Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Penn Linguistics Colloquium

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  • Publication
    A Stratal OT Approach to a Noun-Verb Asymmetry With Respect to Opacity in Korean
    (2009-03-23) Yun, Jiwon
    This paper revisits the well-known opacity caused by the interaction of post-obstruent tensification and coda cluster simplification in Korean and suggests a new class of data that threatens the validity of previous approaches. The new data shows that the opacity occurs only if the input belongs to a certain morphological category such as verb. Therefore, it calls for a theory in which morphology and phonology are systematically interleaved, such as Stratal OT (Kiparsky, 2000). I show that the Stratal OT approach provides a solution to the problem since it adds derivational effects as well as morphological insights to an OT grammar.
  • Publication
    Analyzing Ilokano Pseudoclefts
    (2009-03-23) Rafal, Jeremy
    Several researchers have proposed that cleft constructions in many Austronesian languages are in fact concealed pseudoclefts (Chung, 1998 for Chamorro; Paul, 2001, 2008 for Malagasy; Georgopolous, 1991 for Palauan, among others). What this paper examines is the syntactic structure of pseudoclefts in Ilokano, a VSO Austronesian language spoken in the Northern Philippines. I argue that the language employs two types of pseudoclefts, both of which are biclausal. The first type (ti-type or null copula-type pseudocleft) utilizes a null copula between a focused constituent XP and a headless relative introduced by the determiner ti. Thus, we get a construction of the type XP < copula=ø < ti + wh-clause. Despite the lack of an overt wh-phrase, material after the determiner ti contains an operator-variable chain signaled by the 'trigger' morphology, creating a headless relative much like in English and other languages. Many Austronesian languages including Ilokano exhibit the famous 'trigger-only' restriction to A-bar movement (Keenan and Comrie, 1977; Aldridge, 2004), and thus the trigger morphology found on the verb in a headless relative marks the 'role' of the variable. The second type (ket-type pseudocleft) employs the topic particle ket with the word order ti + wh-clause < ket < XP. This time, the headless relative sits in a topicalization position and the constituent after the topic particle ket introduces the focused constituent XP. I argue that the ket-type of pseudocleft is in fact a TOPIC < COMMENT construction where the focus is a full IP subject to optional ellipsis, similar to a type of specificational pseudocleft found in English (cf. den Dikken et al., 2000).
  • Publication
    Towards a Finer-Grained Theory of Italian Participial Clausal Architecture
    (2009-03-23) Benincà, Paola; Tortora, Christina
  • Publication
    Similarity Avoidance in the Proto-Indo-European Root
    (2009-03-23) Cooper, Adam I.
    This paper adapts the similarity avoidance analysis developed by Frisch, Pierrehumbert and Broe (2004) for Arabic to account for co-occurrence restrictions in the set of reconstructed verbal roots of Proto-Indo-European (PIE). Completion of the two components of the similarity avoidance methodology – the identification of consonantal co-occurrence restrictions through quantification of over- and under-representation in the data, and the appeal, as a means of explaining them, to values of similarity calculated according to shared natural classes, reveal a picture of co-occurrence noticeably more fine-grained than is conveyed by the individual constraint statements traditionally posited for the language. The analysis also evokes questions about the justification for one of these constraints in particular, that against co-occurrence of voiced unaspirated stops; the issue is examined here in further detail.
  • Publication
    Evidentiality and German Attitude Verbs
    (2009-03-23) Scheffler, Tatjana
    German attitude verbs usually embed that-clause complements. In addition, only certain verbs can also license clauses with matrix verb-second (V2) word order as their complements. These same verbs can also appear in slifting constructions. The main question addressed in this paper is why only some attitude verbs allow these additional constructions. I argue that in slifting, the attitude verb functions as an evidential parenthetical, elaborating on (Reis, 1997) and a suggestion in (Potts, 2007), but contra (Wagner, 2004). The lexical meaning of the slifting verb (e.g., the preference information for 'hope') is contributed as a conventional implicature. For V2-embedding, I show that the attitude verb syntactically and semantically embeds its complement. Still, the evidential semantics is the same as in slifting. What differs between the two cases is the distribution of the semantic pieces onto the semantic dimensions of assertion and conventional implicature. In both constructions, only verbs that contribute an upwards epistemic component without factivity are compatible with the evidential semantics.
  • Publication
    Adverbs of Quantity: Entities of Different Kinds
    (2009-03-23) Csirmaz, Aniko
  • Publication
  • Publication
    Intervention Effects and wh-movement
    (2009-03-23) Malhotra, Shiti
    Intervention effects visible in many natural languages have been a lively issue in the syntactic and semantic literature in the last decade, starting with the seminal work by Beck (1996) and followed by a number of equally influential analyses. This paper highlights the limitations of some of these studies and proposes a reanalysis of intervention effects in terms of head movement. This paper also suggests an alternative Wh-movement approach for some Wh in-situ languages that show intervention effects, and claims that the nature of Wh-movement in natural languages has a direct consequence on the nature of Wh-quantifier interactions. I discuss data from various languages, particularly Hindi, English and Chinese to show how the nature of Wh-movement in these languages determines the presence of intervention effects as well as island effects. In this exploration, the paper also investigates the nature of constraints that regulate movement in these languages.
  • Publication
    French Tough-Movement Infinitives as Deverbal Nominals
    (2009-03-23) Authier, J.-Marc; Reed, Lisa A.
    In this paper, we argue that predicates of the tough-class in French embed not a verbal infinitive but rather, a gerundive verbal noun. This hypothesis allows us to capture a number of unexpected restrictions on French tough-movement discussed by Legendre (1986). We show that these restrictions are best described as the inability of French tough-movement infinitives to be followed by complements that are disallowed in their corresponding argument-taking event nominals. Our analysis of such infinitives as nominalized elements correctly predicts that they should never be selected by auxiliaries, and that they should have suppressed external arguments in the sense of Grimshaw (1990).
  • Publication
    Double Modal Syntactic Patterns as Single Modal Interactions
    (2009-03-23) Elsman, Minta; Dubinsky, Stanley
    Double modal constructions (DMCs) such as 'I might could get it for you' are employed by speakers of Southern American and African American English. These constructions appear to counter-exemplify traditional analyses of English modal structure which typically (i) allow only one tensed element per clause and (ii) locate modal auxiliaries only in the tensed position. Previous analyses have attempted to account for these structures by treating DMs as single lexical units (Di Paolo, 1989), or by treating one of the two modals as a "non-modal" (Turner, 1981; Battistella, 1995; Marrano, 1998; Van Gelderen, 2003). Di Paolo’s lexicalist analysis is contraindicated by the separability of the constituent modals, while the others are contradicted by the modals’ tense-like behavior. Following observations in McDowell (1987), we claim that 'might,' 'may,' and 'must' (in their epistemic readings) are sentential polarity operators (P-modals). P-modals head a POLP (Cormack and Smith, 2002), must raise at LF to take scope over the proposition, and may also bear Tense (in which case they move to T at LF). V-modals (i.e., all other modals) head VP and behave as AUX verbs, moving to T overtly when they bear Tense. Under this account, both modals in the DMC can be analyzed as true modals, behaving exactly as they would in a single modal construction. They are, at the same time, syntactically distinct, and the properties of the DMC result from the interactions between these two modal types.