goes missing,demonstrates the existence of a null ModP anaphor (in the binding-theoretic sense), which I’ll call PROModP. I call this kind of ellipsis “scrapping” (Sentential Complement Reduction in ACD Positions). I present a close study of the properties of scrapping, demonstrating that it isn’t Null Complement Anaphora, that it’s subject to a requirement that it appear in ACD environments, that the gap contains a structurally reduced clause that maximally contains a low modality phrase, and that scraps are subject to a requirement that their antecedent c-command them at LF. I argue that analyzing the gap as containing the following structure — [Op PROModP], an operator adjoined to PROModP — is able to predict this constellation of facts. The anaphoric properties of PROModP require that it receive its denotation from a c-commanding antecedent, and the requirement that PROModP be bound by a c-commanding ModP requires that it QR from within that ModP to adjoin to it, in order to be bound, thus deriving (a weak form of) the ACD generalization.

Speaker: Athulya Aravind (MIT) and Patrick Elliott (MIT)
Title: Probing Projection
Time: Friday, April 3rd, 2pm - 3pm
Location: Zoom

Abstract: Theories of presupposition projection make differential predictions about quantificational sentences with a presupposition trigger in the nuclear scope, e.g. “Every boy rides his bike to school”. Some theories suggest that such sentences require the presupposition in the nuclear scope be true of every member of the domain (“universal projection”; Heim 1983, Schlenker 2008, Charlow 2009 a.o.). Others have argued instead for a weaker requirement that the presupposition be true for some member of the domain (“existential projection”; Beaver 2001 a.o.). Yet others take a more nuanced view, where the nature of the presupposition varies with the choice of quantifier (Chierchia 1995, George 2008a, 2008b, Fox 2012, a.o.).

A major challenge for evaluating these theories is that there is little-to-no consensus on what the empirical facts are. As demonstrated by Chemla (2009), judgments vary across speakers, and this variance may reflect appeals to additional pragmatic processes. Even when theories coincide with respect to the predicted projection pattern in a given environment, they often diverge regarding which reading is treated as “basic”, and which is to be derived via some additional process, such as accommodation. Putting theories to the test requires a methodology for probing the presence of costly “extra-grammatical” processes implicit in deriving a given reading. In this talk, we will discuss a first attempt at doing so.

The Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT is very sad to share the news that our esteemed and beloved colleague of many decades, Professor Wayne O’Neil, has died. He was chair of the MIT Linguistics program for eleven years (1986-1997) and head of the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy from 1989 to 1997. He guided the department with wisdom, compassion, and skill, longer than any other head. His contributions to the field are marked by the same qualities that he brought to the headship.

Speaker: Shigeru Miyagawa (MIT) & Danfeng Wu (MIT)
Title: Inducing and Blocking Labeling
Time: Tuesday, March 10th, 1pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: Japanese has functional elements with grammatical, semantic, or pragmatic functions. Case markers mark grammatical relations; the Q-particle clause-types the sentence as an interrogative; and the topic marker designates a phrase as the topic of the sentence. Along with these functions, we argue that these functional elements have a uniform function of assisting in the labeling of structures. There are two ways in which they do so. In one case, a functional element attaches to an item that cannot otherwise project to induce projection, extending Saito’s (2016, 2018) proposal. In the other case, a functional element attaches to an item that is projectable but requires the projection to be blocked, allowing a sister item to project. The Q-particle is an example of a functional element that, when attached to an otherwise unprojectable C, induces the C to project. In contrast, case markers attach to XPs, which are inherently projectable, and block them from projecting, allowing the sister element to project, following Saito. The same goes for topic marking. Across languages, many functional elements have this role of assisting in the labeling of structures. The Q-particle in Japanese, which allows the C to project, is similar to agreement in English and other languages, in which the agreement morpheme on T induces the T to project. Case marking, which blocks projection of a XP, is similar to augment vowels in Bantu, and it is no accident that these vowels have a case-like distribution.

Speaker: Masha Privizentseva (University of Leipzig/UMass Amherst)
Title: Nominal ellipsis reveals concord in Moksha Mordvin
Time: Wednesday, March 11th, 5pm - 6:30pm
Location: 32-D831

Abstract: In some languages nominal modifiers generally do not show concord with the noun, but are inflected if the noun is elided. This inflection is often analyzed as stranded and cliticized affixes of an elided noun (see Dékány (2011), Saab & Lipták (2016), Ruda (2016), Murphy (2018), and Saab (2019)). On the basis of original data from Moksha Mordvin (Finno-Ugric), I argue that inflection under nominal ellipsis is best analyzed as nominal concord and that features are regularly present on a nominal modifier, but remain without morphological realization in non-elliptical contexts. The distribution of features follows from conditions on Spell-Out and types of features that can be spelled out. In particular, I suggest that shortly after valuation probe features are still identifiable as such and are therefore not subject to Vocabulary Insertion. Spell-Out applies to nominal modifiers right after probes responsible for concord are valued, so that features are exempt from realization. Concord is morphologically realized under ellipsis, because in this case there is an additional feature on a nominal modifier, which postpones Spell-Out.

Speaker: Kinjal Hiren Joshi (University of Oslo / MIT)
Title: Optional Agreement and Information Structure in Surati Gujarati
Time: Thursday, March 12th, 12:30pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: In this talk, I present novel empirical evidence demonstrating optionality in agreement in the causative constructions of Surati Gujarati (A language that belongs to the Indo-Aryan language family). Further, I establish a relationship between information structure and agreement relationship and propose that dative case is a dependent (structural) case in Surati Gujarati. To account for both case alternation and the information structure-agreement relationship in Surati Gujarati I propose an object shift analysis. To conclude, I raise a larger theoretical question on the status of A vs A-bar movement as I propose a focus-driven object movement analysis.

Speaker: Athulya Aravind (MIT) and Patrick Elliott (MIT)
Title: Probing Projection
Time: Friday, March 13th, 2pm - 3pm
Location: 32-D831

Abstract: Theories of presupposition projection make differential predictions about quantificational sentences with a presupposition trigger in the nuclear scope, e.g. “Every boy rides his bike to school”. Some theories suggest that such sentences require the presupposition in the nuclear scope be true of every member of the domain (“universal projection”; Heim 1983, Schlenker 2008, Charlow 2009 a.o.). Others have argued instead for a weaker requirement that the presupposition be true for some member of the domain (“existential projection”; Beaver 2001 a.o.). Yet others take a more nuanced view, where the nature of the presupposition varies with the choice of quantifier (Chierchia 1995, George 2008a, 2008b, Fox 2012, a.o.).

A major challenge for evaluating these theories is that there is little-to-no consensus on what the empirical facts are. As demonstrated by Chemla (2009), judgments vary across speakers, and this variance may reflect appeals to additional pragmatic processes. Even when theories coincide with respect to the predicted projection pattern in a given environment, they often diverge regarding which reading is treated as “basic”, and which is to be derived via some additional process, such as accommodation. Putting theories to the test requires a methodology for probing the presence of costly “extra-grammatical” processes implicit in deriving a given reading. In this talk, we will discuss a first attempt at doing so.

The 38th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics was held over the weekend, from March 6th to March 8th, at the University of British Columbia.  The following MIT grad students and  faculty members gave talks or presented posters:

• Peter Grishin (2nd year): Scrapping clauses: an anaphor based approach
• Colin Davis (5th year): Overlapping paths, parasitic gaps, and the path containment condition 
• Patrick Elliott (Postdoctoral Associate): A flexible scope theory of intensionality 
• Tatiana Bondarenko (3rd year) & Colin Davis (5th year): Long-distance scrambling in Balkar and the nature of edges
• Rafael Abramovitz (5th year): Person and Predication in Koryak
• Adam Albright (Faculty): Speakers avoid saying improbable words, but not exceptional words 
• Filipe Hisao Kobayashi (3rd year): Two ways of building reciprocity: A study of Mandarin Chinese reciprocals
• Tatiana Bondarenko (3rd year) & Stanislao Zompi’ (3rd year): Leftover Agreement: Spelling out Kartvelian number

Gillian Gallagher (PhD 2010; now at NYU) gave a plenary talk: Synchronic knowledge of phonetically unnatural classes

In addition, many recent alumni also presented their work:

• Kenyon Branan (PhD 2018; now at National University of Singapore) & Keely New (National University of Singapore): Pronominal paradigms in two varieties of English
• Ivona Kucerova (PhD 2007; now at McMaster University), Cassandra Chapman (University of Toronto) & Keir Moulton (University of Toronto): How to value gender: lexicon, agree and feature transmission under ellipsis
• Shoichi Takahashi (PhD 2006; now at Aoyama Gakuin): Agreement Insulators and Quantifier Float
• Karlos Arregi (PhD 2002; now at University of Chicago) & Asia Pietraszko (University of Rochester): Unifying long head movement with phrasal movement: a new argument from spellout
• Idan Landau (PhD 1999; now at Ben Gurion University): A Selectional Criterion for Adjunct Control
• Heidi Harley (PhD 1995; now at University of Arizona) & Meg Harvey (University of Arizona): Hiaki echo vowels are motivated by phonotactics, not quantity 

