Volume 39, Issue 3 - Special Issue: Indeterminacies and mismatches in grammatical systems

This introduction proposes to investigate mismatches and indeterminacies in languages much more than has hitherto been done. Such seemingly unruly aspects of language(s), it is argued, are interesting since they may help shed light on the internal make-up of grammatical systems. The question of the internal make-up of grammar(s), it is argued, cannot be addressed by the normal modus operandi of linguistic research, which is to find matches (rather than mismatches) between the observable (sound and meaning) interface systems, and to find how the interface representations map unto each other deterministically: It is only in the “lo-fi” aspects of mappings that the internal mechanisms of the overall grammatical architecture may reveal themselves. The introduction also points out that our concern is independent of the various theoretical orientations linguists may choose for their work, since the problem presents itself in all approaches to language research currently available, it seems – if in slightly different ways. We propose, in sum, that mismatches and indeterminacies are an extremely worthwhile field for future linguistic research, and one that should be on the agenda (or minimally, within the field of view) for linguists of all theoretical convictions.

Variation involving a switch between pre- and post-verbal placement of pronominal object clitics in a single syntactic environment within a language is unexpected. The rationale why this would not be expected is clear: Languages pattern as either proclitic or enclitic with respect to object clitic placement, possibly allowing one or the other option across different syntactic environments. We provide an overview of our research from data collected in Cyprus, related to the development and use of pronominal object clitics for child populations and adult speakers that are bilectal in Cypriot and Standard Modern Greek. While it has been shown that the tested bilectal populations receive exposure to more than one distinct grammar, including mixed grammars with optional choices for clitic placement, an important question remains unaddressed: Is variation really “free” across all speakers or are there universally reliable predictors (such as gender, age, or level of education) that mediate a consistent use of either the standard or the dialect? Combining insights from targeted elicitation tasks administered to different groups, a corpus of spontaneous speech, and an extensive literature review, we show the weakness of such purported predictors and support a claim of free variation.

This paper discusses surface optionality in focus fronting in the Benue-Congo language Igbo. A focused XP can occur in-situ or ex-situ. We argue that the optionality does not have its origins in the syntax: in fact, exactly one focused XP has to move to the designated focus position in the left periphery in the syntax. The alternation between in-situ and ex-situ rather arises at PF: either the lowest or the topmost copy of the focus chain is pronounced. The choice is determined by semantic-pragmatic factors, i. e., we see an interaction between PF and LF. This constitutes a challenge for a strict version of the Y-model of grammar.

Some Mayan languages display optional verbal agreement with 3 pl arguments (Dayley1985; Henderson2009; England2011). Focusing on novel data from Santiago Tz’utujil (ST), we demonstrate that this optionality is not reducible to phonological or morphological factors. Rather, the source of optionality is in the syntax. Specifically, the distinction between arguments generated in the specifier position and arguments generated in the complement position governs the pattern. Only base-complements control agreement optionally; base-specifiers control agreement obligatorily. We provide an analysis in which optional agreement results from the availability of two syntactic representations (DP vs. reduced nominal argument). Thus, while the syntactic operation Agree is deterministic, surface optionality arises when the operation targets two different sized goals.

This work examines the nature of the so-called “mid-level generalizations of generative linguistics” (MLGs). In 2015, Generative Syntax in the 21st Century: The Road Ahead was organized. One of the consensus points that emerged related to the need for establishing a canon, the absence of which was argued to be a major challenge for the field, raising issues of interdisciplinarity and interaction. Addressing this challenge, one of the outcomes of this conference was a list of MLGs. These refer to results that are well established and uncontroversially accepted. The aim of the present work is to embed some MLGs into a broader perspective. I take the Cinque hierarchies for adverbs and adjectives and the Final-over-Final Constraint as case studies in order to determine their experimental robustness. It is showed that at least some MLGs face problems of inadequacy when tapped into through rigorous testing, because they rule out data that are actually attested. I then discuss the nature of some MLGs and show that in their watered-down versions, they do hold and can be derived from general cognitive/computational biases. This voids the need to cast them as language-specific principles, in line with the Chomskyan urge to approach Universal Grammar from below.

Grammars are decomposable. On the one hand, an adequate characterization of a given utterance factorizes the contributions of each subsystem of grammar and on the other hand, it thereby reduces the apparent overall complexity to the interaction of less complex subsystems. Scrambling is an apt showcase. Its complicated properties are not inherent properties of a syntactic construction but the result of the interaction of phrase structuring with other subsystems of grammar, and in particular with the information-structuring (IS) subsystem of pragmatics. Scrambling is “utilized” rather than “triggered”. In general, when syntax admits structural variation, this potential is captured and utilized by other subsystems of grammar. Germanic and Slavic languages are handy testimonies for rejecting syntactic trigger scenarios not only for scrambling but also for other constructions with displaced items. Cross-linguistically, scrambling is not a matter of syntactical determinism. For an adequate syntactical account of scrambling it is sufficient to understand and explain the structural conditions that make a language a scrambling language. The pragmatic functions that utilize scrambling structures are not a concern of syntax. They are syntactically not causal and epiphenomenal to syntax.

In German, a verb selected by another verb normally precedes the selecting verb. Modal verbs in the perfect tense provide an exception to this generalization because they require the perfective auxiliary to occur in cluster-initial position according to prescriptive grammars. Bader and Schmid (2009b) have shown, however, that native speakers accept the auxiliary in all positions except the cluster-final one. Experimental results as well as corpus data indicate that verb cluster serialization is a case of free variation. I discuss how this variation can be accounted for, focusing on two mismatches between acceptability and frequency: First, slight acceptability advantages can turn into strong frequency advantages. Second, syntactic variants with basically zero frequency can still vary substantially in acceptability. These mismatches remain unaccounted for if acceptability is related to frequency on the level of whole sentence structures, as in Stochastic OT (Boersma and Hayes2001). However, when the acceptability-frequency relationship is modeled on the level of individual weighted constraints, using harmony as link (see Pater2009, for different harmony based frameworks), the two mismatches follow given appropriate linking assumptions.