An intervention account of the distribution of main clause phenomena: Evidence from ellipsis

Based on an examination of some asymmetries between VP ellipsis and VP fronting, this paper argues for an intervention approach and against a truncation approach to the distribution of main clause phenomena in adverbial clauses and, by extension, in non-root contexts in general. Adopting Authier’s (2011) treatment of VP ellipsis whereby the to-be-elided VP undergoes fronting in the computational component but fails to be spelled out at PF, these asymmetries follow from the fact that a fronted VP, being an intervener for wh-movement in adverbial clauses, triggers a PF crash unless ellipsis allows the derivation to converge via Bošković’s (2011) ‘rescue by PF deletion’ mechanism. This proposal entails that adverbial clauses are derived by wh-movement (Haegeman (2006) among others) and that the landing site for VP fronting is available in a non-root environment, two assumptions that militate against a truncation account of non-root clauses.Partiendo del examen de algunas asimetrías entre la elipsis del SV y la anteposición del SV, este artículo propone una explicación basada en la intervención y contrario a un enfoque basado en el truncamiento de la distribución de los fenómenos de cláusula principal en cláusulas adverbiales y, por extensión, también en cláusulas no principales en general. Si adoptamos el tratamiento de la elipsis del SV de Authier (2011), en el cual el SV a elidir se mueve a izquierda en el componente computacional aunque termina no siendo pronunciado en la FF, estas asimetrías son consecuencia del hecho de que un SV antepuesto, por intervenir en el movimiento-Q de cláusulas adverbiales, provoca una incompatibilidad en FF a menos que la elipsis permita la convergencia de la derivación mediante el mecanismo de ‘rescate por borrado en FF’ de Bošković (2011). Esta propuesta implica que las cláusulas adverbiales se derivan por movimiento-Q (Haegeman (2006) entre otros) y que la posición a la que se mueve un SV antepuesto está disponible en cláusulas no principales, dos supuestos que contradicen explicaciones basadas en el truncamiento de las cláusulas no principales.Baseado numa análise de algumas assimetrias entre elipse de VP e fronteamento de VP, este artigo defende uma abordagem intervencional e rejeita uma abordagem de truncamento da distribuição de fenómenos de orações raiz em orações adverbiais e, por extensão, em contextos não raiz em geral. Adotando o tratamento da elipse de VP de Authier (2011), de acordo com o qual o VP a elidir sofre fronteamento na componente computacional mas não é interpretado em PF, estas assimetrias decorrem do facto de que um VP fronteado, sendo um interveniente no movimento-wh em orações adverbiais, desencadeia uma falha em PF, a não ser que a elipse permita que a derivação convirja através do mecanismo de “reconstrução por apagamento em PF” de Bošković (2011). Esta proposta implica que as orações adverbiais sejam derivadas por movimento-wh (Haegeman, 2006; entre outros) e que a posição de chegada para o fronteamento de VP esteja disponível num ambiente não raiz, duas assunções que vão contra uma abordagem de truncamento de orações não raiz

Against restructuring in modern French

Cinque (2002) examines those transparency effects that have been claimed to point to the existence of restructuring in French and concludes that quantifier and adverb climbing depend not on restructuring but, rather, on an irrealis context. In this paper, we show that restructuring does not play an active role in explaining the existence of en `of-it\u27 and y `there\u27 climbing or long movement in `easy-to-please\u27 constructions either, which leads to the conclusion that Modern French has no transparency effects of the restructuring kind. We then present three arguments against Cinque\u27s (2004) thesis that verbs of the restructuring class are universally functional verbs that appear with infinitives in a monoclausal configuration. Instead, we adopt the Cinque (2001)/Cardinaletti & Shlonsky (2004) approach according to which restructuring verbs can be merged either as lexical or functional verbs. We argue that this approach should be parametrized to yield three options that account for cross-linguistic/dialectal variation associated with restructuring

Identifying Phonologically Overt Counterparts to Silent Elements: The Case of French Exceptives

