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- Volume 5, Issue, 2005
Linguistic Variation Yearbook - Volume 5, Issue 1, 2005
Volume 5, Issue 1, 2005
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Introduction
Author(s): Jeroen Van Craenenbroeck, Johan Rooryck and Pierre Picapp.: 1–3 (3)More Less
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Reconstruction in relative clauses and the copy theory of traces*
Author(s): Carlo Cecchettopp.: 5–35 (31)More LessIn this paper, after discussing the status of the copy theory of traces in the current formulation of the minimalist program and the evidence for the “No-Tampering” Condition from which the copy theory of traces follows, I focus on a specific case study, namely reconstruction effects concerning the head of a relative clause. The common wisdom in the literature is that reconstruction of the relative clause head can be observed by using variable binding as a diagnostic, while the diagnostic based on Condition C gives opposite results. This split has led some researchers to propose that relative clauses are structurally ambiguous, because they would receive both a raising analysis (which explains variable binding reconstruction) and a non-raising analysis (which explains the absence of Condition C reconstruction). One of the goals of this paper is showing that it is not necessary to postulate that relative clauses are structurally ambiguous. In order to do that, I first show that the description in the literature is partly inaccurate. If some methodological problems raised by the use of transitive nouns are avoided, it can be shown that variable binding reconstruction occurs only when the relative clause modifies the subject of an equative sentence. This suggests that variable binding reconstruction of the relative clause head is not an ordinary case of reconstruction like the one found in canonicalwhchains but should be treated as a case of indirect binding, which is known to be sensitive to the identificational (as opposed to predicational) character of the sentence. I then show that, if this perspective is taken, the absence of Condition C effects can be explained without positing a structural ambiguity. The final result of the investigation is that, despite the initially puzzling evidence, the copy theory of traces can successfully explain the reconstruction pattern of the relative clause head.
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Syntactic variation in German wh-questions: Empirical investigations of weak crossover violations and long wh-movement
Author(s): Gisbert Fanselow, Reinhold Kliegl and Matthias Schlesewskypp.: 37–63 (27)More LessThis paper reports three experiments concerning variation in the grammar of German wh-questions. We found much variation but no clear dialects in the acceptability ratings of sentences violating the weak crossover condition. We attribute this variation to extra-grammatical factors. With a sentence completion task, we were able to show that there is regional variation concerning the scope of wh-movement. In a training experiment, we were also able to make speakers of the restrictive dialect behave like speakers of the liberal dialect with respect to wh-movement. We argue that this suggests an extragrammatical explanation of the dialectal difference.
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Relativization strategies in temporal adjunct clauses
Author(s): Anikó Liptákpp.: 65–117 (53)More LessThis article takes a close look at the internal structure of temporal adverbial clauses in a number of unrelated languages, with a goal of uncovering the syntactic variation in these. The focus of discussion will be on temporal clauses that take the form offree relatives. It will be shown that there are minimally two different free relative strategies that can be found in temporal adverbial clauses: anordinary free relativestrategy with a gap in the position of a temporal modifier inside the relative clause and anIP-relativizationstrategy that involves relativization of the whole IP of the temporal clause. It will be shown that the latter strategy is awh-relativization strategy as well and it shows similarity to clausal relativization (sentences of the typeTom arrived, after which Susan left).The language in which the IP-relativization strategy will be isolated and fully analyzed is Hungarian. In this languagebefore/after-clauses (among some other temporal clauses) clearly exhibit a relative clause structure that is different from ordinary relatives. The evidence found in Hungarian will prove useful for the analysis of some temporal clauses in other languages as well. It will be shown that IP-relativization most probably underliesafter-clauses in German and Serbian, too. Further, a brief comparison of Hungarian temporal clauses to temporal clauses in other postpositional languages (Hindi and Basque) will suggest that the IP-relativization strategy inbefore/after-clauses can be thought of as a syntactic alternative tonominalization.
