Relative Embeddings: A Circassian Puzzle for the Syntax/Semantics Interface.

Linguistic

Unconcealed Questions

Which price does John know? This sentence exemplifies what I call an unconcealed question (UQ): a sentence with a structure and meaning analogous to those of an ordinary concealed question (CQ), but where the sentence is interrogative in form and interpretation, with the relevant DP headed by which. Such examples are almost completely unstudied in the otherwise wide-ranging CQ literature. As I show, UQs exhibit a proper subset of the ambiguities that have been observed for ordinary CQs. In particular, UQs lack what is known as Reading B, where a relative clause (or other modifying adjunct) containing the relevant sort of predicate is interpreted in the scope of the higher CQ-selecting predicate (e.g. know). I survey the properties of UQs and evaluate the CQ theories currently on the market in light of the UQ data, concluding tentatively that the absence of Reading B is the result of syntactic factors whose description is straightforward but whose explanation remains murky

On Negative Eventualities, Negative Concord, and Negative "Yes/No" Questions

No abstract

Psych verbs in English and Mandarin

2014-2015 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalAccepted ManuscriptPublishe

Advances in formal Slavic linguistics 2018 (Volume 4)

Advances in Formal Slavic Linguistics 2018 offers a selection of articles that were prepared on the basis of talks presented at the conference Formal Description of Slavic Languages (FDSL 13) or at the parallel Workshop on the Semantics of Noun Phrases, which were held on December 5–7, 2018, at the University of Göttingen. The volume covers a wide array of topics, such as situation relativization with adverbial clauses (causation, concession, counterfactuality, condition, and purpose), clause-embedding by means of a correlate, agreeing vs. transitive ‘need’ constructions, clitic doubling, affixation and aspect, evidentiality and mirativity, pragmatics coming with the particle li, uniqueness, definiteness, maximal interpretation (exhaustivity), kinds and subkinds, bare nominals, multiple determination, quantification, demonstratives, possessives, complex measure nouns, and the NP/DP parameter. The set of object languages comprises Russian, Czech, Polish, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian, and Torlak Serbian. The numerous topics addressed demonstrate the importance of Slavic linguistics. The original analyses prove that substantial progress has been made in major fields of research

About about

I provide a compositional account of about-PPs in combination with attitude predicates, content nouns, and as a predicate. The account requires that attitude predicates are properties of content-bearing eventualities, rather than relations that take propositions (or other clause denotations) as arguments. I argue further that the relevant notion of 'content' must be extremely general, allowing for question-like, proposition-like, and hybrid meanings

Elements of Clausal Embedding

This thesis asks: what is the division of labour between the syntax and the semantics? The empirical focus is on the phenomenon of clausal embedding, whereby the grammar provides the resources to embed a clause within another clause, and the semantics provides the resources to represent an individual’s mental representations. The primary goal is to argue that that-clauses denote predicates of contentful entities – abstract objects, such as propositions, facts, and rumours. The major theoretical claim is that that-clauses function quite generally as modifiers in the compositional semantics, both when they compose with nominals and verbs. In order to cash this idea out, a strictly neo-Davidsonian approach to the syntax-semantics interface is outlined. In the syntax, arguments are severed from the verb; rather, they are incorporated as specifiers of functional heads. This is paralleled by a neo-Davidsonian semantics, where verbs denote predicates of eventualities, and thematic arguments are incorporated via metalanguage functions. Consequently all verbs, including attitude verbs, are argued to simply denote predicates of eventualities. Embedded clauses compose with attitude verbs as intersective modifiers – they specify the content of the verb’s eventuality argument