A Schrift to Fest Kyle Johnson

This volume of forty-three papers celebrates Kyle Johnson\u27s contribution to linguistics. Written by Johnson’s colleagues and former students, the papers touch upon topics that have defined Johnson’s career, including verb movement, ellipsis, gapping, Germanic, extraposition, quantifiers and determiners, object positions, among others.https://scholarworks.umass.edu/linguist_oapubs/1000/thumbnail.jp

Navajo in the typology of internally-headed relatives

This paper considers the semantics of Navajo internally-headed relative clauses (IHRCs) with quantified heads. The results of storyboard-based fieldwork show that when the quantifier ’ałníí’dóó 'half' occurs in RC-internal position, it necessarily takes RC-internal scope. This result suggests that Navajo IHRCs are amenable to analyses given to Japanese IHRCs (Hoshi 1995; Shimoyama 1999) but challenges claims by Faltz (1995) and Grosu (2012), who argue that t’áá ’ałtso 'all' invariably takes RC-external scope. We show that while IHRCs with t’áá ’ałtso do not have precisely the truth conditions expected for EHRCs, their truth conditions differ from what might be expected given a Shimoyama-style IHRC analysis (pace Grosu 2012). However, we consider one way to explain this behavior while maintaining surface scope for all Navajo quantifiers

Pronouns Are as Sensitive to Structural Constraints as Reflexives in Early Processing: Evidence From Visual World Paradigm Eye-Tracking

A number of studies in the extant literature report findings that suggest asymmetry in the way reflexive and pronoun anaphors are interpreted in the early stages of processing: that pronouns are less sensitive to structural constraints, as formulated by Binding Theory, than reflexives, in the initial antecedent retrieval process. However, in previous visual world paradigm eye-tracking studies, these conclusions were based on sentences that placed the critical anaphors within picture noun phrases or prepositional phrases, which have independently been shown not to neatly conform to the Binding Theory principles. We present results from a visual world paradigm eye-tracking experiment that show that when critical anaphors are placed in the indirect object position immediately following a verb as a recipient argument, pronoun and reflexive processing are equally sensitive to structural constraints

Natural Selection and the Syntax of Clausal Complementation

This dissertation examines the syntax and semantics of clausal complements. It identifies semantic underpinnings for some syntactic properties of the arguments of propositional attitude verbs. The way clausal arguments compose with their embedding predicates is not uniform and semantic differences emerge from the syntactic context clausal arguments appear in. Three case studies are taken up: clausal arguments of nouns, dislocated clausal arguments (sentential subjects and topics), and infinitival complements with overt subjects (AcI constructions). Chapter Two assembles evidence to support Stowell’s (1981) claim that the clausal complements of nouns are modifiers. It is shown that the clausal complements of nouns behave like adjuncts in their ability to bleed condition C (Kuno 2004 and Jacobson 2003, and explored here further). The compositional strategy used to compose attitude nouns with their arguments, following Kratzer (2006), is shown to account for this behavior and to be commensurate with observations made by Grimshaw (1990). I then show how the modifier status of clausal complements of nouns is determined by the way in which nominals are formed from clause-taking verbs. Chapter Three examines another complementation strategy, found with fronted clauses. New data from binding is provided in support of Koster’s (1978) hypothesis that clauses do not move. Specifically, fronted clauses fail to show the effects of syntactic reconstruction. An analysis, making crucial use of de re attitude ascription, is offered to account for ‘apparent’ binding into fronted clauses. Chapter Four makes the case for enriching the meanings of clausal complements. By examining some new patterns with accusative with infinitive (AcI) constructions (such as I see him to be a fool), I argue for decomposing certain doxastic attitude verbs, putting the introduction of alternatives into the complement. Here too the role of de re attitude ascription is shown to play a crucial role. It is argued that AcI constructions involve de re attitude ascription, with added constraints (determined by the lexical content of the embedding verb) on the nature of the Acquaintance Relation (Kaplan 1968, Lewis 1979). Several predictions about the kinds of verbs that can participate in AcI are borne out

Deep allophones in the Old English laryngeal system

The laryngeal features of Old English fricatives, while fully predictable, nonetheless behave contrastively in the phonology. According to traditional notions of contrastiveness, this would appear to be a paradox. The paradox is resolved using the contrastive hierarchy (Dresher 1998): in the OE hierarchy, the voicing feature takes scope over all obstruents. Segments traditionally assumed as surface variants will be analyzed as "deep allophones," a characterization that explains their behaviour in OE and their subsequent historical development