Anaphora and Discourse Structure

We argue in this paper that many common adverbial phrases generally taken to signal a discourse relation between syntactically connected units within discourse structure, instead work anaphorically to contribute relational meaning, with only indirect dependence on discourse structure. This allows a simpler discourse structure to provide scaffolding for compositional semantics, and reveals multiple ways in which the relational meaning conveyed by adverbial connectives can interact with that associated with discourse structure. We conclude by sketching out a lexicalised grammar for discourse that facilitates discourse interpretation as a product of compositional rules, anaphor resolution and inference.Comment: 45 pages, 17 figures. Revised resubmission to Computational Linguistic

Information structure and the referential status of linguistic expression : workshop as part of the 23th annual meetings of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft in Leipzig, Leipzig, February 28 - March 2, 2001

This volume comprises papers that were given at the workshop Information Structure and the Referential Status of Linguistic Expressions, which we organized during the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft (DGfS) Conference in Leipzig in February 2001. At this workshop we discussed the connection between information structure and the referential interpretation of linguistic expressions, a topic mostly neglected in current linguistics research. One common aim of the papers is to find out to what extent the focus-background as well as the topic-comment structuring determine the referential interpretation of simple arguments like definite and indefinite NPs on the one hand and sentences on the other

The Penn Discourse Treebank 2.0 Annotation Manual

This report contains the guidelines for the annotation of discourse relations in the Penn Discourse Treebank (http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~pdtb), PDTB. Discourse relations in the PDTB are annotated in a bottom up fashion, and capture both lexically realized relations as well as implicit relations. Guidelines in this report are provided for all aspects of the annotation, including annotation explicit discourse connectives, implicit relations, arguments of relations, senses of relations, and the attribution of relations and their arguments. The report also provides descriptions of the annotation format representation

Complement clauses and complementation systems: a cross-linguistic study of grammatical organization

The dissertation provides a cross-linguistic investigation into the grammatical structure of complement clauses and the organization of complementation systems. Based on a balanced sample of 100 widely dispersed languages, the major goals of the present work are to set the two landmark typological reference articles on complementation (Noonan 1985|2007, Dixon 2006) onto a broad empirical basis and to explore hitherto understudied phenomena in the constitution of complementation systems. In particular, the traditional focus on object complement clauses is shifted to complements in ‘subject’ function, and the dissertation is the first to analyse systematically the cross-linguistic productivity, morphosyntactic coding, syntagmatic arrangement and diachronic rise of complements in S- and A-function, as compared to their corresponding object clauses. On a methodological plane, it combines a multivariate approach to clause-linkage with recent statistical techniques of data mining (e.g. HCFA, cluster analyses, NeighborNet, MDS) in order to measure (dis)similarities in the cross-linguistic organization of complementation constructions. This comprises, for example, a precise gauging of the degree to which the internal structure of complements is ‘desententialized’ (Lehmann 1988) and made NP-like, of the ways in which this correlates with the possible external functions and positions of the complement in the main clause, and of the ways in which these distributional patterns in complementation systems reflect the historical origins and lexical diffusion of the relevant constructions. Above all, the dissertation problematizes the conceptual and terminological foundations for the typological study of complementation, which, despite decades of intensive research, remain challenging to establish in a cross-linguistically satisfactory way

A conspiracy theory for clefts : the syntax and interpretation of cleft constructions

The main goal of this thesis is to contribute to the discussion about the degree to which semantic and discourse related concepts are syntactically encoded. More particularly, I investigate whether there are consistent correlations between the interpretative and syntactic properties of four European Portuguese cleft constructions, and how these potential correlations should be accounted for theoretically. The cleft constructions taken into consideration are it-clefts, pseudoclefts, é que-clefts and SER-clefts. Syntactically we can distinguish between biclausal clefts (it-clefts and pseudoclefts) and monoclausal clefts (é que-clefts and SER-clefts). All cleft constructions have a focalized cleft constituent that can both constitute information focus and contrastive focus, and an existentially presupposed cleft clause. Additionally, the cleft constituent exhaustively identifies an open position in the cleft clause. The alternative semantics for focus (Rooth 1985) is adopted, according to which intonational focus uniformly contributes a set of alternatives in LF. Pragmatic rules operating on this set give rise to two suspendable implicatures: existential presupposition and exhaustivity. Given that both é que-clefts and SER-clefts have the same interpretation as non-cleft sentences with intonational focus when it comes to existential presupposition and exhaustivity, I conclude that their particular syntactic structure does not contribute anything to these interpretive aspects. The biclausal clefts on the other hand, argued to be specificational sentences, have a non-suspendable existential presupposition and exhaustive interpretation, on a par with non-cleft specificational sentences. I argue that this is because in these structures, the cleft constituent identifies a variable introduced by a definite description. The cleft clause, a headed relative clause in complement position of a definite determiner in it-clefts and a free relative in pseudoclefts, are shown to have the same semantic denotation as definite DPs, which are inherently presupposed. The strongly exhaustive interpretation arises because of the identification relation between the cleft constituent and the definite description. Furthermore, I argue that focus features do not trigger A’-movement to a dedicated FocP in European Portuguese: when focalized constituents move, they do so for focus-independent reasons. This is confirmed by the fact that only the cleft constituent of é que-clefts has properties of A’-movement, the other ones seem to be in situ. I propose that the cleft constituent of é que-clefts is a topic with a focus feature that moves to a TopP. This account straightforwardly captures the similar discourse restrictions that exist for non-focalized topics and for the cleft constituent of é que-clefts. The quantificational focus feature pied-piped by topicalization gives rise to intervention effects, causing left-peripheral focus not to be recursive and to be incompatible with movement of constituents with quantificational features. The account predicts the observed embedding restrictions of é que-clefts. Finally, I develop an account for the syntax of SER-clefts that approximates it to structures with focus particles. I argue that the copula is a focus-sensitive operator that is merged together with the cleft constituent. Distributional restrictions of the copula are due to selectional requirements of higher heads

