Paracompositionality, MWEs and Argument Substitution

Multi-word expressions, verb-particle constructions, idiomatically combining phrases, and phrasal idioms have something in common: not all of their elements contribute to the argument structure of the predicate implicated by the expression. Radically lexicalized theories of grammar that avoid string-, term-, logical form-, and tree-writing, and categorial grammars that avoid wrap operation, make predictions about the categories involved in verb-particles and phrasal idioms. They may require singleton types, which can only substitute for one value, not just for one kind of value. These types are asymmetric: they can be arguments only. They also narrowly constrain the kind of semantic value that can correspond to such syntactic categories. Idiomatically combining phrases do not subcategorize for singleton types, and they exploit another locally computable and compositional property of a correspondence, that every syntactic expression can project its head word. Such MWEs can be seen as empirically realized categorial possibilities, rather than lacuna in a theory of lexicalizable syntactic categories.Comment: accepted version (pre-final) for 23rd Formal Grammar Conference, August 2018, Sofi

On past participle agreement in transitive clauses in French

This paper provides a Minimalist analysis of past participle agreement in French in transitive clauses. Our account posits that the head v of vP in such structures carries an (accusativeassigning) structural case feature which may apply (with or without concomitant agreement) to case-mark a clause-mate object, the subject of a defective complement clause, or an intermediate copy of a preposed subject in spec-CP. In structures where a goal is extracted from vP (e.g. via wh-movement) v also carries an edge feature, and may also carry a specificity feature and a set of (number and gender) agreement features. We show how these assumptions account for agreement of a participle with a preposed specific clausemate object or defective-clause subject, and for the absence of agreement with an embedded object, with the complement of an impersonal verb, and with the subject of an embedded (finite or nonfinite) CP complement. We also argue that the absence of agreement marking (in expected contexts) on the participles faitmade and laissélet in infinitive structures is essentially viral in nature. Finally, we claim that obligatory participle agreement with reflexive and reciprocal objects arises because the derivation of reflexives involves A-movement and concomitant agreement

Temporal, aspectual and modal expression in Anindilyakwa, the language of the Groote Eylandt Archipelago, Australia

This thesis provides an empirically driven and theoretically informed examination of temporal, aspectual and modal (TAM) expression in Anindilyakwa, an underdescribed and underdocumented Gunwinyguan language of the Groote Eylandt archipelago, north-east Arnhem Land, Australia. The goals of the thesis are both descriptive and theoretical. The first is to provide a detailed description of some of the core grammatical properties of Anindilyakwa, particularly related to the verbal complex. This descriptive goal is linked to, and builds the infrastructure for, the second goal of the thesis: to provide a theoretically-informed examination of temporal, aspectual and modal expression and interaction in Anindilyakwa, thus contributing towards (and building upon) research in the area of TAM semantics and pragmatics (and their interfaces with morpho-syntax). The original contribution of this thesis lies in the cross-section between theoretically-informed morpho-syntactic, semantic and pragmatic approaches to TAM expression in natural languages, and the exploration and examination of this domain in a fieldwork and language documentation setting: how do underdescribed languages inform our understanding of this domain, and how should we approach the documentation of these concepts in the field? Anindilyakwa is a particularly interesting language to examine in this regard, given the polysynthetic nature and complex morphological make-up and combinatorics of the verb. Inflectionally, TAM expression is realised through the combination of (at least) two discontinuous morphological slots of the verb structure. In addition to the complex morphological combinatorics of the verbal structure, this inflectional system displays widespread aspectuo-temporal underspecification, coupled with a widespread lack of contrastiveness in many of the paradigmatic forms (i.e. syncretism). Thus, unpacking and understanding these inflectional verbal properties, with respect to TAM expression, is where the core of this thesis lies. This comprehensive semantic and morpho-syntactic investigation into the TAM system of Anindilyakwa contributes not only to the description of this underdocumented language, but it also bolsters the representation of understudied (particularly non-European) languages that have received detailed TAM study, ensuring that future cross-linguistic typological work on TAM has access to richer data in a wider sample of the world's languages

Quantification as reference: Evidence from Q-verbs

Formal semantics has so far focused on three categories of quantifiers, to wit, Q-determiners (e.g. 'every'), Q-adverbs (e.g. 'always'), and Q-auxiliaries (e.g. 'would'). All three can be analyzed in terms of tripartite logical forms (LF). This paper presents evidence from verbs with distributive affixes (Q-verbs), in Kalaallisut, Polish, and Bininj Gun-wok, which cannot be analyzed in terms of tripartite LFs. It is argued that a Q-verb involves discourse reference to a distributive verbal dependency, i.e. an episode-valued function that sends different semantic objects in a contextually salient plural domain to different episodes

An event-related potential study of cross-modal morphological and phonological priming

The current work investigated whether differences in phonological overlap between the past- and present-tense forms of regular and irregular verbs can account for the graded neurophysiological effects of verb regularity observed in past-tense priming designs. Event-related potentials were recorded from 16 healthy participants who performed a lexical-decision task in which past-tense primes immediately preceded present-tense targets. To minimize intra-modal phonological priming effects, cross-modal presentation between auditory primes and visual targets was employed, and results were compared to a companion intra-modal auditory study (Justus, T., Larsen, J., de Mornay Davies, P., Swick, D. (2008). Interpreting dissociations between regular and irregular past-tense morphology: evidence from event-related potentials. Cognitive, Affective, Behavioral Neuroscience, 8, 178–194.). For both regular and irregular verbs, faster response times and reduced N400 components were observed for present-tense forms when primed by the corresponding past-tense forms. Although behavioral facilitation was observed with a pseudopast phonological control condition, neither this condition nor an orthographic-phonological control produced significant N400 priming effects. Instead, these two types of priming were associated with a post-lexical anterior negativity (PLAN). Results are discussed with regard to dual- and single-system theories of inflectional morphology, as well as intra- and cross-modal prelexical priming