Linguistics Theses and Dissertations
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Item Adjunct Control: Syntax and processing(2018) Green, Jeffrey Jack; Williams, Alexander; Linguistics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation analyzes the syntax and processing of adjunct control. Adjunct control is the referential relation between the implicit (PRO) subject of a non-finite adjunct clause and its understood antecedent, as in the temporal adjunct in ‘Holly1 went to bed [after PRO1 drinking milk]’, or the rationale clause in ‘August1 sat on the couch [in order PRO1 to read library books]’. Adjunct control is often assumed to involve a syntactic ‘Obligatory Control’ (OC) dependency, but I show that some adjuncts also permit what is referred to as ‘Non-Obligatory Control’ (NOC), as in the sentences ‘The food tasted better [after PRO drinking milk]’ and ‘The book was checked out from the library [in order PRO to read it]’, where PRO refers to some unnamed entity. I argue that for some adjuncts, OC and NOC are not in complementary distribution, contrary to assumptions of much prior literature, but in agreement with Landau (2017). Contrary to implicit assumptions of Landau, however, I also show that this OC/NOC duality does not extend to all adjuncts. I outline assumptions that Landau’s theory would have to make in order to accommodate the wider distribution of OC and NOC in adjuncts, but argue that this is better accomplished within the Movement Theory of Control (Hornstein, 1999) by relaxing the assumption that all adjuncts are phases. Even in adjuncts where both OC and NOC are possible, OC is often strongly preferred. I argue that this is in large part due to interpretive biases in processing. As a foundational step in examining what these processing biases are, the second part of this dissertation uses visual-world eyetracking to compare the timecourse of interpretation of subject-controlled PRO and overt pronouns in temporal adjuncts. The results suggest that PRO can be interpreted just as quickly as overt pronouns once the relevant bottom-up input is received. These experiments also provide evidence that structural predictions can facilitate reference resolution independent of next-mention predictions.Item A Structural Theory of Derivations(2018) Stone, Zachary; Lasnik, Howard; Linguistics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Operations which take in tuples of syntactic objects and assign them output syntactic objects are used to formalize the generative component of most formal grammars in the minimalist tradition. However, these models do not usually include information which relates the structure of the input and output objects explicitly. We develop a very general formal model of grammars which includes this structural change data, and also allows for richer dependency structures such as feature geometry and feature-sharing. Importantly, syntactic operations involving phrasal attachment selection, agreement, licensing, head-adjunction, etc. can all be captured as special kinds of structural changes, and hence we can analyze them using a uniform technique. Using this data, we give a rich theory of isomorphisms, equivalences, and substructures of syntactic objects, structural changes, derivations, rules, grammars, and languages. We show that many of these notions, while useful, are technically difficult or impossible to state in prior models. It is immediately possible to define grammatical notions like projection, agreement, selection, etc. structurally in a manner preserved under equivalences of various sorts. We use the richer structure of syntactic objects to give a novel characterization of c-command naturally arising from this structure. We use the richer structure of rules to give a general theory of structural analyses and generating structural changes. Our theory of structural analyses makes it possible to extract from productions what structure is targeted by a rule and what conditions a rule can apply in, regardless of the underlying structure of syntactic objects or the kinds of phrasal and featural manipulations performed, where other formal models have difficulty incorporating such structure-sensitive rules. This knowledge of structural changes also makes it possible to extend rules to new objects straightforwardly. Our theory of structural changes allows us to deconstruct them into component parts and show relationships between operations which are missed by models lacking this data. Finally, we extend the model to a copying theory of movement. We implement a traditional model of copying ‘online’, where copies and chains are formed throughout the course of the derivation (while still admitting a feature calculus in the objects themselves). Part of what allows for this is having a robust theory of substructures of derived objects and how they are related throughout a derivation. We