tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13830740203862812122024-03-08T17:11:56.283-05:00Linguistics CommentaryOccasional commentary on linguistics publications from a syntactician. Observations that appear here without a reference are, as far as I know, original to me.Benjamin Brueninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01862907128346654016noreply@blogger.comBlogger26125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1383074020386281212.post-28463221420854508592024-02-06T19:39:00.000-05:002024-02-06T19:39:04.674-05:00"Binding" in short passives is logophoric(This is an excerpt from my paper to be published in <i>Glossa</i>, "English middles and implicit arguments." I am excerpting it here because the data may otherwise go unnoticed, when they are quite important to the analysis of passives.)<br><br>
Short passives in English appear to permit binding of an anaphor by the implicit logical external argument (e.g., Baker et al. 1989; Roberts 1987; Collins 2005):<br><br>
(93) a. Some poems can be read aloud to oneself better than others can.<br>
b. Melissa was delighted to find that some of her poems could be read aloud to herself quite well.<br>
c. We were delighted to find that some of our poems could be read aloud to each other quite well.<br>
d. Randi was delighted to find that the butter could be spread easily on herself after she had microwaved it.<br>
e. To the students’ consternation, tickets to the school play were sold more easily to themselves than they were to others.<br>
f. The winter swimmers were delighted to find that the goose fat could be rubbed easily onto themselves once it was warmed up.<br><br>
One might conclude from this that the logical external argument of the short passive is syntactically represented. This conclusion would be too hasty. Anaphors can sometimes be used logophorically, meaning that they can take as an antecedent an entity that does not locally c- command them and may not even be present in the syntax (Pollard and Sag 1992; Reinhart and Reuland 1993). Charnavel and Sportiche (2016) offer a way to rule out this possibility: using inanimate anaphors. Anaphors used logophorically can only take sentient entities as their antecedents. Inanimate anaphors require a local c-commanding antecedent and do not permit a logophoric use. When we use inanimate anaphors in short passives, we find that they are unacceptable:<br><br>
(94) a. * The moon’s gravitational pull isn’t strong enough for asteroids to be attracted to itself very easily.<br>
(cf. The moon attracts asteroids to itself quite frequently.)<br>
b. * This machine’s programming has the result that oil is spread on itself once a day. (cf. This machine spreads oil on itself once a day.)<br>
c. * This automatic thresher’s design allows spare blades to be stored inside itself. (cf. This automatic thresher stores spare blades inside itself.)<br>
d. * This machine is designed so that X-rays are constantly shot at itself. (cf. This machine constantly shoots X-rays at itself.)<br><br>
I take this to indicate that putative examples of binding by the missing external argument of a passive are not actual examples of binding. The missing external argument of a passive is not capable of binding an anaphor. An anaphor can be acceptable in the passive, but when it is, it is being used logophorically.<br><br>
Further strengthening this conclusion, unaccusative examples that are similar to the examples of the passive in (93) also permit an anaphor. Unaccusatives do not have an external argument, so they must involve anaphors being used logophorically:<br><br>
(95) a. Some tones sound better to oneself than they do to others.<br>
b. Randi was delighted to find the butter spreading out all over herself without her needing to do anything.<br>
c. To the hikers’ consternation, snow seemed to fall only onto themselves and not onto the bushes alongside the path.<br>
d. The winter swimmers were delighted to find that the goose fat melted easily onto themselves once it was warmed up.<br><br>
I conclude that apparent binding by the logical external argument of a short passive is not binding at all, it involves a logophoric use of an anaphor. It appears that, when there is no logical external argument in the syntax (in short passives, in unaccusatives, and in middles---see the paper), it is possible for any anaphor in the verb phrase to be interpreted logophorically rather than as a syntactic anaphor. Why this would be the case is not entirely clear.<br><br>
(See the paper for complete references, and an analysis of middles and passives and why they differ with regard to depictive secondary predicates and control.)
Benjamin Brueninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01862907128346654016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1383074020386281212.post-86275547809479634122017-07-21T13:09:00.000-04:002017-07-21T13:09:40.258-04:00Idioms and Other Fixed Expressions in Ditransitives<P>Finally, a new post! This one is about a recent paper by Larson (2017), on fixed expressions in ditransitive constructions. Larson (2017) aims to be clearing up confusion on this topic, but in fact he adds to it. He also completely misses the point of the data.</P>
<P>Larson argues that we need to distinguish between <I>idioms</I> and other types of fixed expressions, especially <I>collocations</I>. He claims that idioms must be constituents, but collocations do not have to be. His evidence regarding collocations, however, is exactly the same evidence that has been used to show that idioms do not have to be constituents (e.g., O'Grady 1998). His one example to show that a literal collocation like <I>rancid butter</I> is not a constituent is his example (25), <I>rancid yellow creamery butter</I>, where modifiers can come in between parts of the collocation. But this type of modification was shown long ago to be common with idioms, too. For instance, a phrase that Larson treats as an uncontroversial idiom, <I>the cat (is) out of the bag</I>, can be modified in exactly the same way: <I>The Feminist Cat is out of the Marxist Bag</I> (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=374dTEMGii0). Idioms with open slots for possessors are also common, like <I>get X's goat</I>, but <I>get</I> and <I>goat</I> do not constitute a constituent. In fact, my own recent work (Bruening 2017) argues that idioms, collocations, and other types of fixed expressions all obey exactly the same constraints, and should be accounted for in exactly the same way. I am not the first to argue this; see Bruening 2017 for references.</P>
<P>The point of fixed expressions in ditransitive constructions made in Bruening (2010) is that they fall into certain patterns, excluding others. Specifically, there are expressions like <I>give X the creeps</I>, which include the verb and second object but not the first object; there are expressions like <I>give rise to X</I>, which include the verb, first object, and preposition, but not the object of the preposition; there are expressions like <I>send X to the showers</I>, which include the verb and prepositional phrase but not the first object. There is also an alternating class, <I>read X the riot act, read the riot act to X</I>. Most importantly, there are no expressions like <I>throw the wolves X</I>, which would include the verb and first object while excluding the second object. There are also no expressions that alternate with this frame (<I>throw the wolves X, throw X to the wolves</I>; <I>throw X to the wolves</I> exists but it does not alternate).</P>
<P>This is a striking pattern of data that requires an account. Whether you call any individual expression an "idiom" or a "collocation" is irrelevant. That is just a matter of terminology. As linguists, we are supposed to be concerned about patterns, and identifying them and accounting for them. Larson's paper completely misses the point, because all it does is argue about whether certain expressions should be called "idioms" or "collocations." It has nothing to say about the actual patterns that we see with idioms and collocations.</P>
<P>Larson also argues that many if not all expressions of the form V X to NP, like <I>send X to the showers</I>, should not be considered "datives." Again, this is an irrelevant matter of terminology. The patterns are what is important, not what we call them. Now, Larson could claim that expressions like <I>send X to the showers</I> could not alternate precisely because it is not a dative; that is, it has the wrong semantics. But this does not <I>explain</I> the patterns: Why are there no "dative" expressions (with a caused possession semantics)? Bruening (2010) proposed an explanation. Larson does not, and does not mention the explanation in Bruening (2010). All Larson does is complain about terminology. </P>
<P>Larson is also quite inconsistent and imprecise. At one point (p399) he defines <I>collocations</I> as "strings of words used together frequently and recognized as such by speakers." He goes on to claim that expressions like <I>give... the creeps</I> and <I>give... the boot</I> are collocations, not idioms, as discussed above. This is not possible, given his definition: they are not strings. Since he has no coherent notion of what a collocation is, his terminological argument is even more beside the point.</P>
<P>To sum up, the patterns of fixed expressions in ditransitives were identified and analyzed in Bruening (2010). Nothing in Larson's paper alters the empirical picture outlined in Bruening (2010) or detracts from the analysis of that picture presented there. As linguists, we need to be concerned about patterns in data and accounting for them. Debates about terminology are beside the point.</P>
References<BR><BR>
Bruening, Benjamin (2010). Ditransitive Asymmetries and a Theory of Idiom Formation. <I>Linguistic Inquiry</I> 41: 519-562.<BR><BR>
Bruening, Benjamin (2017). Syntactic Constraints on Idioms (Do Not Include Locality). In Halpert, Claire, Hadas Kotek, and Coppe van Urk (eds.), <I>A Pesky Set: Papers for David Pesetsky</I>. Cambridge, MA: MIT Working Papers in Linguistics, chapter 8.<BR><BR>
Larson, Richard. (2017). On "Dative Idioms" in English. <I>Linguistic Inquiry</I> 48: 389-426.<BR><BR>
O'Grady, William (1998). The Syntax of Idioms. <I>Natural Language and Linguistic Theory</I> 16: 279-312.<BR><BR>
Benjamin Brueninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01862907128346654016noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1383074020386281212.post-33544369208189072202014-04-22T16:09:00.002-04:002014-04-22T16:09:57.632-04:00Derived Nominals<P>First post in a while! Blame the administrative duties that I have been forced to take up for the last couple of years. On to the post:</P>
<P>Borer (2014) claims that two interesting and surprising generalizations hold of derived nominals. The first is that derived nominals that are eventive and take VP-type event arguments and modifiers always have completely regular, compositional meanings. Conversely, derived nominals that have special non-compositional meanings may never take VP-type arguments and modifiers. For instance, <I>transformation</I> has a technical sense in the field of syntax, but it may not have this meaning when it takes VP-type arguments and modifiers like by-phrases:</P>
(1) the transformation of the field by the linguist (regular, compositional meaning; Borer 2014, example 5b)<BR>
(2) this theory countenances transformations as a grammatical construct (special meaning)<BR>
(3) *the transformation of the structure by the linguist (cannot have special meaning; Borer 2014, example 5a)<BR><BR>
<P>Other examples cited by Borer include <I>government, constitution, civilization, reading</I>. When used with VP-type arguments and events, these only have the meaning that the verb has, not the meaning that the derived nominal used as a simple noun may have.</P>
<P>The second interesting and surprising generalization is that, according to Borer, derived nominals that take VP-type arguments and modifiers must embed a real, attested verb. For instance, <I>transformation</I> embeds the verb <I>transform</I>, <I>government</I> embeds <I>govern</I>, etc. In contrast, nominals like the following (from Newmeyer 2009, in Borer's footnote 10) are claimed not to allow VP-type arguments and modifiers (her judgments):</P>
(4) the scrutiny of dubious looking tax forms (??by the IRS) (*in order to uncover tax evaders)<BR>
(5) the constant mischief by the boy (*for two hours) (*in order to get attention) <BR>
(6) the ongoing treason (*by Quisling) (*in order to support Nazi Germany) <BR>
(7) the homicide of AltaVista and AllTheWeb (*by Yahoo) (*in order to increase the value of its shares)<BR><BR>
<P>It appears to me, however, that Borer does not have either of these generalizations quite right. I will begin with the second one, which just seems to be incorrect, at least for English. All of the English speakers I have asked find the phrases marked as ungrammatical in 4-7 perfectly fine. I have found several possible examples on the web, as well:</P>
(8) You are an emotional girl prone to tantrums and mischief just to get attention even if it is negative! <BR>
(9) It will start looking like a scam or mischief just to get people to waste their trade offers.<BR>
(10) You can't look at the death penalty in a vacuum. It's merely a justifiable homicide in order to protect others.<BR>
(11) Treason by Public Officials? (headline) <BR><BR>
<P>It appears that such nominals are perfectly able to take by-phrases and purpose clause, two of the VP-type modifiers that Borer says are limited to nominals derived from attested verbs. Less clear are modifiers like <I>for two hours</I>, but my own judgment is that <I>mischief for two hours</I> is well-formed, as is <I>the scrutiny of tax forms for two hours</I>.</P>
<P>I believe the second generalization to be incorrect, then, at least for English. I also believe that the first generalization, while correct, is actually part of a larger generalization. This larger generalization includes not just derived nominals but also derived adjectives and derived verbs. For instance, adjectival passives may have VP-type arguments and modifiers like by-phrases, but they never have special, non-compositional meanings when they do. The adjectival passive <I>hammered</I> can occur with a by-phrase, as in 12 (embedding <I>hammered</I> under <I>looks</I> guarantees that this is an adjectival passive and not a verbal one). <I>Hammered</I> can also mean heavily intoxicated, but not if a by-phrase is present:</P>
(12) The younger spruce lining this trail look hammered by new snow that fell in fat moist flakes...<BR>
(13) She looks hammered (*by all the wine she drank).<BR><BR>
<P><I>Hung</I> as an adjective has a special meaning when it modifies <I>jury</I>, but again this meaning is absent with a by-phrase:</P>
(14) a hung jury<BR>
(15) *a jury hung by the convincing arguments of both lawyers<BR><BR>
<P>This indicates that Borer's generalization referring to derived nominals carries over to derived adjectives: they may not have special, non-compositional meanings when they take VP-type modifiers.</P>
<P>Note also that adjectival passives can take VP-type modifiers even when they are not derived from an attested verb:</P>
(16) Even good corrections officers feel embattled by dangerous inmates who badly outnumber them.<BR>
(17) *Dangerous inmates embattled the corrections officers.<BR><BR>
<P><I>Embattle</I> does not seem to exist as a verb, only as an adjectival passive (at least in my lexicon). This again points to the incorrectness of Borer's second generalization above.</P>
<P>Going back to the first generalization, I believe that derived verbs, which always have argument structure and take VP-type arguments and modifiers, are also always interpreted compositionally. I have not done a systematic investigation, but I have not been able to find any verbs derived with <I>-ize</I>, <I>-ate</I>, <I>-ify</I>, <I>-en</I>, or zero derivation that have an irregular, non-compositional meaning. (See discussion of some possibilities below.)</P>
<P>It therefore appears to me that the larger generalization is that no category that has argument-structure properties and takes VP-type arguments and modifiers may have special, non-compositional meanings. (One can never tell with non-derived verbs: they do not embed any morpheme that they could be compared to to determine whether they are non-compositional or not.) Note that I am being rather vague about what "argument-structure properties" and "VP-type arguments and modifiers" are; see Borer and the references she cites. Nevertheless, it does appear that there is a significant generalization here that must be accounted for.</P>
<P>It does not appear that Borer's own account of the incompatibility between derived nominals with argument-structure properties and special, non-compositional meanings can be extended to derived verbs. Borer explicitly allows derived verbs to have special meanings, and in fact claims that at least two do, namely <I>civilize</I> and <I>naturalize</I>. I do not know any meaning of <I>civilize</I> that is not also a meaning of <I>civil</I>, nor can I find one in the Oxford English Dictionary (although some are said to be rare). As for <I>naturalize</I>, it appears from Borer's footnote 22 that the special meaning she intends is that in <I>naturalized citizen</I>. However, for people who do not know the term <I>natural citizen</I> (see Borer's footnote 22), it seems more likely that this meaning is part of the adjectival passive <I>naturalized</I> and the derived nominal <I>naturalization</I>, and not the verb <I>naturalize</I>. Google searches return numerous hits for <I>naturalized</I> and <I>naturalization</I> in the context of citizenship, but very few for <I>naturalize</I> (only 5 in the first 50 hits). To the extent that <I>naturalize</I> can have this meaning, it is probably a back-formation from <I>naturalized</I>. In any case, the citizenship meaning seems to be available for <I>natural</I> and any word derived from it, so it does not appear to be correct to locate the special meaning in <I>naturalize</I>.</P>
<P>Borer (2013) also mentions <I>patronize</I>, which can have a meaning of "act condescendly toward." However, this seems to be a straightforward extension of the core meaning "act as a patron to," with the addition "act as a patron to <I>inappropriately</I>." A few other potential cases I have found scanning lists of -ize verbs are <I>authorize, organize, capitalize</I>, and <I>weatherize</I>, but all of these seem to have the same meaning in the stem they are derived from: <I>authorize</I> might be derived from <I>authority</I>, and <I>author</I> apparently has a now-obsolete meaning of one who has authority over others. <I>Organ</I> includes the concept of having a particular function; the "profit by" meaning of <I>capitalize</I> is a simple extension of the meaning of converting something into capital. <I>Weatherize</I> means to make weatherproof, not to make into weather, but the stem <I>weather</I> itself can have this meaning, as in <I>weather the storm</I>.</P>
<P>It therefore appears that there really are no derived verbs with idiosyncratic, non-compositional meanings. Borer's generalization actually covers not just derived nominals, but all derived categories that have argument structure properties and occur with VP-type arguments and modifiers. I further conclude that we do not yet have a good account of this generalization, since Borer's account cannot be extended to derived verbs. I also hope that a systematic investigation of the lexicon of English and other languages can be done to verify whether the generalization is actually correct. If it is, it demands an explanation.</P>
References<BR><BR>
Borer, Hagit (2013). <I>Structuring Sense: Volume III: Taking Form</I>. New York: Oxford University Press.<BR><BR>
Borer, Hagit (2014). Derived Nominals and the Domain of Content. <I>Lingua</I> 141: 71-96.<BR><BR>
Newmeyer, Frederick J. (2009). Current Challenges to the Lexicalist Hypothesis: An Overview and a Critique. In William D. Lewis et al. (eds.), <I>Time and Again: Theoretical Perspectives on Formal Linguistics in Honor of D. Terence Langendoen</I>. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 91-117.<BR><BR>
Benjamin Brueninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01862907128346654016noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1383074020386281212.post-11510350618540674302013-07-26T14:42:00.001-04:002013-07-26T14:42:19.248-04:00Scope in Nominalizations<P>van Hout, Kamiya, and Roeper (2013) discuss a difference in possible scope readings in nominalizations. They observe that sentence (1) can mean two different things:</P>
(1) The election of nobody surprised me.<BR><BR>
<P>On what they call the narrow scope reading, sentence (1) means `Nobody at all was elected, and that was surprising.' On the wide scope reading, it means `Of those elected, none of them was surprising.' </P>
<P>In contrast to (1), sentence (2) only has the wide scope reading:</P>
(2) Nobody's election surprised me.<BR><BR>
<P>van Hout, Kamiya, and Roeper (2013) view the narrow scope reading as derived by reconstruction, and devise a theory where reconstruction is blocked in sentence (2). The details of this theory are not important here. Rather, I want to suggest that something else is going on in these examples, and that is whether or not the negative quantifier is interpreted as sentential negation. In sentence (2), <I>nobody</I> as the possessor of the subject is preferentially taken to negate the entire clause, such that negation actually negates the main predicate `surprise'. The wide scope reading is the result of negative quantifiers being complex: they consist of an existential quantifier and negation (e.g., Jacobs 1991). If negation is interpreted as sentential negation, what is left as the possessor is an existential quantifier. The reading is then the negation of `someone's election surprised me,' or, `it is not the case that anyone's election surprised me.' This is van Hout, Kamiya, and Roeper's wide scope reading.</P>
<P>The idea is that a negative quantifier as a subject or the possessor of a subject is preferentially interpreted as sentential negation. If we make the nominalization containing the negative quantifier a non-subject, then we can force it to be sentential negation or not by fronting it and either doing negative inversion, or not. A fronted negative phrase plus subject-auxiliary inversion is interpreted as sentential negation; a fronted negative phrase without subject-auxiliary inversion is <I>not</I> interpreted as sentential negation. Consider the following:</P>
(3) With the election of nobody was I surprised.<BR>
(4) With nobody's election was I surprised.<BR><BR>
<P>The sentences in (3) and (4) only have van Hout, Kamiya, and Roeper's wide scope reading. In contrast, (5) and (6) only have the narrow scope reading:</P>
(5) With the election of nobody, I was surprised.<BR>
(6) With nobody's election, I was surprised.<BR><BR>
<P>There is no contrast between <I>the election of nobody</I> and <I>nobody's election</I> once we control for sentential versus non-sentential negation. In particular, (6) has the reading that (2) is said to lack, while (5) only has one reading when it should be ambiguous.</P>
