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This study aims at investigating the distribution of the possessive pronouns in Modern Standard Arabic. It shows that when the possessive pronouns are used as reflexives they have implications for the word order. The different positions occupied by the objects are determined by the presence of these pronouns and the binding relations within the c-commanding domain. Building on the basic assumptions of Binding Theory, possessive pronouns are best treated as normal pronominal elements which are subject to condition B. However, when they are used as anaphoric elements in certain contexts, they have to be c-commanded by their antecedents. Depending on the derivational level at which c-command relation is established between the reflexive possessive pronoun and its antecedent, movement of the possessive pronoun along with the phrase containing is optional in certain structures or, in other structures, the pronoun becomes frozen in the position in which it is base-generated.

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.

This article investigates the syntax of the phrase-final focus particles kuphela and qha ‘only’ in Zulu and Xhosa (Nguni; Bantu). We show that kuphela’s and qha’s associations with a focused constituent respect the complex topography of information structure in Nguni and, like English only, a surface c-command requirement. However, unlike English only, the Zulu and Xhosa particles typically follow the focus associate they c-command, a fact that poses a serious challenge for Kayne’s (1994) antisymmetry theory. We demonstrate that the Nguni facts are incompatible with recent Linear Correspondence Axiom–inspired approaches to phrase-final particles in other languages and, after weighing the merits of several approaches, we conclude that kuphela is an adjunct and that syntax is only weakly antisymmetric: adjuncts are not subject to the LCA.

This paper investigates the syntax of multiple wh’s in Korean, especially when such multiple wh’s are of reduplicative form. Particularly focusing on locality in deriving a pair-list interpretation in the construction at issue, we argue that the clause-boundedness restriction follows from quantifier raising (QR) and absorption that multiple wh’s undergo. At the same time, we examine how Dayal’s (1996) wh-triangle and Watanabe’s (1992) additional wh effects materialize in Korean multiple wh-constructions, providing a comparativesyntactic account for the issues at hand. Meantime, we also investigate the issue of how Pesetsky’s (1987) D-linking comes into play in the construction in question.

Research on subject-verb agreement production in SVO languages has shown that objects moved pre-verbally sometimes trigger attraction, i.e., erroneous agreement of the verb with the object rather than the subject. Moreover, objects c-commanding one of the agreement positions in the hierarchical structure were found to generate stronger attraction than those linearly preceding them. Evidence for the role of c-command comes from the observation that the accusative clitic in French triggers stronger attraction than the preverbal dative pronoun and the PP modifier (Franck et al. 2006; 2010). In this study, we report the results of an experiment in Persian (an SOV language) in which subject–verb agreement was elicited by presenting sentences in Rapid Serial Visual Presentation procedure (RSVP) followed by verb selection (Staub 2009; 2010). We compared attraction errors induced by pre-verbal accusatives versus datives in the canonical SOV word order as well as the OSV word order. Corroborating Franck et al. (2006; 2010), we found stronger attraction when the pre-verbal object occupies a c-commanding position in the hierarchical structure than when it simply precedes one of the agreement positions in the linear string. We also found stronger attraction in the OSV word order as compared to the canonical SOV word order. This finding is attributed to the real-time processes of erroneous structure building and/or erroneous controller selection during subject-verb agreement computation.

While there are very clearly some structural constraints on pronoun interpretation, debate remains as to their extent and proper formulation (Bruening 2014). Since Reinhart 1976 it has commonly been reported that bound-variable pronouns are subject to a c-command requirement. This claim is not universally agreed upon and has recently been challenged by Barker (2012), who argues that bound pronouns must merely fall within the semantic scope of a binding quantifier. In the processing literature, recent results have been advanced in support of c-command (Cunnings et al. 2015, Kush et al. 2015). However, none of these studies separates semantic scope from structural c-command. In this article, we present two self-paced reading studies and one off-line judgment task which show that when we put both c-commanding and non-c-commanding quantifiers on an equal footing with regard to their ability to scope over a pronoun, we nonetheless find a processing difference between the two. Semantically legitimate but non-c-commanded bound variables do not behave like c-commanded bound variables in their search for an antecedent. The results establish that c-command, not scope alone, is relevant for the processing of bound variables. We then explore how these results, combined with other experimental findings, support a view in which the grammar distinguishes between c-commanded and non-c-commanded variable pronouns, the latter perhaps being disguised definite descriptions (Cooper 1979, Evans 1980, Heim 1990, Elbourne 2005).

