Syntax & Semantics Circle

University of California, Santa Cruz

Winter 2018

March 19

Ivy Sichel (UC Santa Cruz): “Neg-Expressions, locality, and fragments”

Neg-words in Neg-concord (NC) languages may constitute a fragment answer to a positive question, in (1b) (Watanabe 2004), similar to negative indefinites in non-NC systems, such as English (1c). This poses a challenge for theories of NC, and especially for those theories which do not view neg-words as inherently negative (e.g., Ladusaw 1992, Brown 1999, Giannakidou 2000, Weiss 2002, Zeijlstra 2004, Penka 2010): where does the negativity of the fragment reside and how is the neg-word licensed? Theories of fragment answers which involve neg-word fronting combined with TP-sluicing, as in (2), may be on the right track, but because the antecedent is positive they do not provide an immediate solution to this problem. In this talk I present cross-linguistic evidence from long-distance NC and fragments, in (3-4), to support the view that sluicing is necessarily involved, and there must be an instance of covert high negation (Schwartz & Bhatt 2006, Zeijlstra 2011, among others) above the position of the fragment. The grammaticality of LD NC, as in (3) makes it possible to compare, in LD contexts, NC fragments in Hebrew with Neg-Indef fragments in English, in (4), and here we seem to observe a difference. Whereas an English neg-indef yields ambiguity, a neg-word yields only the interpretation in which Neg scopes in the matrix clause. This suggests that the operation that licenses the N-word fragment is structurally constrained; the fact that negation in the NC example has to take wide scope; and this suggests that sluicing is involved. Further motivation for this view is provided in the talk by the comparison of different kinds of clausal complements and their interaction with LD NC and the corresponding fragments. a. hu *(lo) ra’a af talmid / af seret. Hebrew he NEG saw N-student / N-film / N-student / N-film ‘He didn’t see any student / any film.’ b. A: Et mi hi ra’ata? ACC who she saw ‘Who did she see?’ B: Af exad Neg-word =hi lo ra’ata af exad she didn’t see Neg-word c. A: Who did she see? B: Nobody 2. Nobody [TP she saw nobody] 3. Lo amarti Se-hi ra’ata af exad neg said.I that-she saw N-word ‘I didn’t say that she saw anyone.’ 4. a. A: Who did you say she saw? B: Nobody =Nobody did I say that she saw / I didn’t say she saw anybody =I said that nobody did she see / I said that she didn’t see anybody. b. A: Et mi amart Se-hi ra’ata? ACC who you.said that-she saw B: Af exad N-word =lo amarti Se-hi ra’ata af exad I didn’t say she saw N-word ≠amarti Se-hi lo ra’ata af exad I said that she didn’t see anybody.

March 9

Steven Foley and Maziar Toosarvandani (UC Santa Cruz): “Variation and uniformity in constraints on clitic combinations”

Languages that have clitic pronouns frequently prohibit certain combinations of these clitics (e.g., the Person-Case Constraint). Why do these constraints restrict just clitic pronouns, not arguments more generally? And, why are only some combinations of clitics prohibited and not others? We identify two patterns in the clitic combinations that are allowed across languages and across phi-domains (across person and gender). These patterns arise, we propose, from how clitics are licensed syntactically; certain asymmetries point, in particular, to the universal role played by a cyclic version of Agree in clitic licensing. The attested variation across languages in how they constrain clitic combinations can then be derived entirely from variation in their lexicons.

January 26

Boris Harizanov and Line Mikkelsen (Stanford University and UC Berkeley): “Resumption and Chain Reduction in Danish VP Left Dislocation”

January 12

Jake Vincent (UC Santa Cruz): “D-raising in Chamorro RCs (and beyond)”

The aim of this talk is to propose and justify an analysis for internally headed relative clauses (IHRCs) in Chamorro. I argue that Chamorro IHRCs are not captured by any of the specific analyses presented in Grosu's (2012) work on the typology of IHRCs--nor are they captured by analyses for IHRCs in related languages (Aldridge 2004; 2017). I propose that they are derived by raising of the null operator (a determiner) to the exclusion of its NP complement, stranding the head noun phrase in the relative clause and giving rise to the characteristic IHRC surface pattern. In support of the analysis, it is shown that this stranding pattern also occurs with overt determiners in constituent questions and sentences with focus, which can have a remarkably similar surface pattern to IHRCs. A potential alternative analysis for these constructions is dismissed with evidence from negative concord patterns.