Speaker: Adam Albright (MIT)
Title: Speakers avoid saying improbable words, but not exceptional words
Time: Monday, March 2nd, 5pm - 6:30pm
Location: 32-D831

Abstract: Numerous studies over the past two decades have documented cases in which restrictions that are obeyed categorically in some languages are obeyed gradiently in others, and that speakers are aware of such gradient restrictions. Such facts suggest that gradient restrictions are included in speakers’ grammars, even if they are not enforced absolutely. An implication of this approach is that lexicons may be rife with exceptions to gradient restrictions. This is not necessarily a problem, as long as learners have adequate evidence to learn both the restriction and the exceptions. In order to learn that a particular morpheme is exceptional, it must have sufficiently high token frequency. This effect is seen very clearly in the domain of irregular morphology, where irregular items tend to be skewed towards high token frequency. Phonological alternations show a similar effect: items that run counter to general lexical trends tend to have higher token frequency. The current study tests whether a similar skewing is found for words that are exceptions to static phonotactic trends, using data from English and Korean. The hypothesis is that exceptional items should likewise require the support of high token frequency.

In order to examine the distribution of grammatically exceptional forms, I employed the UCLA Phonotactic Learner to discover gradient phonotactic restrictions in English and Korean. I examined three lexicons: 4,657 English monosyllabic lemmas, 15,386 Korean mono- and disyllabic nouns, and 3,750 Korean verbs. For each lexicon, the model was used to discover 500 constraints, which were assigned weights to form a maximum entropy grammar. In order to examine the frequency distribution of exceptions, I selected constraints with at least modestly high weights, and reasonably many (>50) exceptions. For each constraint, the frequency density distributions of regular vs. exceptional forms were then compared, testing for a skew towards high frequency among exceptions.

For some constraints, exceptional items are indeed skewed towards higher token frequency. For example, English exhibits a gradient restriction against [ŋ] followed by coronals, and exceptions show a slight skewing towards higher frequencies. This effect is small compared to the effect for morphological irregulars, however, and most constraints do not show such a skewing at all. The same general pattern holds for for Korean nouns and verbs: a few constraints show a slight trend for exceptions to have higher frequency, but most constraints do not.

In order to test the relation between phonotactic probability and frequency more generally, I also calculated bigram transitional probability of existing items in each of the three datasets, and compared bigram probability to token frequency. For all three data sets, generalized linear models show that even when segment count is controlled for, lemma frequency is positively correlated with bigram probability. Thus, phonotactically unusual words tend to have lower frequency, not higher frequency. In the domain of static phonotactics, grammatically exceptional words do not require high token frequency to maintain their exceptionality. I conclude that phonotactically exceptional words are reliably learned, but speakers tend to avoid using them, lowering their token frequency (Martin 2007).

Speaker: Masha Privizentseva (Leipzig University)
Title: Nominal ellipsis reveals concord in Moksha Mordvin
Time: Tuesday, March 3rd, 1pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: In some languages nominal modifiers generally do not show concord with the noun, but are inflected if the noun is elided. This inflection is often analyzed as stranded and cliticized affixes of an elided noun (see Dékány (2011), Saab & Lipták (2016), Ruda (2016), Murphy (2018), and Saab (2019)). On the basis of original data from Moksha Mordvin (Finno-Ugric), I argue that inflection under nominal ellipsis is best analyzed as nominal concord and that features are regularly present on a nominal modifier, but remain without morphological realization in non-elliptical contexts. The distribution of features follows from conditions on Spell-Out and types of features that can be spelled out. In particular, I suggest that shortly after valuation probe features are still identifiable as such and are therefore not subject to Vocabulary Insertion. Spell-Out applies to nominal modifiers right after probes responsible for concord are valued, so that features are exempt from realization. Concord is morphologically realized under ellipsis, because in this case there is an additional feature on a nominal modifier, which postpones Spell-Out.

Speaker: Agnes Bi (MIT)
Title: Resumptive pronouns and how to interpret them
Time: Friday, March 6th, 2pm - 3pm
Location: 32-D831

Abstract: There are at least two broader classes of resumptive pronouns cross-linguistically: (I) grammatically licensed resumptives that are subject to various syntactic locality constraints, and (II) processor resumptives that are utilized as a last-resort strategy responding to extra-grammatical factors such as distance and complexity. It is generally assumed English has only the latter type. I start with the observation that in select constructions, English does seem to have resumptives which show the syntactic behavior on par with grammaticality licensed resumptives across languages: specifically, the such-that relative. In this work in progress, I explore a hypothesis that resumptive pronouns are in fact generated in the grammar of English and become degraded due to separate mechanisms. I’d like to discuss the experiment design and (hopefully) some preliminary results.

Speaker: Nicholas Fleisher (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee)
Title: On Binding-Strict Configurations
Time: Friday, March 6th, 3:30pm - 5pm
Location: 32-155

Abstract: Many prominent approaches to binding and ellipsis countenance binding-strict configurations: cases where strict identity is licensed for an elided pronoun while the corresponding pronoun in the ellipsis antecedent is locally bound. I argue that such a licensing regime overpredicts the distribution of strict readings. This is a particularly dire problem for theories that involve what I call compulsory binding (Reinhart 1983, Grodzinsky & Reinhart 1993, Fox 2000, Büring 2005), but it also afflicts the widely adopted ellipsis licensing framework of Rooth (1992). I suggest that we should seek a theory of ellipsis that bars binding-strict configurations. I sketch a modified Rooth-style approach involving formal alternatives (Fox & Katzir 2011); the core idea is that the licensing condition be stated on syntactic logical forms, which preserve crucial pronoun-related distinctions that are neutralized in the mapping to the denotational semantics. I pair this with the approach to binding developed by Heim (1993), Reinhart (2006), and Roelofsen (2010). Beyond its success in taming the generation of strict readings, the theory sketched here offers a straightforward account of certain scope parallelism phenomena (Fox 2000, Merchant 2018), and the alternatives-based licensing mechanism bears a close resemblance to Fiengo & May’s (1994) notion of a reconstruction.

Speaker: Enes Avcu (MGH/Harvard)
Title: Using Cognitive Neuroscience to Understand Learning Mechanisms: Evidence from Phonological Processing
Time: Monday, February 24th, 5pm - 6:30pm
Location: 32-D831

Abstract: My dissertation work studies different learning mechanisms of phonological processing by conducting behavioral and neurophysiological experiments in the artificial grammar learning paradigm. The main goal is to identify the phonological computations that give rise to the complex combinatorics underlying human languages by providing new knowledge about whether linguistic constraints that are learned in laboratory situations are directly “channeled” into incremental, real-time phonological predictive processing. To this end, my research uses behavioral and neurophysiological measures (EEG/ERPs) to test the predictions of phonological computations. In this talk, I will present the results of some of my experiments designed to investigate non-adjacent dependencies between two phonemes in a word. My results will reveal that systematic consequences of phonological computations can be detected during word processing via EEG/ERPs. I will illustrate that the learning outcome (either behavioral or neural) depends on the specific learning mechanism (domain-specific vs. domain-general) and the computational complexity of the patterns​​.

Speaker: Patrick Elliott
Title: Exceptional de re via exceptional scope
Time: Wednesday, 02/26, 1pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: In this talk, I’ll develop a flexible take on the Scope Theory of Intensionality (STI), where exceptional
de re interpretations are derived via recursive scope-taking (Dayal 1996, Charlow 2019, Demirok 2019). The
flexible STI avoids undergeneration issues associated with, e.g., Keshet’s (2010) split intensionality, while also
avoiding overgeneration issues associated with the Binding Theory of Intensionality (BTI) (Percus 2000). I’ll show in detail how the flexible STI provides a straightforward account of Bäuerle’s Puzzle, which cannot be accounted for under existing versions of the STI, as demonstrated by Grano (2019).

Note: although this is not a practice talk, this material will be presented at WCCFL 38, so critical feedback and presentational suggestions are very welcome!

Speaker: Filipe Hisao Kobayashi (MIT)
Title: Guseva & Weisser (2018), “Postsyntactic reordering in the Mari nominal domain”
Time: Wednesday, February 26th, 5pm - 6:30pm
Location: 32-D831

Abstract: We argue that the unusual morphological template in the noun phrase of Meadow Mari should be derived on the basis of a simple, semantically transparent syntax. In accordance with the Mirror Principle, the analysis we propose derives the actual surface order of morphemes in Mari by means of two postsyntactic reordering operations: A lowering operation and a metathesis operation. Evidence for this account comes from a process called Suspended Affixation. This process is known to delete the right edges of non-final conjuncts under recoverability. We show however, that Suspended Affixation in Mari does not apply to the right edges of surface orders. Rather, the right edges of an intermediate postsyntactic representation are relevant. Suspended Affixation applies after some but not all postsyntactic operations have applied. Thus, the account we present makes a strong argument for a stepwise derivation of the actual surface forms and thus for a strongly derivational architecture of the postsyntactic module.