It is generally assumed that interpreting a co-referential or a syntactically-bound pronoun requires retrieving a representation of its antecedent from memory. Donkey pronouns (e.g., Geach 1962) are pronouns that co-vary in interpretation with non-c-commanding indefinite QPs in apparent violation of structural constraints on QP-pronoun relations (Reinhart 1976). Recent research (Moulton & Han 2018) has hypothesized that the real-time processing of donkey pronouns may not involve retrieval of the co-varying indefinite QP as an antecedent, because non-c-commanding QPs are assumed to be inaccessible to retrieval. We tested this hypothesis with a self-paced reading study that compared the processing of standard co-referential pronouns and donkey pronouns in Norwegian. Contrary to the hypothesis, our results indicate that donkey pronouns retrieve a feature-matching antecedent from memory in a manner analogous to how co-referential pronouns retrieve a referential antecedent. Our findings imply that retrieval of a feature-matching antecedent is a necessary step in the processing of all pronouns, irrespective of their ultimate interpretation. Moreover, retrieval does not uniformly ignore non-referential NPs that fail to c-command a pronoun. We briefly discuss the implications of these findings for psycholinguistic models of anaphora resolution and formal theories of donkey pronouns. Copyright The Authors. Open Access CC-BY

We ask these questions: Where are parsing principles applied? Could they extend beyond sentences to Discourse? Modern proposals have proposed that Discourse structure can entail typical c-command relations. This in turn allows binding between quantifiers and pronouns. We argue that if children make the strongest, most falsifiable hypotheses first, they should seek to continue to parse input in terms of previously recognized sentence structure, linked by narrative structure as Keshet proposes for sequences like: Every candidate walked to the Dean. He took his diploma and sat down where every candidate = he. Data from the DELV test indicates that children will also allow quantifiers to be co-indexed with pronouns in separate sentences, contrary to the usual assumption that quantifier-scope is sentence bound, but consistent with Keshet’s Discourse structure. For instance, in the sequence: The man saw every boy. He played the piano, many children allow this connection. We argue that it can be seen as a natural step under a constrained notion of learnability that seeks the Strictest Interfaces possible. The CP may be the point of contact with Discourse. Early arguments that children adjoin new information to the Root in an unLabeled form can be extended to mean: attach new information to the Discourse with the same domination relations that allow c-command and binding.

This paper observes the three modules of government-binding (henceforth GB) theory which come into existence after transforming a syntactic string from D-structure to S-structure level. Transforming a syntactic structure via the process of movement leads to the appearance of a new structure, which is different from the original one at D-structure level. Here the focus is on the phrasal possessive constructions to which bounding (movement) theory, government theory, and binding theory are applied. The paper tries to provide a possible answer to the question of whether there is any relationship between the three post-transformational modules or not with respect to possessives. Also, and more importantly, it aims at indicating the extent to which possessives adhere to the modules. The paper is a theoretical one whose data is from textbooks and scholarly articles, rather than from participants. One of the outstanding conclusions is that the two modules of government theory and binding theory are highly intertwined due to sharing the structural relation of c-command.

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, 2017; Hammerly et al., draft.april.2018). These approaches usually assume separate processing mechanisms for different linguistic dependencies, and thus lose the parsimonious attractiveness of cue-based memory models. They also take a different stance on the role of structural information in real-time language processing, assuming that structural cues do accurately guide the dependency resolution. A priori there is no reason why they could not turn out to be true. But given the theoretical attractiveness of cue-based models in which structural information does not categorically restrain processing, it is important to critically evaluate these recent claims. In this thesis, we focus on reflexive pronouns and on the novel pattern reported in Parker and Phillips (2017) and Sloggett (2017): the finding that reflexive pronouns are sensitive to the properties of structurally inaccessible antecedents in some specific conditions (interference effect). The two works report consistent findings, but the accounts they give take opposite perspectives on the role of structural information in reflexive resolution. Our aim in this thesis is to assess the reliability of these findings and to experimentally investigate cases which would hopefully provide clearer evidence on how the structure guides reflexives processing. To this aim, we conduct two direct replications of Parker and Phillips (2017) and four novel experiments further investigating the properties of the interference effect. None of the six experiments provided strong statistical support for the previous findings. After ruling out several possible confounds and analyzing numerical patterns (which go in the expected direction and are consistent with previous results), we conclude that interference effect is likely real, but may be less strong than the previous studies would lead to believe. These results can be used for setting more realistic expectations for future studies regarding the size of the effect and statistical power necessary to detect it. With respect to our main goal of distinguishing between cue-based and alternative accounts of the interference effect, we tentatively conclude that cue-based approaches are preferred; however, one has to assume that some structural features are able to categorically rule out illicit antecedents. Further highly powered studies are necessary to verify and confirm these conclusions.

