ComSyn Lectures

Speaker: Loes Koring (Leiden university)
Title: Disjointess in Language Acquisition
Date: Thursday 25 April
Venue: Lipsius 2.35(!)
Time: 15.15-16.30 hrs (drinks follow at Cafe de Keyzer)

Abstract:
A word like ‘somebody’ introduces a novel referent to discourse. Adult speakers of English typically accept (1) in a context in which the person who brought wine is different from the one who brought beer.

(1)          Somebody brought wine and somebody brought beer to the party.

The disjointness in reference in (1) does not follow from the semantics of the existentially quantified argument, but rather from an implicature of disjointness. Results from an experiment with 3- to 5-year-old English-speaking children show that children have no difficulty deriving disjointness in sentences like (1). Results from two more experiments demonstrate that children do have difficulty, however, deriving the disjointness implicature when the existentially quantified argument is left implicit. This is the case in short verbal passives as in (2).

(2)          The girl is being painted.

Verbal passives involve existential quantification of the external argument, giving rise to an implicature of disjointness, like in (1). As a result, (2) is not compatible with a reflexive event in which the girl painted herself. In contrast to adults, 3-year-olds accept (2) as a description of a reflexive event. I will discuss these results as well as the implications for the syntax of adjectival passives.

Speaker: Jenneke van der Wal (Leiden university)
Title: Gender on n in Bantu DP structure: from root-derived nominals to locatives (a joint work with Zuzanna Fuchs)
Date: Thursday 04 April
Venue: Van Eyckhof 2/006
Time: 15.15-16.30 hrs (drinks follow at Cafe de Keyzer)

Abstract:
Grammatical gender is a noun-categorizing feature that is not interpretable and largely arbitrary. Big questions are where this gender information is stored (in the lexicon, Num, Gen, or n) and whether this varies crosslinguistically. In this talk we test the proposal that gender is universally on n (Kramer 2015, following Kihm 2005 and Ferrari 2005, among others) by establishing the parameters of variation across a range of Bantu languages. We show in a DM account how gender on n can account for the morphosyntactic properties of noun classes, also in derived nominals (deverbal, diminutive, and locative), and how a structural difference between diminutives and locatives has potential consequences for our thinking about the reference.

Speaker: Guido Vanden Wyngaerd (KU Leuven)
Title: Phonology-Free Syntax
Date: Thursday 21 March
Venue: Van Eyckhof 2/006
Time: 15.15-16.30 hrs

Abstract:
The Principle of Phonology-Free Syntax (PPFS) states that “[i]n the grammar of a natural language, rules of syntax make no reference to phonology” (Miller, Pullum, and Zwicky 1997). Late-insertion theories of syntax, like Distributed Morphology and Nanosyntax, adopt an architecture of the grammar from which the PPFS follows: if the building blocks of syntax are roots and features, i.e. elements with no phonology, then the syntactic rules by which these elements combine cannot make reference to phonological properties. Recently, Harley (2014) has argued that roots must be individuated in the syntax, a proposal that lets the phonology into the syntax through the backdoor again. Harley’s argument involves the phenomenon of root suppletion. We propose a theory of root suppletion that does not require Harley’s backdoor. For such a theory to be possible, a distinction must be made between syntactic √s and morphological roots.

Speaker: Gurmeet Kaur (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen)
Title: Not all imperatives have a Jussive head- Insights from allocutive imperatives
Date: Thursday 7 March
Venue: Van Eyckhof 2/006
Time: 15.15-16.30 hrs

Abstract:
According to the syntactic-pragmatic approach to imperatives, all imperatives contain a dedicated functional head with a 2nd person feature, labeled the Jussive head (Zanuttini 2008; Zanuttini, Pak & Portner 2012); (also see Jensen 2003; Bennis 2006). In this talk, I investigate the (2nd person subject) imperative paradigm in Punjabi, an allocutive Indo- Aryan language, which can encode the addressee of the speech act via overt verbal morphology (Kaur 2017, 2018). The language has two distinct imperatives for the 2nd plural/honorific subject. While the first type of imperative is composed of the bare verb stem and is marked with –o as in (1), the other imperative comprises of a perfective verb form with obligatory allocutive marking je, (2).