Speaker: Oriana Kilbourn-Ceron (Northwestern)
Title: Phonological variation at word boundaries: the effect of speech production planning
Time: Thursday, February 27th, 12:30pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: Connected speech processes have played a major role in shaping theories about phonological organization, and how phonology interacts with other components of the grammar. Presenting evidence from English /t/-realizations and French liaison, we argue that the effect of lexical frequency on variability can be understood as a consequence of the narrow window of phonological encoding during speech production planning. By connecting the study of phonological alternations with the study of factors influencing speech production planning, we can derive novel predictions about patterns of variability in external sandhi, and better understand the data that drive the development of phonological theories.

Speaker: Keny Chatain and Filipe Hisao de Salles Kobayashi (MIT)
Title: How to read possessives without uniqueness?
Time: Friday, February 28th, 2pm - 3pm
Location: 32-D831

Abstract: Possessives don’t always come with uniqueness inferences (cf Barker (1995)). We start by sharing our intuitions about the readings that non-unique possessives receive in quantified environments. These intuitions are our own, unstable, and go against a certain tradition of using possessives as a paradigmatic presuppositional item for projection tests. We are looking for a way to strengthen the intuitions or dismiss them, whatever the case may be. Help from the audience is welcome.

Speaker: Eva Zimmermann (Leipzig)
Title: Gradient Symbolic Representations and the Typology of Phonological Exceptions
Time: Friday, February 28th, 3:30pm - 5pm
Location: 32-155

Abstract: The assumption of Gradient Symbolic Representations that phonological elements can have different degrees of activation (Smolensky and Goldrick, 2016; Rosen, 2016; Zimmermann, 2018, 2019) allows a unified explanation for the typology of phonological exceptions. The crucial theoretical mechanism for exceptional behaviour are gradient constraint violations: The activation of a phonological element in an underlying morpheme representation determines 1) how much the element is preserved by faithfulness constraints and 2) how much it is penalized by markedness constraints. I argue that this simple mechanism predicts the attested typology of phonological exceptions. Two cases studies from Molinos Mixtec and Finnish show why such an account should be preferred over alternative analyses of exceptionality.

The assumption that morpheme-specific phonological behaviour within one language arises from gradient differences in the activity of phonological elements makes at least four prediction that set the account apart from alternative approaches to exceptionality based on autosegmental defectivity (=ASD; e.g. Lieber, 1987; Tranel, 1996; Zoll, 1996) or lexically indexed constraints (=LIC; e.g. Pater, 2006; Flack, 2007; Mahanta, 2012). First, it offers a symmetric account for four commonly distinguished types of exceptional morphemes: 1) exceptional triggers for a process that is otherwise not regular, 2) exceptional non-triggers for a general phonological process, 3) exceptional undergoers of a process that is otherwise not regular, and 4) exceptional non-undergoers of a general phonological process. In contrast, an account based on LIC cannot predict the existence of exceptional non-triggers (Smith, 2017) that have indeed be argued to be non-existent (e.g. Finley (2010) for vowel harmony). In this talk, I will strengthen the arguments for the existence of exceptional non-triggers (Smith, 2017; Hout, 2017) and discuss a new pattern in the tonal phonology of Molinos Mixtec where certain tones fail to trigger an otherwise regular tone spreading (Hunter and Pike, 1969). Second, a GSRO account predicts that exceptional elements can be exceptional for multiple processes. Such an instance can also be found in Molinos Mixtec: The tones that are exceptional non-triggers for a spreading process are also exceptional non-undergoers of an otherwise regular tone association process. A representational account where the gradient activity of the tones is the explanation for exceptional behaviour predicts exactly such an accumulation of exceptional behaviour. Third, a GSRO account predicts different degrees of exceptionality. This point is illustrated with a case study of Finnish where an exceptional repair for heteromorphemic /ai/ sequences can be observed (Anttila, 2002; Pater, 2006). Certain /i/-initial suffixes are exceptional triggers for a repair process but the type of repair (assimilation /pala-i/→[paloi], deletion /otta-i/→[otti], or variation between both /taitta-i/→[taittoi]∼[taitti]) depends on the nature of the preceding /a/-final morpheme. Such degrees of exceptionality for /a/-final morphemes are easily captured under GSRO and LIC but are more difficult to predict under ASD. And fourth, it predicts implicational relations between exceptionality classes within a language. If, for example, one morpheme class is an exception and fails to trigger/undergo process P2 but regularly triggers/undergoes process P1, then it is impossible under the gradience account that yet another morpheme class is only exceptional for P1 but not P2 if both refer to the same phonological structure. The typology of exceptions seems to confirm such general restrictions.

On International Mother Tongue Day 2020, YouTube’s Twitter feed promoted to its 72 million subscribers the recently launched YouTube channel of the MIT-Haiti Initiative, which can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg-WXl8PbfZuZUWyuOCqHRg.  

On that day (February 21, 2020), YouTube’s main showcase on Twitter was a bold project led by linguists who care about every single mother tongue on the planet (https://wikitongues.org/), whose YouTube channel can be found here at https://www.youtube.com/user/WikiTongues. Wikitongue’s goal is to produce videos of every language spoken on the planet.  Here’s the tweet from YouTube: https://twitter.com/YouTube/status/1230921304166977537?s=20 Please help make it go viral!

ECO-5 is a venue for graduate students from five East Coast universities (UMass, MIT, Harvard, UConn, and UMD) to present their current, original work in syntax. This year, ECO-5 was held on February 22 at Harvard, featuring the following talks from our department:

Danfeng Wu (4th year): Syntax of either in either…or… sentences

Tanya Bondarenko (3rd year): Inverse in Passamaquoddy as Feature Gluttony

Luiz Fernando Ferreira (visiting student): The relation between pied-piping and DPs in Karitiana (joint work with Karin Vivanco (Unicamp))

Website: https://sites.google.com/view/eco-5

Speaker: Tanya Bonderanko
Title: Hyperraising and Logical Form: evidence from Buryat
Time: Wednesday, 02/19, 1pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: Languages differ in whether they allow hyperraising to object:  movement of an argument of an embedded finite clause into the matrix clause.  Languages like Buryat (Mongolic) allow such movement, languages like English don’t:

(1) a. bair            badm-i:jɘ-1  [CP   t-1   sajan-i:jɘ    zura-xa       gɘʒɘ]    han-a:
          Bair.NOM  Badma-ACC                  Sajana-ACC draw-FUT  COMP  think-PST
          `Bair thought that Badma will draw Sajana.’
b. *Bair thought Badma-1 [CP that t-1 will draw Sajana].

The question that arises is: what determines whether a language allows hyperraising to object?

In this work in progress, I would like to propose that the relevant factor is  the semantic type of the clause. I adopt  Kratzer’s (2013) approach to semantics of attitude verbs and follow Deal (2018) in analyzing hyperraising as (potentially covert) raising into a theta-position. I propose that CPs come in two kinds: some, like Buryat CPs, denote properties of events (<vt>-CPs), others, like English CPs, denote properties of individuals (<et>-CPs). I argue that only <vt>-CPs can be hyperraised out of: due to the semantics of movement into a theta-position I propose, hyperraising out of <et>-CPs creates a type mismatch. This account automatically captures such properties of hyperraised arguments as inability to undergo reconstruction, obligatoriness of de re interpretation, and impossibility of indexical shifting.

Speaker: Luiz Fernando Ferreira (MIT/Universidade de São Paulo)
Title: What challenges do our theories on the x-marking of counterfactuals face?
Time: Thursday, February 20th, 12:30pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: Counterfactual sentences are usually marked with what looks like a special tense/aspect/mood morphology. For instance, English CFs always bear past morphology and auxiliary woll as illustrated in (01).

(01) a. If Angelica is at MIT, Kai is happy. (non-CF)
b. If Angelika were at MIT, Kai would be happy. (CF)

Von Fintel & Iatridou (2019) calls the exceptional morphology used in CF environments X-marking. There are many proposals that try to explain what is the semantic contribution of X-marking (see Iatridou, 2000, Ippolito, 2002; 2003; 2013; Arregui, 2005; von Fintel & Iatridou, 2019; von Prince, 2019). I will present some crosslinguistic data and analyse how well those proposals fare.

The first challenge we will address is how the temporal orientation of a CF sentence is determined. I look at data from Karitiana (Tupi) and Daakaka (Oceanic) which do not distinguish between present/past/future readings. Based on ideas from Iatridou (2009), I argue for a mirror principle on tense according to which CFs mirrors the temporal orientation of non-CFs sentences.

