NYU Linguistics

Roni Katzir will be giving a syntax brown bag on Friday Nov 6 at 1:30pm.

Title: On the roles of context and structure in the theory of alternatives
(Joint work with Danny Fox, MIT)

Abstract:
We present an argument for revising the theory of alternatives for Scalar Implicatures and for Association with Focus. We argue that in both cases, the alternatives are determined in the same way, as a contextual restriction of the focus value of the sentence, which, in turn, is defined in structure-sensitive terms. We provide evidence that contextual restriction is subject to a constraint that prevents it from discriminating between alternatives when they stand in a particular logical relationship with the assertion or the prejacent, a relationship that we refer to as symmetry. Due to the constraint on contextual restriction, discriminating between alternatives in cases of symmetry becomes the task of focus values. This conclusion is incompatible with standard type-theoretic definitions of focus values, motivating our structure-sensitive definition instead.

Dennis Ott (Harvard) will be giving a Syntax Brown bag on Friday, Oct 30th at 1:30pm in the 1st floor conference room (10 Washington Place).

Title:
Remnant Movement in German Revisited

Abstract:

Tom Roeper (UMass) will present a Brown Bag on Oct 23 at 1:30pm in 10 WP, room 103.

"Vacate Phase and Presupposition Guarantee"

The brown bag schedule for Fall, 2009 is...

Benjamin Spector - CANCELLED -

Tom Roeper - Friday, Oct. 23

Dennis Ott (Harvard) - Friday, Oct. 30

Roni Katzir - Friday, Nov. 6

Judy Bernstein and Raffaella Zanuttini - Friday, Dec. 4

Oussama Haddad will be giving a syntax brown bag on Friday May 1 at 1:30 in the Linguistics department conference room.

Title: The Silence of the NOUNS: Alternate Agreement in Lebanese Abstract Nominal Constructions

Abstract:

Jessica Coon will be giving a brown bag on Friday April 17th at 1:30 in the Linguistics department conference room.

Title: Predicate Fronting and its Consequences: Ergativity in Chol

Abstract:

Daniel Kaufman will be giving a Syntax Brown Bag on Friday April 3 at 1:30 in the Linguistics Conference room.

Title: v-free predication in Austronesian and its consequences, from root to clause

Abstract:

Friederike Moltmann will be giving a syntax brown bag on Friday, March 27th at 1:30 in The Linguistics Conference Room (726 Broadway, 7th Floor)

Title: Reifying Terms

Abstract:

The syntax brown bag by Oussama Haddad has been rescheduled for May 1st.

Hedde H. Zeijlstra will be talking to us about his work on French ne pas, arguing that ne is an NPI. The talk is at 1:30 PM, at 726 Broadway 7th Floor conference room. Light snacks and beverages free for all who come.

Pas de problème

Abstract

Roberto Zamparelli (Trento) will be giving a syntax brown bag on Feb 20 at 1:30 in room 703 of the linguistics department (726 Broadway, 7th floor)

TITLE:

Coordination, Non-nominal Subjects and Semantic Agreement

A few of talks have been added to the syntax brown bag schedule for Spring 2009:

Hedde H. Zeijlstra, March 6
Friederike Moltmann, March 27
Jessica Coon, April 17

updated Mar 7, 2009

Roberto Zamparelli
Title TBA
February 20

Hedde H. Zeijlstra
Title TBA
March 6

Friederike Moltmann
Title TBA
March 27

Daniel Kaufman
Title TBA
April 3

Jessica Coon
Title TBA
April 17

Oussama Haddad
Title TBA
May 1

Friederike Moltmann
(IHPST, Paris)

"Presentational pronouns"

Friday, December 5 at 1:30pm
726 Broadway, room 703

Abstract:

In this talk I will take a closer look at the syntax and semantics of the pronouns 'this, 'that, and 'it' as their occur in (1a, b, c):

(1) a.This is Mary.
b. That is a wellknown person.
c. It was a student.

'This', 'that' and 'it' in (1) do not have a referential function, but rather occur in the subject position of specificational sentences, exhibiting the same constraints as subject wh clauses, as in (2):

(2) What I saw was a wellknown person.