show consequences for checking features in chains and feature-sharing.Item Comparative psychosyntax(2015) Chacón, Dustin Alfonso; Phillips, Colin; Linguistics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Every difference between languages is a “choice point” for the syntactician, psycholinguist, and language learner. The syntactician must describe the differences in representations that the grammars of different languages can assign. The psycholinguist must describe how the comprehension mechanisms search the space of the representations permitted by a grammar to quickly and effortlessly understand sentences in real time. The language learner must determine which representations are permitted in her grammar on the basis of her primary linguistic evidence. These investigations are largely pursued independently, and on the basis of qualitatively different data. In this dissertation, I show that these investigations can be pursued in a way that is mutually informative. Specifically, I show how learnability con- cerns and sentence processing data can constrain the space of possible analyses of language differences. In Chapter 2, I argue that “indirect learning”, or abstract, cross-contruction syntactic inference, is necessary in order to explain how the learner determines which complementizers can co-occur with subjects gaps in her target grammar. I show that adult speakers largely converge in the robustness of the that-trace effect, a constraint on complementation complementizers and subject gaps observed in lan- guages like English, but unobserved in languages like Spanish or Italian. I show that realistic child-directed speech has very few long-distance subject extractions in En- glish, Spanish, and Italian, implying that learners must be able to distinguish these different hypotheses on the basis of other data. This is more consistent with more conservative approaches to these phenomena (Rizzi, 1982), which do not rely on ab- stract complementizer agreement like later analyses (Rizzi, 2006; Rizzi & Shlonsky, 2007). In Chapter 3, I show that resumptive pronoun dependencies inside islands in English are constructed in a non-active fashion, which contrasts with recent findings in Hebrew (Keshev & Meltzer-Asscher, ms). I propose that an expedient explanation of these facts is to suppose that resumptive pronouns in English are ungrammat- ical repair devices (Sells, 1984), whereas resumptive pronouns in island contexts are grammatical in Hebrew. This implies that learners must infer which analysis is appropriate for their grammars on the basis of some evidence in linguistic envi- ronment. However, a corpus study reveals that resumptive pronouns in islands are exceedingly rare in both languages, implying that this difference must be indirectly learned. I argue that theories of resumptive dependencies which analyze resump- tive pronouns as incidences of the same abstract construction (e.g., Hayon 1973; Chomsky 1977) license this indirect learning, as long as resumptive dependencies in English are treated as ungrammatical repair mechanisms. In Chapter 4, I compare active dependency formation processes in Japanese and Bangla. These findings suggest that filler-gap dependencies are preferentially resolved with the first position available. In Japanese, this is the most deeply em- bedded clause, since embedded clauses always precede the embedding verb(Aoshima et al., 2004; Yoshida, 2006; Omaki et al., 2014). Bangla allows a within-language comparison of the relationship between active dependency formation processes and word order, since embedded clauses may precede or follow the embedding verb (Bayer, 1996). However, the results from three experiments in Bangla are mixed, suggesting a weaker preference for a lineary local resolution of filler-gap dependen- cies, unlike in Japanese. I propose a number of possible explanations for these facts, and discuss how differences in processing profiles may be accounted for in a variety of ways. In Chapter 5, I conclude the dissertation.Item Syntactic head movement and its consequences(2014) Funakoshi, Kenshi; Lasnik, Howard; Linguistics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis attempts to assimilate head movement as far as possible to phrasal movement. In particular, I argue that if we assume that the computational system of natural languages does not discriminate head movement from phrasal movement in terms of locality and the possible mode of operation, a distributional difference between these two types of movement can be explained by the interaction between a locality constraint and an anti-locality constraint to which syntactic movement operations are subject, and crosslinguistic variations in the possibility of what I will call headless XP-movement and headless XP-ellipsis can be reduced to parameters that are responsible for the possible number of specifiers. For this purpose, this