ComSyn Lectures

Speaker: Seid Tvica (UvA)
Title: The Rich Agreement Hypothesis beyond Indo-European
Date: Thursday 9 February
Venue: Lipsius 30
Time: 15.15-16.30 hrs

It is well-established in the literature that many Germanic and Romance languages differ in the placement of adverbs, appearing either before or after the finite verb. This typological distinction is standardly accounted for via v-to-I⁰ movement, arguably triggered by the subject agreement features that are assumed to be located at I⁰ (cf. Roberts 1985; Kosmeijer 1986; Rohrbacher 1994; Vikner 1995; Bobaljik and Thráinsson 1998; Koeneman and Zeijlstra 2014, among many others). The observed correlation between the properties of agreement morphology and verb movement gave rise to the so-called “Rich Agreement Hypothesis” (RAH) which states that in controlled environments the finite verb moves to a vP-external position if and only if the agreement morphology is rich (cf. Koeneman and Zeijlstra 2014).  In this talk, I present the results of a typological investigation of the RAH, showing that the hypothesis holds in all studied  languages outside Indo-European that exhibit environments in which the presence (or absence) of verb movement can be detected. Although a number of languages prima facie appear to challenge the RAH, it turns out that these “counter-examples” arise due to either morphological triggers of verb movement that are not related to agreement, or other types of displacements, such as vP- and vP-remnant movement.

Speaker: Metin Bağrıaçık (Ghent University)
Title: Relative Clauses in Asia Minor Greek
Date: Thursday 8 December
Venue: Matthias de Vrieshof 4/012
Time: 15.15-16.30 hrs

In this talk I will provide a synchronic and a diachronic account of the micro-variation in headed relative clause (HRC) formation strategies within the Asia Minor Greek dialects (dialects which were spoken in the regions known as Cappadocia, Pharasa and Pontus in modern-day Turkey until 1923, but are now spoken in various locations in Greece). In all the three dialects, HRCs are finite structures. In Cappadocian and (certain sub-varieties of Pontic) HRCs are obligatorily prenominal and are introduced by morphemes identical with the definite neuter singular/plural articles (‘to/ta’– dubbed as relative articles) which agree with the number feature on the head. In Pharasiot today, HRCs, which are –similar to Cappadocian and Pontic – finite, can nevertheless be both prenominal and postnominal without any semantic or pragmatic difference between the two, and the latter has been available only for the last four decades. Moreover, in this variety, both types of HRCs are introduced by a unique morpheme near identical in form to the relative articles of the other two dialects, ‘tu’.

I will first reveal that synchronically there is nothing as ‘relative articles’ in any of the dialects, but HRCs are simply subject to the phenomenon of ‘Obligatory Definiteness Spread’ according to which all (strictly) prenominal adjectival, numeral and relative modifiers have to be marked by overt neuter articles if the head they modify is definite. This is corroborated by the fact that there is a definiteness restriction on the head in HRCs in Cappadocian and Pontic. In Pharasiot, however, the head can be both definite or indefinite, which suggests that ‘tu’ is not an article, nor it is a relative article. Then, I will trace the origins of HRCs in Cappadocian/Pontic and Pharasiot in Early Medieval Greek and reveal that HRCs in Cappadocian/Pontic are successors of an already existing prenominal HRC structure with ‘relative articles’ but are by no means identical to this structure today. In Pharasiot, on the other hand, the ‘tu’ morpheme introducing HRCs is historically bimorphemic, composed of an external determiner from the neuter set (t-) and an invariant complementizer (u) that was employed to introduce HRCs. The morphological merger of these two yielded the prenominal HRCs in Pharasiot, which are by hypothesis of matching type. Tests applied on modern-day Pharasiot HRCs support the idea that these prenominal HRCs are indeed matching HRCs. On the other hand, the newly emerged postnominal HRCs, I argue, emerged due to pattern borrowing from Modern Greek and to identification of ‘tu’ with the Modern Greek invariant relativizer ‘pu’. This is witnessed by the fact that postnominal HRCs in Pharasiot are raising HRCs, precisely as Modern Greek HRCs with the invariant complementizer ‘pu’ (and without resumptives). In effect then, in modern-day Pharasiot, prenominal and postnominal HRCs differ not only in terms of their linear word order but also in terms of their internal structure.

