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Item Headedness and the Lexicon: The Case of Verb-to-Noun Ratios(MDPI, 2020-02-13) Polinsky, Maria; Magyar, LillaThis paper takes a well-known observation as its starting point, that is, languages vary with respect to headedness, with the standard head-initial and head-final types well attested. Is there a connection between headedness and the size of a lexical class? Although this question seems quite straightforward, there are formidable methodological and theoretical challenges in addressing it. Building on initial results by several researchers, we refine our methodology and consider the proportion of nouns to simplex verbs (as opposed to light verb constructions) in a varied sample of 33 languages to evaluate the connection between headedness and the size of a lexical class. We demonstrate a robust correlation between this proportion and headedness. While the proportion of nouns in a lexicon is relatively stable, head-final/object-verb (OV)-type languages (e.g., Japanese or Hungarian) have a relatively small number of simplex verbs, whereas head-initial/verb-initial languages (e.g., Irish or Zapotec) have a considerably larger percentage of such verbs. The difference between the head-final and head-initial type is statistically significant. We, then, consider a subset of languages characterized as subject-verb-object (SVO) and show that this group is not uniform. Those SVO languages that have strong head-initial characteristics (as shown by the order of constituents in a set of phrases and word order alternations) are characterized by a relatively large proportion of lexical verbs. SVO languages that have strong head-final traits (e.g., Mandarin Chinese) pattern with head-final languages, and a small subset of SVO languages are genuinely in the middle (e.g., English, Russian). We offer a tentative explanation for this headedness asymmetry, couched in terms of informativity and parsing principles, and discuss additional evidence in support of our account. All told, the fewer simplex verbs in head-final/OV-type languages is an adaptation in response to their particular pattern of headedness. The object-verb/verb-object (OV/VO) difference with respect to noun/verb ratios also reveals itself in SVO languages; some languages, Chinese and Latin among them, show a strongly OV ratio, whereas others, such as Romance or Bantu, are VO-like in their noun/verb ratios. The proportion of nouns to verbs thus emerges as a new linguistic characteristic that is correlated with headedness.Item Explorations in Diagnosing Competence and Performance Factors in Linguistic Inquiry(2022) Liter, Adam; Lidz, Jeffrey; Hornstein, Norbert; Linguistics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation presents a series of case studies concerned with whether the signal in a given set of measurements that we take in the course of linguistic inquiry reflects grammatical competence or performance factors. We know that performance and competence do not always covary, yet it is not uncommon to assume that measurements that we take of linguistic performance do transparently reflect the underlying grammatical competence that is the target of inquiry. This has been a very useful and fruitful assumption in the vast majority of cases. Nonetheless, there are certain cases where more careful consideration of the linking hypothesis between the underlying competence of interest and the measurements of linguistic behavior (i.e., performance) that one takes might be warranted. This dissertation presents three case studies that try to model such consideration. How performance and competence might interact is highly dependent on the phenomenon being investigated as well as the method being used to investigate it, so there is no one-size-fits-all approach to these kinds of considerations. The goal of this dissertation is to model such consideration and to encourage more of it. In Chapter 2, we investigate English-acquiring children’s non-adult-like productions of medial wh-phrases. On the basis of experimental data showing a correlation between an independent measure of cognitive inhibition and the production of such examples, we will argue that the best explanation of these productions is that children fail to inhibit the pronunciation of the wh-copy at the intermediate clause boundary due to an underdeveloped executive function and that children do have the target adult-like English grammar with respect to the formation of wh-dependencies (contra, e.g., Thornton 1990, McDaniel, Chiu, & Maxfield 1995, de Villiers, de Villiers, & Roeper 2011). Then, in Chapter 4, we investigate the status of island violations under sluicing (i.e., TP ellipsis). Sluicing apparently improves the acceptability of island violations contained inside the ellipsis site (see, e.g., Ross 1969). Whether we should understood this improved acceptability as indicative of such examples being grammatical is an open question (cf. Ross 1969, Chomsky 1972, Lasnik 2001, Fox & Lasnik 2003, Merchant 2005, 2008b, 2009, Temmerman 2013, Griffiths & Lipták 2014, Barros 2014a, Barros, Elliott, & Thoms 2014, 2015). We investigate the status of such examples with several 2 × 2 experiments, an experimental paradigm discussed in detail in Chapter 3. The idea of the experimental design is to use