Proceedings of the 45th Annual Penn Linguistics Conference
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Publication Negative Comparison, or how to be Judgmental and Ignorant with Scalar Alternatives(2022-11-18) Mihoc, TeodoraThe English negative comparative-modified numerals (CMNs) "no more than n" and "not more than n" different in surprising ways: The former conveys exactness (EX) and evaluativity (EVAL), and the latter conveys no exactness (NO-EX) and ignorance (IG). The existing literature offers 3 proposals, one based on Horn (1972), one based a combination of Horn (1972) with the Universal Density of Measurement hypothesis, and one based on a combination of Horn (1972) with the Modifier Alternatives hypothesis. In this paper I argue that both modifications of Horn (1972) are in fact too drastic. And point out that none captures both EX and NO-EX, nor do they make any provisions for IG or EVAL. I propose what I argue is a smaller departure from Horn (1972), and I show it captures all of EX, NO EX, IG, and EVAL. The explanation crucially relies on a combination of Horn (1972) with Negation Alternatives - the idea that for some negative expressions the set of scalar alternatives include variants with the negation as well as without - plus silent exhaustification with O(nly) and E(ven).Publication Can the Head Quantifier Phrase Reconstruct in Doubly Embedded Chinese Relative Clauses?(2022-11-18) Su, Nianpo; Chen, YunchuanAoun and Li (2003) claimed that when a universal quantifier phrase (QP) occurs in the doubly embedded subject position of Chinese relative clauses (RCs), it cannot be raised out of the RC and thus cannot have scope over the head of the RC. This study investigated whether it is really true that when a universal QP occurs in the doubly embedded subject position of Chinese RCs, it cannot take scope over the head of the RC. With a controlled truth value judgment experiment, our findings suggest that in Chinese RCs, it is possible for the universal QP in the doubly embedded subject position to have scope over the head QP, which contradicts Aoun and Li's (2003) claim. Furthermore, our findings cast doubt upon the raising analysis (Aoun and Li 2003, Lee 1986) for the universal QP in the RC subject position of Chinese RCs. We argue that the head of Chinese RCs, regardless of whether it is a QP or an NP, can reconstruct into its base position inside the RC. There is no need to stipulate that in Chinese RCs, a head NP can reconstruct while a head QP cannot.Publication The Lack of Full Pro Drop as a Consequence of Featural Overspecification(2022-11-18) Koeneman, Olaf; Zeijlstra, HeddeDespite the enormous attention that pro drop has received in the linguistic literature, there is no generally accepted answer to the question why relatively rich Germanic languages do not have argumental null subjects, neither is there a fundamental answer to the question why English would not allow them in at least 3SG contexts, where the agreement marker uniquely identifies the features of the unexpressed subject, just like in Italian. We argue that a closer inspection of the Germanic languages reveals that tense and agreement are expressed mono-morphemically, whereas Romance pro drop languages have distinct morphemes for tense and agreement. This allows us to postulate that the lack of pro drop in Germanic languages is a consequence of overspecification: the presence of the tense features makes licensing of a null subject impossible. Germanic variants that have partial pro drop, such as Frisian and Bavarian German, can be naturally accommodated in our approach by reference to complementizer agreement.Publication Non-binary Language Forms in Spanish: Consciously Using it Facilitates Processing during Comprehension?(2022-11-18) Stetie, Noelia A.; Zunino, Gabriela M.Several grammatical studies have focused on the study of morphological innovations used as non-binary forms in Spanish (-x; -e). However, there are no experimental studies that analyze their psycholinguistic processing or the multiple and complex relationships between production and comprehension in non- binary language. To analyze this phenomenon, we performed a sentence reading and comprehension task. We recorded reading times, response times, and accuracy. We considered morphology, stereotypicality and frequency of use of non-binary forms in the participants as predictors. The results show specialization of the non-binary forms as generic morphological variants, as opposed to the generic masculine. The non- binary forms consistently elicited a reference to mixed groups and response times showed that these morphological variants do not carry a higher processing cost than the generic masculine. Moreover, it is possible to see that the conscious use of non-binary forms influences the comprehension processes of the different variants of gender morphology: as the voluntary use of non-binary forms increases, the generic masculine seems to concentrate its reference to groups of men exclusively. Thus, in addition to showing general evidence regarding the processing costs and comprehension of gender morphology in Spanish, our data allow us to observe a potential reciprocal link between production and comprehension processes that deserves further study.Publication Against the Argument/Adjunct Distinction(2022-11-18) McInnerney, AndrewThis paper suggests that much of the empirical basis for the argument/adjunct distinction (A/AD) is weaker than traditionally believed. First, I argue that successful argumenthood diagnostics should both (i) identify a distinction among dependents which resembles the conventional A/AD, and (ii) draw a distinction which is not already predicted independently of the A/AD. Focusing on