ComSyn Lectures

Speakers: Kazuko Yatsushiro & Uli Sauerland (ZAS Berlin)
Title: Genitive Case on Japanese Quantifiers: The Place of the Reverse Partitive Analysis

Date: Thursday April 9th
Venue: Eyckhof 2/ room 006
Time: 15:15 – 16:30 hrs

Abstract

In Japanese noun phrases, quantificational expressions are frequently marked with genitive case. Genitive case attached to nouns marks possession or partitivity, but on quantifiers it has been re- garded as purely morphological. We show that genitive case on quantifiers can be analyzed as regular genitive case, and identify three distinct derivations. Two of these derivations proceed from an underlying partitive structure. We claim that the genitive particle can be stranded by NP ellipsis, and then attaches to a quantifier. Our analysis therefore supports an analysis of partitives assuming two NP positions where ellipsis can target one or both of those two NPs.

Speaker: Mirjam Hachem(Utrecht Institute of Linguistics)

Title: Gender Classifies Mass

Date: Thursday March 26　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　

Venue: Huizinga 4

Time: 15:15 – 16:30 hrs

                                                               Abstract

In this talk, I will deal with both the syntactic and semantic dimension of grammatical gender in Germanic languages focusing on German and Dutch. The phenomenon of grammatical gender is related to two long-standing questions in Germanic linguistics:

1. Does grammatical gender have semantic meaning or does it only serve to instantiate syntactic agreement?
2. Is grammatical gender represented in syntax by projecting its own phrase?

According to the standard view gender distinctions do not entail semantic distinctions. While singular and plural morphology is correlated with a singular and plural interpretation, masculine, feminine, and neuter morphology seem to yield no comparable semantic distinctions. With respect to phrase structure, the two most common assumptions are (a) that gender either doesn’t project a phrase at all or (b) that it involves one syntactic head which can have two or three values, depending on the language.

In this talk, I will argue that the standard assumptions summarized above are incorrect. The main point of my argument will be that grammatical gender does have a semantic dimension and that its original function was to classify nouns into different kind of mass types. I will furthermore argue that this function is still active but mostly intransparent. To prove this point, I will present substantial evidence from the morphological gender and case paradigms of German and Dutch determiners as well as diachronic data from Old Germanic languages and Indo-European. I will then propose a decomposition of the lower part of the DP into three successive projections of distinct mass types – unbounded mass, bounded mass and collection – which I will then correlate with what is traditionally thought of as feminine, masculine and neuter gender. An implicit consequence of this proposal will be that biological gender and grammatical gender are entirely unrelated.

Speaker: Marjo van Koppen (Universiteit Utrecht)  and Jeroen van Craenenbroeck (KU Leuven)
Title: Identifying Parameters
Date: Thursday March 12

Venue: Huizinga 4
Time: 15:15 – 16:30 hrs

Abstract

This talk (i) explores a new tool that offers a unique window into microparameters, namely variation in transition zones between dialects areas, (ii) identifies the microparameters that are at work in the dialect Dutch C-domain, (iii) shows that these microparameters conspire, rendering certain combinations of paramater settings highly infrequent and others very common, and (iv) provides an in-depth analysis of the attested parameter interaction.

The central data are from the C-domain of two major Dutch dialect areas: Brabantic and Flemish, and the transition zone between these dialect areas, the Dender region. We focus on the interaction between complementizer agreement, clitic doubling, short do-replies, agreement and clitics on `yes’ and `no’, and negative clitics.

We show the variation between Flemish and Brabantic and show that the picture becomes more complicated as soon as the transition zone in between these dialects is taken into account. We then analyze the variation within these three dialects by formulating three microparameters. We then extend our analysis to the variation found in the Dutch dialects more in general, showing how these parameters interact.

Speaker: Linda Badan (École Normale Supérieure, Paris) & Lisa L. Cheng (Leiden University)
Title: Exclamatives in Mandarin Chinese
Date: Thursday February 26th
Venue: Huizinga 4
Time: 15:15 – 16:30 hrs

Abstract

This talk deals with exclamatives in Mandarin and has two main objectives. The first is the application of the exclamativity tests proposed in the literature to identify the “true” sentential exclamatives in Mandarin. The second goal is to find the essential components of sentential exclamatives in Mandarin, so as to open a new perspective on the research on exclamatives in general. Our starting point is Zanuttini and Portner’s (2000, 2003) proposal, which argue that two fundamental syntactic components that identify a clause as exclamative are a factive operator and a wh-operator. They identify the force of exclamatives, with a semantic operation called widening, which is connected to the surprise reading that generally is regarded as always implied by exclamatives. In this talk, we show that there are only two types of true exclamatives in Mandarin, one involving the more deictic type of exclamatives, with zhème/nàme as markers of scalar focus, and the other with duōme, which is also scalar in nature. We argue that these two types of exclamatives reveal that, contra Zanuttini and Portner, neither wh-interrogativity, nor surprise is an essential property of exclamatives. Instead, scalar focus, ego-evidentiality as well as factivity form an integral part of exclamatives.

