Volume 32, Issue 4 -

The article establishes a new generalization concerning domains from which extraction is possible. Taking as the starting point the well-known difference between NPs and VPs regarding extraction, where extraction from Complex NPs is not possible while extraction from Complex VPs is possible, the article argues that the former represents a pervasive pattern found in many contexts, the latter being highly exceptional. More precisely, extraction is impossible not only from clausal but all complements of nouns. Furthermore, it is impossible from complements of prepositions and adjectives as well as ergative verbs. A deduction of the impossibility of extraction from the complements of lexical heads (other than non-ergative verbs) is proposed based on a new approach to phases (i.e. to what counts as a phase) and the Phase-Impenetrability Condition, as well as a particular implementation of Chomsky’s (2013) labeling algorithm. The analysis is extended to the Subject Condition effect and the that -trace effect.

In some Romance languages, including French and Spanish, there is an interesting asymmetry concerning the behavior of isolated clitics and clitic clusters with respect to coreference. In the French example Anne croit qu’on va la lui recommander pour la promotion ‘Anna thinks that they will recommend her to him for the promotion’, the accusative clitic la ‘her’ in the embedded clause cannot corefer with ‘Anne’ when a dative clitic, lui ‘to him’, co-occurs in the cluster. The only previous account of this constraint (Bhatt and Šimík 2009) attributes this to a binding restriction. Based on new data disentangling binding and logophoricity, we show that the generalization capturing the distribution of clitics clusters in French and Spanish is the following: an accusative clitic cannot be clustered with a dative clitic if the accusative clitic refers to a logophoric center and is read de se . We derive this antilogophoricity effect from perspective conflicts, which we represent as intervention effects in the presence of a single logophoric operator in the relevant domain. This analysis furthermore provides a semantic motivation for intervention effects that have been postulated for the Person-Case Constraint (PCC), which we hypothesize also derives from perspective conflicts.

This paper investigates the geometry of phi-features, with a special emphasis on number and gender in Spanish. We address two sets of questions: (i) are number and gender bundled together or do they constitute separate categories, and (ii) does the internal feature composition of number and gender follow a single- or a multi-valued system? Given the lack of consensus on these issues based on primary data, we approach these questions experimentally, using the phenomenon of agreement attraction: a situation in which ungrammatical sequences are perceived as grammatical when one of the NPs is erroneously identified as determining agreement. Our results offer novel support in favor of an agreement model in which number and gender are in separte projections and are valued independently. In addition, our results indicate that number but not gender in Spanish is multi-valued.

The present study focuses on A-scrambling in Dutch, a local word-order alternation that typically signals the discourse-anaphoric status of the scrambled constituent. We use cross-modal priming to investigate whether an A-scrambled direct object gives rise to antecedent reactivation effects in the position where a movement theory would postulate a trace. Our results indicate that this is not the case, thereby providing support for a base-generation analysis of A-scrambling in Dutch.

This paper presents a case study in intraparadigmatic variation. It begins with a fine-grained morphological decomposition of the reinforced demonstrative pronoun in Old Norse. Five distinct morphemes are identified, and it is shown that there are three patterns into which these morphemes can be assembled within the paradigm. Applying Cinque’s (2005) U20 theory of movement, it is then shown that the three different structures observed in the reinforced demonstrative paradigm are derived from a single functional sequence of four syntactic heads. Interestingly, a morphological reflex of the cyclic/roll-up divide is identified in the process. Finally, an account is provided for why only these three structures appear in the paradigm in the first place. Overall the paper argues that Cinque’s (2005) theory of syntactic movement can be applied also at the morphological level and ultimately that syntax and morphology are governed by the same principles.

Inspired by the split-CP hypothesis, different orders of the functional projections in the left periphery are proposed for Chinese. Based on previous studies, this paper proposes the following hierarchy for Chinese: AttitudeP1 > AttitudeP2 > Special QuestionP > Illocutionary ForceP > Only -focusP > Sentential.AspectP > TP. These projections host sentence final particles (SFP) or null operators. When the compared projections are both head-final, the syntactic word order reflects the relevant hierarchy; when the compared projections are not uniformly head-final, their scope interaction reflects the order. This study shows that the higher a projection, the more subjective its interpretation and the harder it can be embedded. For instance, being subject-oriented sentential aspects and only -type focus are not directly linked to the speaker’s attitude and therefore, they can be embedded and be interpreted within the subordinate clause. As for the SFPs linked to illocutionary forces, some can be embedded, while others cannot. Special questions and the SFPs expressing the speaker’s mood, interjection and attitude cannot be embedded at all. This fact is regarded as an indirect argument in favor of my proposal.

In this paper we demonstrate that there are two related, but distinct types of animacy in the Plains Algonquian language, Blackfoot – morphological animacy (m-animacy) and high animacy (H-animacy). We argue that the two types of animacy are constructed in different ways: M-animacy is a head feature that determines noun class and plays a role in syntactic agreement operations, whereas H-animacy is a selectable feature of arguments. The two kinds of animacy also have different distributions: Only languages that have animacy-based form classes have m-animate nominals, but H-animate nominals are universal because all languages have predicates that select for high animates. We discuss empirical differences between m-animate and H-animate nominals that are intended to serve as diagnostics for the exploration of animacy in other languages.