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Microvariations in harmony and value-relativized parametrization
Author(s): Andrew Ira Nevinspp.: 119–164 (46)More LessThis paper explores a parametric delimitation of the space of possible harmony patterns with respect to the class of feature-values that are visible. Extending the framework of Calabrese (1995), the proposal is that alternating morphemes that are searching for a harmonic value may have access toall-values, only asingle-value, or thecontrastivevalues of the harmonic feature. Two cases of microvariation are explored: [ATR] vowel harmony in Standard Yoruba vs. Ife Yoruba, which reduces to the setting of the relativization-value toallvs.contrastive, and vowel-consonant interactions mediated by [high] harmony in Sanjiazi Manchu vs. Sibe, which reduces to the parametric setting ofcontrastivevs.single-value.
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Two types of resumptive pronouns in polish relative clauses
Author(s): Adam Szczegielniakpp.: 165–185 (21)More LessThis paper discusses two types of resumptive pronouns found in Polish relative clauses: (i) adjacent resumptives and (ii) embedded resumptives. It will be argued that adjacent resumptives are truncated forms of the relative operator, whereas embedded resumptives are ‘regular’ resumptive pronouns found in other languages like Hebrew and Russian. Support for this claim will come from analyzing the differences between adjacent and embedded resumptives, and analyzing the similarities between adjacent resumptives and relative operators. Cross-linguistic data involving the interaction of relative clause formation and resumption, as well as the interaction of cliticization and resumption will provide additional support for the above claim.
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Microparameters for Norwegian wh-grammars
Author(s): Øystein Vangsnespp.: 187–226 (40)More LessThe absence of V2 in mainclausewh-questions is geographically speaking a very widespread phenomenon in Norwegian, absent only in central eastern and southeastern Norwegian dialects. The characteristics of the phenomenon are nevertheless not uniform across the dialects – three descriptive variables can be discerned: (i) whether or not V2 is required, (ii) whether or not V2 is optional alongside non-V2, and (iii) whether or not non-V2 is allowed with shortwh-elements only. In addition these variables are relative to a 77;subjecthood distinction on thewh-constituent. The phenomenon has received considerable attention by both dialectologists and theoretical syntacticians, and the main purpose of this paper is to systematize the information available in previous works. On the basis of the resulting overview a microparametric account of the variation will be proposed whereby the variation hinges on three microparameters: (i) whether or not interrogative C must be lexicalized, (ii) whether or not shortwh-elements are heads that may lexicalize C, and (iii) whether or not the elementsomthat appears in subjectwh-questions is a head or not. Diachronic speculations concerning the development of the variation will also be raised.
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Extending the extension condition to discontinuous idioms
Author(s): Peter Svenoniuspp.: 227–263 (37)More LessThis paper makes a specific proposal regarding the structure of idioms as they are listed in the lexicon, which has important ramifications. Specifically, I suggest that first Merge as well as internal Merge can target subconstituents of structures already built by Merge. This creates structures which I call Banyan trees, in which there is more than one undominated node. I suggest that this model, together with certain assumptions about phases and about the functional sequence of syntactic heads, derive important facts about the structure of idioms.
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On productivity
Author(s): Charles Yangpp.: 265–302 (38)More LessLanguage learning is a remarkably robust process. The child is incredibly good at recognizing systematic regularities even when faced with lexically and contextually restricted exceptions This paper sketches out a preliminary model that recognizes productive processes and exceptions as such; accordingly, the learner can proceed to internalize each as different kinds of linguistic knowledge. We argue that if a linguistic process is conjectured to be productive, then having exceptions to it can add (surprisingly) significant cost to its online processing. Empirically, we explore these issues in the domain of morphology, which leads to finer-grained analyses of a number of well-known morphological problems. We also briefly discuss how the methodology and results of this work may generalize to syntactic learning.
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Antisymmetry and the lexicon
Author(s): Richard S. Kayne
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On productivity
Author(s): Charles Yang
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