Variation in English subject extraction : the case of hyperactive subjects

International audienceStarting from the well known observation that for some speakers of English, wh-subjects extracted across a transitive predicate can bear accusative case, we investigate the syntax of the pattern in which a subject is wh-moved across a passive predicate. For a minority of speakers, in this second pattern the moved wh-subject can trigger agreement with the predicate in the matrix clause, yielding an apparent case of finite raising which we will call wh-raising. In attempt to offer a unified account of these two structures, we suggest that both are possible in a grammar that allows for DPs to be 'hyperactive' (Carstens 2011) and to take part in A-operations (i.e. syntactic phenomena related to Case and agreement) in more than one clause. The analysis that we propose is couched in the cartographic framework, and adopts the approach to subject extraction from Rizzi (2006) and Rizzi & Shlonsky (2006, 2007)

The domain of Finiteness: Anchoring without Tense in copular amalgam sentences

The central thesis of this work is that a clause consisting only of left-peripheral functional structure can be fully finite. Generative models of clause structure typically assume that a finite clause must be tensed, including a projection of T and a temporal relation between the proposition and the utterance context. In light of evidence from tenseless languages, this assumption has come under scrutiny in recent years. This dissertation offers a new body of evidence from English, a tensed language, in support of the claim that finite clauses can lack the projection of T. Drawing on the results of formal acceptability experiments, this dissertation presents an original investigation of the understudied family of specificational copular amalgam sentences (e.g., She wrote about finiteness is what she did), which differs from canonical specificational copular sentences with respect to a number of syntactic and semantic properties. The most salient of these properties is the occurrence of a root clause in the role of logical and structural subject. I propose that copular amalgam sentences are finite, but their functional spine consists only of the C-domain, lacking projections of T and V. Since C-domain heads can project in the absence of T and V, there can be no implicational relation between higher and lower heads in the functional sequence. Copular amalgams show that finiteness can be reduced to phenomena originating in the left periphery of the clause. These phenomena include [T] and [phi] inflection, the licensing of an independently referential subject, and independent anchoring of the proposition to the utterance context. Independent anchoring, which is typically conflated with temporal anchoring in the T domain, obtains via deixis to the utterance context in finite clauses that lack T. This dissertation has two main contributions: to catalogue the properties of a typologically rare, yet understudied construction, and to challenge the Extended Projections model of the clause

Derivation and Representation of Syntactic Amalgams

This dissertation consists of an investigation of Syntactic Amalgamation (cf. Lakoff 1974): the phenomenon of combination of sentences that yields parenthetic-like constructions like (01). (01) John invited God only knows how many people to you can imagine what kind of a party. The theoretical framework adopted is the Generative-Transformational Grammar (Chomsky 1957, 1965, 1975, 1981, 1986b, 2000b), following (and elaborating on) the recent developments known as the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1995, 2000a, 2001a, 2001b; Martin & Uriagereka 2000; Uriagereka 1998, 1999, 2002). As far as the representation of syntactic amalgams is concerned, the main claim made in this dissertation is that such constructions involve a radical form of shared constituency, where two or more matrix sentences share the same subordinate sentence, in a multiply-rooted phrase marker. As far as the derivation of syntactic amalgams is concerned, the main claims made in this dissertation are: (i) context-free shared constituency arises from overlapping numerations; and (ii) the computational system builds structure incrementally, in a generalized tucking-in fashion, which yields a left-to-right/top-to-bottom effect on the derivation, such that constituency is heavily dynamic (along the lines of Phillips 1996, 2003; Drury 1998a, 1998b, 1999; Richards 1999, 2003). The conclusion is that this particular kind of paratactic-like construction is better understood as a purely syntactic phenomenon, where the resources of the computational system are pushed to the limit

Post-syntactic excorporation in realizational morphology, evidence from Breton

International audienceI investigate a Breton paradigm where excorporation takes place from morphological amalgams such as inflected lexical verbs. I propose that Breton analytic structures with auxiliation in 'do' illustrate a case of excorporation outside of syntax, in realizational morphology. The distribution of Breton excorporation is directly dependent on the output of the syntactic module : word order. The trigger for excorporation, Late Expletive Insertion Trigger, is itself at the interface, after syntax and before phonology. Excorporation out of the inflected head asks for repair strategies in order to pass the Stray Affix Filter : 'do' support insertion leads to regular analytic structures in 'do' (to.know do.1SG, 'I know'). Another last resort strategy is to pronounce the lower copy of the lexical verb, which leads to doubling structures (to.know know.1SG, 'I know'). Idiosyncrasy of the latter confirms that repairs of excorporation are not syntactic

Homogeneity and Homogenizability: Hard Problems for the Logic SNP

We show that the question whether a given SNP sentence defines a homogenizable class of finite structures is undecidable, even if the sentence comes from the connected Datalog fragment and uses at most binary relation symbols. As a byproduct of our proof, we also get the undecidability of some other properties for Datalog programs, e.g., whether they can be rewritten in MMSNP, whether they solve some finite-domain CSP, or whether they define the age of a reduct of a homogeneous Ramsey structure in a finite relational signature. We subsequently show that the closely related problem of testing the amalgamation property for finitely bounded classes is EXPSPACE-hard or PSPACE-hard, depending on whether the input is specified by a universal sentence or a set of forbidden substructures.Comment: 34 pages, 3 figure

A Divide-and-Conquer Approach for Solving Interval Algebra Networks

Deciding consistency of constraint networks is a fundamental problem in qualitative spatial and temporal reasoning. In this paper we introduce a divide-and-conquer method that recursively partitions a given problem into smaller sub-problems in deciding consistency. We identify a key theoretical property of a qualitative calculus that ensures the soundness and completeness of this method, and show that it is satisfied by the Interval Algebra (IA) and the Point Algebra (PA). We develop a new encoding scheme for IA networks based on a combination of our divide-and-conquer method with an existing encoding of IA networks into SAT. We empirically show that our new encoding scheme scales to much larger problems and exhibits a consistent and significant improvement in efficiency over state-of-the-art solvers on the most difficult instances