<P>If all of this is correct, then the scope facts described by van Hout, Kamiya, and Roeper (2013) do not reveal much about the derivation of nominalizations, and they are not about reconstruction or its lack.</P>
References<BR><BR>
van Hout, Angeliek, Masaaki Kamiya, and Thomas Roeper (2013), Passivization, Reconstruction and Edge Phenomena: Connecting English and Japanese Nominalizations. <I>Natural Language and Linguistic Theory</I> 31: 137-159.<BR><BR>
Jacobs, Joachim (1991), Negation. In Arnim von Stechow and Dieter Wunderlich (eds.), <I>Semantics: An International Handbook of Contemporary Research</I>, pp 560-596. Berlin: de Gruyter.<BR><BR>
Benjamin Brueninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01862907128346654016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1383074020386281212.post-90083574659003968482013-07-26T12:18:00.000-04:002013-07-26T12:18:30.215-04:00Passives with Do So<P>Hallman (2013) discusses some apparently contradictory data involving English <I>do so.</I> The received view is that <I>do so</I> is incompatible with the passive (Hallman's example 5d):</P>
(1) *These books were left in the classroom, and this cell phone was done so, too.<BR><BR>
<P>The typical account of this is that <I>do so</I> is a pro-form and does not have internal structure that can support extraction. The passive subject must move from an object position, but with <I>do so</I> there is no such position. What is surprising and apparently contradictory is that unaccusatives, which are also thought to involve movement from an object position, are compatible with <I>do so</I> (these are Hallman's examples 50a-b):</P>
(2) The river froze solid, and the pond did so, too.<BR>
(3) The towels dripped dry, and the socks did so, too.<BR><BR>
<P>Unaccusatives pattern with passives in many ways, which has led to the hypothesis that the surface subject of an unaccusative, like the surface subject of a passive, starts out as an object. The fact that <I>do so</I> is compatible with unaccusatives but not passives seems to be problematic for this view.</P>
<P>However, it appears from a web search that <I>do so</I> is in fact compatible with passives, at least for many speakers. The following are some examples found on the web, which do not seem to me to be ungrammatical (though some are a little awkward):</P>
(4) This means that the only the most edible meat is eaten and done so with much chewing as to liquify the food. (http://www.ehow.com/about_4740227_scorpions.html)<BR><BR>
(5) For those who do not know Devil Fruits are extremely rare to find and the ones that are found and eaten are done so in mere happenstance unless you know what to look for. (http://shannaro.wordpress.com/2012/11/30/)<BR><BR>
(6) I then take notice and observe when the food is brought to table that the meal is picked apart and what is eaten is done so in a controlled and seemingly not pleasurable manner. (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/when-food-is-family/201208/reflections-the-2012-olympics)<BR><BR>
(7) Every photo taken and every update written is done so with the adoptive parents in mind. (http://godslittlestangelsinhaiti.org/andlifegoeson/2013/07/19/words-of-encouragement-adds-sunshine-to-our-day/)<BR><BR>
(8) It is thrillingly written, and done so with the clarity and poignancy of a man who waited 62 years to reveal the full account of his experience, after first being approached by American prosecutors in 1947. (http://theboar.org/2013/04/19/denis-avey-believe-or-not-believe/#.UfJfWRz-nn0)<BR><BR>
(9) And I think everyone can agree that some of the most beautiful music ever written was done so in the name of God or gods. (quote attributed to Anand Wilder, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeasayer)<BR><BR>
(10) The first ``Rosicrucian'' writings, the Fama Fraternitatis, Confessio Fraternitatis and the Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz, all when written were done so anonymously and then later traced to be the works of Johannes Valentin Andreae,... (Tobias Churton, http://www.bonisteelml.org/invisible_history_of_rosicrucians.pdf)<BR><BR>
<P>From these examples it appears that <I>do so</I> is in fact compatible with any sort of VP: active transitive, unaccusative, passive, and so on. A simple account is that <I>do so</I> is a pro-form for a predicate that takes a subject. The actual predicate is retrieved from context and predicated of the surface subject of <I>do so</I>. This predicate can be a passive or unaccusative one, such that its subject will correspond to an underlying object. For instance, in example (8), <I>done so</I> is replaced with the predicate Lambda x.Exists y. x is written by y.</P>
<P>At the same time, the predicate can only be a predicate with an open subject (a one-place predicate), and no other open positions, so that extraction of other elements is impossible:</P>
(10) *I know which book Mary read, and which book Bill didn't do so. (Hallman 2013, (5a))<BR><BR>
<P>As in the traditional account, the predicate has no internal structure in the syntax, and so cannot support a gap. The only gap that is possible is the subject of the predicate itself.</P>
<P>The fact that <I>do so</I> is in fact compatible with passives renders Hallman's conclusions unwarranted and his theory unnecessary. There is no reason to think that passives and unaccusatives do not involve movement in the general case.</P>
References<BR><BR>
Hallman, Peter (2013), Predication and Movement in Passive. <I>Lingua</I> 125: 76--94.<BR><BR>
Benjamin Brueninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01862907128346654016noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1383074020386281212.post-61588710958862280202013-04-30T16:16:00.000-04:002013-04-30T16:16:35.899-04:00Wh-the-Hell: Pair-List Readings with Multiple Questions<P>Den Dikken and Giannakidou (2002) claim that there is a difference between matrix and embedded questions with wh-the-hell. They say that in a matrix multiple question, a pair-list reading is impossible:</P>
(1) Who the hell is in love with who?<BR><BR>
<P>(This is den Dikken and Giannakidou's example 64a, which they give one question mark; they say that a previous publication, a UCLA MA thesis cited as Lee 1994, marked it as completely ungrammatical. I find neither judgment accurate; the sentence is perfect in the right context. See below.)</P>
<P>Sentence (1), according to den Dikken and Giannakidou (2002), only has a single-pair echo reading. In contrast, when it is embedded, it can have a pair-list reading (this is their example 64b):</P>
(2) I am wondering who the hell is in love with who.<BR><BR>
<P>Den Dikken and Giannakidou (2002) go on to design a theory of wh-the-hell and questions generally that derives this difference. The details of this theory are not important here, since what I am concerned with is the accuracy of this claimed contrast. I believe a matrix question like (1) can have a pair-list reading, in the right context.</P>
<P>Imagine an Agatha Christie-type murder mystery where the detectives are called to investigate a murder at a country manor. They discover numerous love affairs, love triangles, unrequited loves, and jealousy. After interviewing multiple house guests and family members, one detective turns to the other in exasperation and says, ``Who the hell is in love with who? I can't keep track, have you been making a list?''</P>
<P>In such a context, the sentence in (1) easily has a pair-list reading, as indicated by the follow-up, ``have you been making a list?'' If this judgment is accurate, then the claim in den Dikken and Giannakidou (2002) is not correct, and there is no root/embedded asymmetry to account for.</P>
<P>To verify the accuracy of this judgment, I also looked for such questions occurring on the internet. I found a few that seem to have pair-list readings, as indicated by the context. Here are two:</P>
<UL>
<LI>Who the Hell is Who? (title of page http://rense.com/general41/skolmdfng.htm, which goes on to list who each person is)</LI>
<LI>But who the hell says what? (game where the reader has to guess who produced a quote, with a whole series of them; http://www.sugarscape.com/main-topics/homepage/804060/it’s-one-direction-“who-hell-said-what</LI>
</UL>
<P>Both of these are matrix questions, and both go on to give a list of pairs. Here is another one:</P>
<UL>
<LI>Caesar starts the ape rebellion which was talked about in the first films, Caesar is the son of Cornelius and Zira who only went back in time because of Brent who went to the future because of Taylor, so who the hell started what? (http://scificolony.canaryzoo.com/Fanzine%20Movie%20Sagas/fanzine%20saga%20planet%20of%20the%20apes.htm)</LI>
</UL>
<P>It is not completely clear how many whos and how many whats there are, but the list of potential whos is quite long. In my judgment there could easily be multiple pairs, and it is quite likely that multiple pairs are intended. And again, the sentence is a matrix question, not an embedded one.</P>
<P>I conclude that den Dikken and Giannakidou's claimed contrast between matrix and embedded questions is not real. Multiple wh-the-hell questions can have pair-list interpretations whether they are embedded or not.</P>
References<BR><BR>
den Dikken, Marcel and Anastasia Giannakidou (2002), From <I>Hell</I> to Polarity: ``Aggressively
Non-D-Linked'' <I>Wh</I>-Phrases as Polarity Items. <I>Linguistic Inquiry</I> 33: 31--61.<BR><BR>
Benjamin Brueninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01862907128346654016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1383074020386281212.post-66128018147486950632012-11-26T20:15:00.000-05:002012-11-26T20:15:57.487-05:00VP Ellipsis inside Islands<P>Johnson (2001) proposed that VP ellipsis in English involves a first step of VP topicalization prior to deletion. This proposal is heavily criticized by Aelbrecht and Haegeman (2012), but they do not question the data that motivated this proposal in the first place. The most important argument presented by Johnson (2001) is that VP ellipsis is ungrammatical inside islands if the clause it occurs in is non-finite (the dashes represent the elided VP):</P>
(1) *You shouldn't play with rifles because to --- is dangerous. (subject island)<BR>
(2) *Mag Wildwood came to read Fred's story, and I also came to ---. (adjunct island)<BR>
(3) *Lulamae Barnes recounted a story to remember because Holly had also recounted a story to ---. (complex NP island)<BR>
(4) ??Ron wanted to wear a tuxedo to the party, but Caspar couldn't decide whether to ---. (wh-island)<BR><BR>
<P>If VP ellipsis requires a first step of topicalization, these facts are explained. Non-finite clauses do not permit topics, as in (5), and topicalization to a higher clause would cross the island boundary, which is also bad (6).</P>
(5) *You shouldn't play with rifles because [play with rifles] to is dangerous.<BR>
(6) *[Play with rifles], I am unhappy because to is dangerous.<BR><BR>
<P>While the examples in (1) through (4) are indeed unacceptable, I question whether VP ellipsis is generally not permitted inside non-finite islands. The following are some examples that I found on the web and which seem acceptable to me:</P>
(7) ...meaning, I guess, that he is not really healthy enough, because in order to be ---, he needs this surgery.<BR>
(8) Loftus, who police say started the attack, was carrying her infant at the time and attempted to hit the other woman with her fist, but in order to ---, she threw her infant to the ground.<BR>
(9) Hi, I need to go on a visa run soon and have heard a lot of people disagree as to where the best place to --- is. Any suggestions?<BR>
(10) If you're ready to start your explorations, the best place to --- is the free 5-week mini-course, How to Explore.<BR>
(11) You have to carry the fire. I don't know how to.<BR><BR>
<P>Examples (7) and (8) are adjunct clauses, structurally very similar to (2). Examples (9) and (10) are complex NPs, just like (3). Example (11) is a wh-island, like (4) (wh-islands are frequently quite weak, especially with non-finite clauses, so this is not surprising). Regarding subject islands like (1), I find the following (constructed) example acceptable:</P>
(12) Being arrested once is understandable; twice even; but to have been --- so many times is just unbelievable!<BR><BR>
<P>Moreover, when VP ellipsis takes place in a non-finite clause that is embedded in another non-finite clause, it is perfectly acceptable:</P>
(13) To vote Republican is bad; to have to --- is worse.<BR>
(14) To play with guns is stupid; to want to --- is just plain dumb.<BR><BR>
<P>Since every clause inside the subject island in these examples is non-finite, there should be no landing site for a topicalized VP, without the VP crossing the island boundary. More generally, VP ellipsis seems to be acceptable in non-finite islands, contra Johnson (2001).</P>
<P>If VP ellipsis is actually acceptable in non-finite islands, the main reason for thinking that VP ellipsis is preceded by VP topicalization disappears. The only other reason is that they are both similar in requiring an auxiliary verb, and there are numerous proposals that explain that fact without relating VP ellipsis to VP topicalization derivationally (for instance, the proposal in Bruening 2010).</P>
References<BR><BR>
Aelbrecht, Lobke and Liliane Haegeman (2012). VP-Ellipsis Is Not Licensed by VP-Topicalization. <I>Linguistic Inquiry</I> 43: 591--613.<BR><BR>
Bruening, Benjamin (2010). Language-Particular Syntactic Rules and Constraints: English Locative Inversion and Do-Support. <I>Language</I> 86: 43--84.<BR><BR>
Johnson, Kyle (2001). What VP Ellipsis Can Do, and What It Can't, but not Why. In <I>The Handbook of Contemporary Syntactic Theory</I>, edited by Mark Baltin and Chris Collins. Oxford: Blackwell, pp.439--479.
Benjamin Brueninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01862907128346654016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1383074020386281212.post-76405964778766198352012-11-25T14:19:00.000-05:002012-11-25T14:19:19.032-05:00Confusion about Reciprocals<P>There is an obvious difference between the literal meaning of an expression and its actual usage. Consider the phrase ``scared to death,'' which everyone knows is rarely used in its literal meaning. When it is, in fact, people usually add the adverb ``literally,'' as in, ``there's no apparent cause of death; the victim seems to have been literally scared to death.'' However, if one were to simply survey attested usage of the phrase in an attempt to determine its literal meaning, one would of course be deceived.</P>
<P>How does one distinguish literal meaning from usage? One could simply ask a native speaker; all native speakers of English, for example, could tell you the distinction between the literal meaning of the expression ``scared to death'' and its actual usage. This does not always work, however. Another example, though, can point to some ways to get at literal meaning. Consider the phrase ``a minute.'' If one were to survey its usage, particularly when spoken to antsy children, as in ``we'll be there in a minute,'' one would conclude that it denoted a time period of quite extended range, perhaps up to one hour. But if one were to limit the context of utterance to those contexts that required greater precision in time durations, one would quickly discover that the phrase's literal meaning is a time period of 60 seconds. One such context is a race: if the TV announcer says, ``the winner beat the next runner by a minute,'' the phrase ``a minute'' means 60 seconds (give or take a few decimal points). Another context is a court of law: if the prosecutor, seeking to establish a timeline, asks me, ``How long did you leave the victim alone?'', and I answer, ``A minute,'' I would be lying if I had actually left the victim alone for two minutes or more.</P>
<P>Hence, it is a simple truism that people use expressions in non-literal ways. Importantly, these non-literal <i>uses</i> in no way require that semanticists posit truth-conditional meanings for expressions that differ from the literal meaning. The meaning of ``a minute,'' for instance, is a time period of 60 seconds; it is in actual <i>usage</i> that this time period extends beyond that. (If you asked someone, they would say that ``We'll be there in a minute'' is literally false if it will take more than 60 seconds to get there.)</P>
<P>For some reason, though, the simple distinction between literal meaning and linguistic usage is frequently ignored in studies of reciprocals. A huge literature now exists examining the possible meanings of reciprocals (e.g., Dalrymple et al. 1998, Beck 2001, Schein 2001, and now Sabato and Winter 2012). Much of this literature (Dalrymple et al. 1998 in particular) surveys attested usage of reciprocals in an effort to figure out what they mean. As with the phrase ``scared to death,'' this method runs the risk of obscuring the actual <i>meaning</i> by not distinguishing that from non-literal <i>usage</i>. This is exactly what has happened; while there is a significant amount of complexity to reciprocals, I believe that they are actually much less complex than they appear to be. The problem is exactly that described above: people use language in non-literal ways.</P>
<P>The kinds of meanings that reciprocals have been argued to have can be illustrated with examples like the following:</P>
(1) The three thugs respect each other.<BR>
(2) The three thugs shot each other.<BR><BR>
<P>The example in (1) requires that every thug respect every other thug. This interpretation is called Strong Reciprocity, and it seems to be required by stative predicates like <i>respect</i>. This strong interpretation is not necessary with the eventive predicate in (2), which seems to require (minimally) that each thug shot one of the other ones, and got shot by one of the other ones. This interpretation is usually called Weak Reciprocity. I believe that these two interpretations are the <i>only</i> ones that reciprocals have: statives require Strong Reciprocity, while eventives require Weak Reciprocity.</P>
<P>This is not what most of the literature has concluded, however. Dalrymple et al. (1998) introduced a whole range of possible reciprocal meanings in order to account for attested examples like the following:</P>
(3) The third-grade students in Mrs. Smith's class gave each other measles.<BR><BR>
<P>In this example, world knowledge tells us that each student can get measles only once, and one of the students must have gotten measles from a non-student, leaving at least one student with no student to give measles to. So, if Weak or Strong Reciprocity were the only meanings a reciprocal could have, sentence (3) could never be true. Yet speakers of English utter and accept sentences like (3). Dalrymple et al. (1998), and researchers after them, therefore added additional meanings for reciprocals.</P>
<P>The obvious alternative, though, is that sentence (3) <i>is</i> literally false, just like <i>scared to death</i> is (almost) always literally false. This is in fact my judgment: it is literally impossible for a group of children to give each other measles. But one can still say ``the children gave each other measles,'' with the meaning that measles passed from one child to another; we just allow two exceptions at either end of the chain (and possibly more, depending on the size of the group). If we switch to a context that requires more precision, though, the literal meaning of the reciprocal comes out. Consider a context where two epidemiologists are talking, and they are trying to determine the source of a measles outbreak. Dr. Q asks how the third-grade students in Mrs. Smith's class got measles. Dr. Z would never reply with the sentence in (3); if he did, he would be saying that measles was not introduced into the class from an outside source, and must have had a spontaneous genesis within the class.</P>
<P>This context makes it clear that the literal, precise meaning of the reciprocal expression is something other than how it is used in (3). In fact, the literal, truth-conditional meaning is Weak Reciprocity, which requires that each member of the subject set act on one other, and be acted upon by one other. That is, each child gave another child measles, and each child got measles from another child. The literal, precise meaning could never be true, which is why in a context that requires it to be, no one would use it. Outside of such contexts, however, people make general statements that have exceptions, they exaggerate, they understate, they speak metaphorically, and so on.</P>
<P>As another example, consider the famous example, ``The people on this island used to eat each other.'' It was probably not true that every single person ate at least one other person and in turn got eaten by someone. For some reason this is thought to be significant in discussions of reciprocals; but take a similarly general statement not involving reciprocals, like ``The people on this island used to eat dodos.'' It was probably not true that every single person ate a dodo; surely some people on the island did not like dodo, or some were vegetarians; the statement is made as a generality, which of course will have some exceptions. The reciprocal statement is no different.</P>
<P>Similar issues are at work in examples involving linear configurations, such as ``The children followed each other into the schoolhouse,'' or ``The acrobats stood on each other's shoulders.'' The members of the subject set at the ends of the lines (or stacks) are exceptions: they participate in the relation in only one way. That they are exceptional is shown by the fact that the size of the set matters, as pointed out by Beck 2001: people would not use ``The children followed each other into the schoolhouse'' when there are only two children, and in fact acceptability goes up with the number of students. Same with acrobats: if there are only two, they have to alternate, first one standing on the other, then they switch. This, it seems to me, points to the actual, literal truth conditions of (eventive) reciprocals being Weak Reciprocity.</P>
<P>Yet another publication has recently appeared in which the distinction between literal meaning and actual usage is not properly made, namely Sabato and Winter 2012. While it may be that I am wrong that there are only two possible meanings for reciprocals, the distinction between literal meaning and usage needs to be carefully kept in mind in trying to figure out what the truth-conditional meaning of an expression is. Many (possibly most) utterances that humans make are not literally true, so just surveying attested usage will not be a good guide to actual meaning.</P>
References<BR><BR>
Beck, Sigrid (2001). Reciprocals are Definites. <i>Natural Language Semantics</i> 9: 69--138.<BR><BR>
Dalrymple, Mary, Makoto Kanazawa, Yookyung Kim, Sam Mchombo, Stanley Peters (1998). Reciprocal Expressions and the Concept of Reciprocity. <i>Linguistics and Philosophy</i> 21: 159--210.<BR><BR>
Sabato, Sivan and Yoad Winter (2012). Relational Domains and the Interpretation of Reciprocals. <i>Linguistics and Philosophy</i> 35: 191--241.<BR><BR>
Schein, Barry (2001). Adverbial, Descriptive Reciprocals. <i>Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory XI</i>, edited by Rachel Hastings, Brendan Jackson, and Zsofia Zvolenszky. Ithaca: CLC Publications.
