ComSyn: Fall/Winter 2023

We’re looking forward to a varied programme of ComSyn talks in the upcoming season, running from September to December. All talks will be held at the usual timeslot of Thursdays, 16:15-17:30 CET. Here’s the list of speakers and dates:

Speaker(s) Date Venue
Sjef Barbiers &
Irina Morozova (LUCL)
28 September Lipsius 2.17
Mieke Slim
(Ghent University)
12 October Lipsius 2.17
Karen De Clercq
(Université Paris Cité)
16 November Lipsius 2.17
Danfeng Wu
(Oxford University)
7 December Zoom (broadcast
in Lipsius 2.17)
Elise Newman
(University of Edinburgh)
14 December Zoom (broadcast
in Lipsius 2.17)
Thom Westveer
(University of Amsterdam)
21 December Lipsius 2.17

As always, looking forward to seeing you there!
—Maarten (on behalf of the ComSyn organizing committee)

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Thu 22 Jun – Anikó Lipták & Crit Cremers

Speakers:  Anikó Lipták & Crit Cremers (LUCL)
Title: Left node not raising: Word part ellipsis revisited
Date: Thu 22 Jun
Location: Lipsius 0.01 (note room change)
Time: 16:15-17:30

Abstract:
In this talk, we describe a novel ellipsis phenomenon that deletes the second part of compounds, stranding the left side of the compound in sentence-final position:

(1) Deze lift is zevenpersoons, en die
this lift is seven.person.adj and that
acht____.                                                                                   (Dutch)
eight
‘This lift can carry seven people, and that one can carry eight people.’

We refer to this phenomenon as “left part stranding” (LPS for short) and show that it occurs both in Dutch and Hungarian in very similar ways and can affect the second part of an N-N or A-A compound, or adjectival compounds of the type shown in (1). In addition to the fact that LPS curiously violates Lexical Integrity and cannot be classified as any known exception to this condition (such as coordination reduction of the first part of a compound in a second coordinand, cf. onderzoek doelstelling of __ belangstelling, or the second part of a compound in a first coordinand, cf. ijs __ en bruine beren, see Booij 1985), LPS is also curious in that it has many unexpected properties, which are atypical of any process of coordination reduction or right node raising.

  • It is only possible under clausal but not phrasal coordination;
  • it preferably occurs in compounds that are the adjectival or nominal predicate of a clause;
  • it preferably (in some cases obligatorily) co-occurs with gapping or TP-ellipsis (such as fragments);
  • the stranded left part is necessarily contrastive.

After inventorising its morphosyntactic and semantic properties, we explain this set of constraints on LPS with reference to semantic conditions on ellipsis identity.

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Thu 25 May – Claudia Pañeda

Speaker:  Claudia Pañeda (University of the Basque Country)
Title: Wh-island effects are similar in English and Spanish
Date: Thu 25 May
Location: Lipsius 2.23/Zoom [online talk]
Time: 16:15-17:30

Abstract:
A-bar extraction from an embedded wh-question (e.g. ‘What did the politician want to know when they would reject _?’) is thought to yield unacceptability or ‘island effects’ in English, but not in Spanish (Torrego 1984). This contrast has been used to argue that the linguistic principles responsible for island effects are parameterized (see also Rizzi 1982). However, it is unclear to what extent the contrast holds: previous empirical work suggests that there are island effects in both languages (see e.g. Sprouse et al. 2012 for English and Pañeda et al. 2020 for Spanish), but that they can be small in Spanish in some cases (Pañeda & Kush 2021). One limitation of most previous studies is that they have tested island effects in each language independently, with different materials (cf. Ortega-Santos et al. 2018). To better compare the two languages, we ran three acceptability experiments in each language with lexically-matched items. In each experiment, we obtained judgments from around 100 participants on one type of wh-island (introduced by when, whether or why). Our design, based on Sprouse et al. (2011 et seq.) manipulated the distance between the two members of the A-bar dependency (long, short) and the structure where it was established (island, non-island), identifying island effects as a structure × distance interaction. The three clauses yielded clear island effects in both languages, and, unexpectedly, these were slightly larger in Spanish. This indicates there are no relevant cross-linguistic differences in effect size and suggests that it may not be necessary to posit parametric variation—as previous work has done—to explain the data from both languages. Our wh-island effects may be attributed to the violation of simpler, non-parameterized grammatical principles, or to processing limitations.