The occurrences of the pronouns in (1) shed a significant light on the question whether specificational sentences express an identity of (possibly higher-order) meanings, question-answer relations, or function-value relations (with the subject acting as an intensional NP (Romero)). I show that specicational sentences with 'this', 'that' and 'it' in subject position support a question-answer analysis, but at the same time require signficant modications of existing accounts. I will also point out how a proper syntactic and semantic analysis of sentences as in (1) and (2) allows for a re-evaluation of certain philosophically significant sentences that appear to support a view of relative identity.

Svitlana Antonyuk-Yudina

"On the Prosodic Realization of Doubly Quantified Sentences in Russian"

Friday, November 14 at 1:30pm
726 Broadway, room 703

Abstract:

Mark Baltin and Jeroen van Craenenbroeck

"On Becoming A Pronoun"

Friday, November 7 at 1:30pm
726 Boadway, 7th-Floor Conference Room

Abstract:

Many processes in grammar look as though they require reference to a feature
[+pronoun], in that expressions of other types appear to change to pronouns. We
argue that appeal to such a feature is the wrong way to look at this phenomenon,
and that a more fruitful way to approach this phenomenon is to adopt Postal's
(1966) analysis of pronouns as determiners with deleted complements. In this way,
we can account for why elements appear to change to pronouns, but not , say,
anaphors; the feature‐changing approach, by contrast, makes both types of change
equally possible, and does not, as a consequence, account for why the former type
of change occurs, but not the latter. We show that our account does not violate
Chomsky's (1995) Inclusiveness Constraint, which limits the appearance of
elements in syntactic computations to those that are present from the outset of the
computation; the feature‐changing approach does violate Inclusiveness. We also
show that this approach to pronouns accounts for vehicle change in ellipsis
contrasts, the pronominal character of various kinds of empty elements, such as
ellipsis sites and traces, and the existence of copy‐raising (Moore (1998), in which
an element raises and a pronoun occurs at the raised element's point of origin.

Ivona Kucerova (UCL)

"A-Scrambling as Grammatical Marking of Prepositions"

Wednesday, October 29 at 5:30pm
726 Broadway, Room 703

Abstract:

Scrambling is usually understood as a feature-triggered operation that is avaialable only under rather strict pragmatic conditions and only in some languages. Even though a lot of attention has been paid to syntactic properties of scrambling, it still remains mysterious why scrambling takes place at all and why it takes place only in some language. Furthermore, there are significant differences between scrambling languages both with respect to type of movement labeled as scrambling and the set of syntactic elements that undergo this movement.

In this talk I will offer an answer to these questions in terms of scrambling as a parasitic syntactic operation which purpose is to Maximize Presuppositons (Heim 1991). I will build on Schwarzschild's (1999) account of givenness, following Rooth (1992), under which givenness is semantically interpreted, but focus is grammatically marked. I will presents a case study of a language in which it is not focus but givenness that that is always grammatically marked (cf. Wagner 2005, 2006 for arguments that even in English givenness must be sometimes grammatically marked). Crucially, movement plays a role in this process.

In Czech, given elements must linearly precede new elements. If this relative ordering cannot be achieved by base generation, movement must take place. I will argue for a natural language operator that marks elements in its scope as given. The operator divides the structure between a given and a new part. The role of Maximize Presupposition is to enforce that every given element is in the scope of the operator. The operator and Maximize Presupposition work in tandem with an economy condition on movement that licenses movement only if it yields otherwise unavailable semantic interpretation (cf. Fox 1995, 2000, Reinhart 1995). The proposal thus provides independent evidence for a structural competition in the grammar and for the role of Maximize Presupposition in the process. Furthermore, understanding scrambling as presupposition marking allows us to understand scrambling in context of other grammatical means for Maximizing Presupposition such as definiteness marking, agreement, or special morphological markers.

