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    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).
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    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.
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    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.
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    Thematically Driven Movement in Japanese: A Study of Psych Verb Constructions
    (2004-04-30) Motomura, Mitsue; Hornstein, Norbert; Linguistics
    The general aim of this thesis is to provide support for the claim that movement can be driven by theta-features, advanced by Bokovič (1994), Hornstein (1999, 2001), Manzini and Russo (2000), and O'Neil (1997) among others, through a study of Japanese Psych Verb constructions that exhibit interesting peculiarities. In some psych verb constructions, theta-roles are projected in an order that diverges from the canonical order found in other dyadic constructions. The theme role of Object Experiencer (OE) verbs is realized in the subject position of the sentence, while the experiencer role is linked to the object position. On the other hand, Subject Experiencer (SE) verbs map the theme role to the object position while the experiencer role is realized in the subject position. Given that in general experiencers are mapped to the subject/external argument position, OE verb constructions raise some critical issues for the Principles and Parameters theory (Chomsky, 1981), in particular for the theories of argument structure. The first goal of the thesis is to provide a solution to this linking puzzle as well as other peculiarities of OE verbs in Minimalist terms. In particular, I claim that the subject of an OE verb sentence is derived by thematically driven movement. By allowing such movement, the inverse linking pattern, backward binding phenomenon, and scope patterns of OE verbs can be accounted for straightforwardly. The second goal is to investigate the structures of SE verbs and OE verbs and how they are related one another. I propose that an OE verb is a mono-clausal causative, composed of an SE verb base and a causative morpheme -sase, and that SE verbs are bare VPs without vP projection. This amounts to saying that SE verbs do not project the external argument. It is shown that SE verbs do not allow passivization, supporting the claim that SE verbs do not project the external argument.