(02) Karitiana
dinheiro tyyt y-aki-p, dibm/kabmat/koot yjxa-jyt-ahy-t yjxa cerveja-ty
money have 1.sg-cop-? tomorrow/now/yesterday 1.pl.inc-cf-drink-nfut 1.pl.incl beer-obl
`If I had money, we would have a beer tomorrow’
`If I had money, we would have a beer today.’
`If I had had money, we would have had a beer yesterday.’

(03) Daakaka
Nye na bwe dimyane ka ebya-ok we pwer kyun, na=t ka pini or
1sg 1sg cont want asr wing-3sg-poss pot stay just 1sg=dist fly fill place
‘I wish I had wings, I would fly arounf everywhere.’

The second challenge I will address is the semantic contribution of the tense and the modal in CFs. Proposals which assume tense is the responsible for conveying CF (Iatridou, 2000, 2009; von Prince, 2019) do not explain the role of the modal element. Proposals in which assume tense is real and that it shifts one’s perspective to the past (Ippolito, 2002, 2003, 2013, von Prince, 2019), fail to account for non-historical counterfactuals (i.e. counterfactuals in which the antecedent is always true no matter how far in the past you go). I assume that CFs always have a modal element that quantifies over possible worlds and tense is real. However, it is not a perpective shifter, but it restricts the quantification to possible worlds with a past similar to the actual world (Arregui, 2005).

In my account, past is a necessary element to convey CF. CF markers are either a modal restricted to the past or the spell-out of the modal element plus tense.

Speaker: Stanislao Zompi’ (MIT)
Title: Arregi & Pietraszko (2020), “The ups and downs of head displacement”
Time: Wednesday, February 12th, 5pm - 6:30pm
Location: 32-D831

Abstract: Arregi & Pietraszko (2020) propose a theory of head displacement that replaces traditional Head Movement and Lowering with a single syntactic operation of Generalized Head Movement. They argue that upward and downward head displacement have the same syntactic properties: cyclicity, Mirror-Principle effects and blocking in the same syntactic configurations. They also study the interaction of head displacement and other syntactic operations arguing that claimed differences between upward and downward displacement are either spurious or follow directly from out account. Finally, they argue that their theory correctly predicts the attested crosslinguistic variation in verb and inflection doubling in predicate clefts.

Speaker: Shigeru Miyagawa (MIT)
Title: How the politeness marking –des-/-mas- functions as phi-feature agreement in the syntax of Japanese
Time: Tuesday, February 11th, 1pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: Based on Chomsky’s Uniformity Principle (Chomsky 2001), Miyagawa (2010, 2017) proposed that all languages share the same set of grammatical features, and that these features are overtly manifested in every language. I called it Strong Uniformity. Japanese poses a clear challenge to Strong Uniformity since it is traditionally considered as a language without any phi-feature agreement. In Miyagawa (2012a, 2017) it is argued that the politeness marking –des-/-mas- is a form of phi-feature agreement that is the same as the so-called allocutive agreement found in a variety of languages including Basque, Tamil, and Thai. In this paper, I will look in detail at how the allocutive agreement functions as phi-feature agreement in the syntax of Japanese by drawing on the study of Uchibori (2007, 2008) and Yamada (2019).

Speaker: Elise Newman (MIT)
Title: The future since Stump
Time: Thursday, February 13th, 12:30pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: English temporal adjunct clauses typically show past-under-past (1) and present-under-future (2), irrespective of the temporal connective used. The examples in (2) have come to be known as Stump’s pattern, based on Stump’s(1985) observation that the present tense in the adjunct clause has a future-shifted interpretation.

(1) Past under past a. I waved when I saw/see him. b. I saw him before he saw/sees me. c. I saw him after he saw/*sees me.

(2) Present under future a. I will wave when I see/saw him. b. I will see him before he sees/saw me. c. I will see him after he sees/*saw me.

Sharvit (2013) and von Stechow and Grønn (2013) propose that future-shifted present is a deleted tense, licensed by a present tense operator on woll in the matrix clause. Adjunct tenses are otherwise proposed to be evaluated with respect to utterance time. I discuss a counterexample to Stump’s pattern that poses a problem for this theory: since-adjuncts in future perfect clauses show past, not present, and still allow future-shifting. This future shifted past appears not to be a deleted tense, but is rather interpreted with respect to a future time instead of utterance time. Similar facts can be demonstrated for other temporal connectives as well.

(3) By this time next year, mom will have visited twice since I bought/*buy my new bike. (bike-buying time can be in the future)

To account for these facts, I propose that the evaluation time of an adjunct is compositionally determined by its adjunction site. The presence of the perfect in the matrix clause offers an additional adjunction site below tense, allowing the adjunct to scope under the matrix tense operator. In a future perfect, this means that the adjunct clause can take a future time as its evaluation time, thus licensing a past operator that introduces a future event (like we find in embedded clauses).

The reason a low adjunction position is only available in future perfect clauses, but not simple future clauses, is because of the meaning of the temporal connectives. Interpretation of before/since with respect to the same evaluation time as their complement clauses results in contradiction. Therefore, I argue that complement clauses of before/since must QR to receive an evaluation index from a higher head. This always results in a tense-deletion configuration for matrix simple future clauses, but a shifted interpretation in future perfect.

Speaker:​ Athulya Aravind and Cindy Torma
Title: Decomposing ​both
Time: Friday, February 14th, 2pm - 3pm
Location: 32-D831 (8th Floor Conference Room)

The acquisition trajectories of semantically complex quantifiers can be a fruitful window into understanding the primitives and construction principles involved in natural language quantification. As a case study, we investigate the acquisition of the English quantifier both, which involves (i) universal quantification and (ii) a duality presupposition. We examine 2-and-3-year-olds’ understanding of both given an understanding of universal quantification and number knowledge, probed using the corresponding expressions all and two. I’d like to discuss some preliminary results, where it looks like children hypothesize candidate meanings for both that comprise only a subset of its component meanings or where the pieces are assembled in non-adult ways.​

Speaker: Benjamin Bruening (University of Delaware)
Title: The Algonquian Prefix is an Affix, Not a Clitic: Implications for Morphosyntax
Time: Friday, February 14th, 3:30pm - 5pm
Location: 32-155

Abstract: The “consensus” in the literature is that the prefix that appears on independent order verbs in Algonquian languages is a pronominal clitic. I show that this prefix is an agreement affix, not a clitic, according to every diagnostic for clitics versus affixes that has ever been proposed. This then has significant implications for syntactic theories of morphology. The prefix always appears on the highest verbal element in the clause, while all other inflection instead goes on the lowest verbal element. In order to account for the placement of the prefix, higher verbal elements have to block affixation to lower ones; but then it is impossible to get the suffixes on the lowest verbal element. No existing accounts of verbal morphology based on head movement, lowering, Mirror Theory, or phrasal movement can account for the verbal morphology. I propose an alternative where a complex head can be built by external merge according to the clausal hierarchy, inserted low, and then copied head-by-head as the clausal spine is built, without movement.

Speaker: Stanislao Zompi’ (MIT)
Title: On some Distinctness effects in the English DP
Time: Tuesday, February 4th, 1pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: In this talk, I focus on several apparently arbitrary quirks of English nominal constructions, such as the contrasts between this tall a person and *a this tall person, between any taller a person and *an any taller person, and between what color car and *a what color car / *what color a car. I argue that all these contrasts follow straightforwardly from Richards’ (2010) Distinctness condition, banning any Spell-Out domain in which two nodes of the same type are in an asymmetric c-command relation. I also suggest that, under slightly less trivial assumptions, the Distinctness-based account might also be extended to the contrast between a three year old kid and *a three years old kid. I then conclude with a few more speculative remarks building toward a general theory of Distinctness repairs.

Speaker: Kai von Fintel and Sabine Iatridou (MIT)
Title: Unasked Questions
Time: Thursday, February 6th, 12:30pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: Since Hamblin 1958, many linguists have considered the denotation of a question to be a set of propositions. But what is it that compels the hearer to respond to a question? The by far most common answer is ‘pragmatics’. The general idea is that, as the natural response to an assertion is to consider whether you want to accept it (i.e. add the proposition to the common ground), the response to being confronted with a set of propositions is to be compelled to choose among them. We argue that a number of languages have a way of marking a question that seems to affect the question’s meaning in a way that is illuminating to the above issue. These markers include Greek araye, Turkish acaba, Japanese naa. We show that across these unrelated languages, these markers have surprisingly similar results. We argue that all these results reduce to one: a question marked this way imposes no obligation on the hearer to answer the question. This means that a set of propositions does not automatically and in and of itself bestow an obligation on the hearer to answer it. We discuss the significance of this finding for current theories of questions.

Please join us for our first Experimentalist Meeting of the spring semester! We will be discussing current and future projects in the ESSL and Language Acquisition Lab. Those who have an active project, or are interested in conducting research in either lab this semester are strongly encouraged to attend.