differences between acceptability ratings and subtraction logic afforded by the linking hypothesis between acceptability and grammaticality to try to more directly get at grammaticality. Our results from this chapter are ultimately somewhat inconclusive, but for potentially methodologically informative reasons. Finally, in Chapter 5, we use the same kind of experimental paradigm to investigate the status of Bulgarian examples with multiple wh-dependencies, where one of the wh-dependencies crosses an island and the other does not. Bulgarian is a language with multiple fronting of wh-elements, and it has been observed that examples where one of the wh-dependencies spans an island but not the other are improved in acceptability (see, e.g., Richards 1997, 1998, 2001). Such examples have thus been taken to be grammatical, though they do still exhibit some degree of unacceptability. We use the same sort of experimental paradigm to try to ascertain the grammaticality status of these examples. We find evidence that such examples are indeed grammatical, which reaffirms the importance of ensuring our syntactic theories can account for such examples.Item All about alles: The syntax of wh-quantifier float in German(2021) Doliana, Aaron Gianmaria Gabriel; Lasnik, Howard; Hornstein, Norbert; Linguistics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis offers an in-depth investigation of “wh-quantifier float” of the quantifying particle ‘alles’ in German. 'Alles' (etymologically, ‘all’) appears in wh-questions like 'Wen alles hat die Mare eingeladen?' (‘Who-all did Mare invite?’). The thesis focuses on the syntactic distribution of 'alles'. 'Alles' enjoys a wide distribution in the clause. It can occur both ‘adjacent’ to its ‘associate’ wh-phrase, and ‘distant’ from it, in various positions of the clause. I address three questions: What determines the distribution of 'alles'? Are adjacent 'alles' and ‘distal alles’ the same category? What licenses distal 'alles'? I answer these questions by arguing for a stranding analysis of distal 'alles': 'alles' and its associate form a first-Merge constituent, which is optionally separated in the course of the derivation through a process that involves movement ([WH alles] ⇒ [WH. . . [[WH alles]. . . ]]). The conclusion is compatible with prior analyses that argued for or assumed (a) constituency, and (b) a movement dependency in overt syntax. The conclusion is at odds with adverbial analyses, which assume that distal 'alles' is an adverbial. I provide two main empirical arguments. First, I argue against the idea that distal 'alles' and adjacent 'alles' are separate lexical items, or have different lexical content. Second, I argue that the “Chain Link Generalization” is the most accurate generalization for the distribution of 'alles': Given a derivation involving 'alles' and a licit associate, 'alles' may appear in any position which hosts an Abar-chain link of the associate, and in no other position. I show that 'alles' has “no distribution of its own in the clause”. Rather, the distribution of 'alles' depends on the potential distribution of its associate and can be predicted by the associate’s category, the associate’s base-position, the derivation that the associate undergoes in a given sentence. Conceptually, I argue that a stranding analysis is favored by simplicity as most generalizations established in this dissertation are directly entailed by it.Item Identity Conditions on Ellipsis(2021) Ranero Echeverría, Rodrigo; Polinsky, Maria; Preminger, Omer; Linguistics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation presents a new perspective on the identity condition underpinning ellipsis in natural language. It argues that the condition is irreducibly syntactic—at least in part—but the way this syntactic component works is different than previously thought. First, instead of simple identity of structures/features, the condition relies on non-distinctness. For example, a privative feature present in the antecedent but not in the ellipsis site (or vice-versa) does not constitute a violation of identity. Nor does a functional projection present in one but not the other. Second, the identity condition includes a component that pertains to √ROOTs. Unlike the component requiring featural non-distinctness, √ROOTs in the ellipsis site and the antecedent must be strictly identical. After providing an overview of the core research questions surrounding ellipsis, the dissertation builds its initial case in chapter 2 on the basis of novel data from Kaqchikel (Mayan). In contrast to the pattern familiar from languages like English, Kaqchikel bans certain voice mismatches under sluicing, but allows others. To account for that, I argue that clauses in the Agent Focus voice—which can mismatch with active and passive clauses—lack the VoiceP layer. The proposed identity condition which relies on non-distinctness captures this newly-established pattern. The empirical scope is expanded in chapter 3, where I consider mismatches above VoiceP in several languages. I show that the proposed identity condition can account for the observed generalizations regarding tense, polarity, illocution, and modality mismatches, which remain unexplained under other proposals. Chapter 4 zooms into the nominal domain and discusses mismatches in grammatical gender