Morphosyntax of auxiliaries

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2011.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 241-256).This dissertation is concerned with the broad question of why auxiliary verbs occur in natural language. Much previous work has assumed that the occurrence of auxiliary verbs is morphologically or syntactically arbitrary. I argue instead that auxiliary verbs, particularly BE, arise as a result of general properties morphological and syntactic systems of verbal inflection. More specifically, I propose that the existence of auxiliary BE reflects the fact that the inflectional system can fail to unite inflectional material with a main verb. I argue the reasons for this failure are structural: inflectional information combines with the main verb via Agree (Chomsky, 1998), a process constrained by relativized locality. Certain inflectional contexts isolate inflectional features from the verb because other targets for inflectional Agree intervene between them, resulting in these features being stranded. Stranded features are morphologically realized separately from the main verb; if they are affixal, this triggers the insertion of a totally default verb (BE) within the morphological component. Framing this approach to inflection in terms of Agree, however, requires modification of Chomsky's original formulation, so that inflectional feature values can be passed downward (or fail to be passed downward) from functional heads onto the main verb. I argue for a "reverse" formulation of Agree similar to that adopted in a number of recent papers (Baker 2008, Zeijlstra 2010, Wurmbrand 2011, a.o.) The resulting framework for verbal inflection predicts that different patterns of auxiliary use arise cross-linguistically due to differences in which inflectional features are able to Agree locally with the main verb. I argue that this variation can be traced two factors independently known to differ cross-linguistically: inflectional feature markedness, determining which features are visible to Agree, and the distribution of head movement, able to move the verb into local relationships with higher functional heads. Subsequent chapters extend this general approach into a variety of related domains: the alternation between HAVE and BE in auxiliary selection, the conflict between this analysis of BE and the traditional analysis of DO-support as a process that rescues stranded inflection, and the interaction of verbal inflection and auxiliaries with counterfactual inflection marking.by Bronwyn Alma Moore Bjorkman.Ph.D

Rigor and accessibility: Attitudes towards syntax pedagogy in higher education

We report on early stages of a large study on syntax pedagogy, and particularly on perceptions of “gatekeeping”. We present the results of a pilot study to explore this theme and others that arose, such as inequality and discrimination in the classroom, as well as the results of an ongoing program survey. Together, these results show that there are widespread experiences of bias in syntax classrooms, that syntax occupies a privileged space within linguistics, and that syntax is perceived to be a particularly difficult subject which some people have an innate talent for and others do not. The findings, especially in the context of current work on social justice in linguistics, have serious implications for inclusivity in the field and on how we as syntax educators can make changes for the benefit of future syntax scholars

The Crosslinguistic Defaultness of BE

This paper presents a formalization of view that auxiliary verbs such as be are in some sense default verbs. On the basis of languages in which auxiliaries arise only in certain combinations of inflectional categories (Latin, Kinande), it is argued that auxiliary be is not present in the syntax, but is instead a morphological strategy for realizing “stranded” inflectional features. A model of verbal inflection that implements this approach to auxiliaries is developed, providing a unified analysis of the auxiliary pattern found in languages of the Latin/Kinande type with the more familiar pattern of languages such as English.The Coyote Papers are made available by the Arizona Linguistics Circle at the University of Arizona and the University of Arizona Libraries. Contact [email protected] with questions about these materials

Singular they and the syntactic representation of gender in English

Singular 'they 'enjoys a curious notoriety in popular discussions of English grammar. Despite this, and though its use with quantificational, non-specific, and genuinely epicene antecedents dates back at least to the 1400s (Balhorn 2004), it has been little discussed in formal linguistics. This squib suggests an analysis of this longstanding use of 'they', while also describing a more recent change in 'they'’s distribution, whereby many speakers now accept it with singular, definite, and specific antecedents of known binary gender. I argue that the distribution of 'they', in both conservative and innovative varieties, has implications for our understanding of the syntactic representation of gender in English, the structure of bound variable pronouns, and the regulation of coreference

Illusions of transitive expletives in Middle English

Abstract This paper examines a type of existential there sentence found in Middle English that has been argued to have a structure similar to transitive expletive constructions (TECs) in other Germanic languages, or to follow from the presence of NegP below T during the relevant period. Based on an exhaustive analysis of the 74 examples of this construction found in the Penn Parsed Corpora of Historical English (out of a total of over six thousand sentences from 1125 to 1913 containing there coded as expletive), we observe that 67 contain both a modal verb and clausal negation licensing a negative associate, unlike TECs found in other Germanic languages, and that the construction is found only between 1390 and 1600. We argue that the availability of this construction was due to a transitory alignment of three syntactic properties in this stage of the language: (i) modals were still main verbs merged within vP, but took a reduced complement consisting of only an inner clausal phase, and did not take a thematic external argument; (ii) English still had negative concord; (iii) Voice and viewpoint Aspect shared a single syntactic projection. The confluence of these three factors provided a non-thematic specifier position, [Spec,vP], into which there could merge. Before the late 14th century, modals were full verbs taking a thematic external argument and full clausal complements, and after about 1600, they were merged directly in T, occurring in a monoclausal rather than a (reduced) biclausal structure. At no point did the English monoclausal spine have the structural room to accommodate a true Germanic TEC