Aspects de la syntaxe du créole martiniquais

Cette thèse est consacrée à l’étude de trois faits de langue du créole martiniquais (CM) et aborde ainsi certains aspects de l’interface syntaxe-sémantique/pragmatique. Le premier fait de langue concerne la périphérie gauche nominale du CM pour laquelle nous proposons de scinder la projection fonctionnelle DP en deux projections, Def(initeness)P et Specif(icity)P. La première de ces couches encode la définitude, tandis que la seconde marque la spécificité. Cette analyse permet de rendre compte de deux des propriétés des propositions relatives restrictives du CM. Il s’agit en l’espèce du fait qu’elles comportent deux occurrences du déterminant défini et que la présence ou absence de sa seconde occurrence résulte en une lecture spécifique ou non spécifique. Bien qu’ils ne puissent comporter qu’une seule occurrence du déterminant défini (motivée par une haplologie), les DP simples sont soumis à la même analyse. On peut ainsi rendre compte de leurs différentes interprétations. Le second fait de langue concerne les interrogatives partielles définies (IPD). Ces constructions se distinguent des interrogatives canoniques par les conditions de leur légitimation. Elles nécessitent l’inclusion dans le common ground d’une proposition existentielle qui partage avec l’IPD sa restriction et sa portée nucléaire. De ce fait, on ne peut ni commencer une conversation par une IPD ni y apporter une réponse du type rien. Les IPD se caractérisent donc par une présupposition forte que nous attribuons à la présence en position finale d’un déterminant clausal. Ce dernier est engendré dans la périphérie gauche de la phrase et prend pour restriction une proposition. En raison de son homophonie avec le déterminant défini nominal, nous suggérons qu’il est la réalisation d’un trait acatégoriel [+DEF]. Autrement dit, nous apportons ici de nouvelles preuves au point de vue selon lequel la définitude n’est pas une propriété exclusivement nominale. Le troisième fait de langue concerne l’interaction des verbes modaux du CM avec le temps. Qu’ils soient épistémiques ou radicaux, les modaux du CM sont des verbes à montée. Quelle que soit leur lecture, ils participent donc à des structures biclausales et sont sous la portée du temps. On observe cependant que l’interprétation temporelle des épistémiques est soumise à des contraintes qui ne s’appliquent pas aux radicaux. Ce contraste trouve son origine dans une différence d’orientation. Les radicaux sont orientés vers le sujet, alors que les épistémiques sont orientés vers le locuteur (ou le Siège de la Connaissance). Cela se traduit par une dépendance interprétative des épistémiques vis-à-vis de la couche fonctionnelle abstraite Sen(tience)P située dans la périphérie gauche de la phrase. Nous proposons un trait [sen] pour traduire cette dépendance. Les conséquences interlangagières de cette analyse sont évaluées. Les trois faits de langue à l’étude confirment l’importance capitale de la périphérie gauche nominale et phrastique dans l’interface syntaxe-sémantique/pragmatique.This dissertation investigates three linguistic phenomena in Martinican Creole (MC) and addresses some aspects of the syntax-semantics/pragmatics interface. The first phenomenon concerns the nominal left periphery. I argue that the MC DP layer should be split into two distinct functional projections, Def(initeness)P and Specif(icity)P. The former projection encodes definiteness, while the latter marks specificity. This analysis accounts for two properties of MC restrictive relative clauses. First, they manifest determiner doubling. Second, the presence/absence of the second occurrence of the definite determiner is correlated with a specific/nonspecific reading. The proposed analysis can be applied to simplex DPs even though, owing to a haplology, they cannot feature more than one occurrence of the determiner. This allows for a straightforward account of their interpretational properties. The second phenomenon concerns definite wh-questions (DWQs). These non-canonical wh-questions are characterized by their peculiar licensing conditions. They can only be uttered if the common ground includes an existential proposition which shares its restriction and nuclear scope with the DWQ. As a result, they cannot be uttered out of the blue and do not tolerate nothing-type answers. In other words, DWQs are associated with a hard presupposition triggered by the clausal determiner which appears in the final position of DWQs. This determiner is base-generated in the left periphery of the clause and takes a proposition as its restriction. Because of its homophony with the nominal definite determiner, we suggest that it spells out an acategorial [+DEF] feature. This can be adduced as further evidence for the view that definiteness is not restricted to the nominal domain. The third phenomenon under study concerns the interaction of MC modal verbs with tense. Whether they receive a root or an epistemic reading, MC modals are raising predicates. Both epistemic and root modals are inserted in biclausal structures and are under the scope of tense. Nevertheless, the temporal interpretation of epistemic modals is subject to constraints which do not apply to their root counterparts. This contrast correlates with a difference in orientation. Root modals are subject-oriented, while epistemic modals are oriented toward the speaker (or the Seat of Knowledge). This results in their interpretational dependence on the abstract Sen(tience)P functional layer. To reflect this dependency, I argue for a [sen] feature. The cross-linguistic implications of this proposal are evaluated. The three phenomena under study confirm that the nominal and clausal left periphery plays a crucial role in the syntax-semantics/pragmatics interface