dissertation discusses a number of syntactic phenomena: nominative object constructions in Japanese, long head movement constructions in Slavic and Romance languages, multiple topicalization in Germanic languages, predicate cleft constructions in Hebrew, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, and Yiddish, remnant VP-fronting constructions in Polish, a difference between VP-ellipsis and pseudo-gapping in English, null object constructions in Hebrew, Tagalog, Russian, European Portuguese, Japanese, Bantu languages, Persian, and Serbo-Croatian, and yes/no reply constructions in Irish and Finnish.Item A Movement Account of Long-Distance Reflexives(2013) McKeown, Rebecca Katherine; Hornstein, Norbert R; Linguistics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis examines reflexive pronouns, such as Icelandic sig (Cf. Thráinsson 2007), which may be bound from outside of an infinitive clause (which I call MD "medium distance" binding) in addition to being bound locally. I propose that such reflexives are linked to their antecedents via sisterhood followed by movement: the reflexive and antecedent are first merged together as sisters, and the antecedent subsequently moves to receive its first theta-role, as schematized below: 1. He ordered Harold to shave he+sig This links the properties of bound simplex reflexives to the properties of movement. I argue that reflexives such as sig must be bound within the first finite clause because finite CP is a spell-out domain and its escape hatch is inaccessible to A-movement. Furthermore, I derive the subject-orientation of sig and other simplex reflexives from merge-over-move, combined with a numeration divided into phases including vP. Since the antecedent is moving into its first theta-role, and merge is preferable to move, the antecedent will end up in the highest position in the phase: that is, the subject. I then examine long-distance (LD) uses of sig as well as Chinese ziji, Japanese zibun, and Kannada tannu. I propose that in such cases the reflexive still has a double, which is not the antecedent but a null element, possibly an operator. It undergoes A' movement to a position in the left periphery of a finite clause, associated with point-of- view (with a divided left periphery as in Speas 2004)--and this operator is in turn associated with an antecedent either outside the finite clause, or outside the sentence entirely. This accounts for the observation that LD reflexives often must refer to POV holders (Sells 1987). Evidence for LD reflexives being mediated by an A' position comes from the interaction of binding with wh-movement in Kannada (Lidz 2008), and is one way of describing where blocking effects do and do not occur in Chinese (Anand 2006). Furthermore, in Japanese there are sometimes overt morphemes, potentially left- periphery heads, that indicate POV and can co-occur with the use of LD reflexives (Nishigauchi 2005, 2010).Item Without Specifiers: Phrase Structure and Events(2012) Lohndal, Terje; Pietroski, Paul M; Linguistics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation attempts to unify two reductionist hypotheses: that there is no relational difference between specifiers and complements, and that verbs do not have thematic arguments. I argue that these two hypotheses actually bear on each other and that we get a better theory if we pursue both of them. The thesis is centered around the following hypothesis: Each application of Spell-Out corresponds to a conjunct at logical form. In order to create such a system, it is necessary to provide a syntax that is designed such that each Spell-Out domain is mapped into a conjunct. This is done by eliminating the relational difference between specifiers and complements. The conjuncts are then conjoined into Neo-Davidsonian representations that constitute logical forms. The theory is argued to provide a transparent mapping from syntactic structures to logical forms, such that the syntax gives you a logical form where the verb does not have any thematic arguments. In essence, the thesis is therefore an investigation into the structure of verbs. This theory of Spell-Out raises a number of questions and it makes strong predictions about the structure of possible derivations. The thesis discusses a number of these: the nature of linearization and movement, left-branch extractions, serial verb constructions, among others. It is shown how the present theory can capture these phenomena, and sometimes in better ways than previous analyses. The thesis closes by discussing some more foundational issues related to transparency, the syntax-semantics interface, and the nature of basic semantic composition operations.Item Movement and Intervention Effects:Evidence from Hindi/Urdu(2011) Malhotra, Shiti; Hornstein, Norbert; Lasnik, Howard; Linguistics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the nature of