Schedule: 2pm-3pm, Friday, February 7th

Room: 8th Floor Conference Room (32-D831) (Please note this location is different from last semester!)

This week (February 3-7), fifth-year student Suzana Fong is teaching a summer course (sic) at ELBA (Escuela de Lingüística de Buenos Aires), “a Linguistics Summer school organized by graduate and undergraduate students from Argentina”. Her class is under the rubric “Advanced Topics in Syntax” and is entitled “Hyperraising in Mongolian and the A vs A-bar distinction // The syntax and semantics of bare nominals in Wolof (and cross-linguistically)”. We wish wecould be there to take it!

The 4th Crete Summer School of Linguistics will be taking place from July 18​ to July 31, 2020, at the University of Crete in Rethymnon.

Current MIT faculty Adam Albright, Athulya Aravind, Kai von Fintel, Sabine Iatridou, Shigeru Miyagawa, Norvin Richards, and Donca Steriade will be teaching classes at CreteLing, along with alumni and colleagues from around the world. With four parallel sessions, this year’s offerings include more courses than ever before. There will also be two workshops at the summer school: Speech-Accompanying Gestures (organized by Patrick Grosz and Sarah Zobel), and Covert Modality (organized by Tim Stowell and Roumyana Pancheva).

Full information (including details on the student early application due April 5th), can be found on the school website (http://linguistics.philology.uoc.gr/cssl20/index.php).

Course announcements in this post:

• 24.979 Topics in Semantics
• 24.964 Topics in Phonology: Sentence Prosody

24.979 Topics in Semantics: Getting High: Scope, Projection, and Evaluation Order

• Instructors: Patrick Elliott & Martin Hackl
• Schedule: Thursdays 2-5pm
• Room: 32-D46
• Course website: http://stellar.mit.edu/S/course/24/sp20/24.979/

24.964 Topics in Phonology: Sentence Prosody

• Instructors: Edward Flemming & Sabine Iatridou
• Schedule: Tuesday 10am-1pm
• Room: 32-D46
• Course website: http://stellar.mit.edu/S/course/24/sp20/24.964/

Different ways of pronouncing the same sentence can convey different messages. The properties of pronunciation that modify meaning in this way are referred to as sentence prosody. There are three components of prosody: intonational melody, prominence and phrasing. These components will be introduced through an overview of English prosody and ToBI transcription. Then we will investigate each component in more detail, exploring their phonetics and phonology, and their relationships to syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, drawing on data from a variety of languages.

In honor of MIT alum Uli Sauerland’s 50th birthday, a special issue of Snippets has just been published here.

The issue was edited by Patrick Elliott, Andreea Nicolae, and Yasu Sudo, and includes contributions by a broad range of current MIT faculty, and alumni.

Congratulations to our colleague Shigeru Miyagawa , fourth-year student Danfeng Wu, and distinguished alum Masatoshi Koizumi (PhD 1995) on the New Year’s Eve publication of their paper entitled “Inducing and blocking labeling” in Glossa!

https://www.glossa-journal.org/articles/10.5334/gjgl.923/

Our grad student Annauk Olin was recently at the Alaska Native Heritage Center in Anchorage, where she was joined by a group of about 25 people represented the Gwich’in, Inupiat, Yup’ik, and Koyukon cultures from Alaska. They gathered to translate materials for the 2020 Census. She says in an interview:

“I think this is a pretty revolutionary movement that we’re working on because it acknowledges that our languages are our birthright and that means that our languages should be spoken in all the different facets of our lives…… When we’re translating Census material into Inupiaq or Denaakk’e (the Koyukon language) or Yup’ik that means that we are telling different agencies that our languages matter and that we prefer to and we require that we communicate in our languages across our communities and with federal or state institutions.” 

The full interview can be read here.

Whamit! will be on its Winter (semi-)hiatus from now until the start of the Spring semester. Weekly posts will resume on February 3rd, 2020. In the mean time, we will have rolling posts, publishing breaking MIT Linguistics news as it happens. Thanks to all our contributors, editors, and you dear readers!

See you next year!

Speaker: Danfeng Wu (MIT) & Yadav Gowda (MIT)
Title: Focus and penultimate vowel lengthening in Zulu
Time: Monday, December 9th, 5pm - 6:30pm
Location: 32-D831

Abstract: Many Bantu languages exhibit fixed placement of focus at the Immediately-After-the-Verb (IAV) position, which has been argued to be related to this position’s prosodic prominence. Elements in this position appear at the edge of a prosodic phrase, and are subject to penultimate vowel lengthening, which we take to be a form of phrasal stress which occurs at the right edge of every prosodic phrase. We present evidence from a production study in Zulu showing that the degree of penultimate vowel lengthening at the IAV is greater than at any other prosodic phrase edge, lending phonetic support to the claim that the IAV is prosodically prominent.

Speakers: Yadav Gowda (MIT) and Danfeng Wu (MIT), Run Chen (MIT)
Title: LSA Practice talks: Intervention in Wolof Clitic Climbing and Superiority Effect in Albanian Multiple Wh-movement
Time: Tuesday, December 10th, 1pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Title: Intervention in Wolof Clitic Climbing
Authors: Yadav Gowda & Danfeng Wu
Abstract: Clitic movement from an embedded infinitive (‘clitic climbing’) is a hallmark property of restructuring (Rizzi 1978 i.a.). We show data from Wolof which shows clitic climbing requires linear adjacency of verbal heads — that is, nothing can intervene linearly between the embedded verb and the matrix verb. The relationship of such ‘verb clustering’ phenomena to restructuring, and how verb clusters arise, is still the subject of debate (Wurmbrand 2017). Our data contributes to this debate, showing a) in a language which doesn’t exhibit other ‘verb clustering’ phenomena (e.g. reordering verbal heads, morphology sharing), linear adjacency is required for restructuring; b) contrary to expectations, linear adjacency in Wolof restructuring constructions doesn’t arise through complex head-formation (pace Haider 2003, supporting Wurmbrand 2007). Furthermore, we argue that both this simple linear adjacency requirement and `verb clustering’ phenomena are driven by Selectional Contiguity (Richards 2016).

Title: Superiority Effect in Albanian Multiple Wh-movement
Author: Run Chen
Abstract: This study examines the order of wh-phrases in Albanian multiple wh-questions. Despite SVO and OVS orders, I argue that Albanian wh-movement follows the Superiority Effect, through a mechanism generating a rightmost highest specifier. OVS order constructions are subject to Haplology Effect and Word Order Freezing, showing the presence of a multiple wh-fronting step in the derivation. The study highlights a general observation of opacity and cross-linguistic wh-question environment. Linear order does not reveal hierarchical structure, as a typically leftmost wh-phrase is pronounced rightmost. This rightward wh-movement analysis may explain future findings of languages claimed to not follow the Superiority Effect.

Speaker: Frank Staniszewski
Title: A variable force analysis of positive polarity neg-raising modals

Time: Wednesday, December 11th, 1pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: I argue that data like (1) show that the modals should and supposed to can give rise to weak existential-like readings, which are not predicted under current approaches.

      (1)       Context: Walking through tunnels to a talk on campus, we find ourselves in a basement area among                                     potentially dangerous supplies (obviously not the best place to be).

                  a.  Should we be down here? / Are we supposed to be down here?
                  b. I ’m not sure that we should/are supposed to be down here.
                  c. I don’t know if we should/are supposed to be down here.


Intuitively, the speaker is not asking if this is the optimal place to be. Instead the modal statement can be paraphrased with ‘is it okay to be down here?’. In work in progress, I sketch an analysis that builds on earlier proposals in which modals interact with the polarity system (Iatridou & Zeijlstra 2013, Homer 2015). Motivated by the new data, I suggest a revised approach, adopting insights from work on variable force modals (Deal 2011), as well as free-choice (Fox 2007, Bassi & Bar-Lev 2016, a.o.) that assumes an underlying weak meaning that undergoes strengthening in upward-entailing environments, but stays weak in downward-entailing environments. I also show how this revised approach can explain interactions of these modals with negation that motivated the previous polarity-sensitive analyses.

Speaker: Filipe Hisao Kobayashi (MIT)
Title: Sudo (2014): “Dependent plural pronouns with Skolemized choice functions”
Time: Wednesday, December 11th, 5pm - 6:30pm
Location: 32-D831

Abstract: I will discuss Yasutada Sudo’s (2014) paper entitled “Dependent plural pronouns with Skolemized choice functions”. The paper’s abstract follows below:

“The present paper discusses two interesting phenomena concerning phi-features on plural pronouns: (i) plural pronouns that denote atomic individuals (‘dependent plural pronouns’), and (ii) plural pronouns with more than one binder (‘partial binding’). A novel account of these two phenomena is proposed, according to which all occurrences of phi-features are both semantically and morphologically relevant. For such a ‘uniformly semantic account’ of phi-features, dependent plural pronouns constitute a theoretical challenge, while partial binding is more or less straightforwardly accounted for. In order to make sense of the semantic effects of the phi-features on dependent plural pronouns, the following idea is pursued: the phi-features on a dependent plural pronoun reflect the range of values that the pronoun takes, rather than the particular value it denotes at a time. This idea is implemented in a compositional semantics by making use of (Skolemized) choice functions. An appealing feature of the present account is that, unlike its predecessors, it accounts for dependent plural pronouns without c-commanding antecedents in essentially the same way as for those with c-commanding antecedents. It is also shown how this account of dependent plural pronouns can straightforwardly be augmented with set indices to account for partial binding.”