Benjamin Brueninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01862907128346654016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1383074020386281212.post-16031300203477514712012-11-07T10:33:00.001-05:002012-11-07T10:38:50.413-05:00Direct-Inverse Systems are More Common than People Think: Mandarin ChineseDirect-inverse voice systems have been described most famously for Algonquian languages, but there are a few other cases in the world, as well. Not many, though. I would like to suggest that they are more common than people think, and linguists should start paying more attention to the grammatical properties of inverse systems.<BR><BR>
An example of a direct-inverse voice system is Plains Cree. In Plains Cree, if there are two (or more) third-person arguments in the same clause, one is proximate (unmarked) and the other(s) obviative (marked with the suffix -<i>ah</i>). If the proximate NP is the subject, the direct voice is used (glossed ``3/Obv,'' meaning a proximate (3) acting on an obviative (Obv). If the proximate NP is instead the object, the inverse voice is used (glossed ``Obv/3''). The following examples, from Dahlstrom 1991 (pp64--66), illustrate the direct (1) and the inverse (2):<BR><BR>
(1) aya:hciyiniw-ah nisto e:h=nipah-a:t awa na:pe:sis<BR>
Blackfoot-Obv three kill-3/Obv.Conj this boy<BR>
`this boy had killed three Blackfoot'<BR><BR>
(2) ta:pwe: mac-a:yi:siyiniw e:sah nipah-ik o:hi ihkw-ah<BR>
truly bad-person kill-Obv/3 this.Obv louse-Obv<BR>
`truly the louse killed the evil man'<BR><BR>
What characterizes the inverse is a reversal of syntactic prominence: the thematic external argument seems to be hierarchically subordinate to the thematic internal argument, regardless of surface word order. This reversal of prominence is reflected in binding, scope, and other facts; see Bruening 2009. It is important to note that the inverse is not a passive: the external argument has not been removed or demoted to an oblique. Plains Cree also has a passive (or ``indefinite subject'' form), which lacks a thematic external argument:<BR><BR>
(3) ki-kosis nipah-a:w<BR>
your-son kill-Pass/3<BR>
`your son has been killed'<BR><BR>
Let's now look at Mandarin Chinese. This language is usually described as basically SVO, as in the following example (from Li 2006):<BR><BR>
(4) wo sha-le ta-le<BR>
I kill-Asp him-Asp<BR>
`I killed him.'<BR><BR>
However, other word orders are possible, like OSV or even SOV; these are usually described as some sort of topicalization. <BR><BR>
There are also two constructions that I would like to put side-by-side, the ba-construction and the bei-construction (5 is from Li 2006, but 6 comes from my own consultants):<BR><BR>
(5) wo ba ta sha-le<BR>
I BA him kill-Asp<BR>
`I killed him.' <BR><BR>
(6) ta bei wo sha-le <BR>
he BEI I kill-Asp<BR>
`He was killed by me.'<BR><BR>
Suppose Mandarin Chinese did not have examples like (4), and all sentences were either like (5) or like (6). Linguists would then describe the voice system of Mandarin Chinese as a direct-inverse system: (5) is the direct voice, with the thematic external argument highest hierarchically, and (6) is the inverse voice, with the thematic external argument subordinate to an internal argument.<BR><BR>
This is not how most linguists describe Mandarin; instead, (6) is referred to as a ``passive,'' while (5) is the mysterious ``ba-construction.'' However, (6) has nothing in common with Indo-European-type passives: the thematic external argument has not been demoted or removed, it retains its status as an argument (see Huang 1999). Now, the external argument <i>can</i> be removed, and be interpreted as an indefinite:<BR><BR>
(7) ta bei sha-le<BR>
he BEI kill-Asp<BR>
`He was killed (by someone).'<BR><BR>
However, as we saw above, direct-inverse languages like Plains Cree also have a passive, in addition to direct-inverse clauses. The presence of (7) therefore in no way undermines the idea that the bei-construction in (6) is an inverse.<BR><BR>
I suggest that a more accurate terminology for Mandarin Chinese would be to call SVO sentences like (4) ``unmarked,'' and (5) and (6) ``direct'' and ``inverse,'' respectively. Linguists should then turn to the study of inverse sentences (and direct ones), both from a theoretical and from a typological standpoint. Constructions like the bei-construction in Mandarin Chinese are very common among Asian languages, and the potential to deepen our understanding of language by taking a new perspective is great.<BR><BR>
References<BR><BR>
Bruening, Benjamin (2009). Algonquian Languages Have A-Movement and A-Agreement. <i>Linguistic Inquiry</i> 40: 427--445.<BR><BR>
Dahlstrom, Amy (1991). <i>Plains Cree Morphosyntax</i>. New York: Garland.<BR><BR>
Huang, C.-T. James (1999). Chinese Passives in Comparative Perspective. <i>Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese Studies</i> 29: 423--509.<BR><BR>
Li, Yen-Hui Audrey (2006). Chinese Ba. In Martin Everaert and Henk van Riemsdijk (eds.), <i>The Blackwell Companion to Syntax</i> volume 1, pp 374--468. Oxford: Blackwell.
Benjamin Brueninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01862907128346654016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1383074020386281212.post-51691954775997616892012-05-25T08:19:00.000-04:002012-05-25T08:19:13.054-04:00Two-Step Tough Movement?The proper syntactic analysis of <i>tough movement</i>, illustrated in (2) below, has long been a matter of debate:<BR><BR>
(1) It is difficult to get a handle on tough movement.<BR>
(2) Tough movement is difficult to get a handle on.<BR><BR>
In (2), an object is missing within the non-finite clause, and this gap is related to the NP that appears in the matrix subject position. The NP in the matrix subject position in (2) takes the place of the expletive in (1), where there is no gap.<BR><BR>
All analyses agree that the matrix subject in (2) needs to be related to the gap inside the non-finite clause. The point of debate is the nature of this relation. Early analyses, such as object deletion and one-step movement, have been discarded, since Chomsky (1977) showed that tough-movement has all the properties of successive-cyclic A-bar movement. Current analyses can be divided into two categories: those that posit base-generation of the matrix subject, relating it to a null operator that undergoes A-bar movement within the embedded clause (Chomsky 1977, 1981); and those that hypothesize two-step movement of the matrix subject: A-bar movement to the edge of the lower clause, followed by A-movement to the matrix subject position (e.g., Hicks 2009). This second type of analysis has to reject or reformulate the generally assumed ban on <i>improper movement</i>, which rules out A-bar movement followed by A-movement; or it has to hypothesize some way to get around that ban (Hicks 2009).<BR><BR>
The two analyses make very different predictions concerning reconstruction effects and other diagnostics of movement. The null operator analysis says that the matrix subject never occupied a position in the embedded clause; it therefore predicts that it will never be able to reconstruct, and should fail diagnostics of movement. The two-step movement theory, in contrast, says that the matrix subject started out in the embedded clause, and so should be able to reconstruct, and should pass other diagnostics of movement.<BR><BR>
Pesetsky (1987, 2012) presents data that he argues show that the matrix subject in tough movement can reconstruct for anaphor binding. The following examples are from Pesetsky (2012):<BR><BR>
(3) [This aspect of herself] is easy [for Mary to criticize].<BR>
(4) [This side of herself] was tough [for John to get Mary to deal with].<BR>
(5)*[This aspect of herself] is easy [for [Mary's father] to criticize].<BR>
(6)*[This side of herself] was tough [for John to get [Mary's father] to deal with].<BR><BR>
Pesetsky presents (5-6) as controls, to show that c-command is necessary for reconstruction and binding to go through.<BR><BR>
The problem, though, is that <i>this aspect of herself</i> and <i>this side of herself</i> are picture-NPs. Anaphors inside picture-NPs are known to be exempt from the Binding Conditions, and subject instead to pragmatic phenomena like perspective (Pollard and Sag 1992, Reinhart and Reuland 1993). Pesetsky's examples in (5-6) are ungrammatical not because the intended antecedent does not c-command the anaphor, but because the animate NP <i>father</i> competes with <i>Mary</i> for perspective. Compare the following pair:<BR><BR>
(7)*Clinton's wife carried a picture of himself in her purse.<BR>
(8) Clinton's car carried a picture of himself on the roof. (Hestvik and Philip 2001)<BR><BR>
<i>Wife</i> competes with <i>Clinton</i> for perspective, decreasing the acceptability of the exempt anaphor taking <i>Clinton</i> as the perspective holder that provides its reference in (7). Since <i>Clinton</i> is in a less prominent position (it is only a possessor, while <i>Clinton's wife</i> is the matrix subject and topical), it is difficult to understand the perspective in (7) to be that of <i>Clinton</i>. In contrast, with an inanimate in (8), there is no other potential perspective holder, and the exempt anaphor can take <i>Clinton</i> as the holder of perspective to which it refers. Note that animacy makes no difference to an anaphor in argument position, which strictly requires a c-commanding antecedent:<BR><BR>
(9)*Clinton's car backfired/collapsed/exploded behind himself. (Hestvik and Philip 2001)<BR><BR>
To show whether c-command is necessary for reconstruction in Pesetsky's tough movement examples, then, we need to use inanimate NPs, or non-specific NPs that do not compete as perspective takers. When we do that, we see that c-command is not necessary at all:<BR><BR>
(10) This side of herself will be easy for Sarah Palin's detractors to use against her.<BR>
(11) This aspect of herself was tough for Sarah Palin's autobiography to present in a good light.<BR><BR>
This means that the "binding" in Pesetsky's examples is not binding, after all, and does not require that the antecedent c-command the anaphor. That being the case, these examples do not show that there is reconstruction in tough movement.<BR><BR>
Reconstruction generally does not seem to take place. There is no reconstruction for Principle C (Pesetsky 2012), and reconstruction for variable binding also does not seem to be generally available (see Hicks 2009). Idiom chunks are not a valid diagnostic for movement, because the ones that can undergo tough movement can also antecede pronouns (and participate in control):<BR><BR>
(12) Some strings are harder to pull than others. (Nunberg, Sag, and Wasow 1994)<BR>
(13) Kim's family pulled some strings on her behalf, but <b>they</b> weren't enough to get her the job. (Nunberg, Sag, and Wasow 1994)<BR>
(14) His closets would be easy to find skeletons in. (Nunberg, Sag, and Wasow 1994)<BR>
(15) There are a lot of old skeletons in his closets; there are even some new ones in <b>there</b> too.<BR><BR>
Idiom chunks are compatible with the null operator theory: they would simply antecede the null operator, the same way they antecede the pronouns in (13) and (15).<BR><BR>
The one diagnostic of movement that seems to be conclusive is expletives. Expletives cannot antecede pronouns, particularly null pronouns like PRO:<BR><BR>
(16)*There occurred three more accidents without PRO being any medical help available on the premises. (Haegeman 1994)<BR>
(17)*It occurred to me that most people are greedy without PRO bothering me that they are.<BR><BR>
If expletives appear displaced from the clause they are licensed in, then, they must have moved there.<BR><BR>
It is telling, then, that expletives can never undergo tough movement:<BR><BR>
(18)*There is hard to believe to have been a crime committed. (Chomsky 1981)<BR>
(cf. I believe there to have been a crime committed.)<BR>
(19)*It is impossible to stop from snowing in the Himalayas.<BR>
(cf. You can't stop it from snowing in the Himalayas)<BR>
(20)*It is difficult to think likely that two-step movement is involved.<BR>
(cf. I think it likely that two-step movement is involved.)<BR><BR>
Postal (1974, page 199) claims that there is a contraint against multiple raising of expletives. Since most expletives are subjects, and tough movement cannot affect subjects, to test them in tough movement we have to first raise them to an object position in (18-20). They would then violate Postal's constraint: in all three examples, the expletive first raises to object, and then undergoes tough movement.<BR><BR>
However, this constraint does not seem to be real. An anonymous reviewer for <i>Language</i> has pointed out numerous examples of multiple raising of expletives on the internet, all of which seem to be acceptable:<BR><BR>
(21) UNICEF noted that there appear to continue to be extremely low literacy rates among the poorest 20 percent of the population.<BR>
(22) There seem to continue to be problems with the multiple ad presentation.<BR><BR>
Since there is no such constraint, if the matrix subject started out in the embedded clause, the examples in (18-20) should all be grammatical. The fact that they are not is expected by the null operator theory, but not by the two-step movement theory.<BR><BR>
The general lack of reconstruction effects in tough movement, and the ungrammaticality of tough movement of expletives, favors the null operator theory over the two-step movement theory. It also points to there being a ban on improper movement, since that ban rules out a two-step movement derivation of tough movement, and forces something like the null operator analysis.<BR><BR>
References<BR><BR>
Chomsky, Noam (1977), On WH-Movement. In Peter Culicover, Thomas Wasow, and Adrian Akmajian, eds.,
<i>Formal Syntax</i>, New York: Academic Press, pp. 71–132.<BR><BR>
Chomsky, Noam (1981), <i>Lectures on Government and Binding</i>. Dordrecht: Foris. <BR><BR>
Hestvik, Arild, and William Philip (2001), Syntactic Vs. Logophoric Binding: Evidence from Norwegian Child Language. In Peter Cole, Gabriella Hermon, and C.-T. James Huang, eds., <i>Long-Distance Reflexives</i>, San Diego: Academic Press, vol. 33 of <i>Syntax and Semantics</i>, pp. 119–139.<BR><BR>
Hicks, Glyn (2009), Tough-Constructions and Their Derivation. <i>Linguistic Inquiry</i> 40: 535–566. <BR><BR>
Nunberg, Geoffrey, Ivan A. Sag, and Thomas Wasow (1994), Idioms. <i>Language</i> 70: 491–538. <BR><BR>
Pesetsky, David (1987), Binding Problems with Experiencer Verbs. <i>Linguistic Inquiry</i> 18: 126–140. <BR><BR>
Pesetsky, David (2012), Phrasal Movement and Its Discontents: Diseases and Diagnostics. In Lisa Cheng and Norbert Corver, eds., <i>Diagnostics in Syntax</i>, Oxford: Oxford University Press, to appear.<BR><BR>
Pollard, Carl, and Ivan Sag (1992), Anaphors in English and the Scope of the Binding Theory. <i>Linguistic Inquiry</i> 23: 261–303. <BR><BR>
Postal, Paul M. (1974), <i>On Raising: One Rule of English Grammar and Its Theoretical Implications</i>. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. <BR><BR>
Reinhart, Tanya, and Eric Reuland (1993), Reflexivity. <i>Linguistic Inquiry</i> 24: 657–720.<BR><BR>Benjamin Brueninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01862907128346654016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1383074020386281212.post-49943745530895479992011-12-07T14:15:00.002-05:002011-12-07T14:20:08.037-05:00Some Observations on Get PassivesMany researchers have suggested that <span style="font-style:italic;">get</span> passives are ambiguous. For instance, Reed (2011) says that <span style="font-style:italic;">get</span> passives are ambiguous between three different structures and interpretations:<br /><br />(1) That child got hurt.<br />a. Verbal passive; much like a <span style="font-style:italic;">be</span> passive.<br />b. Control; equivalent to <span style="font-style:italic;">That child got herself hurt</span>, but with unpronounced PRO instead of <span style="font-style:italic;">herself</span>.<br />c. Adjectival passive: <span style="font-style:italic;">hurt</span> is an adjective (<span style="font-style:italic;">get</span> can take adjectival complements, as in <span style="font-style:italic;">That child got sick.</span>)<br /><br />I focus on the verbal passive and the control structure here. The control structure is supposed to have the surface subject interpreted as something like an agent; as such, it can be modified by adverbs like <span style="font-style:italic;">deliberately</span> (Lasnik and Fiengo 1974):<br /><br />(2) I think that John deliberately got hit by that truck, don't you?<br /><br />However, there is some reason to doubt the general availability of a control structure for <span style="font-style:italic;">get</span> passives. First, notice that the following sequence makes sense and is not contradictory:<br /><br />(3) That truck hit Marvin, but Marvin didn't get himself hit by that truck.<br /><br />This is because the <span style="font-style:italic;">get</span> passive with pronounced <span style="font-style:italic;">himself</span> asserts more than just the corresponding active (or <span style="font-style:italic;">be</span> passive): in addition to the truck hitting Marvin, Marvin did something to bring that hitting event about. So <span style="font-style:italic;">a truck hit Marvin</span> can be true without <span style="font-style:italic;">Marvin got himself hit by a truck</span> being true.<br /><br />So, if any given example of a <span style="font-style:italic;">get</span> passive could have a control analysis, we would expect the same non-contradictory pattern. This is not the case, however. The following is a contradiction, just like the corresponding sentence with a <span style="font-style:italic;">be</span> passive:<br /><br />(4) That truck hit Marvin, #but Marvin didn't get hit by that truck.<br />(5) That truck hit Marvin, #but Marvin wasn't hit by that truck.<br /><br />Adding <span style="font-style:italic;">deliberately</span> makes the sentence non-contradictory again:<br /><br />(6) That truck hit Marvin, but Marvin didn't get hit by that truck deliberately.<br /><br />From this it appears that the control (agentive) interpretation of a <span style="font-style:italic;">get</span> passive is not generally available, but can only be brought about by the addition of something, like <span style="font-style:italic;">deliberately</span>. Without some such element, a <span style="font-style:italic;">get</span> passive is truth-conditionally equivalent to the corresponding active sentence, just like a <span style="font-style:italic;">be</span> passive. <br /><br />It is also worth pointing out that <span style="font-style:italic;">get</span> does not pattern with raising verbs in truth conditional equivalence, either. Haegeman (1985), for instance, analyzed <span style="font-style:italic;">get</span> as a raising verb like <span style="font-style:italic;">seem</span>. Note the following contrast, however:<br /><br />(7) That truck hit Marvin, #but Marvin didn't get hit by that truck.<br />(8) That truck hit Marvin, but Marvin didn't seem to have been hit by that truck.<br /><br />The raising verb <span style="font-style:italic;">seem</span> adds additional assertive content and so negating it does not contradict a simple active. If <span style="font-style:italic;">get</span> is a raising verb, it is apparently a semantically contentless one.<br /><br />A second observation casts doubt on the idea that <span style="font-style:italic;">get</span> plus <span style="font-style:italic;">deliberately</span> should be analyzed like <span style="font-style:italic;">get</span> with an overt anaphor. It seems to me that adverbs like <span style="font-style:italic;">deliberately</span> are degraded when there is an animate by-phrase. In (2), above, <span style="font-style:italic;">that truck</span> is inanimate and can occur with <span style="font-style:italic;">deliberately</span>. Contrast that example with an animate by-phrase:<br /><br />(9) I think that Marvin deliberately got hit by Mike Tyson.<br /><br />The example in (12) is acceptable only where Mike Tyson is not agentive, but he simply collided with Marvin. Where the by-phrase cannot be so interpreted, it is degraded with <span style="font-style:italic;">deliberately</span>:<br /><br />(10) Marvin deliberately got injured (??by his co-worker).<br />(11) Beckham deliberately got suspended (??by league officials) in order to attend his sister's wedding.<br />(12) The children deliberately got separated (??by the teacher) from their group (??by the teacher).<br /><br />Note that there is no incompatibility between <span style="font-style:italic;">get</span> plus anaphor and an agentive/animate by-phrase:<br /><br />(13) Marvin got himself injured by his co-worker.<br />(14) Beckham got himself suspended by league officials in order to attend his sister's wedding.<br />(15) The children got themselves separated from their group by the teacher.<br /><br />This suggests that <span style="font-style:italic;">get</span> plus <span style="font-style:italic;">deliberately</span> is not the same thing as <span style="font-style:italic;">get</span> plus anaphor, as the control analysis assumes (or at least as Reed's version of it does).<br /><br />I will make one last observation, which is not obviously related to the ones above. This is that sentential subjects are not very good in <span style="font-style:italic;">get</span> passives, although they are fine with <span style="font-style:italic;">be</span> passives and with raising verbs:<br /><br />(16) *That the world is round got ignored for centuries.<br />(17) That the world is round was ignored for centuries.<br />(18) That the world is round seems to have been ignored.<br /><br />(19) *That the world is round got shown conclusively in 1522.<br />(20) That the world is round was shown conclusively in 1522.<br /><br />(21) *That these nouns behave differently got expressed/captured by this formulation of the rule.<br />(22) That these nouns behave differently was expressed/captured by this formulation of the rule.<br /><br />This doesn't seem to be a semantic restriction, since <span style="font-style:italic;">the fact that</span> is fine:<br /><br />(23) The fact that the world is round got ignored for centuries.<br />(24) The fact that Columbus miscalculated the circumference of the earth got mixed up with the incorrect notion that medieval Europeans thought that the world was flat.<br /><br />Sentential subjects are also bad with extraposition <span style="font-style:italic;">it</span>:<br /><br />(25) *It got expected/insisted/reasoned/predicted that the Giants would win the World Series.