The Common Syntax of Deixis and Affirmation

This paper pursues a formal analysis of the idea that affirmative answers to Yes/No questions correspond to a sort of propositional deixis whereby the relevant proposition is pointed at. The empirical case involves an analysis of the deictic particle na in Greek and a comparison of its syntax with that of the affirmative particle nai. It is shown that both involve an extra head which in the case of the deictic particle is uniformly externalised as the pointing gesture. It is argued that gestural externalisation of syntactic structure should be considered on a par with phonetic externalisation (not only in sign languages). The grammar of the affirmative particle gives us also an account of the observed facts about Greek whereby both the truth and the polarity answering system appear to coexist

Long distance scrambling and anaphora*

This paper explores the impact of long distance scrambling on the interpretation of both local and long distance anaphors in Japanese and Korean.  The implications for binding theory are also explored. In particular, it is shown that the concept of an index can be reconceptualized in order to sit more comfortably within a system that incorporates the inclusiveness condition. The implications for the analysis of scrambling are also considered. The main analytical result on this point is that long distance scrambling in Korean at least is best analyzed as a case of base generation

Scope assignment: From wh- to QR

This paper develops a theory of scope assignment to wh-phrases as resulting of a process of selective spell-out of copies created from Internal Merge. We show that so-called LF-movement is not a viable option in the current theory of grammar. We therefore pursue the idea that all movement is 'overt 'and this, taken in conjunction with a tripartite structure for question formation (involving a clause-typing interrogative C, a Q particle, and a wh-phrase) yields a transparent, syntactically driven theory of scope which we then extend, more speculatively to Quantifier Raising in general

Portions and countability: a crosslinguistic investigation

We examine three constructions across several languages in which a mass noun is embedded in what appears to be a count environment, but the construction as a whole remains mass. We argue that the discussed phenomena - 'Q-noun' constructions like 'lots of water', bare measure constructions like 'kilos of sugar', and pluralised mass nouns in languages like Greek and Persian - all involve portioning-out of the embedded mass denotation. Adopting an overlap-based approach to the mass/count distinction (e.g. Rothstein 2011, Landman 2011, 2016, Khrizman et al 2015), we argue that the same portioning-out operator may result in either a count or a mass NP depending on whether (count) or not (mass) it is the syntactic head of the portion phrase. We provide a compositional semantics to account for this. The examined phenomena all share an inference of large quantity or abundance that, we argue, cannot be reduced to the lexical meaning of the portioning-out expression, nor to a multiplicity inference contributed by plural morphology. We show that our cases of mass portioning-out involve a total order ≤ on portion size and propose to analyse the abundance inference in terms of an uninformativity-based Quantity implicature, following the analysis of the positive form ("Mary is tall") in Rett's (2015) approach to adjectival gradability

On a difference between English and Greek and its theoretical significance

This paper tries to rethink the properties of two types of coordination in English and Greek. It argues that the different behaviour of "and" and "with" coordination in English are the result of the fact that while "and" does not provide a syntactic label "with" does. In Greek, however, neither does resulting in different behaviours. If this is correct we have to accept two higher level conclusions. First, that the (non)-labelling nature of a category can capture linguistic variation and perhaps it is a parametric property. Given that this is not an inflectional category, if I am correct then there is evidence for variation that, although ultimately located in the lexicon if we assume that there is a feature [LABEL], it concerns the only thing that is determined internally to the computational system. The second conclusion, connected directly to the first, is that labelling is a process necessary for the syntactic computation and is neither determined by nor determines interface properties

A syntactic analysis of particle-based exclamatives in Gulf Arabic

This thesis investigates the syntactic structures and the properties of three particle-based exclamatives in Gulf Arabic: vocative exclamatives which involve two particles yaa and ʔaya, and non-vocative exclamatives which involve the particle ʔamma. It implements Chomsky (1995)'s Minimalist Program with Rizzi (1997)'s Split CP Hypothesis in the analysis of the data. I propose that particle-based exclamatives are derived from the underlying verb ʔa-taʕaʒab (1-exclaim) and the preposition min (about) via the ellipsis of the tense phrase which dominates the verb phrase and the preposition. The exclamative particle licenses their ellipsis by blocking the tense phrase and the preposition from spelling out to surface. Focus fronting contributes to the derivation to the fronting movement of the degree phrase, which hosts the exclamative nominals, to the spec of focus phrase prior to the ellipsis operation. I also propose that exclamative particles are complex by carrying two features: the exclamative feature and the deictic feature. Due to their complexity, exclamative particles are decomposable into two heads: an exclamative head and a deictic head, in accordance to Tsoulas (2015) and (2016)'s approach