Formal grammatical theories make extensive use of syntactic relations (e.g. c-command, Reinhart, 1983) in the description of constraints on antecedent-anaphor dependencies. Recent research has motivated a model of processing that exploits a cue-based retrieval mechanism in content-addressable memory (e.g. Lewis, Vasishth, & Van Dyke, 2006) in which item-to-item syntactic relations such as c-command are difficult to use as retrieval cues. As such, the c-command constraints of formal grammars are predicted to be poorly implemented by the retrieval mechanism. We tested whether memory access mechanisms are able to exploit relational information by investigating the processing of bound variable pronouns, a form of anaphoric dependency that imposes a c-command restriction on antecedent-pronoun relations. A quantificational NP (QP, e.g., no janitor) must c-command a pronoun in order to bind it. We contrasted the retrieval of QPs with the retrieval of referential NPs (e.g. the janitor), which can co-refer with a pronoun in the absence of c-command. In three off-line judgment studies and two eye-tracking studies, we show that referential NPs are easily accessed as antecedents, irrespective of whether they c-command the pronoun, but that quantificational NPs are accessed as antecedents only when they c-command the pronoun. These results are unexpected under theories that hold that retrieval exclusively uses a limited set of content features as retrieval cues. Our results suggest either that memory access mechanisms can make use of relational information as a guide for retrieval, or that the set of features that is used to encode syntactic relations in memory must be enriched.

Tone is widely reported as a prosodic feature of many African and Asian languages that contrasts meaning among words and sentential constructions. Hardly have any of the studies examined in detail the underlying syntactic principles which make it perform such functions. This article therefore investigates the principles which underlie the function of tone in the Igbo language, an East Benue Congo language, with particular emphasis on grammatical tone. This is done with the hope that the findings of the study can be inductively applied to other tone languages across the world. It answers such questions as: what are the principles which enable tone to perform its grammatical functions? What syntactic positions predispose tone to perform the grammatical functions? What are the grammatical realisations of tonal governance? The paper finds that tone is a constituent commander and governor. The principle of precede and constituent command (c-command) underlies tone governance. Just as in proper government, tone governs the lexical items, which it c-commands. The scope of tone and its domain of governance vary from one structure to another. The position of the governor determines its domain of governance and the kind of structure that is realised after governance. Such syntactic constructions as the negative, perfective, past tense, and serial verb constructions result from tonal government.

Ditransitive predicates select for two internal arguments, and hence minimally entail the participation of three entities in the event described by the verb. Canonical ditransitive verbs include give, show, and teach; in each case, the verb requires an agent (a giver, shower, or teacher, respectively), a theme (the thing given, shown, or taught), and a goal (the recipient, viewer, or student). The property of requiring two internal arguments makes ditransitive verbs syntactically unique. Selection in generative grammar is often modeled as syntactic sisterhood, so ditransitive verbs immediately raise the question of whether a verb may have two sisters, requiring a ternary-branching structure, or whether one of the two internal arguments is not in a sisterhood relation with the verb. Another important property of English ditransitive constructions is the two syntactic structures associated with them. In the so-called “double object construction,” or DOC, the goal and theme both are simple NPs and appear following the verb in the order V-goal-theme. In the “dative construction,” the goal is a PP rather than an NP and follows the theme in the order V-theme-to goal. Many ditransitive verbs allow both structures (e.g., give John a book/give a book to John). Some verbs are restricted to appear only in one or the other (e.g. demonstrate a technique to the class/*demonstrate the class a technique; cost John $20/*cost $20 to John). For verbs which allow both structures, there can be slightly different interpretations available for each. Crosslinguistic results reveal that the underlying structural distinctions and their interpretive correlates are pervasive, even in the face of significant surface differences between languages. The detailed analysis of these questions has led to considerable progress in generative syntax. For example, the discovery of the hierarchical relationship between the first and second arguments of a ditransitive has been key in motivating the adoption of binary branching and the vP hypothesis. Many outstanding questions remain, however, and the syntactic encoding of ditransitivity continues to inform the development of grammatical theory.

