Syntax & Semantics Circle
University of California, Santa Cruz
spring 2016
May 13
Erik Zyman (UCSC): “Hyperraising to object and the mechanics of Agree”
In English and other familiar languages, A-movement can occur out of an infinitival clause, but not out of a finite clause:
(1a) Sue1 seems [__1 to be embezzling money].
(1b) *Sue2 seems [__2 is embezzling money].
On one prominent analysis, this is because an element must bear an unvalued feature to be an eligible goal for Agree (the Activity Condition, Chomsky 2000, 2001). On this view, in (1b)—unlike in (1a)&emdash;Sue gets Case in the embedded clause, and, having no more unvalued features, becomes invisible to higher A-probes such as matrix T. Here, I present novel data illustrating the Janitzio P’urhepecha (JP) “accusative + complementizer” construction (e.g., ‘They want Xumo-ACC that build a house’) that strongly suggest the Activity Condition is not an inherent constraint on Agree (cf. Nevins 2004). I show that the accusative DP is in the matrix and truly A-moves out of the embedded CP (i.e., this is hyperraising, not prolepsis or object control). Crucially, a hyperraised accusative DP can be linked to a nominative floated quantifier in the embedded CP&emdash;showing that nominative Case is available in the embedded CP, but its subject A-raises out of it nonetheless, challenging the Activity Condition.
The findings have further theoretical consequences. First, I argue that existing analyses of hyperraising (e.g., Martins & Nunes 2010, Carstens & Diercks 2013, Halpert 2016, Petersen & Terzi to appear) cannot extend to the JP case, and propose that JP allows hyperraising to object but English does not because in JP, but not in English, the finite embedding C can optionally bear the feature [uD[EPP]] (cf. Cable 2012). Secondly, I argue that JP hyperraising to object can be accounted for straightforwardly on an altruistic (target-driven) analysis of movement (Chomsky 2000, 2001, 2004, McCloskey 2001), but not under Greed (Bošković 1995, 2002, 2007) or Labeling (Chomsky 2013, 2015).
April 22
Erik Maier (Berkeley): “As above, but below: Karuk directional suffixes as low applicatives”
Karuk, a Hokan language of Northern California, has a distinctive set of over 50 verbal directional suffixes used to express the Path and/or Ground of a motion event, a subset of which were analyzed by Macaulay (2004) as high applicatives (cf. Pylkkänen 2008). In this talk, I present a previously undescribed restriction wherein telic verbs cannot combine with the suffixes and argue that, while this restriction cannot easily be accounted for in a high applicative analysis, it follows neatly from an analysis of these suffixes as PathP complements to the verb in Ramchand (2008)'s system of VP decomposition, specifically as a result of the Path-Result complementarity built into that system. This requires the suffixes to reside low in the structure, and as such they constitute a new type of low applicative afforded by Ramchand (2008)'s system, one with semantics more akin to Pylkkänen (2008)'s high applicatives, severing the connection Pylkkänen (2008) makes between low or high structural position and types of applicative semantics. Some preliminary remarks on the semantics underlying the observed Path-Result complementarity follow. Throughout the talk, I will also discuss the difficulties of diagnosing telicity in the Karuk language and field situation, and present a novel test to do so, based on insights into the default temporal interpretation of bounded and unbounded verbs from Smith (2007) and Mucha (2013).
April 8
Karl DeVries (UCSC)
Sentences like (1) have played a modest role in the literature on partitives, appearing in lists of sentences counter-exemplifying the partitive constraint (roughly, that the inner DP must be definite).
(1) That book could belong to one of three people (Ladusaw 1982).
There are two strategies for reconciling bare cardinal partitives with the partitive constraint. Ladusaw (1982) argues that the inner cardinal is a specific indefinite and Barker (1998) suggests that bare cardinal partitives can also be used when inner cardinal exhausts the restrictor set; (2) has such an interpretation.
(2) Sybil is one of three people Otis admires.
Sentences like (3) suggest that matters are more complex. When a bare cardinal partitive appears in the scope of a universal quantifier it can give rise to a cumulative reading.
(3) Every student read one of three papers. (i.e. every student read one paper and three papers were read overall)
Sentence (3) does not require that the inner cardinal be specific nor does it require that there be only three (contextually salient) papers. I develop a compositional account of cumulative readings using an extension of First Order Logic with Choice (Brasoveanu & Farkas 2011) and discuss how cumulative readings fit into larger debates about the status of the partitive constraint.