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Thu 11 May – Molly Rolf (Konstanz)

Speaker:  Molly Rolf (University of Konstanz)
Title: The functional load shift from case to adposition: the role of L2-difficulty.
Date: Thu 11 May
Location: Lipsius 2.23
Time: 16:15-17:30

Abstract:

This talk proposes that a mixed realisation of case features in the KP (case phrase) is more ‘L2-difficult’ than a harmonic realisation, accelerating, in the correct sociolinguistic scenario, to a shift in the functional load expression in the case and adposition systems.

I take as my theoretical background the Final-Over-Final Condition (FOFC) (Biberauer, Holmberg and Roberts (2014) and the exploded KP approach adopted by Caha (2009), highlighting how the two give the same synchronic predictions concerning both case and adposition inventories and syncretisms. The diachronic predictions made by the FOFC mechanism can be straightforwardly applied to the KP, eliciting two directionality pathways of change (i.e. more or less head-initial).

It is furthermore suggested that L2-difficulty can play an important role in this diachronic change: one of the alternative grammars L2 adults can postulate when faced with a mixed realisation grammar is in line with the diachronic pathway we see in the history of Bulgarian and Macedonian and indeed, many Indo-European languages: that of a loss of morphological case and a rise of adpositions. I argue following Lindstedt (2000, 2018) that it is the historic sociolinguistic make-up of the Balkan Sprachbund that has led to the varying degrees of simplification in the case paradigms of the Balkan Sprachbund languages.

Finally, I show how corpus data can be used to track this functional load shift among case and adposition systems and discuss in which ways Balkan Slavic data supports the diachronic predictions made.

References:
Biberauer, Theresa, Anders Holmberg & Ian Roberts. 2014. A syntactic universal and its consequences. Linguistic Inquiry 45. 169–225
Caha, P. 2009. The Nanosyntax of Case. Ph.D. thesis, University of Tromsø
Holmberg, Anders. 2000. Deriving OV order in Finnish. In Peter Svenonius (ed.), The derivation of VO and OV, 123–152. Amsterdam: John Benjamins
Lindstedt, J. (2000). Linguistic Balkanization: Contact-induced change by mutual reinforcement
Lindstedt, J. (2018). Diachronic Regularities Explaining the Tendency towards Explicit Analytic Marking in Balkan Syntax, in Balkan Syntax and (Universal) Principles of Grammar
Roberts, Ian. 2019. Parameter Hierarchies and Universal Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Walkden, George and Breitbarth, Anne. 2019. “Complexity as L2-difficulty: Implications for syntactic change ” Theoretical Linguistics, vol. 45, no. 3-4, 2019, pp. 183-209.
Wahlström, Max. 2015. The loss of case in Bulgarian and Macedonian. Doctoral thesis, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.

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Thu 4 May – Iva Kovač (University of Vienna)

Speaker: Iva Kovač (UniWien)
Title: Dissecting habituality: The Croatian know and its kin
Date: Thu 4 May
Location: Lipsius 2.23
Time: 16:15-17:30

Abstract:
Habituality is a versatile concept bordering categories such as aspect, modality, and iterativity, and has been used to describe a range of diverse meanings and configurations (see Boneh & Jędrzejowski 2019 for an overview). I investigate a habitual-like configuration in Croatian in which the verb znati ‘know’ embeds an infinitive (see also Hellman 2005) and discuss its syntactic and semantic properties. Comparing znati with expressions from other languages that have been described as habitual requires dissecting the notion of habituality and reveals three broad subcategories.

As for znati in particular, I argue that it is semi-lexical (Emonds 1985, Corver & Van Riemsdijk 2001, Cavirani-Pots 2020). Iterativity figures prominently in its meaning, pointing into a functional direction. At the same time, even though znati is a raising verb (and the subject thus need not possess knowledge of any kind), the core knowledge component applies to the speaker instead, invoking an evidential-like flavour. Since verbs denoting knowledge are known to grammaticalize not only into habitual but also into evidential markers (Kuteva et al. 2019), this comes as no surprise.

