Treating clitics with minimalist grammars

International audienceWe propose an extension of Stabler's version of clitics treatment for a wider coverage of the French language. For this, we present the lexical entries needed in the lexicon. Then, we show the recognition of complex syntactic phenomena as (left and right) dislo- cation, clitic climbing over modal and extraction from determiner phrase. The aim of this presentation is the syntax-semantic interface for clitics analyses in which we will stress on clitic climbing over verb and raising verb

Treating the Semantics of French Clitics with Minimalist Grammars

International audienceWe use the standard definition of Minimalist Grammars give by Ed Stabler since 1997. In this paper, we propose an extension of Stabler modelling of the french clitics which cover all the different case that we find in french texts. Moreover, this proposal take into account of the proper treatment of they semantics

The semantic effects of verb raising and its consequences in second language grammars

This article considers whether highly proficient second language speakers of English can distinguish meaning contrasts associated with constructions where there is a raising be, and constructions where there is a non-raising thematic verb, as illustrated in the difference between (1a) and (1b): 1a. Kim is reading a novel (`event-in-progress/existential ? interpretation

Tree Adjoining Grammar at the Interfaces

This thesis constitutes an exploration of the applications of tree adjoining grammar (TAG) to natural language syntax. Perhaps more than any of its major competitors such as HPSG and LFG, however, TAG has never strayed too far from the guiding principles of generative syntax. Indeed, following the pioneering work of Frank (2004), TAG has been successfully incorporated into Chomsky’s (1995) Minimalist Program (MP). In large part, however, Frank (2004) leaves unexplored the issue of how TAG applies at the PF and LF interfaces. Given the fundamental importance of interfaces within the MP, no minimalist syntactic theory is complete without at least some notion of the means by which syntactic structure relates to pronunciation and interpretation. In this thesis we attempt to provide insight on this very issue: we address how TAG interfaces with the articulatory and interpretive components of the language faculty, and what insights it provides to minimalist conceptions of these interfaces. Ultimately, our aim is both to reaffirm the viability of TAG as a minimalist syntactic theory as well as to demonstrate that TAG makes clear otherwise arcane facts in natural language syntax. The central proposal of this thesis is twofold. First, TAG may be naturally extended to interface with the articulatory and interpretive components of the language faculty by making recourse to synchronous TAG (STAG). Second, once such a framework has been adopted, minimalist ideas regarding the interaction between syntax and linear order can be applied to deal with certain problematic examples in the TAG framework. TAG thus offers confirmation that in at least some cases, certain aspects of linear order are dependent on post-syntactic operations, so that syntax does not always wholly determine linear order. As a corollary of our proposal, we also demonstrate, through a case study in Niuean raising, that the TAG system makes clear predictions on phenomena that are difficult to describe in mainstream minimalist theories. Our argumentation for these proposals proceeds in three major stages. First, we formalize the synchronous TAG system that has to date been applied in a mostly piecemeal way by various researchers (see Shieber & Nesson 2006, Frank & Storoshenko 2012 for some examples). As a part of this formalization, we argue that the derivation of the LF object, but not the PF object, should make recourse to a more expressive version of the TAG system: multicomponent TAG, a variant that relaxes some constraints on the primitive units in the TAG system to yield greater expressive power. Second, we argue that the STAG system lends credence to the view that at least some word order is determined post-syntactically. In the past, researchers have presented ad hoc extensions of the expressive power of TAG to handle various difficult examples such as subject-to-subject raising in English questions and Irish and Welsh main clauses. We demonstrate that these extensions are both theoretically suspect and ultimately unnecessary given minimalist notions of the derivation: for many of the data motivating these extensions, there is independent evidence that their derivation in fact relies on post-syntactic rearrangements of certain verbal heads. Such examples are therefore well within the generative capacity of a framework with a TAG-based syntactic component that allows certain specific and well motivated post-syntactic rearrangements. Third, we demonstrate that not only is our particular system well motivated within the theoretical bounds of the MP, but also that it makes surprising and accurate empirical predications in cases that have otherwise defied analysis. Specifically, the Austronesian language Niuean features a peculiar instance of raising that has defied a satisfactory analysis since its discovery by Seiter (1980, 1983). We show that TAG makes the clear prediction that there is no raising in Niuean, then argue that this prediction is borne out under a careful examination of the facts. Given that the framework was developed almost exclusively based on the Indo-European language family, its ability to capture confounding behavior in a typologically dissimilar Austronesian language is a strong confirmation of its status as a reasonable alternative to mainstream minimalist syntactic theories