Speaker: Maša Močnik and Rafael Abramovitz (MIT); Filipe Hisao Kobayashi and Enrico Flor (MIT)
Title: A Variable-Force Variable-Flavor Attitude Verb in Koryak; Coordinating Complete Answers: The case of Tanto-Quanto Conjunction
Time: Thursday, December 12th, 12:30pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: We enrich the typology of modal expressions with the attitude verb ivək from Koryak (Chukotko-Kamchatkan), which shows a wide range of flavors (doxastic, bouletic, assertive, directive) and is the first documented variable-force attitude verb. Variation in both domains goes against the universal that modal items can’t vary in both force and flavor (Nauze 2008). We use the existential-universal doxastic-assertive variation to argue against this generalization. For the bouletic flavor, we show that it is triggered by the material in the embedded clause; we propose a new technical way of composing the bouletic flavor at LF.

==============================

We discuss a coordination strategy found in Portuguese and Italian which we call Tanto-Quanto Conjunction (TQC). The semantic properties that distinguish this construction from run-of-the-mill and-conjunction are the focus of this paper. TQC imposes a discourse related requirement on its conjuncts, namely that they each be a complete answer to a question raised in the discourse. We propose an analysis of TQC where each of its conjuncts falls under the scope of a focus sensitive operator which, by means of an answerhood operator, checks that its prejacent satisfies this requirement. Full paper at: https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004906.

Speaker: Suzana Fong (MIT)
Title: The syntactic distribution of bare nominals in Wolof
Time: Tuesday, December 3rd, 1pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: In this research in progress, I try to analyze the positions where a bare nominal (BN) in Wolof (Niger-Congo) can or cannot occur. An example of BN in the object position of a transitive verb can be found in (1).

(1) Roxaya jang-na xibaar. Roxaya read-NA.3SG newspaper ‘Roxaya read a newspaper.’

So far, the following generalizations have emerged:

(2) i. A BN can be the object of a transitive verb, but it has to be adjacent to that verb. ii. There are clauses where another lower argument can be introduced, namely, a causee, an applied argument, or a dative argument. In that case, a BN can be the theme argument, but it no longer obeys the aforementioned adjacency condition. iii. BNs cannot be the other lower argument (i.e. causee, anapplied argument, or a dative argument), irrespective of adjacency with the verb. iv. BNs cannot be the subject of a finite clause. v. BNs can be the subject of a nonfinite clause (more precisely, a bare perceptual complement). vi. BNs can be focused/clefted. vi. A BN direct object that is modified by a relative clause can bleed the adjacency requirement. However it still cannot be the subject of a finite clause.

(2-ii) and (2-vi) are strikingly similar to a pattern that Branan (to appear) analyzes in Kikuyu. This presentation will be an exercise in applying Branan’s (to appear) proposal to Wolof BNs. I will introduced auxiliary ingredients as needed.

- Lecture 1: Redundancy in Pragmatics.
A basic dynamic semantic system will be introduced as a formulation of Stalnakerian Pragmatics. We will discuss Mayr & Romoli’s (2016) Disjunction Problem, and a solution to it that makes use of non-eliminativity.
- Lecture 2: Discourse Referents.
We will enrich the dynamic semantics with ‘discourse referents’ so as to account for anaphora. We will discuss issues about plurality, especially so-called ‘quantificational subordination’.

Speaker: Elise Newman (MIT) and Yadav Gowda (MIT)
Title: Children can ‘even’: the learning trajectory of an English scalar particle
Time: Friday, December 6th, 2pm - 3pm
Location: 36-156 (NOTE: This is a a different location than normal!)

Abstract: Kim 2011 argues that children learn ‘even’ later than ‘only’, showing no evidence of learning ‘even’ in the 4-5 year old range. We argue that Kim’s results are unreliable due to flaws in her experimental design. We show that controlling for those factors reveals evidence of learning in children ages 4-5: children ages 4-5 show considerably more adult-like comprehension of ‘even’ than 3 year olds, with justifications that suggest they recognize the need for scalar reasoning in interpreting ‘even’. In addition to this finding, we report two additional results. First, children show two types of non-adult like behavior, one of which looks like guessing (and is unstable, disappearing by age 6), and the other of which co-occurs with justifications that indicate scalar reasoning (and is stable through age 6). This suggests that there is a learning space children consider when hypothesizing meanings for ‘even’. Second, there appears to be somewhat of a polarity effect: children show higher rates of adult-like behavior in negative environments than positive environments. Evidence from child production of ‘even’ as well as child-directed use of ‘even’ suggests that the latter finding may be a frequency effect in the input; adults produce higher rates of negative ‘even’ than positive ‘even’.

Speaker: Yasutada Sudo (UCL)
Title: Implicatures with Discourse Referents
Time: Friday, December 6th, 3:30pm - 5pm
Location: 32-155

Abstract: Theories of discourse anaphora represent discourse referents separately from propositional content (Karttunen 1976, Heim 1982, Kamp 1983, among others). It is then natural to expect discourse referents to play a role in generating pragmatic inferences, but most current pragmatic theories seem to ignore them. In this talk I will discuss how discourse referents (should) behave in the computation of implicatures, by looking at plurality inferences of plural indefinites, and scalar and ignorance implicatures triggered in the scope of indefinites.

Speaker: Christopher Baron (MIT)
Title: States in the semantics of degree achievements
Time: Wednesday, November 27th, 1pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: Adjectives are typically analyzed as measure functions ( functions) or degree-individual relations ( functions); alternative analyses posit they are (neo)davidsonian state predicates ( functions). I argue that the interaction between degree achievement verbs and source/goal PPs, as in (1), supports the state predicate view.

(1) The gap widened from 3 inches to 9 inches.

Speaker: Laura McPherson (Dartmouth)
Title: Anti-alignment, melodies, and the OCP in Poko tone
Time: Monday, November 25th, 5pm - 6:30pm
Location: 32-D831

Abstract: Poko (Skou, PNG) lexical tone melodies are built off of three contrastive tone levels (L, M, H) in addition to ∅. Melodies consist of 0-2 tones, which may be either associated or floating. A puzzling aspect of Poko tone is the lack of level L or H melodies, despite the presence of M, LM, MH, and LH. In the first half of this talk, I show that the distribution of tones in lexical melodies is accounted for with anti-alignment constraints, banning initial H and final L, with exceptional faithfulness to the underlying association of H tones (i.e. tones cannot associate automatically). Accounting for both associated and floating tones necessitates two domains of anti-alignment: the stem and the tone melody. The second half of the talk addresses challenges in postlexical tone, including the association (or non-association) of floating tones, the realization of toneless stems, and the simplification of rising tones. Both the inventory of lexical melodies and the behavior of postlexical tone point to active OCP constraints for L and H tones in Poko.

Patrick Elliott gave an invited talk, “Nesting habits of flightless wh-expressions”, on Monday Nov 25 at a workshop in Nantes entitled “complex multiple wh-constructions”.

Abstract:

Speaker: Elise Newman (MIT)
Title: Mayan agent focus and the interaction between merge and agree (continued)
Time: Tuesday, November 19th, 1pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: (Continued from 11/5) In this week’s edition of Syntax Square, I will discuss Mayan Agent Focus from the perspective of Coon, Baier, Levin 2019. In their paper, they propose that examples like (1), where a subject has been wh-extracted, are ungrammatical due to the so called Ergative Extraction Constraint (EEC).

(1) *Maktxel max y-il ix ix? who pfv A3s-see clf woman intended: ‘Who saw the woman?’

They propose that the EEC is active in some Mayan languages due to the fact that the object moves higher than the subject, and is a more local target for agree by a higher probe. While typically A’-movement is insensitive to intervening nominals, they argue that Mayan A’-probes are relativized to seek D features as well as wh/focus features (a mixed A/A’ probe). The result is that whenever a subject is marked with wh/focus features, the relevant probe searching for those features first agrees with the internal argument before finding the subject, and thus becomes gluttonous, which leads to a crash. The only way to pronounce (1) is to insert the agent focus morpheme in place of agreement with the moved subject.

(2) Maktxel max-ach il-on-i? who pfv-b2s see-AF-itv ‘Who saw you?’