<br />(26) It was expected/insisted/reasoned/predicted that the Giants would win the World Series.<br /><br />Apparent PPs are fine, but they are probably NPs; this one was found on the internet: <span style="font-style:italic;">When I vacuum, under the bed gets cleaned too</span>.<br /><br />References<br /><br />Haegeman, Liliane (1985), The <span style="font-style:italic;">Get</span>-Passive and Burzio’s Generalization. <span style="font-style:italic;">Lingua</span> 66: 53–77.<br /><br />Lasnik, Howard, and Robert Fiengo (1974), Complement Object Deletion. <span style="font-style:italic;">Linguistic Inquiry</span> 5: 535–571.<br /><br />Reed, Lisa A. (2011), Get-Passives. <span style="font-style:italic;">The Linguistic Review</span> 28: 41–78.Benjamin Brueninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01862907128346654016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1383074020386281212.post-22713098734985468872011-11-19T09:51:00.001-05:002011-11-19T09:52:55.123-05:00Non-Question Uses of The HellSince Pesetsky (1987), wh-phrases with <span style="font-style:italic;">the hell</span>, as in (1), have been extensively studied in the generative literature:<br /><br />(1) Who the hell is she talking to?<br /><br />None of this literature, to my knowledge (other than a footnote in Huang and Ochi 2004), ever mentions other uses of <span style="font-style:italic;">the hell</span>. The purpose of this post is to set out some of the data. The syntactic distribution of <span style="font-style:italic;">the hell</span> turns out to be quite limited.<br /><br />There seem to be two non-question uses of <span style="font-style:italic;">the hell</span>. The first is exemplified by the following:<br /><br />(2) The hell you say!<br />(3) The hell I will! (responding to other person's request/command)<br />(4) The hell she did! (responding to other person's report)<br /><br />In this use, <span style="font-style:italic;">the hell</span> seems to attach to the left of a finite clause, and vehemently denies the validity of the proposition expressed by the clause. This use seems to be restricted to matrix clauses:<br /><br />(5) *She said that the hell she will. (OK as quote: She said, ``The hell I will!'')<br /><br />Note that the subject of the clause can be any person---first, second, third---, as exemplified by (2) through (4). (Plural is also possible: <span style="font-style:italic;">The hell we will! The hell they did!</span>)<br /><br />The second use has <span style="font-style:italic;">the hell</span> to the left of a directional prepositional phrase (or particle):<br /><br />(6) Get the hell out of here!<br />(7) I got the hell out of there.<br />(8) Get the hell into bed!<br />(9) The fox ran the hell out of the room.<br />(10) I drove my car the hell away from there.<br /><br />Phrases other than PPs are not allowed:<br /><br />(11) *I fled the hell the scene.<br />(12) *I got the hell lost.<br />(13) *I ran the hell as fast as I could.<br />(14) *I hope the hell (that) she's not there. (not to be confused with <span style="font-style:italic;">I hope to hell that...</span>)<br />(15) *I wonder the hell where she went.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">The hell</span> cannot come before the verb, interspersed with auxiliaries:<br /><br />(16) I was running the hell away when...<br />(17) *I was the hell running away when...<br />(18) *I the hell was running away when...<br /><br />Although <span style="font-style:italic;">the hell</span> seems to be attached to the prepositional phrase, it does not move as a unit with it. It cannot front with the PP in locative inversion, for instance:<br /><br />(19) Out of the room ran the fox.<br />(20) *The hell out of the room ran the fox.<br /><br />(It also can't be stranded: *<span style="font-style:italic;">Out of the room ran the fox the hell.</span>)<br /><br />It also can't front in a wh-question or relative clause, although stranding the preposition is fine:<br /><br />(21) This is the person that he ran the hell away from.<br />(22) *This is the person the hell away from whom he ran.<br /><br />Rightward shift seems to be possible:<br /><br />(23) ?I drove my car on Thursday the hell away from there.<br /><br />At this point I have no theory to offer of this peculiar distribution. (Few other phrases attach only to PPs; one is <span style="font-style:italic;">right</span>, and that can move with the PP: <span style="font-style:italic;">Right out of the room ran the fox</span>.) It is also unclear whether these three uses of <span style="font-style:italic;">the hell</span> have anything in common, other than some kind of expressive content.<br /><br />References<br /><br />Huang, C.-T. James and Masao Ochi (2004). Syntax of the Hell: Two Types of Dependencies. <span style="font-style:italic;">Proceedings of NELS 34</span>, ed. K. Moulton and M. Wolf, 279–294. Amherst, MA: GLSA Publications.<br /><br />Pesetsky, David (1987). Wh-in-Situ: Movement and Unselective Binding. In Eric Reuland and Alice ter Meulen (eds.), <span style="font-style:italic;">The Representation of (In)definiteness</span>. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 98–129.Benjamin Brueninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01862907128346654016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1383074020386281212.post-15257249361407131592011-10-07T14:09:00.003-04:002011-10-07T14:19:12.232-04:00Two Constraints on Fake Indexicals<span style="font-style:italic;">(Note: I wrote this blog post in 2009, but am only posting it now. Other publications may have rendered these two observations superfluous in the meantime, but I am posting them anyway in case they are still relevant.)</span><br /><br />Kratzer (2009) proposes a theory of <span style="font-style:italic;">fake indexicals</span>, 1st and 2nd person pronouns used as bound variables, as in the following examples:<br /><br />(1) I am the only one who takes care of <span style="font-weight:bold;">my</span> children. (bound reading: no one else takes care of their own children)<br /><br />(2) I am the only one who remembers <span style="font-weight:bold;">our</span> first meeting. (bound reading: no one else remembers the meeting between them and the addressee or salient other individual)<br /><br />(3) I am the only one who thinks someone criticized <span style="font-weight:bold;">my</span> paper. (bound reading: no one else thinks someone criticized their paper)<br /><br />In Kratzer's theory, the pronouns in (1-2) start out as <span style="font-style:italic;">minimal</span> pronouns, without any features, and get their features via Agree with v (the head that introduces the external argument of the verb; in (1), this would be the head that introduces the external argument of <span style="font-style:italic;">takes care of</span>). The head v can be inserted with 1st or 2nd person features, which then get transmitted to the pronouns and spelled out. Since the subject is a relative pronoun (<span style="font-style:italic;">who</span>), it is compatible with 1st or 2nd person features, with no clash. In the long-distance case in (3), there is a conflict between the local subject (<span style="font-style:italic;">someone</span>) and 1st person features on v; so Kratzer hypothesizes that in this case, the pronoun has 1st person features to begin with, but a context-shifing lambda-operator can be inserted to bind 1st person to the subject of the higher verb (<span style="font-style:italic;">thinks</span>).<br /><br />The purpose of this blog post is to point out two generalizations that are not captured by Kratzer's system. In this system, there is no syntactic relation between the 1st person pronoun in the matrix clause (<span style="font-style:italic;"><span style="font-weight:bold;">I</span> am the only one</span>...) and the fake indexical in either the local or the long-distance case. Presumably, a condition on v being inserted with 1st person features as in (1-2) is that the context must involve the speaker. However, this is not good enough. There must be an occurrence of the 1st person pronoun in the same sentence, and it is not good enough for the pragmatics to implicate the speaker, as the following examples show:<br /><br />(4) You see before you the only person who can lick my eyebrows. (*bound reading)<br /><br />(5) Yours truly is the only person who watches my children. (*bound reading)<br /><br />(6) Yours truly is the only one who thinks someone criticized my paper. (*bound reading)<br /><br />In (4), <span style="font-style:italic;">you see before you</span> clearly evokes the speaker. However, the bound reading is impossible with a first person possessive pronoun; it is only possible with a third person pronoun. Similarly, in (5) and (6) <span style="font-style:italic;">yours truly</span> refers to the speaker, but again the bound reading of possessive <span style="font-style:italic;">my</span> is not possible. The generalization is that there must be an explicit first person pronoun in the sentence. Kratzer's theory does not capture this generalization. In fact, this generalization is very difficult to capture in a syntactic way at all; in most theories, there is no direct syntactic relation between the matrix pronoun in (1-3) and anything in the relative clause.<br /><br />In addition, Kratzer's theory fails to capture a directional asymmetry in mismatches between singular and plural pronouns. In (2), <span style="font-style:italic;">I</span> in the matrix clause followed by <span style="font-style:italic;">our</span> in the embedded clause can have a bound reading, but the reverse order does not allow a bound reading:<br /><br />(7) We are the only ones who watch my children. (*bound reading)<br /><br />This directional asymmetry was noted briefly by Rullmann 2004 (her example 19). <br /><br />Both of these generalizations will be very difficult for any syntactic theory to capture, since, as noted above, there is no apparent syntactic relation between the subject of the matrix clause and anything in the relative clause. I have no suggestions to make, but simply point out the two generalizations, as they are important ones that must be captured by an adequate theory of fake indexicals.<br /><br />References<br /><br />Kratzer, Angelika (2009). Making a Pronoun: Fake Indexicals as Windows into the Properties of Pronouns. <span style="font-style:italic;">Linguistic Inquiry</span> 40: 187-237.<br /><br />Rullmann, Hotze (2004). First and Second Person Pronouns as Bound Variables. <span style="font-style:italic;">Linguistic Inquiry</span> 35: 159-168.Benjamin Brueninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01862907128346654016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1383074020386281212.post-1258249883348934812011-06-20T11:47:00.010-04:002011-06-20T13:03:34.815-04:00A-Adjectives Again: Response to GoldbergAdele Goldberg has responded to my earlier post (3/2/2011) on A-adjectives here: <br /><br /><A HREF="http://www.princeton.edu/~adele/Princeton_Construction_Site/Publications_files/a-adjsnotpps.pdf">http://www.princeton.edu/~adele/Princeton_Construction_Site/Publications_files/a-adjsnotpps.pdf</A><br /><br />She responds to the points I made to argue that A-adjectives are actually PPs, and brings up more data, some old, some new, to argue that they are adjectives, not PPs. Here I respond to all of her points, and show that, while most of the arguments are simply inconclusive, there still is positive evidence that A-adjectives are PPs and not adjectives.<br /><br />First, Goldberg criticizes my earlier post for likening A-adjectives to PPs like <span style="font-style:italic;">at ease</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">on fire</span>, because, according to her, "(t)hese cases are unusual, in that they necessarily involve bare Ns instead of NPs, and they pattern with adjectives" according to some of the tests given by Goldberg that are reproduced below. However, the analogy to such PPs was purposeful: if A-adjectives are PPs, they are PPs like <span style="font-style:italic;">at ease</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">on fire</span> in exactly the way Goldberg says: they do not allow phrases following the <span style="font-style:italic;">a</span>- part, but only bare nouns/stems. As we will see below, in every way A-adjectives pattern with such PPs. If one wants to argue that A-adjectives are adjectives, then one will have to also conclude that PPs like <span style="font-style:italic;">at ease</span> are adjectives. In addition, I will also show that A-adjectives pattern with one-word PPs, what are often called "particles," like <span style="font-style:italic;">on, off, out</span>. Again, one would have to conclude that these particle-Ps are actually adjectives, too. And yet there are still ways they pattern like PPs, and unlike adjectives.<br /><br />To begin, Goldberg produces the list below of ways in which A-adjectives pattern with adjectives, and not with PPs. I reproduce each point verbatim in italics, and then respond to the point. Note that Goldberg says that PPs with a bare N (like <span style="font-style:italic;">at ease</span>) pattern with A-Adjectives on all but point 5, but in fact they pattern the same on that point as well.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">1. Semantically, they [A-adjectives] necessarily modify a property of a noun like other adjectives and unlike prepositional phrases.</span><br /><br />It is not clear to me what this even means. Let us consider uncontroversial PPs like <span style="font-style:italic;">on the table</span> that specify location. How is a location not a property of a noun? Or PPs like <span style="font-style:italic;">with brown hair</span>: again, isn't this a property of a noun? Postnominal PPs, in particular, seem to predicate properties of the noun they follow, in a straightforward way (<span style="font-style:italic;">the book on the table, the girl with brown hair, the man from Tulsa</span>). Additionally, A-adjectives, and PPs, are predicative when used predicatively, as in <span style="font-style:italic;">The light is aglow/on fire/on</span>. That is, they predicate a property of a noun phrase. There is no semantic difference between adjectives and (at least some) PPs in how they predicate properties of nouns.<br /><br />However, this does bring up another point, one related to others below. This is that A-adjectives do not like to be used attributively without being in a restrictive relative clause or modified in some other way. The first fact usually remarked upon about A-adjectives is that they do not appear prenominally. But they don't like to appear postnominally by themselves in a restrictive function, either, as Goldberg points out below:<br /><br />(1) *the asleep man, ??the man asleep<br /><br />Unless they are modified in a way that makes them predicative, including putting them in a relative clause:<br /><br />(2) anyone still asleep, the man who was asleep<br /><br />So, the question is not why A-adjectives do not like to appear prenominally, but rather, Why do they resist being used attributively (as restrictive modifiers) without syntactic help? They resist this function both prenominally and postnominally. Note that the same holds of PPs with a bare N like <span style="font-style:italic;">at ease</span> or <span style="font-style:italic;">on fire</span>:<br /><br />(3) *the on fire man, ??the man on fire<br />(4) anyone still on fire, the man who was on fire<br /><br />It also holds for particle-Ps:<br /><br />(5) *the on light, ??the light on<br />(6) any light still on, the light that is on<br /><br />I do not have an answer to this question, but return to it below. I think it very important that we ask the question this way, rather than focusing on the inability of A-adjectives to occur prenominally. <br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">2. Phonologically, they are inseparable units like adjectives and unlike prepositional phrases.</span><br /><br />To this I respond, So what? All this point indicates is that the division between morphology and syntax is not at all clear-cut (something that everyone knew anyway). Syntactically, PPs like <span style="font-style:italic;">on fire</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">at ease</span> are inseparable, too: *<span style="font-style:italic;">It's fire that he was on</span>. (vs. <span style="font-style:italic;">It's crack that he was on</span>.)<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">3. The verb seem provides a classic test for adjective status, and readily occurs with the A-adjectives but not with prepositional phases (Lakoff 1970; Jackendoff 1972):<br />a. The child seemed alive/afraid/afloat/alone/aghast.<br />b. *The child seemed on the table/at two o’clock</span>.<br /><br />Everyone seems to have concluded that <span style="font-style:italic;">seem</span> only allows adjectives, but that's simply not true (many examples here taken from the web):<br /><br />(7) NPs: that seems just the thing/just the ticket/just the place to rest; seems just the opposite to me<br />(8) PPs with bare Ns: those people seemed at ease/on fire/at war/on target/under control<br />(9) PPs with phrasal NPs: even Charlie seems at a loss; tumors seem on the rise; they seem on the same page; he seems under the weather; it seems beneath the positive things you are doing; win seems within Earnhardt's grasp; post seems within the charter to me; it seems within his character; he seems on his way out; they seem on a collision course; my teen seems on the fringe; school reform seems on a roll<br /><br />The examples in (9) all have fully phrasal PPs as complement to <span style="font-style:italic;">seem</span>. Many are admittedly somewhat idiomatic, but they are still PPs, and some of them are not idiomatic at all (<span style="font-style:italic;">within the charter, within his character</span>).<br /><br />Note also that the PPs that are supposed to only allow bare Ns do admit some modification, and can still appear as the complement of <span style="font-style:italic;">seem</span>:<br /><br />(10) Home ice still seems within reasonable reach for Gophers (http://www.startribune.com/sports/blogs/81601072.html)<br /><br />Also, particle-Ps can appear as the complement of <span style="font-style:italic;">seem</span>:<br /><br />(11) The light seems on/off/out.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Seem</span>, then, does not provide a clear diagnostic for adjectivehood.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">4. A-adjectives can be conjoined with uncontroversial adjectives, like other adjectives and unlike prepositional phrases,<br />a. The man was quiet and afraid/alone.<br />b. ??The man was quiet and on the table.</span><br /><br />It is well-known that different syntactic categories can be conjoined, so conjunction shows nothing (see, e.g., Sag et al. 1985). I find Goldberg's (b) example fine, especially if the PP and adjective are reversed:<br /><br />(12) the man was in the room but quiet; <br />(13) the man was next to me and looming; <br />(14) the man was near the baby and crazier-looking than ever; (and so on)<br />(15) Pat was healthy and of sound mind. (Sag et al. 1985, example 2c)<br /><br />Again, this test is simply inconclusive.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">5. Like many (but not all) other adjectives but unlike prepositional phrases, afraid (if not other A-adjectives) can occur with of phrase complements:<br />a. afraid of the man</span><br /><br />PPs can take of-complements (or other PP complements): <br /><br />(16) at risk of fire; on top of spaghetti; in front of the house; within reach of more people; on board with us; <br /><br />Some A-adjectives even take NP complements, unlike adjectives: <br /><br />(17) aboard the ship, athwart the deck<br /><br />Again, particle-Ps pattern the same way: <span style="font-style:italic;">off (of the table), off the table</span>.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">6. A-adjectives do not readily appear after nouns except if they have a complement and/or an<br />intonation break (a), just like simple adjectives (b), but unlike prepositional phrases (c):<br />a. *The man asleep escaped the police. (postnominal a-adjective)<br />The man, asleep on the floor, escaped the police.<br />b.*The man short had escaped the police. (postnominal (non a-) adjective)<br />The man, short even with his boots on, escaped the police.<br />c. The man under the bed escaped the police. (postnominal PP)</span><br /><br />I addressed this point briefly above. Again, PPs with bare Ns pattern exactly like the A-adjectives (<span style="font-style:italic;">The man at risk ??(of infecting others) eluded the authorities</span>).<br /><br />More importantly, A-adjectives and PPs with bare Ns do NOT pattern with adjectives in this respect, because the actual property here is ability to be used attributively. Adjectives can be used attributively without any modification (and when they are so used, they appear before the noun); A-adjectives and PPs with bare Ns cannot, nor can particle-Ps, as shown above. Fully phrasal PPs can, patterning with adjectives (except in their position). So, point 6 is simply inconclusive: A-adjectives (and PPs with bare Ns and particle-Ps) pattern with neither category.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Summary of the first six points</span>: None of them indicate that A-adjectives are adjectives; all are consistent with them being PPs. All of them indicate that A-adjectives are just like PPs with bare Ns (like <span style="font-style:italic;">at ease</span>) and particle-Ps. If A-adjectives are adjectives, then so are PPs with bare Ns and particle-Ps. But this conclusion seems silly: such PPs have an obvious P head, and in PPs with bare Ns, pretty much any P can appear in such phrases (see the range of examples above). Moreover, they all allow <span style="font-style:italic;">right</span>-modification, which does seem to be limited to PPs (see below).<br /><br />Goldberg then turns to the arguments I gave in my earlier post that A-adjectives pattern with PPs. The first one is the small clause complement of <span style="font-style:italic;">have fond memories of</span>. Goldberg appears to be correct that this does allow adjectives (<span style="font-style:italic;">I have fond memories of him sober</span>), so I was wrong that this context shows A-adjectives patterning with PPs.