All in all, the study casts serious doubts on the long-standing assumptions that (i) HRCs in the dialects are prenominal (solely) due to the Turkish influence exerted on them fr almost a millennium, and that (ii) Pharasiot is a sub-variety of Pontic or Cappadocian.

Speaker: Lieven Danckaert (CNRS/Université de Lille 3)
Title: The syntax-prosody mapping in a dead language, the case of Late Latin BE-periphrases
Date: Thursday 10 November
Venue: Matthias de Vrieshof 4/012
Time: 15.15-16.30 hrs

In this talk I will be concerned with certain aspects of Latin word order and in particular the alternation between the word order patterns ‘lexical verb – auxiliary’ and ‘auxiliary – lexical verb’. As is well known, in the present day Romance languages only the latter pattern is available. My starting point is the observation that in the particular case of periphrastic expressions with a BE-auxiliary and a past participle, Late Latin has a remarkably strong and uniform preference for the head-final order ‘PaPa – Aux’. In contrast, in the case of combinations of a modal verb and a dependent infinitive, we do in fact observe the expected rise of the head-initial pattern. In order to explain the unexpected behavior of BE-periphrases, I will develop an account which characterizes the Late Latin BE-auxiliary as a prosodically weak element, which is subject to a specific PF-condition which limits its positional freedom. Crucial evidence to support this analysis comes from prose rhythm, as well as from novel corpus data on the interaction between verb placement and negation.

Speaker: Olaf Koeneman (Radboud University)

Joint work with: Hedde Zeijlstra (University of Göttingen)

Title: The Rich Agreement Hypothesis: a language universal?

Date: Thursday 27 October

Venue: Lipsius 235C

Time: 15.15-16.30 hrs

Abstract

After its initial success, the hypothesis that verb movement to an inflectional position in the clausal structure, I(nfl), correlates with richness of morphology in some sense (Kosmeijer 1986, Rohrbacher 1994, Koeneman 2000, among others), has been criticized to such an extent that it almost became the laughing stock of generative syntax. In this talk, however, we will defend this Rich Agreement Hypothesis in its strongest, bidirectional formulation (V to I movement takes place if and only if agreement is rich) and argue that all prominent counterexamples have been misanalyzed. This puts the hypothesis in the position of a potential universal, and entails that there is something to be explained (which we will do) and something to be explored for the languages that are not part of the Indo-European language group (which Seid Tvica (University of Amsterdam) has done). Apart from discussing these consequences, we will also address some recent criticisms directed against our work.

Speaker: Sjef Barbiers (Leiden University)

Title: Restructuring Bridges

Date: Thursday 20 October

Venue: Van Eyckhof 2/005

Time: 15.15-16.30 hrs

Abstract

In the sentences in (1a,b) the MoodSpeechAct adverb eerlijk gezegd/honestly is surfacing in the embedded clause but must be interpreted in the matrix clause.

(1)         Syntax-semantics mismatch type 1

1. Ik denk dat ze eerlijk gezegd voor Rooney kiezen.                                   Dutch
2. I think that they honestly will go for Rooney.                                            English

Both: ‘I honestly think they will go for Rooney.’

The reverse type of syntax-semantics mismatch is found in (2). Here the adverb ook ‘also’ is surfacing in the matrix clause but can be interpreted in the embedded clause.

(2)         Syntax-semantics mismatch type 2

Ze hebben gebeld maar… ‘They have called, but…’                                          Dutch

Ik denk ook dat ze komen.

I think also that they come

‘I think that they will also come.’

The two types of mismatches do not have the properties of speech errors or parentheticals. They are both restricted to bridge verbs. The type of adverbs that can occur in mismatch type 1 depends on the bridge verb, e.g., the bridge verb THINK only allows for MoodSpeechAct adverbs, while the bridge verb WANT only allows for ModVolition adverbs. I argue that these properties follow if we extend Cinque’s (2001) analysis of restructuring to finite complement clauses, such that the “matrix” bridge verb originates in the embedded clause and moves to the position of the matrix verb. It is this movement that distinguishes bridge verbs from other CP-selecting verbs. Only adverbs located in the specifier of the base position of the “matrix” verb in the embedded clause must be interpreted in the matrix clause. Mismatch type 2 is restricted to adverbs that are generated in or can reach a position immediately below the base position of the “matrix” verb in the embedded clause. Movement of the “matrix” bridge verb into the matrix clause makes it possible for them to move into the matrix clause as well. A consequence of this analysis is that the syntactic structure of finite CP complements of bridge verbs depends on the type of bridge verb involved. If time permits, I will also discuss other consequences, such as the analysis of long Wh-extraction, Neg-raising and complementizers.