On their approach, the agent focus morpheme licenses extraction of an ergative subject by blocking movement of the internal argument to a higher position, thus preventing the object from ever c-commanding the subject. In other words, the EEC is active in some Mayan languages, and agent focus appears in these languages only to prevent violations of the EEC.

This locality approach to the EEC and agent focus in Mayan is attractive because it builds on structural considerations that are well motivated by the Mayan literature and accounts for the fact that agent focus is sensitive to certain properties of the internal argument. However, their analysis of agent focus struggles to handle cases of multiple extraction where agent focus is present, thus suggesting that agent focus and the EEC may not be so tightly related. I will therefore propose the beginnings of a reanalysis of agent focus (very much still in progress) that builds off of their structural assumptions but disentangles agent focus from the EEC.

My proposal assumes a theory of merge and agree along the lines of Longenbaugh (2019), with the additional assumption that all merge tucks in (Richards 2005). These assumptions tightly constrain the order in which multiple specifiers may appear, given a head with particular selectional and EPP requirements. The result is that the subject is always the outer specifier of vP, unless it is more featurally specified than the internal argument, in which case the order of specifiers becomes reversed. In exactly these cases of reversal, both v and T end up agreeing with the same DP, namely the internal argument. I argue that these cases co-occur with the presence of agent focus because the morphology rejects haplology.

Speaker: Dóra Kata Takács (MIT)
Title: A half baked Hungarian bagel of scalar additive particles
Time: Wednesday, November 20th, 1pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: In this talk I look at the distribution of two Hungarian particles akár and is, which can separately and together give rise to scalar additive inferences. I am particularly concerned with the question what kind of NPI akár is.

Speaker: Stanislao Zompi’ (MIT)
Title: Božič (2019): “Strictly local Impoverishment: An intervention effect”
Time: Wednesday, November 20th, 5pm - 6:30pm
Location: 32-D831

Abstract: Languages that exhibit systematic patterns of morphological syncretism must involve a rule that derives such syncretism as a `deep’ property of the grammar, according to Harley (2008) and Nevins (2011). They show that, within Distributed Morphology (Halle & Marantz 1993), this needs to be derived by Impoverishment (Bonet 1991, Noyer 1992, Halle & Marantz 1994), which as a context-sensitive operation deletes feature F in the context of F. Nevins (2011) discusses Ljubljana Slovenian, and posits Impoverishment of the DUAL-number contrasts in the context of feminine gender. However, Nevins’ argument is only based on the relevant morphological paradigms in isolation and only their nominative Case forms. This papers provides more empirical context, viz. entire morphological paradigms from Ljubljana Slovenian, and also the interaction of the relevant syncretism with agreement patterns. While the agreement patterns confirm the post-syntactic nature of Impoverishment, the full morphological paradigms show that Impoverishment is systematically blocked in certain Case forms: while Impoverishment applies in the context of flexional morphology, it fails to do so in the context of agglutinative morphology. This pattern of blocking can be captured as an intervention effect if Impoverishment is limited to considering a strictly local Xº as context, viz. the closest Xº available in the c-command domain.

Speaker: Damian Blasi (Harvard Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study)
Title: The case for next-gen models of language change
Time: Thursday, November 21st, 12:30pm - 1:50pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: Drawing robust generalizations from language change data has been, with a few exceptions, a challenging task riddled with concerns about generalizability. A number of models of language change (inspired on diverse dynamics and frameworks from evolutionary dynamics to Bayesian learning) have opened the door to a particularly elegant solution to this problem, which I refer to as the bias-to-structure model. This general framework consists in detecting instantaneous biases in humans when learning, using or transmitting language or language-like behavior, and using the direction of the bias jointly with the worldwide distribution of the relevant linguistic structure as a way of arguing for robust history-independent pathways for language change. This popular approach has been deployed for explaining patterns involving trade-offs between morphological and syntactic marking of grammatical functions, the linear order of NP modifiers and the emergence of compositionality and regular morphological paradigms, among others. In this presentation I will summarize a number of challenges associated with this approach, ranging from the empirical adequacy of these language change models, to the generalizability of linguistic biases in the laboratory and the reliability of cross-linguistic frequency as an indicator of species-wide preferences. I conclude that, in spite of the fact that these approaches have helped moving forward our discussions and have yielded a plethora of interesting observations, concerns about ecological validity merit a re-examination of alternative models of language change.

Speaker: Masoud Jasbi (Harvard)
Title: Nativism vs. Constructivism: The Case of Disjunction
Time: Friday, November 22th, 2pm - 3pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: Disjunction has been a major source of insight for theories of meaning and language acquisition. Both nativist and constructivist theories have claimed that children’s development of disjunction conforms to their predictions. What are nativist and constructivist accounts of disjunction acquisition? How often do children hear disjunction in their parents’ speech? in what contexts? What type of learning model can succeed in learning the interpretations of disjunction from child-directed speech? In this talk, I review previous theories of disjunction acquisition and present the results of a study on naturalistic recordings of parent-child interactions. The results suggest that children may learn to interpret a disjunction by partitioning their form-meaning mappings based on salient cues that accompany a disjunction in child-directed speech. In order to better understand the distribution of “or” in parents’ and children’s speech, I collected statistics of its use across speakers, ages, and contexts. The results show that children start producing “or” between 18-30 months and by 42 months their productions plateau at a constant rate. I also show that the most likely interpretation of “or” in child-directed speech is exclusive disjunction. However, exclusive interpretations correlated with a rise-fall intonation, and logically inconsistent propositions. In the absence of these two cues, “or” was commonly not exclusive. Our computational modeling suggests that a hypothetical learner can successfully interpret an English disjunction by mapping forms to meanings after partitioning the input using the set of salient cues in the context of the utterance. I discuss the implications of this work for current theories of word learning and language acquisition.

Speaker: Ezra Keshet (University of Michigan)
Title: Pronouns in 3-D
Time: Friday, November 22nd, 3:30pm - 5pm
Location: 32-155

Abstract: This talk aims to demystify dynamic logic by tracing the development of a new plural logic step-by-step through 3 dimensions of meaning:

1. Storing and retrieving single discourse referents (akin to names), each suitable for later reference via pronouns:
   Arthur saw Beth. She waved to him.
2. Repeating this process along multiple parallel paths to explain pronoun reference to an antecedent indefinite (cf. Groenendijk & Stokhof 1991):
   A man saw a woman. (= Arthur saw Beth or Arthur saw Dara or Charlie saw Beth or Charlie saw Dara …)
   She waved to him.
3. Accessing values along multiple paths at once to derive plural pronoun values and other more exotic effects (cf. van den Berg 1996):
   Every student donated a book. (= Arthur donated W&P and Beth donated C&P and Charlie donated P&P …)
   They are on that shelf. [they = W&P, C&P, P&P, …]

I will argue, perhaps unsurprisingly, that my new logic is simpler than existing analyses, while handling the same data plus new empirical cases. For instance, the logic can handle a class of sentences where a plural pronoun in the nuclear scope of a quantifier seems to refer to the very value being constructed by that nuclear scope, as in (4). I will propose that such cases relate to a straightforward account of reflexives such as each other.

(4) Almost every North Atlantic country agreed in a treaty that an attack on one of them constitutes an attack on all of them. [them = only the treaty signatories]

The Language Acquisition Workshop in New England took place at MIT last Sunday. Two groups of MIT students presented their work:

Sherry Yong Chen & Filipe His Kobayashi: Comprehending and: Lessons from Children’s Understanding of English Conjunction

Fulang Chen & Dóra Kata Takács: Interaction of negation and universal quantification in the grammar of 4-year-olds

Congratulations go to Carolyn Spadine, who defended her dissertation entitled “The structure of attitude reports: representing context in grammar” last week. The empirical core of her dissertation is a set of fascinating findings concerning Tigrinya, a Semitic language spoken in Eritrea. Tigrinya speakers can introduce a clause with an inflected element “ʔil-” that can translate the English verb ‘say’ (or ‘believe’) and take a subject of its own — but turns out not to be a verb at all, but a perspectival complementizer (a kind of subordinating conjunction) with a very different syntax and semantics. Clauses introduced by “ʔil-” also show the phenomenon called “indexical shift”, by which the meaning of pronouns such as “I” and “you” is not fixed as in English, but varies with context. Most excitingly, the syntax of indexical shift in Tigrinya can yield agreement mismatches, with a first or second person subject cooccuring with a third person verb — but only under very particular circumstances. Carrie’s dissertation shows how the details of these phenomena in Tigrinya support a novel theory of how pronouns come to be first or second person in the first place. Congratulations, Carrie!!

https://sites.google.com/site/carolynspadine

Last weekend, fifth-year student Rafael Abramovitz was an invited plenary speaker at an international conference in Petropavlosk-Kamchatsky (the administrative center of Kamchatka) devoted to “The Preservation and Development of the Native Languages and Culture of Indigenous Minorities of the North, Inhabiting the Territory of the Kamchatka Region”. Rafael’s research focuses on the syntax, morphology, and phonology of Koryak, an endangered Chukotko-Kamchatkan language with about 1,700 speakers. The title of Rafael’s plenary talk (in Russian) was “Formal Linguistics and the Koryak Language” (Формальная лингвистика и корякский язык), and he also presented a second talk entitled “Problems of Koryak Language Instruction:” (Проблемы обучения корякскому языку).