(1) (tussii)         kitaab         paRh-o            (*je)
(2.pl/hon)     book.acc    read-2.pl/hon alloc.pl/hon
‘Please read a book!’                                                                                      (Standard imperative)

(2) (tussii)         kitaab         paRhe-yaa-(*o)         je
 (2.pl/hon)    book.acc    read-perf-2.pl/hon   alloc.pl/hon
‘Please read a book!’                                                                                     (Allocutive imperative)

I begin the talk by demonstrating that the imperative in (1) supports the presence of a Jussive head, unique to imperative structures. However, in view of the allocutive imperative in (2), I take issue with the across-the-board presence of a (c)overt Jussive head by providing a twofold argument. First, I show that there is an independent ban on multiple occurrences of 2nd person agreement in the inflectional domain in the language (also noted for other allocutive languages such as Basque (Miyagawa 2012); Tamil (McFadden 2017) and Magahi (Alok & Baker 2018, ms)). This weakens the possibility of a co-occurring allocutive and a (c)overt Jussive head, both of which host a 2nd person feature. Secondly, more evidence for the absence of the Jussive head in (2) comes from the ability of the allocutive head to agree with and bind the 2nd person subject, effectively taking over the role of the Jussive head. More specifically, allocutivity in Punjabi is realized at T as a consequence of agreement with the Addressee-DP in the left periphery. In the absence of another case valuing functional head, the allocutive T head undergoes agreement with the 2nd person subject. This forms a multiple agreement chain (in the spirit of Kratzer 2009; Arregi & Hanink 2018; Bronwyn & Zeijlstra 2018; Raynaud
2018) between the T head, the subject DP, and the Addressee-DP, yielding the required imperative syntax. When this multiple agreement relation cannot be obtained, as in scenarios with a phi-complete v head that can value the subject rendering it inactive for further agreement, we obtain a declarative with allocutivity. In conclusion, this paper argues that positing an imperative-specific functional locus of the 2nd person feature across all imperatives is incorrect. What is crucial to imperative syntax is the presence of an ’active’ 2nd person subject, which is available for agreement with a 2nd person feature—in allocutive systems, this 2nd person feature can also be provided by the (clause-type independent) allocutive head.

Speaker: Katharina Hartmann (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main)
Title: The interpretation of syntactic focus variation
Date: Thursday 21 February
Venue: Van Eyckhof 2/006
Time: 15.15-16.30 hrs

Abstract:
In many West-African languages, non-subject focus in questions and answers is expressed in two varying syntactic forms, an ex situ form, and an in situ form. Ex situ focus is syntactically marked in one or several respects involving at least fronting of the focused constituent. In situ focus shows the canonical word order and usually no formal indication of focus. This asymmetry has been taken to indicate an information structural split between two types of focus relating in situ order to new information, and ex situ order to contrastive focus. Whether this semantic distinction is categorical or not, is a matter of contro-versial debate. Critics of the view that form and interpretation vary along the same coordinates have argued that the correlation between ex situ vs. in situ focus and contrastive vs. non-contrastive interpretation is only a tendency, and not a 1:1 correlation, e.g. Hartmann & Zimmermann (2007). Zimmermann (2008) and Zimmermann & Onea (2011) propose to derive the ‘contrastive’ effect of ex situ focus from a discourse-semantic strategy that allows the speaker to indicate unexpected discourse moves.

In this talk, I first discuss new data from Dagbani (Mabia), which support the claim in Titov (t.a.) on Akan that the alternative set represented by an ex situ focus is interpreted as discourse-salient but not exhaustively. Ex situ and in situ focus differ wrt. the discourse-salience of the elements from the focus alternative sets. In situ focus refers to an open set not expressing any expec-tation from the part of the speaker wrt. to the state of mind of the hearer. Ex situ focus on the other hand, refers to discourse-salient alternatives, which, according to Titov (t.a.), are D-linked. This interpretation is naturally compati-ble with a uniqueness interpretation of the focus constituent. Exhaustivity is syntactically coded by a cleft structure not regularly used in focus contexts.

Second, I will fathom the possibility of non-matching pairs of ex situ and in situ questions and answers in some Niger-Congo languages. I show that the se-quence Q in situ – A ex situ is often blocked. Departing from the assumption that the alternative sets of in situ and ex situ focus differ in size, I claim that the set denoted by the question must be equal to or contained in the set de-noted by the answer. This accounts for the unavailability of the mentioned sequence. I suggest that this may be derived from a presupposition failure.

References: • Hartmann, Katharina & Malte Zimmermann (2007): Place – Out of Place: Focus in Hausa. Kerstin Schwabe and Susanne Winkler (eds.) On Information Structure: Meaning and Form. Amster-dam: John Benjamins. 365–403. • Titov, Elena (2018): Morphosyntactic Encoding of Information Struc-ture in Akan. To appear in Glossa. • Zimmermann, Malte (2008): Contrastive Focus and Emphasis. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 55: 347–360. • Zimmermann, Malte and Edgar Onea (2011): Focus Marking und Focus Interpretation. Lingua 121: 1651–1670. doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2011.06.002

Speaker: Myrthe Bergstra (Utrecht University)
Title: Micro-variation, contact and change: the absentive in Frisian and Dutch
Date: Thursday 14 February
Venue: Van Eyckhof 2/006
Time: 15.15-16.30 hrs