A relatively recent development in the generative framework is the hypothesis that there exist in syntax silent elements (SEs) that have a semantic content that is recovered by accessing their phonologically overt counterparts (cf. Kayne 2005, 2012 and Her and Tsai 2015, among others). In this paper, we provide a careful assessment of the two SEs that have been argued by O’Neill (2011) and Homer (2015) to be present in the French (ne)…que exceptive construction; namely silent rien ‘nothing’ and silent autre ‘other’. In doing so, we take to heart one of the main points made by Her and Tsai (2015) in relation to their criticism of Kayne (2012); namely, that for a proposed SE to be learnable, there cannot be any deviation in meaning from its overt counterpart. That is, the recoverability constraint assumed in the generative framework to be at work in, say, PF-deletion ellipsis, applies to all phonologically silent categories, including SEs. Additionally, as Her and Tsai argue, if semantic deviance between SEs and their phonologically overt counterparts were allowed, SEs would become ‘empirically intractable’. We argue that while positing a silent n-word in (ne)…que is faithful to the recoverability constraint on silent categories, the alleged second SE, namely, silent autre ‘other’, is not semantically equivalent to its phonologically overt counterpart in several respects. As we demonstrate, however, if one assumes instead that its overt counterpart is plus ‘more’, the recoverability requirement is restored

French Tough-Movement Infinitives as Deverbal Nominals

In this paper, we argue that predicates of the tough-class in French embed not a verbal infinitive but rather, a gerundive verbal noun. This hypothesis allows us to capture a number of unexpected restrictions on French tough-movement discussed by Legendre (1986). We show that these restrictions are best described as the inability of French tough-movement infinitives to be followed by complements that are disallowed in their corresponding argument-taking event nominals. Our analysis of such infinitives as nominalized elements correctly predicts that they should never be selected by auxiliaries, and that they should have suppressed external arguments in the sense of Grimshaw (1990)

Conventional Form

Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: General Session Dedicated to the Contributions of Charles J. Fillmore (1994

Affected Experiencers

Numerous languages permit an NP that is not selected by the verb to be added to a clause, with several different possible interpretations. We divide such non-selected arguments into possessor, benefactive, attitude holder, and affected experiencer categories, on the basis of syntactic and semantic differences between them. We propose a formal analysis of the affected experiencer construction. In our account, a syntactic head Aff(ect) introduces the experiencer argument, and adds a conventional implicature to the effect that any event of the type denoted by its syntactic sister is the source of the experiencer’s psychological experience. Hence, our proposal involves two tiers of meaning: the at-issue meaning of the sentence, and some not-at-issue meaning (an implicature). A syntactic head can introduce material on both tiers. Additionally, we allow two parameters of variation: (i) the height of the attachment of Aff, and (ii) how much of the semantics is at-issue and how much is an implicature. We show that these two parameters account for the attested variation across our sample of languages, as well as the significant commonalities among them. Our analysis also accounts for significant differences between affected experiencers and the other types of non-selected arguments, and we also note a generalization to the effect that purely not-at-issue non-selected arguments can only be weak or clitic pronouns

The NOMAD experiment at the CERN SPS

The NOMAD experiment is a short base-line search for $\nu_{\mu}\rightarrow \nu_{\tau}$ oscillations in the CERN neutrino beam. The $\nu_{\tau}$'s are searched for through their charged-current interactions followed by the observation of the resulting $\tau^{-}$ through its electronic, muonic or hadronic decays. These decays are recognized using kinematical criteria necessitating the use of a light target which enables the reconstruction of individual particles produced in the neutrino interactions. This paper describes the various components of the NOMAD detector: the target and muon drift chambers, the electromagnetic and hadronic calorimeters, the preshower and transition radiation detectors, and the veto and trigger scintillation counters. The beam and data acquisition system are also described. The quality of the reconstruction of individual particles is demonstrated through the ability of NOMAD to observe K$^0_{\rm s}$'s, $\Lambda^0$'s and $\pi^0$'s. Finally, the observation of $\tau^{-}$ through its electronic decay being one of the most promising channels in the search, the identification of electrons in NOMAD is discussed