Speaker: Itai Bassi (MIT)
Title: Sloppy names and competition
Time: Wednesday, November 13th, 1pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: Roeper (2006) discovered that proper names, as well as definites and indefinites, can have sloppy readings in focus and ellipsis contexts (thought to be impossible since at least Geach 1962). In a class reunion after 20 years, one can say:

(1) Only MARY still looks like Mary. (based on Roeper 2006)

…and mean that no one other than Mary looks now the way they did 20 years ago. I will offer an account of what allows non-pronominals to have sloppy interpretations in focus contexts, following an independent proposal of mine (Bassi 2019) on how focus structures are generated and interpreted (a revision of Kratzer 1991’s theory of focus). The theory also has to say what makes examples like (1) special, i.e. why sloppy readings of names are so restricted. A key observation is that it is impossible to convey exactly what (1) conveys in the context by means of a pronoun/reflexive instead of the second “Mary”: the “herself” version doesn’t allow a reading where the appearances of the subject and object are evaluated in different times (a fact about which I will speculate). I will thus propose a competition principle which implies that to express a sloppy interpretation, one is required to choose a pronominal element over its full DP counterpart, if the denotation is unaffected. I’ll show some predictions this proposal makes, in English and cross-linguistically, and try to corroborate them. I’ll discuss possible ways to derive the competition principle from something more general (Minimize Restrictors!), but that will turn out to be quite tricky.

Speaker: Anton Kukhto (MIT)
Title: Bennett (2017): ‘Output optimization in the Irish plural system’
Time: Wednesday, November 13th, 5pm - 6:30pm
Location: 32-D831

Abstract: In this paper I argue that a subpattern of Irish plural allomorphy should be analyzed as output optimizing in character. Specifically, I claim that stress-sensitive alternations between the plural suffixes -(e)anna and -(e)acha are conditioned by constraints on metrical well-formedness. This analysis connects with independent facts about the the prosodic prominence of [ax] sequences in Irish phonology. I further argue that an explanatory analysis of these patterns must make use of the notion of surface optimization. Alternative frameworks that eschew surface-oriented optimization mechanisms fail to account for synchronic and diachronic properties of the Irish plural system.

Speaker: Ted Gibson (MIT BCS)
Title: Extraction from subjects: Differences in acceptability depend on the discourse function of the construction
Time: Thursday, November 14th, 12:30pm - 1:50pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: (reporting work by: Anne Abeillé (CNRS; U Paris), Barbara Hemforth (CNRS; U Paris), Elodie Winckel (CNRS; U Paris; Humboldt University, Berlin, Edward Gibson)

In order to explain the unacceptability of certain long-distance dependencies — termed syntactic islands by Ross (1967) — syntacticians proposed constraints on long-distance dependencies which are universal and purely syntactic and thus not dependent on the meaning of the construction, e.g., wh-question vs. relative clause (Chomsky 1977, 2006 a.o.). If so, this has the consequence that such constraints may be impossible to learn, and hence were argued to be part of Chomsky’s Universal Grammar. In this paper, we investigate the “subject island” constraint across constructions in English and French. In particular, we compare extraction out of nominal subjects with extraction out of nominal objects, in relative clauses and wh-questions, using similar materials across constructions and languages. We find that unacceptable extractions from subjects involve (a) extraction from wh-questions (in both languages); or (b) preposition stranding (in English). But the extraction of a whole prepositional phrase from subjects in a relative clause, in both languages, is as good or better than a similar extraction from objects. Following Erteschik-Shir (1973) and Kuno (1987) among others, we propose a theory of extraction that takes into account the discourse status of the extracted element in the construction at hand: the extracted element is a focus (corresponding to new information) in wh-questions, but not in relative clauses. The focus status conflicts with the non-focal status of a subject (usually given or discourse old). We argue that most previous discussions of islands rely on the wrong premise that all extraction types behave alike. Once different extraction types are recognized as different constructions (Croft, 2001; Ginzburg & Sag, 2000; Goldberg, 2006; Sag, 2010), with their own discourse functions, one can explain different extraction patterns depending on the construction. We conclude that crosslinguistic variation has been exaggerated and cross-construction variation underestimated.

Speaker: Fulang Chen (MIT) and Dóra Kata Takács (MIT)
Title: Interactin of negation and universal quantification in the grammar of 4-year-olds
Time: Friday, November 15th, 2pm - 3pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: Aravind et al (2017) investigate children’s acquisition of universal quantification (every) and find that 4-year-olds stop saying “Yes” when they are asked whether (1) is true, given a picture where all but one cowboy is riding a horse (i.e. when there is an extra agent, a cowboy not riding a horse). However, 4-year-olds also start to make quantifier-spreading errors, where they say “No” to (1) when every cowboy is riding a horse but there is an extra object, a horse not being ridden by a cowboy.

(1) Every cowboy is riding a horse.

In this on-going experiment, we explore the interaction of negation and universal quantification in the grammar of 4-year-olds by asking them whether a sentence like (2) is true when they are given a picture where there is an extra agent (e.g. a picture with three giraffes each drinking a milkshake and a giraffe not drinking a milkshake) or an extra object (e.g. a picture with three giraffes each drinking a milkshake and a milkshake not being drunk by a giraffe).

(2) This is a picture where not every giraffe is drinking a milkshake.

The preliminary results replicate Aravind et al’s (2017) findings, suggesting that negation does not interact with universal quantification in a way that prevents 4-year-olds from making quantifier-spreading errors.

We propose that not and every are two independent, scope-taking elements in the grammar of 4-year-olds. To flesh out the syntactic and semantic properties of negation and universal quantification, we will address two theories of quantifier-spreading, Roeper et al (2005) and Denic and Chemla (2018), and discuss modifications need to be made to accommodate the preliminary results in our experiment.

Filipe Hisao Kobayashi (3rd year) and Sherry Yong Chen (3rd year) presented a poster at BUCLD 44 this weekend: 

F. Kobayashi, S. Chen, L. Rosenstein, M. Hackl: Comprehending and: Development Path of English Conjunction in Child Language​

Speaker: Elise Newman (MIT)
Title: Mayan agent focus and the interaction between merge and agree
Time: Tuesday, November 5th, 1pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: In this week’s edition of Syntax Square, I will discuss Mayan Agent Focus from the perspective of Coon, Baier, Levin 2019. In their paper, they propose that examples like (1), where a subject has been wh-extracted, are ungrammatical due to the so called Ergative Extraction Constraint (EEC).

(1) *Maktxel max y-il ix ix? who pfv A3s-see clf woman intended: ‘Who saw the woman?’

They propose that the EEC is active in some Mayan languages due to the fact that the object moves higher than the subject, and is a more local target for agree by a higher probe. While typically A’-movement is insensitive to intervening nominals, they argue that Mayan A’-probes are relativized to seek D features as well as wh/focus features (a mixed A/A’ probe). The result is that whenever a subject is marked with wh/focus features, the relevant probe searching for those features first agrees with the internal argument before finding the subject, and thus becomes gluttonous, which leads to a crash. The only way to pronounce (1) is to insert the agent focus morpheme in place of agreement with the moved subject.

(2) Maktxel max-ach il-on-i? who pfv-b2s see-AF-itv ‘Who saw you?’

On their approach, the agent focus morpheme licenses extraction of an ergative subject by blocking movement of the internal argument to a higher position, thus preventing the object from ever c-commanding the subject. In other words, the EEC is active in some Mayan languages, and agent focus appears in these languages only to prevent violations of the EEC.

This locality approach to the EEC and agent focus in Mayan is attractive because it builds on structural considerations that are well motivated by the Mayan literature and accounts for the fact that agent focus is sensitive to certain properties of the internal argument. However, their analysis of agent focus struggles to handle cases of multiple extraction where agent focus is present, thus suggesting that agent focus and the EEC may not be so tightly related. I will therefore propose the beginnings of a reanalysis of agent focus (very much still in progress) that builds off of their structural assumptions but disentangles agent focus from the EEC.

My proposal assumes a theory of merge and agree along the lines of Longenbaugh (2019), with the additional assumption that all merge tucks in (Richards 2005). These assumptions tightly constrain the order in which multiple specifiers may appear, given a head with particular selectional and EPP requirements. The result is that the subject is always the outer specifier of vP, unless it is more featurally specified than the internal argument, in which case the order of specifiers becomes reversed. In exactly these cases of reversal, both v and T end up agreeing with the same DP, namely the internal argument. I argue that these cases co-occur with the presence of agent focus because the morphology rejects haplology.