Speaker: Probal Dasgupta (Indian Statistical Institute)

Title:  Arbitrariness at the agreement-classifier boundary

Date: Thursday 29 September

Time: 15.15-16.30

Venue: Lipsius 235C

Abstract: Classifiers may initially strike an agr[eement] language speaker as expressing Number plus obscure content. Once we put Gender in the picture, however, new questions emerge. Gender harbours arbitrariness; classification reflects tau [taxonomic] properties. Gender systems are austere; classifier systems are rich. Just how are we to handle languages like Bangla, Odia, Assamese that mix classifiers and agr? What sense can we make of the interaction of tau properties and phi-features more generally?

In the context of drafting tentative answers to these tough questions, we seem to have to appeal to semiotic principles. To introduce such principles gently, the presentation begins not with these obviously recalcitrant interactions between agr and classification phenomena, but with relatively straightforward, in-your-face facts about ‘titular’ classifiers. Titulars carry meanings like ‘big sister’ or ‘mister’ or ‘(your) excellency’; their properties await cross-linguistic exploration. It turns out that a set of titular facts in Bangla fall out neatly if we combine an unconstrained recursive syntax with sensitive principles of semiotics. These relatively easy-to-defend proposals give us the confidence to open up the much less tractable domain of agr-classifier interaction, where we seem to run into semiotic principles of a different order – at the level of characterizing feature ‘interpretability’ itself.

Speaker: Pavel Rudnev (University of Groningen)
Title: PPI-disjunctions in Russian
Date: Thursday 15 September
Time: 15.15-16.30
Venue: Lipsius 235C

Abstract:  We know since at least Szabolcsi (2002) that disjunction markers in certain languages display remarkable similarities with some in English, similarities attributable to both groups of elements’ status as positive polarity items. In the case of disjunction, this translates into the inability of disjunction to scope under a local sentential negation leading to violations of De Morgan’s laws: He doesn’t speak Russian or German in Russian can under certain circumstances be interpreted as a disjunction of negations, the narrow scope reading being unavailable. The current consensus in the literature seems to be that positive polarity is a semantic phenomenon. In this talk I suggest that positive polarity has an important syntactic component, which I show by revisiting the locality of (anti-)licensing, rescuing, the phrasal vs. clausal coordination as well as overt movement and scope in Russian.

Our meeting resume after the summer break!

We are happy to announce our preliminary schedule:

Speaker:  Jakub Dotlačil (University of Groningen)
Title: Intermediate traces in mind
Date: Thursday 2 June
Time: 15.15-16.30
Venue: Eyckhof 2-003

Abstract: Since Chomsky (1973), it has been argued extensively in syntactic research that movement spanning two or more clauses proceeds in successive cycles. Furthermore, it has been noted that intermediate traces created by successive-cyclic movement should be detectable by psycholinguistic methods, for example, in eye tracking/self-paced reading (Frazier and Clifton, 1989, Gibson et al., 2004, Keine, 2015). Consider (i).

(i) Who did the consultant claim [t_who that the proposal had pleased t_who]?

Gibson et al. (2004) and Keine (2015) show that the reconstruction of the object position t_who of “pleased” is faster in (i) than in case there is no intermediate trace present. I will discuss their findings in light of a model of memory retrieval, which might predict such a state of affairs given some well-established properties of memory (temporal decline, increase of activation after a successful recall). The main questions to be addressed will be: (i) can computational models of memory be tied to syntactic models to make fine-grained predictions in psycholinguistics (cf. Lewis et al., 2005)? (ii) can such models be used to make specific linguistic arguments (in this case, the existence of intermediate traces and their localization – at CPs, vPs etc.)?