Abstract

Speaker: Caitlin Meyer (University of Amsterdam)
Title: Rule and order: using structure to acquire ordinal numerals
Date: Thursday 29 November
Venue: Van Eyckhof 3/002
Time: 15.15-16.30 hrs
drinks: Cafe de Keyzer

Abstract:
This talk compares the acquisition of ordinals in Dutch and English, and argues that both groups of learners acquire ordinals in a rule-based fashion. This claim is based on data from 250 children (2;08–6;04), which show that children acquire irregular ordinals (such as derde ‘third’) after they acquire regular synthetic forms (such as vierde ‘fourth’) and even after analytic ordinals (e.g., boot zes ‘boat six’). This may seem unsurprising or even obvious: it only makes sense for children to prefer rule-based forms. Or does it?
This pattern is actually quite puzzling: children seem to skip a lexical learning stage before acquiring their ordinal rule. This makes ordinal acquisition unlike cardinal acquisition (where lexical learning is key, e.g., Le Corre & Carey 2007), and unlike the acquisition of inflectional or derivational morphology (where children initially store morphologically complex forms, cf. Clark 2104, Yang 2016). This begs the question: if not from stored evidence, where does this rule come from and how does this rule learning actually work? I argue that the interplay between transparent linguistic knowledge and abstract concepts is just the recipe for children to cook up ordinal meaning from structural ingredients.

Speaker: Siavash Rafiee Rad (Leiden University)
Title: The Semantics of Ellipsis in Persian Complex Predicates
Date: Thursday 15 November
Venue: Van Eyckhof 3/002
Time: 15.15-16.30 hrs
drinks: Cafe de Keyzer

Abstract:
The study of Ellipsis has been of special interest to scholars of linguistics. One reason for this interest is the fact that the meaning of a sentence with ellipsis cannot purely be based on its antecedent. This talk intends to discuss ellipsis in Persian Complex predicate constructions in which parts of the verbal construction along with some of its arguments are elided. I will argue that ellipsis resolution in such constructions is licensed due to the logical form of such verbal constructions and the relationship that holds amongst parallel elements in the source and the target sentence. Finally, I will discuss how distinguishing between primary and secondary occurrences of anaphoric expressions in the logical form can account for the correct and grammatical reading of intended anaphoric expressions in elliptical sites.

Speaker: Deniz Tat (Leiden University)
Title: Can zero-derived nominals project an argument structure?
Date: Thursday 25 October
Venue: Van Eyckhof 3/002
Time: 15.15-16.30 hrs
drinks: Cafe de Keyzer

Abstract:
In this talk, I will revisit the claim that zero-derived nominals cannot have an argument structure (Grimshaw, 1990; Borer, 2003; Alexiadou and Grimshaw, 2008) by looking at a class of such nominals in Turkish that assign accusative case. These nominals are always of foreign origin, mostly Arabic, but also French and Italian, while their Semitic or Romance derivational histories have no formal status in the synchronic grammar of Turkish. They not only assign structural case, but also allow aspectual and agent-oriented modification, event control within rationale clauses and binomial each, all indicating the presence of a verbal representation. They are analogous to English nominals, such as murder, collapse, repair and defeat, as in the example “the frequent murder of judiciary and governmental officials” (Harley, 2009: 341), which are crucially of Latinate/French origin (see also Alexiadou 2009: 257). I will thus conclude that nominals of foreign origin can be exceptions to the generalization that zero-derived nominals do not project an argument structure, and that models of lexical borrowing must refer to underlying morphosyntactic representations.

Speaker: Jan Casalicchio (Leiden University)
Title: The subject/object asymmetry and the origin of Romance clitics
Date: Thursday 4 October
Venue: Van Eyckhof 3/002
Time: 15.15-16.30 hrs (drinks follow)

Abstract:
In this talk I discuss the differences between object and subject clitic (OCL and SCL) pronouns in Romance, and track their origin in the Middle Ages. These two types of pronouns differ because SCL generally behave as agreement markers, object clitics as real pronouns. In technical terms, subject clitics have only φ-features (i.e., agreement features), while object clitics also have D-features (pronominal features), Roberts (2010). This is shown by various tests, e.g. coordination, negation, etc (Poletto 2000).
In our analysis we propose that this difference is due to the origin of clitics: they first emerged in Old Romance in topicalisation contexts, to resume a dislocated element. However, dislocated objects are more distant from their usual, unmarked position than dislocated subjects (technically: objects have to cross a phase boundary, subjects do not). For this reason, objects have to be resumed by a richer pronominal element than subjects. Later on, the “poorer” structure of subject clitics lead to subject doubling, a common process in Northern Italian Dialects.