Speaker: Jolien Scholten (Utrecht University)
Title: Split possession in dialects of Dutch
Date: Thursday February 12th
Venue: Huizinga 4
Time: 15:15 – 16:30

Abstract
It has been argued that European languages do not grammatically distinguish different groups of nouns in possessive structures (Lødrup 2014, Dixon 2010, Nichols & Bickel 2011). However, as is clear from the literature, there are languages spoken in Europe in which kinship nouns trigger different syntactic behavior in possessive DPs (see Lødrup 2014 for Norwegian, Thraínsson 2007 for Icelandic, Delsing & Egerland 2002 for Italian and Scandinavian). These examples show that European languages do entertain strategies to make a distinction between different semantic types of nouns, which could be analyzed as an alienable-inalienable distinction. In this talk, I will present data from three Dutch dialects that point in the same direction. In Vriezenveen Dutch, Wambeek Dutch and colloquial Flemish, kinship nouns trigger divergent syntactic behavior in a possessive DP when compared to non-kinship nouns. Those varieties have number and gender agreement on possessive pronouns, as is illustrated for Vriezenveen Dutch in (1) and (2).

mien-n hoond
my-m dog.m

mien-e auto
my-f car.f

However, when the possessed noun is a kinship term, there is no agreement, as shown in (3) and (4).

mien-ø va
my father

mien-ø moe
my mother

The semantic nature of the possessed noun determines the structure of the possessive DP, i.e. agreement in the case of non-kinship nouns, absence of agreement in the case of kinship nouns. As I will show for Vriezenveen Dutch, the latter is only true when the kinship noun is introduced by a possessive pronoun. I will argue, at least for Vriezenveen Dutch, that the internal structure of a DP including a kinship noun is different from a DP with a non-kinship noun. Their different structures can account for the agreement morphology that we find on possessive pronouns and adjectives in these structures and for the particular environment in which the divergent behavior is observed (possessive pronoun in combination with a kinship noun).

Speaker: Lotte Hendriks, Sjef Barbiers, Hans Bennis (Meertens Instituut)
Title: Mapping the linguistic system
Venue: Vrieshof 4 / 012
Time: 15:15 – 16:30

Abstract

Speakers are able to judge syntactic constructions that are not part of their own language variety. When they are asked to rank a number of variants of such a construction on a scale, this ranking turns out to be parallel to the geographic frequency distribution of these variants. We consider three possible explanations for this striking fact, based on (i) processing, (ii) familiarity and (iii) the syntactic system. We argue that only the third option can explain the behavior of the speakers.

We discuss two aspects of verb clusters that exhibit variation in the Dutch dialects: the order of the verbs in the cluster and interruption of the verb cluster by non-verbal material.

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Speaker: Liisa Buelens (Ghent University)
Title: External and Event Possession in Flemish: affected arguments
Venue:  Arsenaal 112
Time: 15:15 – 16:30

Abstract
In this talk I look at Flemish External Possession patterns (FEP) such as in (1) (Haegeman, 2011, Haegeman and van Koppen, 2012). These structures seem to be derived from the internal doubling possessor (2), where the possessor is related to the possessee by a possessive pronoun coreferential with the possessor.

(1)   twas    spijtig               da      [Emma]  toen  just   [eur   velo]  kapot     was
        it.was  unfortunate   that    Emma    then   just    her    bike   broken   was
‘It was unfortunate that Emma’s bike was broken just then.’
(2)   [Emma   eur  velo]  was toen  just   kapot
        Emma    her  bike   was then   just    broken
‘Emma’s bike was broken just then.’

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Speaker: Bernat Bardagil-Mas (CLCG University of Groningen)
Title: Panará and the Case of Doubled Clitics
Venue:  Huizinga – 7
Time: 15:15 – 16:30

Abstract

This talk aims to present some ideas on some seemingly polysynthetic properties of Panará, a Jê language spoken in the Brazilian Amazon. I will address the hypothesis that Panará is a configurational language that makes extensive use of clitic doubling, which can also account for the ergative marking of argument NPs. An adpositional approach to ergativity seems to make the right predictions regarding the structure of ergative subjects, and we will try to push this hypothesis to test its limits as far as we can with the available data. We will also explore the role that mood plays in the licensing of Panará nominals, and how it can be linked with the ergative-accusative alignment split of the weak pronominal clitics. Finally, I will sketch the challenges that my working hypothesis present, and future directions for fieldwork on the language.

The Com(parative) Syn(tax) Meetings will resume in September.
We wish you a very nice summer!

Kind regards,
The ComSyn organizers

Speaker: Norma Schifano (University of Cambridge)
Title: The paradigmatic instantiation of TAM: a novel approach to Romance Verb-Movement
Venue: Lipsius/235C
Time: 13:15 – 15:00

Abstract
The aim of this talk is to explore the placement of the finite lexical verb across Romance and to show that, once a rich clausal structure is adopted, as mapped by the cartography, at least for different typologies of V-movement can be identified. The novel approach which will be then presented will show that the attested patterns are not accidental choices of these languages, but rather stem from a compensatory mechanism between syntax and morphology in the licensing of the TAM interpretation of the verb and can be successfully predicted by looking at the properties of the verb paradigms devoted to the expression of Mood, Tense and Aspect.