Gabriela Alboiu (York University)

"On Silent Categories and Case"

Friday, October 24 at 1:30pm
Syntax/Semantics Lab

Abstract:

By focusing on (c)overt subjects in non-finite domains I provide an account of structural Case reliant on the phase domain (Chomsky 2008) rather than the presence of phi-features (i.e., uφ). I argue that uφ is not needed for either Case checking or for obtaining a Case value. Nonetheless, I show that the presence of uφ (and specifically a Person feature, π) on the Probing domain will ensure a NOM value, while its absence will constrain the DP to an ACC value. I propose that a null expletive checking the EPP feature will trigger NOM subjects whenever (C)-T lacks uφ, specifically, in non-finite domains, such as infinitives and gerunds. Crucially, lexical subjects in non-finite domains are not assigned default Case; rather ACC or NOM are systematic occurrences, dependent on the presence or absence of non-referential pro. In effect, an A-relationship guarantees interaction with specific properties/features of some Probe. This feature complex in turn ensures a certain morphological instantiation of the vocabulary item inserted post-Spell-Out. Under this analysis, the overwhelming cross-linguistic evidence of Case-marked PRO is also readily explained. PRO either has: (i) Case checked against a Probe, so assigned a value (e.g. NOM in Icelandic, ACC in English), or (ii) Case checked at Spell-Out, so default (e.g. NOM in German, Czech), but never 'null Case'. It also explains why default Case will not guarantee lexical subjects (e.g. German has NOM as default but no lexical subjects in non-finite clauses), or why lexical subjects in non-finite domains can have Case values distinct from the default (e.g., see Latin). Crucially, the proposed analysis has the benefit of correctly predicting the various empirical generalizations with respect to DP Case valuation, as well as providing support for divorcing structural Case values from specific functional heads. NOM or ACC are not syntactic primitives or a priori properties of (C)-T and v, respectively, but forms assigned post-Spell-Out based on specific instructions from the computational system. In this sense, then, "syntax has no case features" (Sigurðsson 2007), but A-relations in syntax enable specific Case values.

Olga Kagan

"On the Semantics of Genitive Objects"

Friday, October 10 at 1:30pm
Department Conference Room

Abstract:

In this talk, I will investigate the semantics of Intensional Genitive Case in Russian, a phenomenon whereby certain intensional verbs may take genitive objects, as well as accusative ones, as is illustrated in (1):

(1) On ždal čuda / Dimu.
he waited miracle.GEN Dima.ACC
He was waiting for a miracle / for Dima.

Two puzzles arise in connection with the distribution of Intensional Genitive: first, it is licensed only by strong intensional verbs in Farkas' (1985) terminology (e.g. ždat' (wait for), zasluživat' (deserve), trebovat' (demand)) and not by weak intensional verbs (e.g. predstavljat' (sebe) (imagine), predvidet' (foresee), izobražat' (draw, depict)). The second question concerns the choice of Case for objects of strong intensional verbs. As has been noted in the literature (Neidle 1988, Bailyn 2004, Kagan 2005), the choice of Case is dependent on a number of semantic properties. For instance, the genitive tends to be assigned to non-specific, indefinite, narrow scope NPs. At the same time, none of these properties is sufficient to account for the alternation.

I will propose a semantico-pragmatic analysis of Intensional Genitive that is based on the notion of existential commitment, i.e. existential entailment and/or presupposition. It will be argued that Intensional Genitive can only be assigned in the absence of commitment to existence in the reference world, as well as in the set of worlds that is introduced by the intensional predicate (and forms the embedded context set). I will also discuss the relation between existential commitment and individuation, a property that has been argued to affect Case-assignment to objects in a wide range of languages (e.g. Hopper and Thompson 1980, Grimm 2005).

Syntax brown bags are usually held on Fridays at 1:30 in the Syntax/Semantics lounge (rm. 703, 726 Broadway on the 7th floor) Click here for up to date info.

Sept. 26 Arhonto Terzi
Oct. 24 Gabriela Alboiu
Oct. 29 Ivona Kucerova, (Wed., 5:30pm)
Nov. 14 Svitlana Antonyuk-Yudina

Joel Wallenberg (UPenn) will be giving the syntax brown bag at 1:30 on Friday, March 7th. The title of his talk is "Generalizing Holmberg's Generalization: scrambling and phrase structure in synchronic and diachronic perspective" and the abstract can be found here.

Jeremy Rafal (CUNY) will be talking about Pseudoclefts in Ilokano at the Syntax Brown Bag on February 22nd. The talk will be at 1:30 in room 703 (726 Broadway). The abstract for his talk can be found here.

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