<br /><br />The second, and most convincing argument in my opinion, is <span style="font-style:italic;">right</span>-modification (also <span style="font-style:italic;">straight</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">clear</span>). A-adjectives pattern with PPs in allowing <span style="font-style:italic;">right</span>-modification, as in <span style="font-style:italic;">fall right asleep</span>. Goldberg's response to this is to point out that not all A-adjectives allow it. The following are her judgments ("G10" means her example 10):<br /><br />(G10) a. ??It became right afloat.<br />b. ??He became right afraid.<br />c. ??He was left right alone.<br /><br />I personally find (G10c) reasonably good. I agree that (G10a) and (G10b) are odd, but the point remains that most (if not all) other A-adjectives DO admit <span style="font-style:italic;">right</span>-modification. Goldberg has not indicated any way to reconcile this fact with the claim that A-adjectives are adjectives. In particular, she has not shown that anything that is uncontroversially an adjective allows <span style="font-style:italic;">right</span>-modification. So far as I am aware, it is true that only PPs allow <span style="font-style:italic;">right</span>-modification. ((G10a) seems odd because <span style="font-style:italic;">afloat</span> seems to mostly be stative, not inchoative: <span style="font-style:italic;">it became afloat</span> is itself odd. However, this one seems better: ?<span style="font-style:italic;">It bobbed right afloat</span>. Moreover, I think <span style="font-style:italic;">right afraid</span> could be possible, as in ?<span style="font-style:italic;">They slapped him right afraid</span>, which contrasts sharply with *<span style="font-style:italic;">They slapped him right scared</span>.) <br /><br />Goldberg also attempts to defuse the ways in which I showed that A-adjectives do not act like adjectives. First, I claimed they could not appear with <span style="font-style:italic;">the</span> to form kind-denoting NPs. Goldberg has found two such uses:<br /><br /><br />(G11) a. Books are written by the alone for the alone.(COCA corpus)<br />b. The oppressed will come to you for shelter, and the afraid will find safety with you.<br />books.google.com/books?isbn=0791423913<br /><br />She also says that, <br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">...the ability to be used as a kind-denoting NP is not a good test for adjectives, since not<br />all clear adjectives (Class I) pass it:<br />c. ??The full/huddled/pinkish will inherit the earth.<br />Thirdly, if Class III items [A-adjectives] are dispreferred relative to Classes I and II to some degree as they may<br />well be, it could well be because the kind-denoting NP construction prefers adjectives that can<br />readily appear in NPs.</span><br /><br />I agree that her two cases sound reasonably good. However, it seems to me that some PPs with bare Ns would sound just as good, as would particle Ps:<br /><br />(18) Book are written by the under control for the out of control.<br />(19) The on will succeed and the off will not.<br /><br />Then, this test is simply not conclusive. Since I do not really understand the restrictions here, I will leave it at that.<br /><br />My second point was that A-adjectives do not take -er comparatives. Goldberg says the following:<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">The comparative ending requires the adjective be gradient, and most a-adjectives are inchoative and therefore not gradient. Again, all adjectives obey this semantic restriction:<br />(G12) a. *deader, *sunker<br />The phonology of these adjectives may also play a role, explaining the few cases that are gradient<br />(such as afraid) since Class II adjectives [those that start with A but are not A-adjectives; BB] also resist the comparative ending:<br />b. *absurder, *acuter, *aloofer,<br />Thus the lack of appearance with -er cannot be taken as evidence for underlying PP status without overgeneralizing the structure to Class II adjectives.</span><br /><br />I think that Goldberg's claim about gradience is simply false: <span style="font-style:italic;">deader than a doornail</span> is fine, and most adjectives, including most A-adjectives, can form <span style="font-style:italic;">more</span> comparatives, which should be impossible if they cannot be gradable: <span style="font-style:italic;">more alive, more ablaze, more alone, more aghast</span>, etc. Nevertheless, it does seem to be true that the phonology might be playing a role, since <span style="font-style:italic;">absurd</span>, <span style="font-style:italic;">acute</span>, <span style="font-style:italic;">astute</span>, and <span style="font-style:italic;">aloof</span> also do not form -er comparatives. I will concede that this point is not conclusive, either. (However, I do note that a few hits turn up on Google for <span style="font-style:italic;">absurder</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">acuter</span>, and quite a few for <span style="font-style:italic;">astuter</span>, like "An astuter man than the French emperor would have found it difficult to resist the system of delicate flattery..." from <span style="font-style:italic;">The Living Age</span> on Google Books. In contrast, I find nothing for *<span style="font-style:italic;">afraider</span>, *<span style="font-style:italic;">aloner</span>, *<span style="font-style:italic;">aghaster</span>, *<span style="font-style:italic;">ablazer</span>. So, I suspect that the claimed phonological restriction is nonexistent, and -er comparatives really do distinguish A-adjectives from real adjectives, but I will not push this point.)<br /><br />My third point was that A-adjectives do not form adverbs with -ly. Goldberg says this:<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">This again is not a good test for adjective status since many [regular adjectives] would fail it:<br />(G13) a. *Sacredly, *fatly, *bigly, *tinily</span><br /><br />First, <span style="font-style:italic;">sacredly</span> does exist: there's a book called <span style="font-style:italic;">African American Satire: The Sacredly Profane Novel</span>. However, it is true that some adjectives do not form adverbs with -ly. Nevertheless, A-adjectives fail to do so SYSTEMATICALLY. All A-adjectives are absolutely impossible with -ly, as are PPs with bare Ns and particle Ps:<br /><br />(20) *at-ease-ly, *at-war-ly, *under-control-ly<br />(21) *on-ly, *off-ly, *outly<br /><br />In contrast, the badness of *<span style="font-style:italic;">fatly</span>, *<span style="font-style:italic;">bigly</span>, *<span style="font-style:italic;">tinily</span> seems to be arbitrary. Close synonyms and phonologically similar items allow -ly:<br /><br />(22) synonyms: fat: stoutly, grossly, etc.; big: hugely, largely; tiny: minutely, infintesimally, diminutively<br />(23) phonologically similar: fat: patly ("answered patly"); big: sickly, floridly (any adjectives in -ig?); tiny: tinnily, brinily<br /><br />Since there is no phonological or semantic reason for the badness of -ly adverbs with <span style="font-style:italic;">fat, big, tiny</span>, the restriction just seems to be arbitrary. On the hypothesis that the A-adjectives are adjectives, the fact that they do not form -ly adverbs would have to be arbitrary, too. (Note that there is no phonological restriction as there might be with -er comparatives, because <span style="font-style:italic;">acutely, absurdly, astutely</span> are fine.) That is, it would be pure coincidence that none of them happen to form -ly adverbs. I find this highly unlikely; the restriction appears to be entirely systematic, and once again the A-adjectives pattern with PPs with bare Ns and particle-Ps.<br /><br />Let me summarize all of the available evidence here:<br /><br />(24) Ways in which A-adjectives pattern with adjectives: None<br /><br />(25) Ways in which A-adjectives pattern with PPs: <span style="font-style:italic;">right</span>-modification, lack of -ly adverbs, (particle shift, -er comparatives)<br /><br />(26) Inconclusive: semantics; phonology; <span style="font-style:italic;">seem</span>; conjunction; of-phrase complements; small clauses; kind-denoting NPs; (-er comparatives)<br /><br />(27) Ways in which A-adjectives act like neither adjectives nor PPs: inability to be used attributively without modification<br /><br />Most of the arguments are simply inconclusive. However, there is NO positive evidence for the hypothesis that A-adjectives are adjectives. In contrast, there is positive evidence that A-adjectives are PPs: they allow <span style="font-style:italic;">right</span>-modification, and they do not form -ly adverbs. (I have also added particle shift in parentheses in the table: A-adjectives participate in particle shift, like other one-word PPs. I think we should probably also include the lack of -er comparatives.) <br /><br />Moreover, in every way A-adjectives pattern with PPs with a bare N and with particle-Ps. I take this to indicate that those three things have essentially the same status. Note in particular that none of these three things like to be used attributively without further modification. In this they pattern with neither adjectives nor PPs. I would take this to indicate that they are a special kind of PP, but one might also conclude that they are some other category altogether, or something with mixed status.<br /><br />I will leave it at that, but I would like to reiterate that I think we should reframe the question about A-adjectives. The most striking fact about them is NOT that they cannot appear prenominally; rather, they seem to resist being used attributively at all, without further modification. Once they are modified, they pattern with all phrasal nominal modifiers and prefer to appear after the noun. So, the real question we should be addressing is the following: Why do A-adjectives, PPs with a bare N, and particle-Ps resist being used attributively without modification? Once we have answered that, we might have an answer to the learnability issue as well.<br /><br />REFERENCES<br /><br />Sag, Ivan A., Gerald Gazdar, Thomas Wasow, and Steven Weisler. 1985. Coordination and How to Distinguish<br />Categories. <span style="font-style:italic;">Natural Language and Linguistic Theory</span>, 3:117–171.Benjamin Brueninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01862907128346654016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1383074020386281212.post-36868917260128471522011-06-10T13:18:00.000-04:002011-06-10T13:21:57.161-04:00Negative Inversion and Adverbials (Sobin 2003)Sobin (2003) discusses some interesting examples of negative inversion that appear to have an adverbial in between the negative constituent and the inverted auxiliary. His three examples follow:<br /><br />(1) I promise that on no account during the holidays will I write a paper. <br />(2) I promise that under no circumstances during the holidays will I write a paper.<br />(3) Never again over Christmas will I eat that much turkey.<br /><br />(This type of sentences appears to have first been noticed by Haegeman and Gueron 1999 and Haegeman 2000.)<br /><br />Sobin uses these examples to argue against most accounts of negative inversion, which have the auxiliary fronting across the subject, while the subject is in its normal position (Spec-TP). Instead, he suggests that negative inversion has the subject staying low, below T, while the auxiliary is in T and the negative constituent is in a higher projection (Spec-NegP). The adverbial in between is adjoined to TP.<br /><br />An alternative that Sobin does not consider, however, is that the negative expression and the adverbial are a single constituent. This possibility is suggested by data in Haegeman 2000 (although Haegeman herself never adopts this position). Haegeman likens the above examples to wh-questions like the following:<br /><br />(4) Under what circumstances during the holidays would you go in to the office?<br /><br />The adverbial here clearly forms a constituent with the wh-phrase, since it can move long-distance with it:<br /><br />(5) Under what circumstances during the holidays did you say that you would go in to the office?<br /><br />Additionally, "under what circumstances" and "during the holidays" can combine semantically, quantifying over situations in certain time intervals.<br /><br />I will argue that Sobin's examples (the three above are all that he provides) all involve a single constituent, and so Sobin's conclusions regarding negative inversion do not follow. <br /><br />First, phrases like those in all of Sobin's examples can move as a single constituent. Corresponding to (1) is (6); (4) and (5) correspond to (2); and (7) corresponds to (3):<br /><br />(6) On what account during the holidays did you say that you will write a paper?<br />(4 and 5 correspond to 2)<br />(7) How many times over Christmas did you say that you ate too much turkey? (Answer: I said that I ate too much turkey three times over Christmas.)<br /><br />Second, and most tellingly, adverbial expressions that can be adjoined to TP (on standard assumptions, since they appear between the complementizer <I>that</I> and the subject) but cannot form single constituents with a negative expression are incompatible with negative inversion in their pre-subject position:<br /><br />(8) He bragged that with a quill pen he could write a paper.<br />(9) I promise that on no account will I write a paper with a quill pen.<br />(10) *I promise that on no account with a quill pen will I write a paper.<br />(11)*On what account with a quill pen will you write a paper?<br /><br />Note that they cannot be fronted with wh-phrases, either (11). More examples follow, in the same order in each set:<br /><br />(12) I said that over Christmas I would eat only one type of turkey.<br />(13) I said that only one type of turkey would I eat over Christmas.<br />(14) *I said that only one type of turkey over Christmas would I eat.<br />(15) *What type of turkey over Christmas will you eat?<br /><br />(16) I said that on Friday I could not find a word about Smith's negativity.<br />(17) Not a word could I find on Friday about Smith's negativity. (found on web)<br />(18) *Not a word on Friday could I find about Smith's negativity. <br />(19) *How many words on Friday could you find?<br /><br />(20) She said that in front of her house she will not plant any trees.<br />(21) Under no circumstances will she plant trees in front of her house.<br />(22) *Under no circumstances in front of her house will she plant trees.<br />(23) *Under what circumstances in front of her house will she plant trees?<br /><br />(24) I promise that on that topic I will never write a paper.<br />(25) I promise that on no account will I write a paper on that topic.<br />(26) *I promise that on no account on that topic will I write a paper.<br />(27) *On what account on that topic will you write a paper?<br /><br />(28) I said that on Friday I remembered to bring a penny.<br />(29) Not a penny did I remember to bring. (Sobin's ex 2, from a reviewer)<br />(30) *Not a penny on Friday did I remember to bring.<br />(31) *Which penny on Friday did you remember to bring?<br /><br />This is surprising on Sobin's account: any adverbial that can adjoin to TP should be able to appear between a fronted negative expression and the auxiliary in T.<br /><br />Finally, sentence (1) gets worse when "on no account" is changed to "on no one's account"; the corresponding wh-phrase gets worse in the same way:<br /><br />(32) I promise that on no one's account will I write a paper during the holidays.<br />(33) *I promise that on no one's account during the holidays will I write a paper.<br />(34) *On whose account during the holidays will you write a paper?<br /><br />This seems to be because "on what account during the holidays" makes sense as a semantic unit, but "on whose account during the holidays" does not. In Sobin's three examples (1-3), the negative expression plus the adverbial together are a single unit quantifying over time intervals. This could not be the case in any of the examples I have provided, and so the negative expression and the adverbial cannot be a single constituent.<br /><br />I conclude that Sobin's very limited examples all involve a single constituent before the auxiliary. Therefore, none of Sobin's conclusions regarding negative inversion follow. Material before the auxiliary is (and must be) a single constituent, and probably occupies the specifier of whatever projection the auxiliary is the head of. There is no reason to think that the subject is not in its normal position. (One final note: while I am claiming this is true for negative inversion and for the examples of wh-questions given here, it is probably not true for all cases of a wh-phrase followed by some kind of adverbial and then the inverted auxiliary. Haegeman 2000 gives some examples of wh-questions that have this form but where the adverbial is probably not part of a constituent with the wh-phrase. Additionally, a wh-phrase can be followed by a negative constituent, which is then followed by the auxiliary; see Maekawa 2006.)<br /><br />References<br /><br />Haegeman, Liliane (2000). Inversion, Non-Adjacent Inversion, and Adjuncts in CP. <span style="font-style:italic;">Transactions of the Philological Society</span> 98: 121-160.<br /><br />Haegeman, Liliane and Jacqueline Gueron (1999). <span style="font-style:italic;">English Grammar</span>. Oxford: Blackwell.<br /><br />Maekawa, Takafumi (2006). Configurational and Linearization-Based Approaches to Negative Inversion. In O. Bonami and P. Cabredo Hofherr (eds.), <span style="font-style:italic;">Empirical Issues in Syntax and Semantics</span> 6, pp.227-247. (available at <A HREF="http://www.cssp.cnrs.fr/eiss6/maekawa-eiss6.pdf">http://www.cssp.cnrs.fr/eiss6/maekawa-eiss6.pdf</A>)<br /><br />Sobin, Nicholas (2003). Negative Inversion as Nonmovement. <span style="font-style:italic;">Syntax</span> 6: 183-212.Benjamin Brueninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01862907128346654016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1383074020386281212.post-39981502298986415022011-03-02T12:34:00.003-05:002011-03-02T12:56:00.796-05:00A-Adjectives are PPs, not AdjectivesMany linguistics and teaching publications mention the A-adjectives, adjectives like <span style="font-style:italic;">asleep, afraid, afloat, alive, ablaze</span>. The property that sets them apart and that is noted by all of these publications is that they do not like to appear prenominally, which is a position where adjectives generally do appear:<br /><br />(1) ??an afraid child, ??an afloat ship, ??an ablaze building<br />(2) a scared child, a floating ship, a blazing building<br /><br />This is as far as most publications go, although many point out that some of these are derived from prepositional phrases historically. Most assume that this distributional irregularity of the A-adjectives is synchronically idiosyncratic, and just has to be learned as such. This quote from Boyd and Goldberg, to appear, is typical: ``Since there is no general semantic or phonological reason to treat the members of the class as anything other than adjectives, their unusual distribution poses a clear learnability challenge.'' (Boyd and Goldberg to appear, page 10.)<br /><br />I argue here that, in fact, there is strong distributional evidence that A-adjectives are synchronically PPs. Basically, I will argue that an A-adjective like <span style="font-style:italic;">ablaze</span> has the same structure as the PP <span style="font-style:italic;">on fire</span>. This explains why they do not appear prenominally: PPs do not appear prenominally, either:<br /><br />(3) *an on fire building<br /><br />But both can appear predicatively:<br /><br />(4) That building is ablaze/on fire.<br /><br />First, there is abundant evidence that the A-adjectives are not adjectives. They cannot do any of the things that typical adjectives can do. They cannot be used with the definite determiner <span style="font-style:italic;">the</span> to form kind-denoting NPs, for instance:<br /><br />(5) the scared, the living, the fat, the sleepy, the aloof, the lonely (will be expelled from the earth)<br />(6) *the alive, *the afraid, *the ablaze, *the afloat, *the asleep, *the alone (will be expelled from the earth)<br /><br />A-adjectives cannot have comparatives with -<span style="font-style:italic;">er</span>, even though most of them meet the phonological requirements for -<span style="font-style:italic;">er</span> suffixation (maximally two syllables), and there is no ban on morphologically complex stems for -<span style="font-style:italic;">er</span>:<br /><br />(7) sleepier, scareder (I hear this used), floatier, lonelier<br />(8) *aliver, *afraider, *ablazer, *afloater, *aloner<br /><br />They cannot be turned into adverbs with -<span style="font-style:italic;">ly</span>:<br /><br />(9) sleepily, burningly, fearfully, floatingly, aloofly, astutely<br />(10) *afraidly, *ablazely, *afloatly, *alonely<br /><br />So, A-adjectives do not act like other adjectives. As I will now show, not only do they not pattern with adjectives, there are ways in which they pattern with PPs. <br /><br />First, A-adjectives permit <span style="font-style:italic;">right</span> modification, just like PPs and unlike adjectives:<br /><br />(11) he fell right asleep, they went right ashore, it went clear askew/awry, it came right alive<br />(12) it caught right on fire, it went clear off the mark, they stepped right on shore, it came right to life<br />(13) *he became right sleepy, *he got clear lonely, *it came right lively<br /><br />Second, it has often been noted that A-adjectives become better in prenominal position if they are modified:<br /><br />(14) She flashed me an aware, amused glance. (attested example cited in Huddleston and Pullum 2002, page 559)<br /><br />However, PPs also become better in prenominal position under the same conditions:<br /><br />(15) She flashed me an at-ease, amused glance.<br />(16) He gave an on-topic but hastily prepared speech.<br />(17) a rapidly burning, totally ablaze building; a rapidly burning, totally on fire building<br /><br />Third, certain small clauses permit PPs but not adjectives. They also permit A-adjectives:<br /><br />(18) I have fond memories of him at work/ on shore/ with his friends.<br />(19) *I have fond memories of him crazy/ proud of his son/ sleepy.<br />(20) I have fond memories of him asleep/ alone in his office/ ashore.