Dependency formation interacts with case: Evidence from Korean double nominative constructions

The subject-object asymmetry in relative clauses, where structures containing subject dependencies are typically easier to process than those with object dependencies, has been previously attributed to both grammatical function (subject > object) as well as morphological case (e.g., nom > acc). We investigate processing of Double Nominative Constructions (“DNCs”) in Korean, where the object exceptionally has nominative case like the subject (i.e., nom-nom).  This enables isolation of grammatical function and case as possible factors driving the so-called “subject advantage.” We find that dependency formation is more costly in DNCs as compared with nom-acc structures, especially for object relative clauses. We tie this effect to distinctness in morphological case of the subject and object, suggesting that the less morphosyntactically distinct the subject and object are, the more difficult it is to process DNCs in dependencies

Unergatives are different: Two types of transitivity in Samoan

This paper provides arguments in favour of a non-unified treatment of transitive and unergative verbs, based upon the patterning of unergative constructions in the ergative-absolutive language Samoan. Building upon a proposal by Massam (2009; to appear), I argue that unergative subjects in Samoan are merged 'lower 'than transitive subjects, the result being a difference in case marking patterns associated with each verb type. In the spirit of much work which has advocated for a split 'v'P structure (e.g., Pylkkännen 2008; Harley 2013; Legate 2014; a.o.), I propose that unergative subjects are merged in the specifier of 'v'P, while transitive subjects are introduced in a higher projection (VoiceP). This proposal is motivated primarily from split case patterning: while Samoan unergative subjects appear with absolutive case, addition of an object to an unergative verb does not yield the typical ergative-absolutive pattern associated with canonical transitives. Instead, a non-ergative case pattern arises, in which the subject is absolutive, and the object is marked with the prenominal marker 'i'. The Samoan unergative + object construction bears similarities with another set of two-place (so-called middle verbs) which exhibit the same abs'-i 'case frame. Despite the absence of ergative case, both unergative + object and middle constructions are syntactically transitive with respect to various language-internal diagnostics. I argue that the case split results from differing case assigning properties of 'v 'and Voice: 'i 'is analysed as structural accusative case, assigned to the object by 'v'0, while ergative subjects are assigned case by Voice0. The division of external arguments across two VP-external projections can be captured by expanding Dowty’s (1991) framework of thematic proto-roles, whereby unergative and middle “proto'-low'” ('v'P) agents encompass a subset of the semantic properties of full-fledged transitive “proto-'high'” (VoiceP) agents. The additional properties of proto-high agents correspond to additional phrasal structure

Cross-linguistic Effects of Subjecthood, Case, and Transitivity in Syntax and Sentence Processing

The definition of a grammatical ‘subject’, and the properties an argument must have to be characterized as a subject is long debated (e.g., Comrie, 1975; Keenan, 1976). This thesis investigates the relationship between subjecthood, case marking, and transitivity, from both a typological perspective and from an in-depth study of the ergative Polynesian language Niuean. I present two original experimental studies of sentence processing in Niuean, which show that processing of long-distance dependencies and resolution of anaphoric pronouns is affected by agentivity, case marking of arguments, and predicate transitivity. Coupled with formal syntactic analysis, these findings support a view in which a subject is defined as the most agentive verbal argument present in a clause, and further reveal syntactic effects of the distribution of the case marking borne by each argument. Case distribution (known as ‘unmarkedness’ in syntactic literature) and subjecthood are argued to be two distinct factors which, together, influence how accessible an argument is in both syntactic operations and in sentence processing.Ph.D

Psycholinguistic evidence for unaccusativity in an SOV language: A syntactic priming in comprehension

The unaccusative hypothesis (Perlmutter 1978) states that a theme subject of an unaccusative verb is originally an object, as schematized in (1a). In an unergative construction, in contrast, an agent subject originates in subject position, as shown in (1b). (1) a. Unaccusatives: NP1 [VP V t1] b. Unergatives: NP [VP V] The unaccusative hypothesis has been motivated on theoretical grounds (Borer and Grodzinsky 1986; Burzio 1986; Levin and Rappaport Hovav 1995) and further supported by psycholinguistic research (Friedmann et al. 2008; Momma et al. 2018). However, this hypothesis is hard to test in SOV (Subject Object Verb) languages like Japanese, because a surface word order does not provide sufficient information to determine the syntactic nature of the unaccusative subject. In other words, whether movement takes place or not, the surface word order is subject-verb. Hence, it remains less clear whether the subject of the unaccusative in Japanese is base-generated in subject position (Kishimoto 1996) (2a) or base-generated in object position and moves up to subject position (Miyagawa 1989; Takezawa 1991; Hasegawa 2007) (2b). (2) a. NP [VP V] b. NP1 [VP t1 V] The current study is aimed to test whether the unaccusative hypothesis holds in Japanese by conducting a sentence processing experiment

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