intervention effects seen in various constructions like Wh-scope marking, raising and passivization. In particular, this dissertation argues in favor of a movement account for all these cases and supports the idea that (syntactic) movement is inevitable and sufficient enough to provide a unified account of various structural relations (Hornstein, 2009). It further argues that movement always happens in narrow syntax, even when it isn't visible. For some of these invisible cases, this dissertation suggests head movement as an alternative to LF movement and Agree. The second aim of this dissertation is to explain intervention effects in terms of relativized minimality (Rizzi 1990, 2004). In this consideration, this dissertation sides with Boeckx & Lasnik (2006) view that not all minimality violations are derivational: some are repairable, indicating that they must be treated as representational constraints, while others are not, indicating that they are derivational. In this study, the dissertation not only reviews cross-linguistic facts from languages like English, German, Chinese, Japanese, and Icelandic but also provides novel empirical data from Hindi/Urdu. This way, the dissertation focuses on cross-linguistic as well as language specific investigation of intervention effects. The third aspect of this dissertation therefore is to relate cross-linguistic variations in intervention effects to the difference in the nature of the phase heads among languages. For instance, the cross-linguistic difference in the properties of various constructions (such as Wh-scope marking and double object construction) is reducible to the availability of an escape hatch with the relevant phase head (C or v). In this exploration, this dissertation also makes two language specific claims about Hindi/Urdu; (a) the basic word order in this language is SVO, and (b) this language involves Wh-movement in overt syntax. The first claim contributes to the long standing debate about the basic word in Hindi/Urdu, a language which shows a dichotomy in its word order by exhibiting both SOV and SVO word order. The second claim adds to the covert vs. overt Wh-movement debate for Wh in-situ languages like Hindi/Urdu. The dissertation attributes both these aspects to the phasehood of little v in Hindi/Urdu.Item Relating Movement and Adjunction in Syntax and Semantics(2010) Hunter, Timothy; Weinberg, Amy; Linguistics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In this thesis I explore the syntactic and semantic properties of movement and adjunction in natural language, and suggest that these two phenomena are related in a novel way. In a precise sense, the basic pieces of grammatical machinery that give rise to movement, also give rise to adjunction. In the system I propose, there is no atomic movement operation and no atomic adjunction operation; the terms "movement" and "adjunction" serve only as convenient labels for certain combinations of other, primitive operations. As a result the system makes non-trivial predictions about how movement and adjunction should interact, since we do not have the freedom to stipulate arbitrary properties of movement while leaving the properties of adjunction unchanged, or vice-versa. I focus first on the distinction between arguments and adjuncts, and propose that the differences between these two kinds of syntactic attachment can be thought of as a transparent reflection of the differing ways in which they contribute to neo-Davidsonian logical forms. The details of this proposal rely crucially on a distinctive treatment of movement, and from it I derive accurate predictions concerning the equivocal status of adjuncts as optionally included in or excluded from a maximal projection, and the possibility of counter-cyclic adjunction. The treatment of movement and adjunction as interrelated phenomena furthermore enables us to introduce a single constraint that subsumes two conditions on extraction, namely adjunct island effects and freezing effects. The novel conceptions of movement and semantic composition that underlie these results raise questions about the system's ability to handle semantic variable-binding. I give an unconventional but descriptively adequate account of basic quantificational phenomena, to demonstrate that this important empirical ground is not given up. More generally, this thesis constitutes a case study in (i) deriving explanations for syntactic patterns from a restrictive, independently motivated theory of compositional semantics, and (ii) using a computationally explicit framework to rigourously investigate the primitives and consequences of our theories. The emerging picture that is suggested is one where some central facts about the syntax and semantics of natural language hang together in a way that they otherwise would not.Item Island repair and non-repair by PF strategies(2009) Nakao, Chizuru; Hornstein, Norbert