<br /><br />So, there is quite a bit of distributional evidence indicating that A-adjectives are actually PPs. Presumably this evidence is available to language learners, who then construct a mental grammar where the A-adjectives are actually PPs. Given that they are PPs, they do not normally occur prenominally. There is nothing idiosyncratic about the A-adjectives at all.<br /><br />Finally, this analysis has some consequences for particle shift in English. Some A-adjectives participate in particle shift, a fact that has been remarked upon but is generally thought to be mysterious or archaic (e.g., Bolinger 1971):<br /><br />(21) They brought aboard the passengers. / They brought the passengers aboard.<br />(22) They took ashore the passengers. / They took the passengers ashore.<br /><br />However, I personally feel that I have strong intuitions about these, even though I rarely hear or read them, which is odd if particle shift with the A-adjectives is archaic. If A-adjectives are actually PPs, though, this intuition about particle shift makes sense, because we can have a very simple generalization about particle shift: PPs that consist of a single morphological word can undergo particle shift. This includes the common particles <span style="font-style:italic;">out, up, in, off</span>, and so on, but also the A-adjectives, which are PPs that are a single morphological word.<br /><br />References<br /><br />Bolinger, Dwight. (1971). <span style="font-style:italic;">The Phrasal Verb in English</span>. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.<br /><br />Boyd, Jeremy K. and Adele E. Goldberg (to appear). Learning What Not to Say: The Role of Statistical Preemption and Categorization in A-Adjective Production. To appear in <span style="font-style:italic;">Language</span>. Draft dated 10/10/2010 consulted <A HREF="http://www.princeton.edu/~adele/Princeton_Construction_Site/Publications_files/Preemption-readable-Language.pdf">here</A>.<br /><br />Huddleston, Rodney and Geoffrey K. Pullum (2002). <span style="font-style:italic;">The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language</span>. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Benjamin Brueninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01862907128346654016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1383074020386281212.post-44941817919218564492011-01-13T09:45:00.003-05:002011-01-14T10:14:24.541-05:00Idioms and By-PhrasesIdioms have frequently been used to argue for transformational accounts of certain syntactic phenomena. For instance, the fact that part of an idiom can undergo raising is often used to argue for a movement analysis of raising:<br /><br />(1) The shit hit the fan.<br />(2) The shit seems to have hit the fan.<br /><br />Same for promotion of objects to subjects in the passive:<br /><br />(3) Someone spilled the beans. --> The beans were spilled.<br />(4) She pulled some strings (to get him hired). --> Some strings were pulled (to get him hired).<br /><br />It has also been claimed that idioms argue <span style="font-style:italic;">against</span> a transformational analysis of the by-phrase in passives, where it is related transformationally to the active subject, because no subject that is idiomatic in the active can appear in a by-phrase in the passive and retain its idiomatic meaning. A note on references first: This argument is probably a familiar one to most people, but I have had trouble locating a source for it. Bowers (2010, 11-12) cites Marantz 1984, pages 26-27, for the argument, but I cannot find the argument there, or anywhere in Marantz 1984. Postal 2004, page 255, states the argument explicitly as following from the view of the passive in Chomsky 1981, but does not credit the argument to anyone. So, I do not know where the argument originated, but everyone seems to be aware of it.<br /><br />Now, to the argument itself. There are not very many idioms that include a fixed subject, verb, and object, but there are a few. None of them permit a passive with the fixed subject in a by-phrase:<br /><br />(5) The shit hit the fan. --> *The fan was hit by the shit.<br />(6) That's a case of the pot calling the kettle black. --> *That's a case of the kettle being called black by the pot.<br />(7) Elvis has left the building. (="the event is over") --> *The building has been left by Elvis.<br />(8) The ram has touched the wall. (="it's too late to turn back now") --> *The wall has been touched by the ram.<br /><br />The point of this blog post is that this argument and corresponding conclusion are correct, despite several recent claims to the contrary. Postal 2004 (pages 255-256) and Bowers 2010 (pages 12-13) claim that there <span style="font-style:italic;">are</span> idiomatic subjects of actives that can appear in by-phrases in the passive. However, none of their examples are pertinent. Relevant examples have to involve idiomatic subjects, obviously. However, this by itself is not good enough. If it is just the subject that has an idiomatic (or just metaphorical) sense, then this is not good enough. An NP with a self-contained special interpretation should be able to appear in a variety of positions, independent of anything else. It is only when the relevant NP has its special interpretation only by virtue of other elements that it appears with that the example becomes relevant. For instance, in <span style="font-style:italic;">the shit hit the fan</span> above, <span style="font-style:italic;">the shit</span> has its special interpretation only when it occurs with the verb <span style="font-style:italic;">hit</span> and the object <span style="font-style:italic;">the fan</span>. "The shit smacked the fan" and "the shit hit the air conditioner" do not have the idiomatic meaning. That is why separating <span style="font-style:italic;">the shit</span> from the verb <span style="font-style:italic;">hit</span> in (2) shows something: the two pieces must occur together at some level of representation for the idiomatic reading to obtain, since they only have their idiomatic meanings by virtue of occurring together.<br /><br />So now let us turn to the putative counterexamples. Here are the examples from Postal 2004, pages 255-256:<br /><br />(9) The lovebug bit Ted. --> Ted was bitten by the lovebug.<br />(10) A little bird told me that. --> I was told that by a little bird.<br />(11) Birds of a feather may decide to flock together. --> It may be decided by birds of a feather to flock together.<br />(12) Old dogs may even decide to learn new tricks. --> It may even be decided by old dogs to learn new tricks.<br /><br />The problem is that these are not true idiomatic phrases that include a fixed subject, verb, and object. What is idiomatic in all of Postal's examples is just the subject itself (and even that is not very idiomatic; it is usually just metaphoric). The verb and object have their literal meanings. In addition, the subject phrase can appear with various different predicates, and with different grammatical roles:<br /><br />(13) the lovebug has struck Bill, Bill has the lovebug, Bill has the bug<br />(14) a little bird is broadcasting that, a little bird whispered that to me, I heard it from a little bird<br />(15) birds of a feather hang out together, they're birds of a feather<br />(16) I'm an old dog, you can't teach an old dog new tricks, old dogs can't learn new tricks, old dogs and new tricks don't mesh<br /><br />These "idioms" do not have a fixed form and an unexpected meaning, like <span style="font-style:italic;">the shit hit the fan</span>, but merely a metaphoric meaning: using <span style="font-style:italic;">the bug</span> to refer to some kind of obsession or infatuation; <span style="font-style:italic;">a little bird</span> to mean an anonymous source; and so on. So long as these phrases occur with words that are compatible with their use in this metaphor, such as passing on information in the case of <span style="font-style:italic;">a little bird</span>, there is no barrier to their use. It is therefore not surprising that they can appear in a passive as in Postal's examples.<br /><br />Just to shore this up with textual data (searches performed 1/14/2011), I find "you've given me the tennis bug" at http://www.mylondon2012.com/mascots/pictures/youve-given-me-the-tennis-bug/; "Perkins caught the tennis bug from her older brother" at http://www.tennisrecruiting.net/article.asp?id=1121; "Moving to Atlanta was just the spark she needed to ignite the `tennis bug'" at http://www.tennisdynamics.net/facilitymanagement/team/index.asp; and numerous other examples. Googling "heard it from a little bird" turns up 47,400 results; one includes "your little bird is nothing but a tattletale!" (Cheater's Guide to Speaking English Like a Native By Boye Lafayette De Mente, on Google Books.) Googling "they're birds of a feather" gets 28,100 results. Googling "I'm an old dog" gets 361,000 results; of the first ten, two clearly mean it in the sense of "you can't teach an old dog new tricks" (so not all of those 361,000 are relevant, but many are).<br /><br />Bowers 2010, page 13, adds three other putative examples:<br /><br />(17) I felt as if a ton of bricks had hit me. --> I felt as if I had been hit by a ton of bricks.<br />(18) They believe the devil drove him to it. --> They believe he was driven to it by the devil.<br />(19) Photography/Hip-hop/Syntax/etc. fever has swept the nation. --> The nation has been swept by photography/hip-hop/syntax/etc. fever.<br /><br />Again, these are not fixed idioms at all:<br /><br />(20) I felt as if a ton of bricks had crashed down on me; it hit him like a ton of bricks; he'll come down on you like a ton of bricks; (actual expression is "like a ton of bricks")<br />(21) the devil made him do it, the devil forced him to do it, the devil got into him<br />(22) she has hip-hop fever; hip-hop fever has gripped the nation; do you have hip-hop fever? (Watch David Letterman and you will hear many different versions of "X fever"; this is just like "the X bug" in Postal's examples in 13.)<br /><br />Once again, the special interpretation, to the extent that there is any, is just a property of the NP. That NP can occur with a variety of lexical items and in a variety of syntactic positions. Hence, these examples are irrelevant. (Again, google searches turn up numerous examples of these NPs without the verbs that Bowers takes to be part of the "idioms.")<br /><br />I have not been able to find any counterexamples to the claim that true idiomatic phrases cannot appear in a by-phrase in the passive. I therefore conclude that idioms reveal an important asymmetry between object promotion and subject demotion in the passive. A chunk of an idiom can promote from active object to subject in the passive, meaning that the passive subject is derived from or related to the active object; but a chunk of an idiom cannot demote from active subject to by-phrase in the passive, meaning that the passive by-phrase is not derived from or related to the active subject.<br /><br />Furthermore, it should be noted that the exact same active subjects that cannot be demoted to a by-phrase in the examples above <span style="font-style:italic;">can</span> undergo raising:<br /><br />(23) The shit seems to have hit the fan.<br />(24) The pot appears to be calling the kettle black.<br />(25) Elvis seems to have left the building.<br />(26) The ram appears to have touched the wall.<br /><br />So, it is not the case that these particular idioms cannot be manipulated by syntactic rules. Rather, there is no syntactic rule that relates the active subject to the by-phrase.<br /><br />This conclusion is problematic for a whole host of analyses of the passive. It is most problematic for two recent approaches that treat by-phrases as being <span style="font-style:italic;">identical</span> to the active subject, namely Collins 2005 and Bowers 2010. Those approaches would have to add ad-hoc constraints to rule out pieces of idioms in by-phrases.<br /><br />References<br /><br />Bowers, John (2010). Arguments as Relations. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.<br /><br />Chomsky, Noam (1981). Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris.<br /><br />Collins, Chris (2005). A Smuggling Approach to the Passive in English. Syntax 8: 81-120.<br /><br />Marantz, Alec (1984). On the Nature of Grammatical Relations. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.<br /><br />Postal, Paul M. (2004). Skeptical Linguistic Essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Benjamin Brueninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01862907128346654016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1383074020386281212.post-90524906673624558912010-12-01T16:34:00.004-05:002010-12-03T14:33:39.456-05:00Agent, Causer, and Instrument Subjects Are Not DistinctThere is a long history of distinguishing external arguments that seem to be volitional agents from both inanimate causers and instruments. Concentrating on Alexiadou and Schafer (2006) here (see their paper for more references), I show that the arguments for distinguishing them do not go through. The alternative is to say that all of them are the same, and are distinguished only by world knowledge. Alexiadou and Schafer call this view the "underspecification" view of external arguments. Borrowing the term from Ramchand (2008), let us refer to this underspecified external argument role as "Initiator." So the two views we are contrasting are the following:<br /><br />A. All external arguments are Initiators. <br />B. External arguments must be divided into agents, causers, and instruments, which behave differently.<br /><br />Alexiadou and Schafer (2006) present several arguments against a version of the Initiator view. However, the version they argue against is so simplistic as to be unworkable even without arguing against it. Their arguments against such a theory have no force against a more sophisticated version. Here is the crucial addition:<br /><br />Every theory has to allow semantic selection for properties of the subject. Consider the following contrast:<br /><br />(1) A rampaging elephant killed the Prime Minister.<br />(2)#A rampaging elephant murdered/assassinated the Prime Minister.<br /><br />Unlike <span style="font-style:italic;">kill</span>, <span style="font-style:italic;">murder</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">assassinate</span> require subjects that are capable not just of volitional action, but also awareness of morality and politics. Similarly, the verb <span style="font-style:italic;">eat</span> requires a subject that is capable of ingesting:<br /><br />(3) The sea witch ate the captain's heart.<br />(4)#The sea ate the beach. (vs. The sea ate away at the beach, no such requirement)<br /><br />These selectional requirements are over and above the distinction between agents and causers (or instruments). Every theory that I am aware of would treat the subjects of <span style="font-style:italic;">eat, kill, murder</span>, and <span style="font-style:italic;">assassinate</span> as agents.<br /><br />So, every theory requires semantic selection in addition to whatever thematic roles it assigns to external arguments. In the Initiator theory, then, external arguments can all be assigned the broad role of Initiator, but individual verbs (or prepositions, or VPs) might impose additional selectional restrictions. With this in mind, let us examine Alexiadou and Schafer's arguments for distinguishing agents from causers.<br /><br />Their first argument is that Greek passives only allow animate agents and not inanimate causers. So the Greek equivalent of <span style="font-style:italic;">The clothes were dried by the sun</span> is reported to be ungrammatical (their example 2b). Similarly, some languages, like Jacaltec, are reported to only allow animate subjects of transitive verbs. Conversely, certain prepositions only allow causers:<br /><br />(5) The window cracked from the pressure / *from Will.<br /><br />Although one would want to know much more about Jacaltec, it is very easy for the Initiator theory to account for it: through selectional restrictions. Suppose transitive Voice in Jacaltec uniformly selects only animates; then the facts are accounted for, without any need to refer to a role of "agent." Similarly, the preposition <span style="font-style:italic;">from</span> in the relevant sense in English selects nouns that denote events. Hence nouns like <span style="font-style:italic;">pressure, dancing, thermal expansion</span> but not <span style="font-style:italic;">Will</span> are good complements of <span style="font-style:italic;">from</span>.<br /><br />As for Greek, Alexiadou and Schafer go on to show that, in fact, inanimates are allowed in Greek passives; their examples in (42b-c) have <span style="font-style:italic;">The door was opened by THIS key/ the ELECTRONIC key</span> (with focus intonation). I will return to this momentarily.<br /><br />The last argument Alexiadou and Schafer give against the Initiator account is that, according to them, it cannot account for why some apparent instruments make good subjects while others do not. In fact, though, it accounts for the facts straightforwardly.<br /><br />Here is the basic contrast:<br /><br />(6) John loaded the truck with a crane/pitchfork.<br />(7) The crane/*pitchfork loaded the truck.<br /><br />The Initiator theory accounts for this easily: external arguments have to be capable of being Initiators. That is, they have to be able to initiate events. In our conception of the world, cranes can do that, because they are self-propelled and capable of motion. Pitchforks are not. Change it to <span style="font-style:italic;">My new autopitchfork</span> and (7) becomes fine. The same account explains the entire range of data they give in English, German, Dutch, and Greek, shown here only for English:<br /><br />(8) The crane picked the crate up.<br />(9)#The fork picked the potato up.<br />(10) The falling axe broke the windowpane.<br />(11) The storm broke the windowpane.<br />(12) The chamomile cured Mary.<br />(13)#The scalpel cured Mary.<br /><br />Again, cranes are capable of independent motion, whereas forks are not. (However, I personally find <span style="font-style:italic;">fork</span> fine with modals or focus: "These plastic forks are just going to break. Only this titanium fork can pick up such a heavy potato." Again, see below.) Falling axes can initiate events by virtue of their motion; so can storms. Chamomile can because of its chemical properties. Scalpels, on the other hand, cannot do anything on their own. (Again, though, a scalpel is fine as a subject in certain circumstances: "THIS scalpel can rid/cure Mary of her unsightly blemishes!")<br /><br />Alexiadou and Schafer also make an unmotivated distinction between "tools" and "secondary tools" (following Nilsen 1973). This distinction is supposed to be the following (and note that modals and focus do not help with 16b and 17b):<br /><br />(14)a. Ashley cut the melon with a knife. <br /> b. This knife cuts melon easily.<br />(15)a. Casey opened the door with the key.<br /> b. This key opened that door.<br />(16)a. Cathryn ate spaghetti with a fork.<br /> b.#This fork ate spaghetti. <br />(17)a. Denis is drinking juice with a straw.<br /> b.#This straw is drinking juice.<br /> <br />There is no independent way of determining whether a tool is a "tool" or a "secondary tool." Moreover, the distinction is a spurious one; as shown above, the verbs <span style="font-style:italic;">eat</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">drink</span> require external arguments that are capable of ingesting. It is the verbs that are behind the ill-formedness of (16b) and (17b), not the particular tool involved. Changing the verb changes the judgments:<br /><br />(18)a. Cathryn scooped up spaghetti with a fork.<br /> b. This fork can scoop up lots of spaghetti.<br /><br />So, why do modals or focus help to make inanimates better external arguments? I submit that it is because they focus on inherent properties of the inanimate entity, properties that make it capable of carrying out the action of the verb. For instance, in (18b), using the ability modal focuses on the abilities of the fork, namely its tensile strength and scooping capacity (and retention, without spillage). These abilities, once they are brought to the conceptual fore, make the fork a good Initiator.<br /><br />Finally, a major problem for Alexiadou and Schafer arises from their claim that inanimates can only be good external arguments if they can be construed as agents (like self-propelled cranes) or as inanimate causers (like falling axes, which can affect things in the same way storms can). They claim that an inanimate like a rag can never be either (see their complete set of examples in their 34a-e):<br /><br />(19)#THIS rag cleaned the dishes. (personally I find this fine)<br /><br />So, <span style="font-style:italic;">rag</span> should never be a good subject. This is false:<br /><br />(20) The rag muffled the sound.<br />(21) The rag smothered the fire.<br />(22) A rag covered the body.<br /><br />These are clearly external arguments, because they can passivize (<span style="font-style:italic;">the sound was muffled by the rag, the fire was smothered by the rag, the body was covered by a rag</span>). But this should not be possible, if rags cannot be agents or causers. In contrast, the Initiator view predicts these facts without difficulty. Rags can muffle sound, they can smother fires, and they can cover things. That is, their physical properties are such that they can initiate muffling, smothering, and covering events.<br /><br />In sum, none of Alexiadou and Schafer's arguments for distinguishing agents from causers goes through. More broadly, I have seen no good reason to divide external arguments into different categories. The "underspecification" theory, which I have called the Initiator view here, accounts for all of the facts straightforwardly.<br /><br />References:<br /><br />Alexiadou, Artemis and Florian Schafer (2006), Instrument Subjects Are Agents or Causers. In <span style="font-style:italic;">Proceedings of the 25th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics</span>. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project: 40-48.<br /><br />Nilsen, Don L.F. (1973), <span style="font-style:italic;">The Instrumental Case in English: Syntactic and Semantic Considerations</span>. The Hague: Mouton.<br /><br />Ramchand, Gillian Catriona (2008), <span style="font-style:italic;">Verb Meaning and the Lexicon: A First-Phase Syntax</span>. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Benjamin Brueninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01862907128346654016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1383074020386281212.post-45545609758145980602010-11-17T09:57:00.003-05:002010-11-17T11:02:16.277-05:00Information-Structure Approaches to IslandsThere is a strand of research that tries to explain island constraints on movement entirely in information-structural, or discourse, terms. Goldberg (2006) and Erteschik-Shir (2007) are recent examples of this. Both point to some phenomena that they claim are non-syntactic and yet are sensitive to islands, and conclude from this sensitivity that island constraints are not syntactic. <br /><br />Citing Morgan (1975), Goldberg (2006, 132-133) claims that direct replies to questions are sensitive to islands. In all of the following, try to understand the answer to be "she is dating someone new." This is possible when that phrase does not occur inside an island, but not when it does:<br /><br />(1) Q: Why was Laura so happy?<br />a. The woman who lives next door thought she was dating someone new.<br />b. #The woman who thought she was dating someone new lives next door.<br />c. #That she's dating someone new is likely.<br />d. It's likely that she's dating someone new.<br />e. #John shouted that she was dating someone new.<br />f. John said that she was dating someone new.<br />g. #John was hysterical 'cause she was dating someone new.<br />h. John left Manhattan in order that she could date someone new.<br /><br />However, as Goldberg herself notes in footnote 3, this phenomenon is not fully general. Direct replies can occur inside complex NPs; example (2) is from Goldberg's foonote, and I add example (3). They can also occur inside initial <span style="font-style:italic;">if</span>-clauses, which are very strong islands (4):<br /><br />(2) Q: Why was Laura so happy?<br />A: I heard [a rumor that she was dating someone new].<br /><br />(3) Q: Why was Laura so happy?<br />A: I talked to someone who said she was dating someone new.<br />(cf. * Who did you talk to [someone who said she was dating ---]?)<br /><br />(4) Q: Why was Laura so happy?<br />A: If she was dating someone new, I would have heard about it.<br />(cf. *Who did you say that [if she was dating ---] you would have heard about it?)<br /><br />It is therefore simply false that direct replies are sensitive to the same island constraints as movement.<br /><br />Citing James (1972), Goldberg (2006, 133-134) also claims that exclamatives are sensitive to islands. Again, in all of the following try to take what is being remarked upon to be "Laura/she is dating someone new." This is possible if that phrase is not inside an island, but impossible if it is:<br /><br />(5) a. Ah! The woman who lives next door thought Laura was dating someone new!<br />b. *Ah! The woman who thought Laura was dating someone new lives next door!<br /><br />(6) a. Ah! It is likely that she was dating someone new!<br />b. *Ah! That she is dating someone new is likely!<br /><br />(7) a. Ah! John said she was dating someone new!<br />b. *Ah! John shouted that she was dating someone new!<br /><br />(8) a. Ah! John left Manhattan in order that she could date someone new!<br />b. *Ah! John was hysterical 'cause she was dating someone new!<br /><br />Again, though, exclamatives are possible inside complex NPs when they are on a right branch:<br /><br />(9) a. Ah! John talked to someone who said she was dating someone new!<br />b. Ah! John heard a rumor that she was dating someone new!<br /><br />According to Erteschik-Shir (2007, 164), Morgan (1975) actually discussed fragment replies, not direct replies. Erteschik-Shir claims these are also sensitive to islands:<br /><br />(10) Q: Did the man who Tricia fired leave town?<br />a. *No, Thelma.<br />b. No, the man who Thelma fired (left town).<br /><br />This test seems to work a little better, since fragment replies are impossible with complex NPs on a right branch (11), but the correlation is still not perfect. It seems to me that a fragment reply is possible inside an indefinite subject (12):<br /><br />(11) Q: Did you see the man who fired Tricia?<br />a. *No, Thelma.<br />b. No, the man who fired Thelma.<br /><br />(12) Q: Was a statue of Tricia built in Poughkeepsie?<br />a. No, Thelma.<br />b. No, a statue of Thelma (was).<br />(cf. *Who was a statue of built in Poughkeepsie?)<br /><br />Fragment replies also work with clause-initial <span style="font-style:italic;">if</span>-clauses:<br /><br />(13) Q: Did you say that if you see Tricia at the party, you'll leave?<br />a. No, Thelma.<br />b. No, if I see Thelma (I will).<br />(cf. *Who did you say that if you see at the party you'll leave?)<br /><br />Once again, then, phenomena that are claimed to be sensitive to the same islands as movement are actually not. <br /><br />Moreover, it seems to me that any discourse-based account of islands faces an insurmountable problem from sluicing contexts. Consider the following dialogs:<br /><br />(14) A: Yesterday I met a man who claimed that John stole something.<br />B1: What?<br />B2: *What did you meet a man who claimed that John stole?<br /><br />(15) A: John was furious because his wife had taken something of his.<br />B1: What?<br />B2: *What was John furious because his wife had taken?<br /><br />(16) A: We've been assigned to read a book and write a certain kind of paper.<br />B1: What kind of paper?<br />B2: *What kind of paper have we been assigned to read a book and write?<br /><br />In each of these cases, A makes a statement containing an indefinite. B seeks to determine the referent of that indefinite. B can do that with sluicing in all of the (B1) cases. B cannot do that by repeating the entire sentence, with extraction of a wh-phrase corresponding to the indefinite (the B2 cases). Yet the discourse contexts for B1 and B2 are <span style="font-style:italic;">identical</span>. It is simply impossible to explain the contrast between B1 and B2 as being due to discourse.<br /><br />I conclude from all of the above that discourse approaches to islands simply do not work, and should be abandoned.<br /><br />References:<br /><br /><br />Erteschik-Shir, Nomi (2007). <span style="font-style:italic;">Information Structure: The Syntax-Discourse Interface</span>. Oxford: Oxford University Press. <br /><br />Goldberg, Adele E. (2006). <span style="font-style:italic;">Constructions at Work: The Nature of Generalization in Language</span>. Oxford: Oxford University Press. <br /><br />James, D. (1972). Some Aspects of the Syntax and Semantics of Interjections. Paper presented at the 8th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society.<br /><br />Morgan, J.L. (1975). Some Interactions of Syntax and Pragmatics. In P. Cole and J.L. Morgan (eds.), <span style="font-style:italic;">Syntax and Semantics Volume 3: Speech Acts</span>. New York: Academic Press, 289-304.Benjamin Brueninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01862907128346654016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1383074020386281212.post-42781037786629475112010-10-06T10:25:00.004-04:002010-10-06T12:09:13.496-04:00A Note on Levine (2010) and So-Called Movement ParadoxesLevine (2010) criticizes an analysis of the <span style="font-style:italic;">ass camouflage construction</span> (ACC) proposed by Collins, Moody, and Postal (2008). In the ACC, the possessor of the noun <span style="font-style:italic;">ass</span> acts as a binder and controller while the head noun does not, but at the same time the head noun strictly controls agreement:<br /><br />(1) John and Mary's ass is (*are) making theyself mad. (Levine 2010, example 21)<br /><br />In Collins, Moody, and Postal's (CMP) analysis, the possessor starts out in a lower position (the base position of the subject) and moves into the possessor position (where the NP [__'s ass] occupies the higher subject position, Spec-IP). As CMP themselves point out, this analysis requires giving up basic assumptions about movement; namely, that the derived position must c-command its base position.<br /><br />Levine (2010) rightly criticizes CMP's analysis, and offers a different one in the framework of HPSG, where binding and agreement are determined by different features. However, he then goes on to draw an unwarranted conclusion regarding theory comparison. Basically, his argument goes like this: (1) the movement analysis does not fit in with the basic architecture of the theory within which it is couched; (2) the theory he offers follows straightforwardly from assumptions of the HPSG architecture that he adopts; (3) therefore, the HPSG theory is to be preferred.<br /><br />However, this conclusion does not follow at all. I can adopt a movement theory architecture (as I usually do in my own work), but reject CMP's analysis of the ACC (which I did, as soon as I read it). It is true that some researchers working within a movement architecture make the methodological mistake of trying to analyze all grammatical phenomena as movement, but this is a mistake in some instances and not an inherent flaw in the architecture. Other researchers working within the same basic architecture offer competing non-movement accounts of the same grammatical phenomena (witness binding and control, both of which some have tried to analyze as movement, and others have argued are not movement at all). In fact, working within a movement-style architecture, I could even adopt Levine's own analysis of the ACC!<br /><br />So, while Levine's criticisms of CMP are right on target, his broader conclusion is not. In fact, one could go further and point to an issue that proponents of non-movement theories often raise in support of their theories, but which in fact undermines them. This is the issue of what some have called "movement paradoxes." These are often cited as showing that movement is entirely the wrong approach. Basically, a constituent that has moved is ungrammatical in the position it is claimed to move from:<br /><br />(2) (Sag 2010, example 55)<br /> a. That Kim is ready, you can rely on __.<br /> b.*You can rely on that Kim is ready.<br /><br />Proponents of non-movement theories embrace this, claiming that in filler-gap dependencies, the filler and the gap do not have to match in category.<br /><br />However, this mismatch has been shown to be quite limited, and works in only one direction. Recent work by Alrenga (2005) and Takahashi (2010) has shown that the generalization is the following (adapted from Takahashi 2010):<br /><br />(3) A clausal constituent (CP) is allowed to move only if its base-generated position is one in which an NP is allowed to appear.<br /><br />Both Alrenga and Takahashi offer movement-based accounts of this generalization. <br /><br />The point that I wish to make is that the very limited nature of this mismatch screams out for an explanation. Mismatches should not be embraced as something that the very architecture of a theory should allow, as non-movement approaches do; rather, they should be banned, and an explanation for the one exception that exists should be sought. Non-movement approaches that embrace category mismatches predict that they should arise all over the place, when in fact they do not. For instance, you never see the converse of the generalization and example above: a case where a CP but not an NP is allowed, but suddenly under movement the NP is allowed. This never happens:<br /><br />(4) a. *I hoped a good result.<br /> b. *A good result, I hoped.<br /> c. I hoped that a good outcome would result.<br /><br />The verb <span style="font-style:italic;">hope</span> allows a CP but not an NP; it still does not allow an NP when the NP moves. If category mismatches were fully general, we should find such cases. That we do not indicates that the theory that bans them is on the right track. A theory that embraces category mismatches will have to stipulate conditions that ban all but the one described in (3).<br /><br />References:<br /><br />Alrenga, Peter (2005). A Sentential Subject Asymmetry in English and Its Implications for Complement Selection. <span style="font-style:italic;">Syntax</span> 8: 175-207.<br /><br />Collins, Chris, Simanique Moody, and Paul M. Postal (2008). An AAE Camouflage Construction. <span style="font-style:italic;">Language</span> 84: 29-68.<br /><br />Levine, Robert D. (2010). The <span style="font-style:italic;">Ass</span> Camouflage Construction: Masks as Parasitic Heads. <span style="font-style:italic;">Language</span> 86: 265-301.<br /><br />Sag, Ivan (2010). English Filler-Gap Constructions. <span style="font-style:italic;">Language</span> 86: 486-545.<br /><br />Takahashi, Shoichi (2010). The Hidden Side of Clausal Complements. <span style="font-style:italic;">Natural Language and Linguistic Theory</span> 28: 343-380.Benjamin Brueninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01862907128346654016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1383074020386281212.post-58391472276814844262010-09-14T09:37:00.004-04:002010-09-17T12:30:23.081-04:00Implicit Objects of Find-it-Psych-AdjLandau (2010) attempts to give an argument that implicit arguments must be represented syntactically. His argument mostly uses a construction he calls <span style="font-style:italic;">find-it-Psych-Adj</span>, illustrated below:<br /><br />(1) The Professor found it annoying to listen to that speech.<br /><br />As Landau shows, the subject of <span style="font-style:italic;">find</span> is interpreted as the experiencer of the psych adjective, in this case <span style="font-style:italic;">annoying</span>. It is this implicit experiencer that then controls the PRO subject of the infinitive (<span style="font-style:italic;">to listen to that speech</span>).<br /><br />What is interesting about this construction, not noted by Landau, is that it has all of the properties of Obligatory Control. First is the obligatory coindexing: the subject of <span style="font-style:italic;">find</span> <span style="font-weight:bold;">must</span> be identical to the experiencer of the psych adjective. Second, as Landau shows, the implicit argument cannot be spelled out:<br /><br />(2) John finds it amusing (*to him) to watch the prisoners suffer. (Landau 2010, ex. 38a)<br /><br />As Landau shows, this is not true of a finite complement to <span style="font-style:italic;">find</span>, just as it is not true of finite complements of control verbs:<br /><br />(3) The researcher found that it was annoying to her/the subjects to have to hear the instructions again.<br />(4) <span style="font-style:italic;">compare control</span>:<br /> a. Billy hopes (*him/his friend) to become Captain Marvel.<br /> b. Billy hopes that he/his friend will become Captain Marvel.<br /><br />Third, only sloppy readings are available in ellipsis:<br /><br />(5) The professor finds it amusing to race ants, and his assistant does too. (only, amusing to the assistant)<br /><br />This is not true of finite complements to <span style="font-style:italic;">find</span>, which allow strict readings:<br /><br />(6) The professor found that it is amusing to him to race ants, and his assistant did too. (either, amusing to the assistant, or amusing to the professor)<br /><br />Fourth, this construction only admits de se readings, just like control. The usual context for this involves an amnesiac war hero. Suppose this amnesiac hero is watching a TV show about his own exploits, but doesn't realize that the person he sees on the TV is him. He sees that the person on TV is embarrassed about discussing his own exploits. The following <span style="font-weight:bold;">cannot</span> describe this scenario:<br /><br />(7) The amnesiac finds it embarrassing to discuss his war exploits.<br /><br />The sentence in (7) requires belief de se, which is missing from this context. In contrast, a finite complement to <span style="font-style:italic;">find</span> does not, and is felicitous in this context:<br /><br />(8) The amnesiac finds that it is embarrassing to him to discuss his war exploits.<br /><br />The overt <span style="font-style:italic;">him</span> can refer to the person the amnesiac is watching on TV, without him realizing that it is himself. This is exactly like control into non-finite clauses versus overt pronouns in finite ones.<br /><br />So, it appears that the relation between the subject of <span style="font-style:italic;">find</span> and the experiencer of the psych adjective is one of obligatory control (which must be exhaustive, and cannot be partial; see Landau 2000). If all obligatory control is control of PRO, then the implicit experiencer of the psych adjective must be PRO:<br /><br />(9) The amnesiac1 finds it embarrassing <span style="font-weight:bold;">PRO1</span> [PRO1 to discuss his war exploits].<br /><br />This is interesting in its own right, because PRO is generally restricted to subject position in English. But it also severely weakens Landau's argument that implicit arguments must be syntactically represented, because for the purposes of this argument he was excluding PRO. Most researchers recognize the syntactic reality of PRO, and basically view it as an unpronounced pronoun. PRO can participate in all the syntactic relations that an overt NP can; so it is not surprising that the implicit experiencer of the <span style="font-style:italic;">find-it-Psych-Adj</span> construction can. What Landau really needs to make his argument go through is an implicit argument that his diagnostics classify as ``weak,'' but which can nevertheless do partial control. (Personally, I am not convinced that there are any ``weak implicit arguments'' in English).<br /><br />One last comment on Landau's theory: In his theory, strong implicit arguments have D, but weak ones do not. This makes weak implicit arguments unable to serve as the subject of a secondary predicate, because, according to Landau, only NPs with D can be arguments. But then how could a weak implicit argument be an implicit argument in the first place? By definition, an implicit argument is an <span style="font-weight:bold;">argument</span>, of some predicate. This part of Landau's account appears to me to be inherently contradictory.<br /><br />References:<br /><br />Landau, Idan (2010). The Explicit Syntax of Implicit Arguments. <span style="font-style:italic;">Linguistic Inquiry</span> 41: 357-388.<br /><br />Landau, Idan (2000). <span style="font-style:italic;">Elements of Control: Structure and Meaning in Infinitival Constructions</span>. Dordrecht: Kluwer.<br /><br />Update to post (9/17/2010):<br /><br />Idan Landau sends the following comments. I agree with him that implicit goals of communication verbs are convincing cases of implicit arguments that can control but not bind.<br /><br />Hi Ben,<br /><br />Thanks for this interesting commentary. Here are some comments of my my own.<br /><br />1. The ban on lexicalization of the argument is not special to this construction. Quite a few constructions involve an implicit position which can't be lexcicalized:<br /><br />a. The topic merits discussion (*of it).<br /><br />b. John gave me a/*his call. <br /><br />I'm not sure PRO is motivated in all of them. Just like in your proposal, the implicit position in (a) is an object position; in fact, in the find-it-Adj. cases, it's an oblique position. For PRO to occur in it would be very unusual. In fact, so unusual - also crosslinguistiucally - that this alone is a strong reason for me to doubt your conclusion.<br /><br />This would imply that the signature properties - sloppy reading, ncessary se se etc. - are a necessary corollary of PRO, but not a sufficient indicator for its presence; other grammatical elements may induce the same signature. Note that simple reflexives are also necessarily sloppy and de se:<br /><br />c. John hates himself and Bill does too.<br /><br />d. The unfortunate hates himself.<br /><br />I somehow sense that the find-it-Adj. construction involves some "complex predicate", in which the argument structures of 'find' and 'Adj.' coalesce' (note that the subject of 'find' is also an experiencer), and that this process is responsible for the effects you observed. If true (I don't know yet how to formalize this), the situation would be quite different from standard OC, where the argument structures of the infinitive and the main predicate remain distinct (ignoring the small class of restructuring). <br /><br />2. There are many examples of WIA controllers in English - other than in the find-it-Adj constructions. I cite an example with 'say', and one can add other communication verbs:<br /><br />a. John said/signaled/shouted (to the kids) to stay alert.<br /><br />Dative controllers are easily omissible with gerundive complements:<br /><br />b. He recommended/suggested/offered [filing a complaint] (to the tenants). <br /><br />Experiencer arguments of adjectives are also possibly implicit:<br /><br />c. It is fun/amusing/disturbing (for Peter) to watch this scene. <br /><br />And so on. So I don't think your skepticism is warranted. <br /><br />3. Your last comment rests on the ambiguity of 'argument'. I tried to be clear on this term, but maybe I wasn't clear enough. Anyway, the contradiction is illusory.<br /><br />One sense of argument is the logico-semantic sense: an argument of a predicative function, or more linguistically, a slot in a theta-grid. This sense is completely a-syntactic, and has no implications for syntactic representation. It is in this sense that WIAs are arguments.<br /><br />A second, syntactic sense of 'argument' is relevant for the saturation of secondary predicates. This is where [D] is crucial, in definining SIAs. It is an empirical observation that two such notions of 'arguments' must be entertained (the split between WIA and SIA is theory-independent). One can think of various ways to localize it in the grammar. Perhaps it is in the nature of the predicator itself - verb or adjective; maybe it is in the distinction between primary and secondary predicates; or maybe it is a by-product of a Pred head, present in secondary predicates only (and not in verb-argument combinations). Whatever the solution is, the two senses will be available in different contexts and hence would not create a contradiction.Benjamin Brueninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01862907128346654016noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1383074020386281212.post-37832342448774235502010-09-01T16:08:00.002-04:002010-09-01T16:52:17.418-04:00Locality as LinearizationFox and Pesetsky (2005) make a number of interesting proposals regarding the locality of movement and linearization. In a nutshell, they propose that locality constraints on movement can be derived from the nature of linearization, which takes place cyclically. As Sabbagh (2007) points out, this theory predicts that string-vacuous movement should not be subject to any locality constraints. Sabbagh claims that this is true in the case of rightward movement (specifically, right node raising). How about leftward movement? Is string-vacuous leftward movement impervious to locality conditions? <br /><br />The following are some attempts to find out. Although constructing relevant examples is not easy, it appears that the answer is no.