Finally, znati is also used as a factive verb and an ability modal. I explore a possible direction towards connecting these different meanings, especially in light of the finding that other languages (e.g., Norwegian, English) employ know in a similarly diverse manner.

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Wed 26 April – Charlotte Sant (UiT)

Speaker: Charlotte Sant (Arctic University of Norway)
Title: Comparing apples and oranges: What grinding and portioning can tell us about gender and atomicity
Date: Wednesday 26th April
Location: Lipsius 1.30 (note day and room change)
Time: 16:15-17:30

Abstract:
It is not uncontroversial whether or to what extent gender and classification are connected (Corbett, 1991; Fedden & Corbett, 2017; Audring, 2016; Dixon, 1986; Aikhenvald, 2000), or whether a language can embody both systems (described by Fedden & Corbett, 2017). In this talk I will argue that Norwegian nouns vary with regards to whether they are lexically specified for a gender or atomicity value, meaning that these features are found within the same language but in complementary distribution.

Norwegian is consistently reported to have three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter. Using novel data, I will show that neuter is not a gender, but rather a signal that the noun marker carries a +/-ATOMIC feature rather than a gender feature. I observe that neuter nouns are more restricted for grinding and portioning. Neuter nouns can be ground if the noun is bare but not if the NP is definite. Compare the masculine noun ‘appelsin’ to the neuter noun ‘apple’ below. Imagine a context in which you are being trained to work in a cake factory and the person training you points to a barrel of mashed oranges or apples and tells you that this mass will be added to some mixture.

(1) No tilset me appelsin / eple.
now add we orange.masc / apple.neut
‘Now we’re going to add orange / apple (i.e., orange or apple mass).’
(2) No tilset me appelsin-en / *eple-t.
now add we orange-def.masc / apple-def.neut
‘Now we’re going to add the orange / apple (i.e., orange or apple mass).’

For the indefinite portioned form, masculine and feminine nouns show article agreement according to their gender, but neuter nouns cannot be portioned using the neuter article:

(3) a. Kan eg ein vin?
can I have a.masc wine.masc
‘Could I get a (glass/bottle of) wine?’
b. Kan eg ei suppe?
can I have a.fem soup.fem
‘Could I get a (bowl of) soup?’
c. *Kan eg eit vatn?
can I have a.neut water.neut
‘Could I get a (glass/bottle of) water?’

The data shows that atomicity is intrinsic to neuter nouns, and so, I argue, it must be specified in the lexicon. This is represented in the syntax through a Noun Marker (NM) head (equivalent to other categorizing heads such as n, see Harris, 1991; Kramer, 2016), which carries the gender feature for gendered nouns, but a +/-ATOMIC feature when a gender feature is not present. My analysis implies that atomicity is in the lexical entry of some nouns but not others, within the same language. Gendered nouns are able to grind and portion via context and are free to do so because atomicity is not part of the computation (see Landman, 2011; Falkum, 2010; Pelletier, Kiss, Husić, 2021; Kiss, Pelletier, Husić, & Poppek, 2017; Cheng, Doetjes, & Sybesma, 2008; Ramchand & Svenonius, 2008). The analysis also somewhat unifies gender and classification by placing the two features in the same noun-marking head, while still treating them as different features with different properties and semantic content.

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Thu 6 April – Tamirand Nnena de Lisser (Guyana)

Speaker: Tamirand Nnena de Lisser (University of Guyana)
Title: The Three Phases of Early Missing Subjects: Evidence from Creole Language Acquisition
Date: Thursday 6th April
Location: Lipsius 2.23/Zoom [online talk]
Time: 16:15-17:30