Optional categories in early French syntax : a developmental study of root infinitives and null arguments

LoC Class: PC2395, LoC Subject Headings: French language--Synta

Cliticisation in the acquisition of French as L1 and L2

The intense debate on continuity in child grammars has largely focused on the existence of Functional Categories (FCs) in early grammars despite differences in language use with adults (e.g., omissions, word order errors, lack of case marking). Simplified, the major theoretical explanations for these properties range from Maturational accounts (Radford 1990 and later) claiming an initial absence of FCs, to Weak Continuity views (Clahsen, Eisenbeiss and Penke 1996) claiming one (or more) initially underspecified FCs that are subsequently specified by exposure to input, and further to Strong Continuity views (Poeppel and Wexler 1993) where an adult set of FCs is initially assumed and child language is claimed to be subject solely to performance constraints. A similar debate has raged in SLA (see Herschensohn this volume, for discussion) where an initial absence of FCs has been advocated by many scholars (Vainikka and Young-Scholten 1996, among others). The opposite view, i.e. initial presence of FCs, has been defended by scholars such as Schwartz and Sprouse (1996), who claim that, initially, structural representations of the L2 are based solely on the L1, and by scholars claiming direct UG-access to the FCs (White 1996, Prevost and White 2000b). Most of these studies concern adult SLA. One way to investigate FCs is to study the acquisition of clitics. There is a strong connection between FCs and clitics; clitic pronouns in French have an especially tight relation to the finite verb, which they precede in most cases. Since French is a verb raising language, it follows that the clitic must also move to an FC at spell-out. A common argument, based on this logic, is that a structure of the type je l'entends (I it hear - ‘I hear it’) is diagnostic of the existence of (some) FC in the grammar of a particular learner. These facts have lead researchers investigating FCs in L1 and L2 to analyse the development of clitic pronouns (Hamann et al. 1996 on L1 monolingual French, White 1996 on child L2 French, Herschensohn, this volume, on adult L2 French), and Meisel (1994 on bilingual L1 French) who uses the emergence of subject clitics and finite verbs for determining when AGR is acquired. If scholars agree on the relation “if clitics then FCs“, the inverse relation is much more problematic. Certain data (see below) suggest that, in adult L2 acquisition of French, there may be object pronouns but not clitics. But a lack of clitics does not necessarily imply a lack of FCs. The question mirrors in a certain way the issue of Missing Inflection: if systematic and functional inflection is present, then we can conclude that FCs are accessible, but the lack of inflection does not necessarily imply the absence of FCs (Lardière 1998, Prevost and White 2000b). Now, the syntax of clitics, and more generally cliticisation (pronouns and articles), is in itself a long-standing issue in theoretical linguistics and especially in Romance linguistics. A recently developed theory of pronouns provides new perspectives from which to approach acquisition data. In their detailed analysis, Cardinaletti and Starke (1999) reveal a typology that seems to have been rapidly accepted (see peer comments in van Riemsdijk 1999), where pronouns are classified as either strong, weak or clitics. The distributional and interpretative properties of clitics, weak pronouns and strong pronouns depend on the amount of (functional) internal structure they project. Cliticisation in this view can be seen as a change in structural representation during the derivation, from more to less (i.e., from XP to X0). Since both UG-access and FCs are prerequisites for cliticisation, the study of cliticisation can contribute to a better general understanding of L1 and L2 acquisition. Indeed, the strong consensus on direct access to UG and to early instantiations of FCs in L1 acquisition is not as clear in adult L2 acquisition (see White 2000 for an overview). Furthermore, previous work on clitics in L1 and adult L2 acquisition suggests that there may be differences in the way these are acquired. There is, therefore, a need for further L1 and adult L2 comparative research addressing cliticisation and controlling for general access to FCs. In this paper, we will address the issue of differences between L1 and adult L2 acquisition with respect to cliticisation. Adopting the framework of Cardinaletti and Starke (1999), we will investigate how and to what extent subject and object pronouns and articles become clitics in developing grammars. The data come from bilingual first language acquisition (2L1) and adult second language acquisition (L2). The children are Swedish-French bilinguals and the adults native speakers of Swedish. The fact that Swedish, the “other” language here, is present in both cases allows us to separate transfer from age effects