PPs within the VP in English, I argue that purported diagnostics for argumenthood, including omission, 'do so'-substitution, and iteration, do not meet these criteria, therefore do not provide empirical support for the A/AD. After briefly discussing the prospects for several further diagnostics, I conclude that it is plausible that the A/AD might be eliminable. Though this would raise technical questions in various areas, it would be desirable from a Minimalist perspective.Publication Matrix Operators in Georgian Indexical Shift(2022-11-18) Thivierge, SigwanThis paper examines indexical shift in Georgian (South Caucasian), which has been noted but understudied in the literature. I argue that its matrix-level shift provides evidence in favour of the shifty operator theory (Anand and Nevins, 2004; Shklovsky and Sudo, 2014; Deal, 2020, i.a.). In these approaches, an embedded indexical is interpreted against a non-utterance context whose parameters are determined by an operator. Crucially, this operator is distinct from the verb that introduces it, which logically allows for the operator to merge freely in the structure. This prediction is evidenced by shifted indexicals in Georgian matrix clauses.Publication Korean Case Stacking and the Nominal Template(2022-11-18) Lee, Soo-Hwan; Nie, YiningKorean exhibits a phenomenon known as case stacking, where a single nominal can bear two markers traditionally associated with case. We show that while the inner markers in stacked nominals reflect genuine case, the outer markers are instead associated with discourse marking. Stacked “nominative” and “accusative” are in fact focus markers, whose distributions are distinct from those of genuine case marking (Schütze 2001). We propose that the inner markers are associated with the argument introducing heads Voice and Appl, and the outer markers are associated with focus and topic. By assigning inner markers low and outer markers high, our analysis derives the templatic ordering of morphemes in Korean nominals (Cho & Sells 1995) and explains the difference in distribution of honorific nominative (HON.NOM) and plain nominative (NOM). Our analysis that only external argument introducing heads (Voice and Appl) can assign honorific-sensitive case markers captures an independent fact about Korean: the case paradigm contains HON.NOM and HON.DAT but no *HON.ACC.Publication Directionality Effects and Exceptions in Learning Phonological Alternations(2022-11-18) Wang, Anqi; Finley, SaraThe present study explores learning vowel harmony with exceptions using the artificial language learning paradigm. Participants were exposed to a back/round vowel harmony pattern in which one affix (either prefix or suffix, depending on the condition) alternated between /me/ and /mo/ depending on the phonetic feature of the stem vowels. In Experiment 1, participants were able to learn the behaviors of both alternating and non-alternating affixes, but were more likely to generalize to novel affixes for non-alternating items than alternating items. In Experiment 2, participants were exposed to training data that contained non-alternating affixes in prefix position while alternating affixes were all suffixes, or vice versa. Participants were able to extend the non-alternating affixes to the novel direction, suggesting that participants inferred a non-directional harmony pattern. Overall, the patterns of alternating affixes are harder to learn than patterns of exceptions that do not alternate, which aligns with previous findings supporting a non-alternation bias. Our study raises the question of how biases towards exceptionality and directionality interact in phonological learning.Publication Differential Subject Marking in Kazakh(2022-11-18) Ótott-Kovács, EszterThis paper investigates the distinction between nominative and genitive subject complement clauses in Kazakh (Turkic) to determine whether these clauses have the same syntactic structure or whether they are derived independently using different strategies. Based on novel data, the paper shows that Kazakh morphologically distinguishes anaphoric and unique definiteness (in the sense of Schwarz 2009), and that genitive marking on the subject of complement clauses is determined by anaphoricity of the subject. Therefore, nominative and genitive subjects are in complementary distribution: anaphoric subject DPs are in the genitive, while pseudo-incorporated and unique definite subjects are nominative-marked. This distinction can be accounted for by analyzing the anaphoric subject undergoing a semantically motivated movement to the edge of the complement clause, where it is assigned lexically-governed genitive. The analysis contributes to the cross-linguistic study of morphological case assignment by showing that genitive can be a lexical case, and also by demonstrating that definiteness marking can drive differential case marking.Publication Universal Concord as Syntactic Agreement(2022-11-18) Yip, Ka-FaiThis paper argues that universal concord is attested in Cantonese and offers a syntactic agreement account. The Cantonese verbal suffix -can is shown to be a concord element that requires the presence of a universal quantifier but it lacks inherent quantificational force. Drawing crucial evidence from minimality and locality, I propose that -can carries an uninterpretable universal feature that agrees with a genuine universal quantifier. Consequently, the empirical landscape of concord is extended to universal quantifiers. Moreover, this study also offers additional support for a syntactic approach to concord by exploring minimality effects, which have not received enough attention in the studies on concord.
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