Abstract:
This talk will explore the null subject phenomenon in L1 acquisition of two Creole languages, Jamaican, a non-null subject language, and Morisyen, a language that allows null subjects in certain contexts. According to Bickerton (1981; 1984; 1999; 2014), the grammar of Creole languages may give an insight in the default parameter settings of the language faculty, and as such Creole-speaking children’s production should be errorless. Results from the cross-linguistic comparative analysis reveal striking similarities – Both Jamaican and Morisyen speaking children start with a system of target inconsistent missing subjects (Phase 1). This is however not related to Parameter (mis)setting or Bickerton’s Language Bioprogram Hypothesis, but rather a principle of economical structure building, accounted for by the modified version of the Truncation approach in terms of the Spell-Out mechanism (De Lisser et al., 2016). Around age three, when this system is accurately regulated by children, we note a shift to an overwhelming number of overt subjects in the children’s grammar (Phase 2). This developmental phase can arguably reflect what appears to be the default parametric option which is explored, regardless of the target being a null or non-null subject language. It is only later, based on evidence from the input, that children acquiring null subject languages fix the null subject parameter to reflect a target consistent grammar (Phase 3). The findings from the post-truncation phase of Creole language development (Phases 2 and 3) can therefore be argued to be supportive of the assumption that overt subject is the default unmarked option, and may contribute to discussion on Bickerton’s Language Bioprogram Hypothesis and parameter (mis)setting.

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Thu 16 March – Elisabeth Kerr (LUCL)

Speaker: Elisabeth J. Kerr (LUCL)
Title: Tunen syntax within a structural typology of Aux-O-V word orders
Date: Thursday 16th March
Location: Lipsius 2.23
Time: 16:15-17:30

Abstract:
Aux-O-V word order is an interesting case of disharmonic word order, where a head-initial TP (Aux-V) dominates a head-final VP (O-V). Aux-O-V disharmony has attracted attention in the theoretical syntax literature as an instantiation of disharmonic word order compatible with the Final-Over-Final Condition (FOFC; Biberauer, Holmberg & Roberts 2014). The Aux-O-V type of disharmony has been analysed in such Kaynesian frameworks as derived through roll-up movement triggered by a formal feature on heads within the extended projection of the verb, e.g. the ^-feature in Biberauer, Holmberg & Roberts (2014), as discussed predominantly for Germanic and Uralic varieties (see a.o. Sheehan et al. 2017, Roberts 2019). Other analyses of Aux-O-V are found in the Africanist literature, where most work has been on West African languages with S-Aux-O-V-X word order, often existing in alternation with SVO (see e.g. Sande et al. 2019 for a generative overview and Creissels 2005, Güldemann 2018 a.o. for descriptive overviews).

In this talk I present my thesis work on the analysis of Aux-O-V in Tunen, the only Bantu (Niger-Congo) language with S-Aux-O-V-X as the canonical word order, found in matrix (and embedded) clauses, across tense/aspect contexts, and in multiple information-structural contexts. The empirical foundation is field data I collected in Cameroon between 2019 and 2022 as part of the Bantu Syntax and Information Structure project. I discuss the three main types of formal analyses: first, a roll-up account as previously applied to Germanic, second, an account which generates Bantu verbal morphology via head movement (e.g. Zeller 2013, van der Wal 2022), which must then be modified via object shift in order to additionally derive Tunen’s OV order (in contrast to canonical Bantu SVO), and third, a non-Kaynesian account allowing for base-generation of OV order within the VP. I then raise some challenges for discussion in choosing between these analyses, namely (i) the proper derivation of Bantu verbal morphology, (ii) accounting for Tunen’s O-V-X order, (iii) the position of subjects, and (iv) the availability of postverbal discontinuous nominal modifiers in Tunen. In showing how previous analyses of Aux-O-V must be adapted to fit the Tunen data, I reflect on the structural typology of S-Aux-O-V(-X) derivations crosslinguistically, which has implications both for understanding word order change in West/Central Africa and word order variation more broadly.

