Search

In a range of languages, the mapping from syntactic to prosodic structure produces "mismatches", where a prosodic constituent has no matching syntactic constituent. This is puzzling, since prosodic structures are clearly based on syntax, and the two are often isomorphic. Here, I examine the predictions of three theories of the syntax-phonology interface using Optimality Theory: Align/Wrap Theory, Match Theory, and a c-command based theory I call Command Theory. Command Theory is shown to be well suited to deal with the phrasing of ditransitive constructions. The types of matches and mismatches predicted by these theories are examined through the lens of formal OT, with careful attention to candidate generation and constraint definitions. This is accomplished using the JavaScript application SPOT (Bellik, Bellik, & Kalivoda 2016). Data is drawn from Bantu, Germanic, Romance, Japanese, and other languages and language families.

Ajuts: AG acknowledges the support of grants FFI2014-56968-C4-1-P and FFI2017-87699-P.

In a range of languages, the mapping from syntactic to prosodic structure produces "mismatches", where a prosodic constituent has no matching syntactic constituent. This is puzzling, since prosodic structures are clearly based on syntax, and the two are often isomorphic. Here, I examine the predictions of three theories of the syntax-phonology interface using Optimality Theory: Align/Wrap Theory, Match Theory, and a c-command based theory I call Command Theory. Command Theory is shown to be well suited to deal with the phrasing of ditransitive constructions. The types of matches and mismatches predicted by these theories are examined through the lens of formal OT, with careful attention to candidate generation and constraint definitions. This is accomplished using the JavaScript application SPOT (Bellik, Bellik, & Kalivoda 2016). Data is drawn from Bantu, Germanic, Romance, Japanese, and other languages and language families.

The main question that this thesis addresses is: in what way does structural information enter into the processing of long-distance dependencies? Does it constrain the computations, and if so, to what degree? Available experimental evidence suggests that sometimes structurally illicit but otherwise suitable constituents are accessed during dependency resolution. Subject-verb agreement is a prime example (Wagers et al., 2009; Dillon et al., 2013), and similar effects were reported for negative polarity items (NPIs) licensing (Vasishth et al., 2008) and reflexive pronouns resolution (Parker and Phillips, 2017; Sloggett, 2017). Prima facie this evidence suggests that structural information fails to perfectly constrain real-time language processing to be in line with grammatical constraints. This conclusion would fall neatly in line with an assumption that human sentence processing relies on cue-based memory (e.g McElree et al., 2003; Lewis and Vasishth, 2005; Van Dyke and Johns, 2012; Wagers et al., 2009, a.m.o.), the key property of which is the fragility of memory search, which can return irrelevant results if they look similar enough to the relevant ones. The attractiveness of such an approach lies in its parsimony: there is independent evidence that general purpose working memory is cue-based (Jonides et al., 2008), so we do not need to postulate any language specific mechanisms. Additionally, the processing of multiple linguistic dependencies can be analyzed within the same theoretical framework. Cue-based approach has also been argued to be the best one in terms of its empirical coverage: some of the experimental evidence was assumed to only be explainable within it (the absence of ungrammaticality illusions in subject-verb agreement is the main example, to which we will return in more detail later). However, recently several other approaches have been suggested which would be able to ac- count for these cases (Eberhard et al., 2005; Xiang et al., 2013; Sloggett

This dissertation uses the processing of anaphoric relations to probe how linguistic information is encoded in and retrieved from memory during real-time sentence comprehension. More specifically, the dissertation attempts to resolve a tension between the demands of a linguistic processor implemented in a general-purpose cognitive architecture and the demands of abstract grammatical constraints that govern language use. The source of the tension is the role that abstract configurational relations (such as c-command, Reinhart 1983) play in constraining computations. Anaphoric dependencies are governed by formal grammatical constraints stated in terms of relations. For example, Binding Principle A (Chomsky 1981) requires that antecedents for local anaphors (like the English reciprocal each other) bear the c-command relation to those anaphors. In incremental sentence processing, antecedents of anaphors must be retrieved from memory. Recent research has motivated a model of processing that exploits a cue-based, associative retrieval process in content-addressable memory (e.g. Lewis, Vasishth & Van Dyke 2006) in which relations such as c-command are difficult to use as cues for retrieval. As such, the c-command constraints of formal grammars are predicted to be poorly implemented by the retrieval mechanism. I examine retrieval's sensitivity to three constraints on anaphoric dependencies: Principle A (via Hindi local reciprocal licensing), the Scope Constraint on bound-variable pronoun licensing (often stated as a c-command constraint, though see Barker 2012), and Crossover constraints on pronominal binding (Postal 1971, Wasow 1972). The data suggest that retrieval exhibits fidelity to the constraints: structurally inaccessible NPs that match an anaphoric element in morphological features do not interfere with the retrieval of an antecedent in most cases considered. In spite of this alignment, I argue that retrieval's apparent sensitivity to c-command constraints need not

This dissertation proposes a principle of "economy of command", arguing that it provides a simple and natural explanation for some well-known properties of human language syntax. The focus is on the abstract combinatorial system that constructs the hierarchical structure of linguistic expressions, with long-distance dependencies determined by the structural relation of c-command. Adopting the assumption of much recent work that properties of syntax reflect very general organizational principles, I propose that syntactic forms with fewer and shorter c-command relations are preferred. Within the boundaries of strict binary branching assumed here, this results in a preference for hierarchical tree structures to be shallow and bushy, rather than deep and narrow. I pursue two broad applications of this principle, to syntactic movement and phrase structure. I argue that movement, the displacement of material to thematically unrelated positions, is a mechanism to reduce the number and length of c-command relations in the affected structures. I detail the properties we expect if movement is driven by this principle, including antilocality, a size threshold effect, a class of island effects, and feedback effects on iterated patterns of movement. I argue that these predictions align well with recent empirical descriptions of syntactic movement. I develop an account in these terms of the cross-linguistic ordering of elements within nominal phrases. Utilizing a computer program, I show that a single underlying structure common to all languages can give rise to all and only the attested word order possibilities via c-command-reducing movements, and describe the required shape of this underlying structure. The principle of economy of command also makes predictions about the format of phrase structure. Among the possible ways to build self-similar syntactic structure, the phrasal forms that build trees with the fewest c-command relations are "endocentric", in the geometric sense t