R; Lasnik, Howard; Linguistics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Since Ross (1967), it has been observed that there are configurations from which otherwise unbounded movement operations cannot occur, and they are called islands. Ellipsis and resumption are known to have a peculiar property to `repair' island violations. Each chapter of this thesis discusses a case of ellipsis/resumption to examine in what cases movement out of an island becomes licit by those strategies. Chapter 2 discusses the elliptical construction called sluicing, and argues for the PF-deletion analysis of sluicing (Merchant 2001, originated from Ross 1969). I will show that ECP violations made by adjunct sluicing cannot be repaired by sluicing, unlike island violations. I will thus argue that island violations are PF-violations while ECP violations are LF violations, and that PF-deletion ameliorates only PF-deletion. Chapter 3 examines properties of stripping and argues that stripping is derived by focus movement followed by PF-deletion. I try to attribute the lack of island repair under ellipsis in stripping to the fact that focus movement is not usually overt in English. Covert movement is derived by a weak feature (Chomsky 1995), but when a focused material is included in the PF-deletion site, it undergoes last resort PF-movement to satisfy the recoverability of deletion. I claim that this PF-movement is incompatible with island-repair, speculating that island violations are ameliorated at spell-out, and post-spell-out movement is `too late' to be repaired. Chapter 4 reviews properties of Japanese sluicing, and introduces Hiraiwa and Ishihara's (2002) analysis where Japanese sluicing is derived from what they call "no da" in-situ focus construction. Under this analysis, the sluiced wh-phrase undergoes focus movement, followed by clausal deletion. I adopt the analysis of stripping to Japanese sluicing, claiming that this is another instance of the last resort focus movement at PF, which cannot ameliorate island violations. Chapter 5 discusses properties of Left Node Raising (LNR) in Japanese. Based on the fact that simple LNR shows properties distinct from Null Object Construction (NOC), I claim that LNR involves ATB-movement rather than NOC. However, the second gap of LNR behaves like a pronoun only when included inside an island. I claim that this is an instance of null resumptive pronoun.Item Multiple Interrogatives: Syntax, Semantics, and Learnability(2006-08-09) Grebenyova, Lydia; Lasnik, Howard; Linguistics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The dissertation consists of theoretical and experimental studies of multiple interrogatives (i.e., sentences containing more than one wh-phrase, like Who bought what?). First, I examine the status of Superiority effects in contexts with and without subject-aux(iliary) inversion cross-linguistically. The relevant contrast from English is between Who bought what?, ??What did who buy?, and *I wonder what who bought., where (*) indicates a greater degree of unacceptability by native speakers than (??). I argue that the presence of subject-aux inversion in main clauses in English is responsible for the given asymmetry, and I attribute the degraded status of ??What did who buy? to the independent semantic properties of questions. Next, I explore the semantic properties of multiple interrogatives in detail. I develop an analysis that does not rely on covert wh-movement, relying instead on the syntactic position of the Question morpheme. I also explore the nature of complex wh-phrases (e.g., what boy, which book). I propose that choice functions are part of complex wh-phrases but not bare wh-phrases. I then explore the behavior of multiple interrogatives under Sluicing (i.e., clausal ellipsis). I observe that, in Slavic, it is possible to have multiple wh-phrases as well as focused referential expressions as remnants of sluicing. Based on this data, I argue that clausal ellipsis is licensed by focus in general. I also explore the apparent Superiority effects under sluicing in Russian and Polish and conclude that those are, in fact, parallelism effects, and not minimality effects. Finally, I present the results of several language acquisition studies on at what age and how English-, Russian-, and Malayalam- speaking children acquire the language-specific syntactic and semantic properties of multiple interrogatives, given the limited evidence in the input. I report the results of the corpus studies of parental speech with respect to the frequency of occurrence of multiple interrogatives, as well as the results of the studies, where multiple interrogatives were elicited from children and adults in specific contexts. I conclude that young children acquire syntax and semantics of multiple interrogatives quite successfully. I then discuss what evidence in the input they might be using.