References
Biberauer, Theresa, Holmberg, Anders & Ian Roberts. 2014. A syntactic universal and its consequences. Linguistic Inquiry, 45(2): 169-225.
Creissels, Denis. 2005. S-O-V-X constituent order and constituent order alternations in West African languages. In Rebecca T. Cover & Yuni Kim (eds.), Proceedings of the annual meeting of the Berkeley linguistics society, 31:2, 37-52.
Güldemann, Tom. 2008. The Macro-Sudan Belt: Towards identifying a linguistic area in northern sub-Saharan Africa. In Heine, Bernd and Derek Nurse (eds.). A Linguistic Geography of Africa, 151-185, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sheehan, Michelle, Biberauer, Theresa, Holmberg, Anders & Ian Roberts (eds.). 2017. The Final-Over-Final Condition: A syntactic universal. Cambridge, Mass/London: MIT Press.
Roberts, Ian. 2019. Parameter hierarchies and Universal Grammar. Oxford: OUP.
Sande, Hannah, Baier, Nico & Peter Jenks. 2019. The syntactic diversity of SAuxOV in West Africa. In Clem, Emily, Jenks, Peter and Hannah Sande (eds.). Theory and description in African linguistics: Selected papers from the 47th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, 667-701, Berlin: Language Science Press.
van der Wal, Jenneke. 2022. A featural typology of Bantu agreement. Oxford: OUP.
Zeller, Jochen. 2013. In defence of head movement: Evidence from Bantu. In Cheng, Lisa and Norbert Corver (editors), Diagnosing syntax, 87-111, Oxford: OUP

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ComSyn: Spring/Summer 2023

We are looking forward to a full programme of ComSyn talks in the upcoming season, running from March-June. All talks will be held at the usual timeslot of Thursdays, 16:15-17:30 CET (aside from 26th April; see below).  Here is the list of dates and speakers:

Speaker

Date

Room
Elisabeth Kerr (LUCL) 16 March Lipsius 2.23
Tamirand Nnena De Lisser (Guyana) 6 April
Lipsius 2.23
Charlotte Sant (UiT) 26 April* Lipsius 1.30*
Iva Kovač (Vienna) 4 May Lipsius 2.23
Molly Rolf (Konstanz/LUCL) 11 May Lipsius 2.23
Claudia Pañeda (Oviedo) 25 May
Lipsius 2.23
Jesús Olguin Martinez (Humboldt Berlin)  1 June Lipsius 2.23

*Note that the talk on 26th April is held on a Wednesday, in order to avoid the King’s Day holiday on 27th April, and therefore is in a different room. The timeslot is unchanged (16:15-17:30).

Looking forward to seeing you there!

– Lis (on behalf of the ComSyn organising committee)

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Thu 8 Dec – Leonel Fongang

Speaker: Leonel Tadjo Fongang (Universität Leipzig)
Title: Towards a Unified Theory for Noun Class Agreement in Grassfields Bantu
Date: Thursday 8 December
Location: Lipsius 208
Time: 16:15 – 17:30

Abstract
DP-internal agreement in Grassfields Bantu languages exhibits cross-linguistically rare patterns. In canonical order, where the agreeing modifiers (possessive and demonstrative pronouns, for example) generally follow the noun, we find regular agreement in noun class. In the reverse order, we get what, on the surface, looks like (1) regular agreement (Yemba and Medumba), (2) reduced/impoverished agreement (Ngemba) (3) zero agreement (Shupamem?) or (4) more agreement than expected (Aghem and Nweh). In this talk, I argue that Feature Gluttony (Coon & Keine 2021) may provide the correct setting for proposing a unified account of the observed patterns. I show, specifically for Ngemba, that noun class probes in surface N-POSS/DEM order (canonical order) agree with and copy exactly the features they need for vocabulary insertion in the post-syntax. In POSS/DEM-N order, they agree with and copy more gender features than they need for vocabulary insertion. This, I claim, creates a conflict in the morphology, as there is no vocabulary item that can spell out all the features on the terminal node made available to the morphology by syntax (Morphological Ineffability; Coon & Keine 2021). I adopt a repair mechanism that necessarily assumes Impoverishment before vocabulary insertion for Ngemba. Moreover, I provide empirical evidence from Nweh that Feature Gluttony might be the correct way to look at intricate patterns of noun class agreement in Grassfields Bantu in general. languages only differ in the type of repairs they apply to Feature Gluttony. While Ngemba, for example, does Impoverishment, Nweh does Fission which, in turn, presupposes multiple exponence.

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