In this paper, we examine the emphatic focus doubling construction in American Sign Language (ASL) and Brazilian Sign Language (Libras), in which one element of the sentence appears in its base-generated position within the sentence and one copy appears in sentence-final position. We review the existing focus doubling data in the literature, as well as a previous syntactic analysis of the construction that we think is the best available option on the market (Nunes and Quadros 2005). Diverging minimally from this analysis however, we propose that movement of the focused element proceed not to the head of an emphatic focus projection, but rather through the specifier of that projection; this modification nicely precludes the need for excorporation and c-command out of a dominating non-terminal node. We then examine an asymmetry between focus doubling in Libras vs. ASL, namely that doubling is permitted in indirect questions in the former but not the latter, an asymmetry not addressed by Nunes and Quadros. We suggest that there is a ban on multiple instances of focus-driven movement in ASL, and briefly discuss how a striking parallel with restrictions on multiple foci in Modern Greek may ultimately hold the answer to resolving the asymmetry, at the same time raising interesting questions about the way that information structure maps onto phonology and syntax in different languages.

I provide a semantics of fog and the non-past construction that accounts for these patterns through the interaction of the situation aspect of the predicate with temporal properties of the constructions in question. I argue that fog is a simple existential quantifier over future intervals, whereas the non-past restricts the time that the predicate can hold to the interval extending from now to infinitely in the future. There are three logical possibilities for how an atelic predicate like ”john run” can hold of this interval. Either the predicate holds only over the the moment of speech, P holds over some interval after speech time, or P holds of the interval where John’s running would begin at speech time and extend into the future. I argue that because telic predicates do not have the Subinterval Property, they cannot hold punctually of now, and so do not give rise to ongoing readings.

(i) Mary met a man and John met a woman who know each other well.

In this paper, I demonstrate that existing analyses, both movement and base generation approaches, have difficulties accounting for split-antecedent relative clauses (SARC) without construction-specific stipulations. Even the most promising accounts do not make predictions about the actual behavior of SARC.

Formally, I propose that traditional approaches have difficulty because of how the notion of chain is represented. I provide a preliminary analysis using a novel system of representing narrow syntax that does not run into the type of problem that traditional approaches do. SARC are naturally predicted from the way I propose to treat coordination within the new system. In doing this, I argue for another direction of our model of narrow syntax (cf. Vergnaud to appear), one which redefines the representation of a chain and instead represents grammatical relationships as local – a generalized form of Multidominance. This approach to syntax makes wide-reaching predictions, which I do not discuss here. But, I show that this direction derives SARC naturally, without construction-specific stipulations.

When a verb composes with a classifier to denote a set of sets in the JFQC, there is a sharp contrast between the mixed-predicate JFQC and the collective-predicate JFQC, which is problem- atic for Link 1983 and Landman 1989. When a verb composes with a classifier to denote a set of sets in the JFQC, a mixed predicate, which is an atom predicate, can have only a distributive read- ing, whereas a collective predicate, which is a set predicate, can have both a distributive reading and a collective reading. In my analysis, this difference can be reduced to the properties of an atom predicate and a set predicate, as proposed by Winter (2002).

(1) Engdahl’s accessibility hierarchy for occurrence of MGCs (partial)

most accessible least accessible

manner adv. > temp. adv. > purpose clauses > that, than > when, because > relative clause

[untensed domains] [tensed domains]

The licensing of p-gaps may thus be variable in several regards, including across complement vs. relative vs. adjunct clauses, and more basically between tensed and untensed domains. We probe whether the licensing strategies for p-gaps of a dominant L2 (English) can affect an incompletely-acquired L1 (German) that does not license such gaps and, if so, whether such strategies follow Engdahl’s hierarchy. The presence of p-gaps would support the work of Grosjean (2008), whose view predicts that English syntax may surface (i.e., ‘seep through’) in spoken German if English has become the dominant language for an individual.

Our results support the theory of ‘grammatical seeping’, and our speakers in general behave in accordance with the predictions of Engdahl’s hierarchy. They produce p-gaps in English-to-German translations relatively frequently in manner clauses, often in temporal clauses and rarely in relative clauses. In temporal clauses we find considerable syntactic restructuring. In the least accessible context, relative clauses, speakers restructure more fundamentally, in order to eliminate the gapping environment altogether.