under nominal ellipsis in argument and predicate positions. I present cross-linguistically recurrent patterns of well-formed and ill-formed mismatches and argue that the proposed identity condition (coupled with the independently motivated mechanism of repair-by-ellipsis of morphophonological gaps) is necessary and sufficient to account for the attested patterns. I also argue that certain configurations satisfy the identity condition but are ill-formed for other reasons; in particular, ellipsis cannot repair encyclopedic gaps. Extensions of the proposal are discussed in chapter 5, including voice mismatches under sluicing in Austronesian languages, Chung’s generalization, and vehicle change phenomena.Item Functional structure in the noun phrase: revisiting Hebrew nominals(Ubiquity Press, 2020-07-02) Preminger, OmerThis paper revisits Ritter’s (1991) findings concerning Hebrew nominals in light of recent arguments that nominal phrases are headed by the noun itself (rather than enclosed in functional structure), and shows that the force of Ritter’s argument is as strong as it ever was. It provides strong evidence in favor of functional structure above the projection of the noun itself.Item Functional structure in the noun phrase: revisiting Hebrew nominals(Glossa: a journal of general linguistics (Ubiquity Press), 2020-05-12) Preminger, OmerThis paper revisits Ritter’s (1991) findings concerning Hebrew nominals in light of recent arguments that nominal phrases are headed by the noun itself (rather than enclosed in functional structure), and shows that the force of Ritter’s argument is as strong as it ever was. It provides strong evidence in favor of functional structure above the projection of the noun itself.Item MODALS AND THEIR COMPLEMENTS IN DUTCH AND BEYOND(2020) van Dooren, Annemarie; Hacquard, Valentine; Polinsky, Maria; Linguistics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In this dissertation I investigate the syntax and semantics of modals like can and must and their counterparts in other languages. Modals like can and must can be used to express both obligations (as in employees must wash their hands, called deontic modality) and possibilities given what is known (as in John must be home; his car isn't in the parking lot, called epistemic modality), but previous work shows that the availability of these different 'flavors' of modality are constrained by their syntactic environment. My main claim is that in all languages discussed, modal meanings are specifically restricted by their complement size. For English modals, which are treated as functional items that are part of the functional projections from the verb, this is often captured by having modals appear in different positions in the functional projection of the verb based on their modal flavor: Epistemic modals are located high, above tense, while non-epistemic modals, such as deontics, are located low, below aspect (Cinque 1999, Hacquard 2006, 2008, a.o.). I argue that in Dutch, modals are verbs (following Aelbrecht 2010), and as such, they host their own functional projections. Despite this, some of the same syntactic restrictions on the availability of modal flavor hold, which argues for a recasting of the cross-linguistic generalizations not in terms of position of the functional projection, but in terms of complement size. I claim that cross-linguistically, different flavors require different types of complements: epistemics need a complement the size of a Tense Phrase (in line with Cinque 1999, Hacquard 2006), deontics need the size of an Aspectual Phrase (building on Rubinstein 2012), while other non-epistemics can combine with a smaller-sized complement. I will provide two case studies in favor of the claim that complement size restricts the availability of modal flavors: In chapter 3, I will discuss the interaction between tense and modality, and in chapter 4, I will discuss the case of modals with non-verbal complements.Item What the PCC tells us about “abstract” agreement, head movement, and locality(Ubiquity Press, 2019-01-24) Preminger, OmerBased on the cross- and intra-linguistic distribution of Person Case Constraint (PCC) effects, this paper shows that there can be no agreement in ϕ-features (person, number, gender/noun-class) which systematically lacks a morpho-phonological footprint. That is, there is no such thing as “abstract” ϕ-agreement, null across the entire paradigm. Applying the same diagnostic to instances of clitic doubling, we see that these do involve syntactic agreement. This cannot be because clitic doubling is agreement; it behaves like movement (and unlike agreement) in a variety of respects. Nor can this be because clitic doubling, qua movement, is contingent on prior agreement—since the claim that all movement depends on prior agreement is demonstrably false. Clitic doubling requires prior agreement because it is an instance of non-local head movement, and movement of X0 to Y0 always requires a prior syntactic relationship between Y0 and XP. In local head movement (the kind that is already permitted under the Head Movement Constraint), this requirement is trivially satisfied by (c-)selection. But in non-local cases, agreement must fill this role.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.
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