<br /><br />The first attempt involves <span style="font-style:italic;">though</span>-preposing. This can front a predicate adjective inside an adjunct clause:<br /><br />(1) Intelligent though he is, he still doesn't understand simple logic.<br /><br />Exclamatives can also front predicate adjectives, and they can do so over clause boundaries:<br /><br />(2) How intelligent he thinks he is!<br /><br />Now we can try to form an exclamative from <span style="font-style:italic;">though</span>-preposing. This would involve fronting the predicate adjective out of an adjunct clause (the <span style="font-style:italic;">though</span> clause), but this movement would be string-vacuous. The result is ill-formed:<br /><br />(3) *How intelligent though he is, he still doesn't understand simple logic!<br /><br />If locality reduced to linearization, (3) should be well-formed. The fact that it is not seems to indicate that fronting out of an adjunct clause is not allowed, even when it would not change the linear order of any of the syntactic terminals.<br /><br />One might object that maybe <span style="font-style:italic;">though</span>-preposing would not be able to front a wh-predicate in the first place, so that the input to the exclamative fronting would be what is ill-formed here, not the fronting to form the exclamative. So let's try something that does not mix wh- and non-wh-phrases/operations. Here is a free relative, apparently headed by the wh-phrase <span style="font-style:italic;">what</span>, which has undergone wh-movement from object position (object of <span style="font-style:italic;">ate</span>):<br /><br />(4) What he ate is still available.<br /><br />The phrase <span style="font-style:italic;">what he ate</span> is the subject of the clause. Subjects are known to be islands to movement. But if islands (locality) were derived from linearization, they should not have any effect if the movement is string vacuous. So suppose we embedded (4) under a question-embedding verb, and tried to question <span style="font-style:italic;">what</span>:<br /><br />(5) *I wonder what he ate is still available.<br /><br />The result is ill-formed. It appears to be ill-formed because we have attempted to move <span style="font-style:italic;">what</span> out of the subject <span style="font-style:italic;">what he ate</span>. But this movement does not change the linear order; so if locality were derived from linearization, (5) should be well-formed.<br /><br />Here is another example, which is analogous to Sabbagh's (2007) right node raising examples. According to him, right node raising is really across-the-board movement to the right. This only needs to be string-vacuous in the rightmost conjunct (but the gap has to be rightmost in all other conjuncts, too). So, if things worked like they should, across-the-board leftward movement should be able to violate all locality conditions if it is string-vacuous in the leftmost conjunct (and the gaps in the other conjuncts are also leftmost). So let's go back to though-preposing, which can front VPs as well as adjectives:<br /><br />(6) Sit on a nail though he did, he still can't get out of class.<br /><br />VP-fronting can front VPs across clause boundaries. So, if locality reduced to linearization, we should be able to front the VP <span style="font-style:italic;">sit on a nail</span> out of the <span style="font-style:italic;">though</span> clause. We won't be able to tell in (6), but we will be able to if we try to do it in an across-the-board fashion out of two conjuncts at once:<br /><br />(7) *Sit on a nail though he did, he still can't get out of class, and though she might, it won't excuse her behavior.<br /><br />The result is ill-formed. Again, it appears that string-vacuous movement, including string-vacuous across-the-board movement, is still subject to locality conditions (here, the ban on extracting from adjunct clauses). <br /><br />I hope other people will try to construct other examples. If it is true that string-vacuous leftward movement still obeys locality constraints, as it appears to from the examples here, then it is not possible to derive locality conditions on movement from linearization.<br /><br />References:<br /><br />Fox, Danny, and David Pesetsky (2005). Cyclic Linearization of Syntactic Structure. <span style="font-style:italic;">Theoretical Linguistics</span> 31: 1-45.<br />Sabbagh, Joseph (2007). Ordering and Linearizing Rightward Movement. <span style="font-style:italic;">Natural Language and Linguistic Theory</span> 25: 349-401.Benjamin Brueninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01862907128346654016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1383074020386281212.post-18454432147380278862010-05-26T22:01:00.003-04:002010-05-26T22:52:39.824-04:00Subject restrictions, particle verbs, and consumption verbsMany people have noted that certain transitive verbs in English require intentional subjects:<br /><br />(1) (Folli and Harley 2005, ex 1b)<br /> a. The groom ate the wedding cake.<br /> b.#The sea ate the beach.<br /><br />(Example numbers from Folli and Harley 2005 come from the prepublication version available at <a href="http://dingo.sbs.arizona.edu/~hharley/PDFs/FolliHarley2002Final.pdf">http://dingo.sbs.arizona.edu/~hharley/PDFs/FolliHarley2002Final.pdf</a>. Folli and Harley typically judge the inanimate subjects as "*," but I do not think it is appropriate to view them as ungrammatical. Rather, the sentence imputes intention to the subject, which is not usually appropriate with an inanimate subject. Hence, I prefer to mark them as "#.")<br /><br />Both Folli and Harley (2005) and Ramchand (2008) claim that the class of verbs that require an intentional subject is the class of consumption verbs. This class is supposed to take an "incremental theme" object, the kind whose quantizedness in the sense of Krifka (1992) makes a difference for telicity:<br /><br />(2)a. He ate three pieces of wedding cake in/??for an hour. (quantized object: telic)<br /> b. He ate wedding cake for/??in an hour. (non-quantized object: atelic)<br /><br />However, the class of verbs that require an intentional subject is clearly not the same as the class of consumption verbs. Here is the list of verbs given by Folli and Harley (2005):<br /><br />(3) (Folli and Harley 2005, ex 24)<br /> a.#The sea ate the beach.<br /> b.#The wind carved the beach.<br /> c.#Erosion nibbled the cliff.<br /> d.#The washing machine chewed the laundry.<br /><br />(4) (given for Italian by Folli and Harley 2005, ex 25)<br /> a.#The sun drank the lake.<br /> b.#Inflation sucked our savings.<br /><br />While <span style="font-style:italic;">eat</span>, <span style="font-style:italic;">carve</span>, and <span style="font-style:italic;">drink</span> take incremental theme objects, <span style="font-style:italic;">nibble, chew</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">suck</span> do not:<br /><br />(5)a. The child nibbled the cookie for/??in an hour. (quantized object but atelic)<br /> b. The cowboy chewed two pieces of beef jerkey for/??in an hour. (quantized object but atelic)<br /> c. The child sucked a lollipop for/??in an hour. (quantized object but atelic)<br /><br />Conversely, there are consumption verbs like <span style="font-style:italic;">devour</span> that take incremental themes, but have no subject restriction:<br /><br />(6)a. I devoured two pies in/??for half an hour. (quantized object: telic)<br /> b. I devoured pies for/??in half an hour. (non-quantized object: atelic)<br /> c. The tsunami devoured the coastal resort.<br /><br />Moreover, Folli and Harley (2005) claim that adding a particle or other resultative phrase makes the subject restriction disappear:<br /><br />(7) (Folli and Harley 2005, ex 24)<br /> a. The sea ate away the beach.<br /> b. The wind carved the beach away.<br /> c. Erosion nibbled away the cliff.<br /> d. The washing machine chewed up the laundry.<br /><br />(8) (given for Italian by Folli and Harley 2005, ex 25)<br /> a. The sun drank up the lake.<br /> b. Inflation sucked up our savings.<br /><br />Folli and Harley therefore design a constructional theory of verb meaning wherein consumption verbs combine with a light verb, vDO, which requires animate agents. When they combine with a resultative particle, in contrast, they combine not with vDO but with vCAUSE, which requires only a causer, animate or inanimate.<br /><br />However, it is not true that verb-particle combinations uniformly lack subject restrictions. Consider the consumption particle verb <span style="font-style:italic;">put away</span>. With this verb, the subject restriction actually holds of the <span style="font-weight:bold;">particle</span> use, and not the non-particle use:<br /><br />(9)a. His phone records put the suspect in Manhattan at 12:03 AM. (inanimate subject OK)<br /> b. The groom put away thirteen helpings of wedding cake.<br /> c.#The sea put away the beach. (=/= The sea ate up the beach.)<br /><br />Other particle verbs also have subject restrictions:<br /><br />(10)a. The authorities locked me up.<br /> b.#The earthquake locked me up. (situation: I'm touring a jail with self-locking doors when an earthquake hits, causing the door of the cell I'm in to close)<br /><br />(11)a. The gangster bumped off his rivals.<br /> b.#The tsunami bumped off the sunbathers.<br /><br />(12)a. The speaker explained away the exceptions.<br /> b.#That theory explains away the exceptions. (OK if understand <span style="font-style:italic;">that theory</span> to mean "advocates of that theory")<br /><br />Therefore, the constructional theories designed by Folli and Harley (2005) and Ramchand (2008) will not work. They predict that all and only verbs that take incremental theme objects will show subject restrictions, and no verb-particle combination will. Both predictions are false. Moreover, Folli and Harley (2005) note that there are other verbs that require intentional subjects, but they offer no constructional account of these:<br /><br />(13)a. Sue/#The tornado murdered someone. (Folli and Harley 2005, ex 21f)<br /> b. The warden/#Sickness jailed Andrew. (Folli and Harley 2005, ex 21h)<br /><br />Since these are not "consumption" verbs, they do not fall under Folli and Harley's theory. The quantizedness of their objects does make a difference for telicity, but in this they do not differ from close synonyms like <span style="font-style:italic;">kill</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">imprison</span>, which have no subject restrictions:<br /><br />(14)a. The tornado killed someone.<br /> b. Sickness imprisoned Andrew.<br /><br />Factually, then, subject restrictions do not line up nicely according to other verb classifications. Verbs that take incremental themes may or may not impose subject restrictions. Verb-particle combinations that encode something like a cause and a result state also may or may not impose subject restrictions. There seems to be no independent classification of verbal phenomena that correlates with subject restrictions.<br /><br />Rather, it seems to me that a verb taking only an intentional subject is simply part of our lexical knowledge of that particular verb, in combination with world knowledge. Take the difference between <span style="font-style:italic;">kill</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">murder</span>. Aspectually these two verbs are identical, but the former imposes no restriction on its subject while the latter does. This is clearly because of the lexical meaning of <span style="font-style:italic;">murder</span>: it includes intentionality in its meaning. Turning to consumption verbs, verbs like <span style="font-style:italic;">eat</span> also seem to require intentionality of their subjects; presumably <span style="font-style:italic;">eat</span> means something like "consume with a mouth," which requires that its subject have a mouth that the subject controls. Adding a particle appears to refocus the meaning of the verb on the resulting state of the object, with the effect that the subject restrictions disappear. However, with <span style="font-style:italic;">put away</span> the opposite happens: <span style="font-style:italic;">put</span> by itself only involves changing (or specifying) something's location, with no intentionality involved. But adding <span style="font-style:italic;">away</span> to create a resultative consumption verb adds the implication of desire and volition.<br /><br />In summary, although there appear to be generalizations regarding which verbs impose restrictions on their subjects, this is not true; if one looks around, one discovers exceptions in every possible way.<br /><br />References:<br /><br />Folli, Raffaella, and Heidi Harley (2005), "Flavors of v." In Paula Kempchinsky and Roumyana Slabakova, eds., <span style="font-style:italic;">Aspectual Inquiries</span>, Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 95–120.<br /><br />Krifka, Manfred (1992), "Thematic Relations as Links between Nominal Reference and Temporal Constitution." In Ivan Sag and Anna Szabolcsi, eds., <span style="font-style:italic;">Lexical Matters</span>, Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications, pp. 29–53.<br /><br />Ramchand, Gillian Catriona (2008), <span style="font-style:italic;">Verb Meaning and the Lexicon: A First-Phase Syntax</span>. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Benjamin Brueninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01862907128346654016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1383074020386281212.post-62893064287272399902010-05-10T23:00:00.007-04:002010-05-13T14:53:15.055-04:00Resultatives: Exceptions to the Direct Object RestrictionWechsler (2005) claims that the direct object restriction on resultative secondary predicates is not real, and that resultatives can be predicated of deep subjects if the conditions are right. His claimed counterexamples include unergative verbs of motion like the following:<br /><br />(1) She danced/swam free of her captors. (from Levin and Rappaport-Hovav 1995, p. 186) <br />(2) However, if fire is an immediate danger, you must jump clear of the vehicle. (State of Illinois, <span style="font-style:italic;">Rules of the Road</span>; cited in Levin and Rappaport-Hovav 1995, p. 186)<br />(3) The driver and the fireman had jumped clear before the crash. (<span style="font-style:italic;">Thomas the Tank Engine</span>; Wechsler 2005 ex. 33c)<br /><br />Resultatives can also be predicated of subjects of transitives, according to Wechsler:<br /><br />(4) The wise men followed the star out of Bethlehem. (Wechsler 2005, ex. 34a)<br />(5) The sailors managed to catch a breeze and ride it clear of the rocks. (Wechsler 2005, ex. 34b)<br />(6) He followed Lassie free of his captors. (Wechsler 2005, ex. 34c)<br /><br />These examples are very suspicious, however. First, example (4) is simply a directional PP: it can be replaced with any such PP (<span style="font-style:italic;">through the pass, under the archway</span>). Second, the only adjectives that can be used like this are <span style="font-style:italic;">free</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">clear</span>, and they can be used adverbially with a meaning that is clearly not resultative:<br /><br />(7) Stand clear of the moving doors. (subject does not become clear as a result of standing)<br /><br />Other adjectives that generally make good resultatives (as in example 8) cannot be used with these verbs:<br /><br />(8) She wiped the table clean/dry.<br />(9)a. *The sailors rode the breeze dry.<br />(9)b. *The sailors jumped clean/dry.<br /><br />(And note that <span style="font-style:italic;">clean</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">dry</span> are closed-scale adjectives, so they should be fine as resultatives modifying selected arguments of the verb, according to Wechsler. See more below on closed- vs. open-scale adjectives.)<br /><br />So, an alternative explanation for all of Wechsler's putative counterexamples to the direct object restriction is that they are directionals, basically like a PP. That is, <span style="font-style:italic;">free</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">clear</span> can be used like a PP as directional modifiers. As such, they modify the main predicate: verbs of motion regularly allow specification of starting points, paths, and end points. But these are not resultatives at all, which are secondary predicates and not modifiers of the main predicate.<br /><br />Evidence that this is correct comes from conjunction possibilities. <span style="font-style:italic;">Free</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">clear</span> can be conjoined with directional PPs with these verbs:<br /><br />(10) They jumped clear of the vehicle and through the hoop.<br />(11) She danced free of her captors and into the next room.<br />(12) They rode the waves clear of the rocks and onto the beach.<br /><br />This is not possible with APs that are clearly resultatives, even when the PP by itself is fine with the verb:<br /><br />(13) She pounded the metal through the hoop.<br />(14) She pounded the metal flat.<br />(15)*She pounded the metal flat and through the hoop.<br /><br />A second piece of evidence comes from pseudoclefting. Wechsler's <span style="font-style:italic;">free</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">clear</span> examples allow pseudoclefts with <span style="font-style:italic;">where</span>, like directional PPs, but true resultatives do not:<br /><br />(16) Free of her captors is where she danced (to).<br />(17) Clear of the rocks is where they rode the waves (to).<br />(18)*Flat is where they pounded the metal (to).<br />(19)*Clean is where they wiped the table (to).<br /><br />A third piece of evidence comes from co-occurrence with starting point and path PPs. Endpoints regularly occur with both of these:<br /><br />(20) The sailors rode the breeze off the rocks, along the shore, and out into the open sea.<br /><br />So do <span style="font-style:italic;">clear</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">free</span>, again acting like directional PPs:<br /><br />(21) The sailors rode the breeze through the narrow gap and clear of the rocks.<br />(22) She danced out of her captor's arms and free of their grasp.<br /><br />But true resultatives do not:<br /><br />(23) I kicked the box out the door, down the hall, and into the trash.<br />(24) I kicked the box to pieces.<br />(25) I kicked the box (*to pieces) out the door (*to pieces) and down the hall (*to pieces).<br />(26) I danced myself dry (*from soaking wet).<br />(27) I laughed myself silly (*from perfectly lucid).<br /><br />I conclude, therefore, that Wechsler's putative counterexamples to the direct object restriction are not real counterexamples. They are not resultatives at all: they are directionals. When they specify the endpoint of a path, they might seem to have the semantics of a resultative, but they have very different grammatical properties from true resultative secondary predicates.<br /><br />More generally, I conclude that there are no real counterexamples to the direct object restriction, which stands as a significant generalization about resultatives.<br /><br />Moreover, Wechsler claims that examples like (28) are ungrammatical because resultatives that are predicated of arguments of the verb must be closed-scale adjectives. (29) is grammatical because there is no such requirement on non-selected NPs:<br /><br />(28)*We danced tired.<br />(29) We danced ourselves tired.<br /><br />This is not a good enough explanation for the contrast between (28) and (29), however. Sentences like (28) are still bad with closed-scale adjectives like <span style="font-style:italic;">dry</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">clean</span>:<br /><br />(30)*We danced dry/clean.<br /><br />There is no way to predicate a true resultative of an underlying subject without a fake reflexive as in (29). Again, the direct object restriction stands.<br /><br />References: <br /><br />Levin, Beth and Malka Rappaport-Hovav (1995), <span style="font-style:italic;">Unaccusativity: At the Syntax-Lexical Semantics Interface</span>. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.<br /><br />Wechsler, Stephen (2005), Resultatives Under the Event-Argument Homomorphism Model of Telicity. In Nomi Erteschik-Shir and Tova Rapoport (eds.), <span style="font-style:italic;">The Syntax of Aspect: Deriving Thematic and Aspectual Interpretation</span>. Oxford University Press. pp. 255-273.Benjamin Brueninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01862907128346654016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1383074020386281212.post-46395291583205592272010-05-07T12:27:00.000-04:002010-05-07T12:37:36.682-04:00The Adjacency Requirement on AppositivesThis second post also addresses Christopher Potts' book, <span style="font-style:italic;">The Logic of Conventional Implicatures</span> (OUP, 2005). In chapter 4, Potts discusses various kinds of supplements, including appositive relative clauses. A general feature of supplements, according to Potts, is that they must be strictly adjacent to what they modify (the example number is that from Potts, page 104):<br /><br />(4.29a) *We spoke with Lance before the race, who is a famous cyclist, about the weather.<br /><br />However, the adjacency requirement appears to me to be relaxed just when another supplement is embedded in the non-local one:<br /><br />(1) We spoke with Lance before the race, who, as far as I could tell, was primed and ready to go.<br />(2)??We spoke with Lance before the race, who was primed and ready to go.<br />(3) Bob Scalpbender came by, who, as you know, endorses phrenology.<br />(4)??Bob Scalpbender came by, who endorses phrenology.<br /><br />The non-local supplement also has to occur rightmost; adding "about the weather" to (1), as in (4.29a), renders the sentence unacceptable.<br /><br />This relaxation of the adjacency requirement is a rather odd fact, one which I have no account of.Benjamin Brueninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01862907128346654016noreply@blogger.com0