Volume 34, Issue 2 - GLOW Issue

Relative measures such as percent and thirds relate one quantity to another. We observe that, in several languages, determiner phrases containing relative measures can express two distinct construals: (1) The ‘conservative’ construal in The company hired 75 % of the women considers the ratio of the company’s female hires to all women. (2) The ‘non-conservative construal’ in The company hired 75 % women is instead concerned with the ratio of the company’s female hires to all the company’s hires. We show that other languages that distinguish the two construals using morphosyntactic means include German, Korean, Georgian, Greek, French, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, and Romanian. We argue that the non-conservative construal involves a different constituency of the measure construction. Both construals, however, derive from a structure where the measure structure forms a single DP. Therefore, our analysis of the non-conservative structures makes an argument that the Conservativity Universal may apply at an abstract level of structure rather than at the surface level.

The ellipsis of a VP whose antecedent contains an occurrence of so-called free choice any is highly constrained: it is acceptable only if the elided VP is appropriately embedded. We show that while this is unexpected on the common approaches to free choice and ellipsis, it is predicted on a theory of any that takes its domain to stand in a dependency relation with a c-commanding alternative-sensitive operator (cf. Lahiri 1998, Focus and negative polarity in Hindi. Natural Language Semantics 6(1). 57–123) and that takes free choice inferences to be generated by covert exhaustification in grammar (e.g., Fox 2007, Free choice and the theory of scalar implicatures. In Uli Sauerland & Penka Stateva (eds.), Presupposition and implicature in compositional semantics , 71–120. Palgrave Macmillan; Chierchia 2013, Logic in grammar . Oxford: Oxford University Press).

In this paper, we subject to closer scrutiny one particularly influential recent argument in favour of the long-movement analysis of tough -constructions. Hartman (2011, 2012a, 2012b) discovered that experiencer PPs lead to ungrammaticality in tough -constructions, but not in expletive constructions. He attributes this ungrammaticality to defective intervention of A-movement, a movement step crucially postulated only in the long-movement analysis. He takes this as evidence that tough -constructions are derived via long movement. We make the novel observation that a PP intervention effect analogous to that in tough -constructions also arises in constructions that do not involve A-movement, namely pretty-predicate constructions and gapped degree phrases. Consequently, the intervention effect does not provide an argument for an A-movement step in tough -constructions or for the long-movement analysis, but rather for the base-generation analysis. We develop a uniform account of the intervention effects as a semantic-type mismatch. In particular, we propose that what unifies tough -constructions, pretty-predicate constructions, and gapped degree phrases is that they all have an embedded clause that is a null-operator structure. Introducing an experiencer PP into these constructions creates an irresolvable semantic-type mismatch. As such, we argue for a reassessment of what appears to be a syntactic locality constraint as an incompatibility in the semantic composition.

Consonant cluster simplification in Tundra Nenets coexists with other consonantal alternations, such as fricative strengthening, lenition of stops, and a variety of NC-effects, which all apply within the same phrasal domain. These processes interact with each other, suggesting an opaque ordering within the same post-lexical domain and thus presenting a challenge not only for inherently parallel theories like classical Optimality Theory, but also for the cyclic derivational approaches such as Stratal OT. We analyze all instances of Tundra Nenets cluster simplification as coalescence and show that a variety of apparently opaque alternations accompanying cluster simplification can be seen as transparent on this account. We also argue that strengthening in consonant clusters is caused by an intermediate stage where coda obstruents lose their place and turn into a glottal stop.

This paper first claims that the Inverse Agreement Constraint and the Person–Case Constraint attested in overlapping sets of Uralic languages are manifestations of the same Inverse Topicality Constraint, requiring that the structural hierarchy of topicalized constituents correspond to the ranking of their referents in the Animacy/Topicality Hierarchy. Then it argues that it is the hypothesized Inverse Topicality Constraint that also underlies the Person– Case Constraints restricting the cooccurrence of clitics in ditransitive and ergative–absolutive constructions across languages. It is shown that alternative analyses of the Person–Case Constraint, e.g., those deriving it from the mechanism of multiple Agree, cannot account for the whole range of data attested.

In wh -questions, intervention effects are detected whenever certain elements – focus-sensitive operators, negative elements, and quantifiers – c-command an in-situ wh -word. Pesetsky (2000, Phrasal movement and its kin . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) presents a comprehensive study of intervention effects in English multiple wh -questions, arguing that intervention correlates with superiority: superiority-violating questions are subject to intervention effects, while superiority-obeying questions are immune from such effects. This description has been adopted as an explanandum in most recent work on intervention, such as Beck (2006, Intervention effects follow from focus interpretation. Natural Language Semantics 14. 1–56) and Cable (2010, The Grammar of Q: Q-particles, wh-movement, and pied-piping . Oxford University Press), a.o. In this paper, I show instead that intervention effects in English questions correlate with the available LF positions for wh -in-situ and the intervener, but not with superiority. The grammar allows for several different ways of repairing intervention configurations, including wh -movement, scrambling, Quantifier Raising, and reconstruction. Intervention effects are observed when none of these repair strategies are applicable, and there is no way of avoiding the intervention configuration – regardless of superiority. Nonetheless, I show that these results are consistent with the syntax proposed for English questions in Pesetsky (2000, Phrasal movement and its kin . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) and with the semantic theory of intervention effects in Beck (2006, Intervention effects follow from focus interpretation. Natural Language Semantics 14. 1–56).