'Embu' wh-questions in Cypriot Greek: A comparative study

This paper proposes a novel syntactic analysis for embu wh-questions in Cypriot Greek; a wh-question variant which is similar to the est-ce que interrogatives in French and the é que interrogatives in European Portuguese. The paper examines properties of the embu questions which have not been addressed in the literature and investigates the asymmetries these interrogatives are assumed to display. Adopting a Split-CP analysis, we argue that embu is a Wh head; an analysis which accounts for the examined syntactic and semantic properties of these questions. Given the similarities of these structures to the é que interrogatives in European Portuguese and the est-ce que interrogatives in French, the paper reviews the disagreements in the literature with regards to the analysis of these wh-questions and explores whether the analysis that is proposed for embu questions could accommodate these data as well

Portions and countability : A crosslinguistic investigation

We examine three constructions across several languages in which a mass noun is embedded in what appears to be a count environment, but the construction as a whole remains mass. We argue that the discussed phenomena—“Q-noun” constructions like lots of water, bare measure constructions like kilos of sugar, and pluralised mass nouns in languages like Greek and Persian—all involve portioning-out of the embedded mass denotation. We provide a structural account of portioning out and propose structures that derive both mass and count portioning out. Adopting an overlap-based approach to the mass/count distinction (e.g. Landman 2011; Rothstein 2011; Khrizman et al. 2015; Landman 2016) we provide a compositional semantics for the proposed structures. The examined phenomena all share an inference of large quantity or abundance that, we argue, cannot be reduced to the lexical meaning of the portioning-out expression, nor to a multiplicity inference contributed by plural morphology. We show that our cases of mass portioning-out involve a total order ≤ on portion size and propose to analyse the abundance inference in terms of an uninformativity-based Quantity implicature, following the analysis of the positive form (Mary is tall) in Rett’s (2015) approach to adjectival gradability

‘Embu’ wh-questions in Cypriot Greek: A comparative study

This paper proposes a novel syntactic analysis for embu wh-questions in Cypriot Greek; a wh-question variant which is similar to the est-ce que interrogatives in French and the é que interrogatives in European Portuguese. The paper examines properties of the embu questions which have not been addressed in the literature and investigates the asymmetries these interrogatives are assumed to display. Adopting a Split-CP analysis, we argue that embu is a Wh head; an analysis which accounts for the examined syntactic and semantic properties of these questions. Given the similarities of these structures to the é que interrogatives in European Portuguese and the est-ce que interrogatives in French, the paper reviews the disagreements in the literature with regards to the analysis of these wh-questions and explores whether the analysis that is proposed for embu questions could accommodate these data as well

Plurality and cross-linguistic variation: An experimental investigation of the Turkish plural

In English and many other languages, the interpretation of the plural is associated with an ‘exclusive’ reading in positive sentences and an ‘inclusive’ reading in negative ones. For example, the plural noun tulips in a sentence such as Chicken planted tulips suggests that Chicken planted more than one tulip (i.e., a reading which ‘excludes’ atomic individual tulips). At the same time, however, the corresponding negative sentence Chicken didn’t plant tulips doesn’t merely convey that he didn’t plant more than one tulip, but rather that he didn’t plant any tulip (i.e., ‘including’ atomic individual tulips). Different approaches to the meaning contribution of the English plural vary in how they account for this alternation across the polarities, but converge on assuming that (at least one of) the denotation(s) of the plural should include atomic individuals. Turkish, on the other hand, is cited as one of the few known languages in which the plural only receives an exclusive interpretation (e.g., Bale et al. Cross-linguistic representations of numerals and number marking. in: Li, Lutz (eds) Semantics and linguistic theory (SALT) 20, CLC Publications, Ithaca, pp 582–598, 2010). More recent proposals have, however, argued that the Turkish plural should in fact be analysed more like the English plural (e.g., Sag˘, The semantics of number marking: reference to kinds, counting, and optional classifiers, PhD dissertation, Rutgers University, 2019). We report two experiments investigating Turkish-speaking adults’ and preschool-aged children’s interpretation of positive and negative sentences containing plural nouns. The results provide clear evidence for inclusive interpretations of the plural in Turkish, supporting accounts that treat the Turkish and English plurals alike. We briefly discuss how an inclusive meaning of the Turkish plural can be integrated within a theory of the Turkish number system which captures some idiosyncratic properties of the singular and the agreement between number and number numerals