A recent study questioned the adherence of children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) to a linguistic constraint on the use of reflexive pronouns (Principle A) in sentences like Bart's dad is touching himself. This led researchers to question whether children with ASD are able to compute the hierarchical structural relationship of c-command, and raised the possibility that the children rely on a linear strategy for reference assignment. The current study investigates the status of c-command in children with ASD by testing their interpretation of sentences like (1) and (2) that tease apart use of c-command and a linear strategy for reference assignment. The girl who stayed up late will not get a dime or a jewel (C-command) The girl who didn't go to sleep will get a dime or a jewel (Non C-command) These examples both contain negation (not or didn't) and disjunction (or). In (1), negation c-commands the disjunction phrase, yielding a conjunctive entailment. This gives rise to the meaning that the girl who stayed up late won't get a dime and she won't get a jewel. In (2), negation is positioned inside a relative clause and it does not c-command disjunction. Therefore, no conjunctive entailment follows. Thus, (2) is true if the girl just gets a dime or just a jewel, or possibly both. If children with ASD lack c-command, then (1) will not give rise to a conjunctive entailment. In this case, children might rely on a linear strategy for reference assignment. Since negation precedes disjunction in both (1) and (2), they might be interpreted in a similar manner. Likewise, children who show knowledge of c-command should perform well on sentences governed by Principle A. These hypotheses were tested in experiments with 12 Australian children with HFA, aged 5;4 to 12;7, and 12 typically-developing controls, matched on non-verbal IQ. There was no significant difference in the pattern of responses by children with HFA and the control children on either (1) and (2) or the Principle A sentences. The findings provide preliminary support for the proposal that knowledge of c-command and Principle A is intact in HFA children.

This study aims to explore the degree to which Korean L2 learners of English are able to establish grammatically mediated dependencies between reflexive anaphors and their antecedents in English by examining syntactic co-reference conditions. According to Binding Principle A (BP-A) (Chomsky 1981), both the locality and the c-command condition must be satisfied between reflexives and their antecedents. To reveal late Korean learner"s sensitivity to BP-A, this study conducted an on-line grammaticality judgements task and measured learner"s accuracy rates and response times on sentences containing reflexives. We report that overall, learners are sensitive to the two conditions of BP-A, and suggest that learners with high proficiency may ultimately attain native-like knowledge of BP-A. We also suggest that L1-transfer/intereference may play a certain role in the process of acquiring BP-A by Korean learners.

Some version of the following claim is almost universally assumed: a quantifier must c-command any pronoun that it binds. Yet as I show, the evidence motivating this claim is not particularly strong. In addition, I gather here a wide variety of systematic counterexamples, some well-known, others new. I conclude that c-command is not relevant for quantificational binding in English (nor is any refinement or extension of c-command).

Chinese bi comparatives should be divided into two types: phrasal and clausal. In the former, the prepositional subordinator bi introduces as standard of comparison one syntactic constituent that does not involve comparative deletion; in the latter, however, a clause with more than one standard constituent is introduced and this clause obligatorily involves comparative deletion and a degree operator-variable binding relation in syntax. Among the conditions to which building a Chinese bi comparative is subject, two conditions interact to disallow comparative subdeletion: (A) the bi phrase occurs as an adjunct phrase adjoined to the left of the predicate of comparison and (B) the standard constituent must be minimally c-commanded by its corresponding main clause correlate.

We provide a minimalist syntactic analysis for the morphological realization of non-active voice in Albanian, a paradigm that exhibits a three-way alternation: inflectional affix, clitic and auxiliary choice. We show that the morphological realization of the Albanian non-active voice reflects the hierarchy of functional categories in the clause. More specifically, we argue that the distribution of the morphological means to realize non-active voice in this language is contingent on and regulated by two independently motivated morphosyntactic operations, namely Agree and Impoverishment, which are both governed in crucial respects by closest c-command.

(South-)East Asian languages often force highly restricted word-structures, leading standard Government Phonology (sGP) to the useful, though problematic, Han-template (regular/augmented) (Beijing Mandarin (Goh 1996), Thai (Denwood 1999), Hongkui To (Xu 2001), and Vietnamese (Ulfsbjorninn 2008b)). We replace it with an obligatory c-command relationship between nuclear heads (xN1, xN2), resulting in xO2 being obligatorily c-commanded by xN1 (*V:C). In contrast, the augmented Han-template has obligatory c++2-command, hence, xO2 is not obligatorily c-commanded by xN1 (V:C). Concomitantly, *V:C (unlike V:C) languages prohibit I/U in xO2. In sGP no non-arbitrary link can be suggested; in GP 2.0, it emerges from micro-parametric c-command-conditions acting on word-structure.

The article illustrates some of the salient features of Government Phonology (GP) 2.0 by axiomatising (a subclass of) the set of possible Putonghua forms.We show that a phonological theory can profit by assuming that phonological representations are hierarchical, just like syntactic representations. A structural relation of c++command, a relative of the well-known c-command, is used heavily. The similarity with syntax is further underlined by the introduction of a phonological Binding Theory: illicit representations are prohibited by the LUxI Principles, the phonological counterpart of Principles A, B and C.

Motivated by applications that require mechanisms for describing the structure of object-oriented programs, adaptive star grammars are introduced, and their fundamental properties are studied. In adaptive star grammars, rules are actually schemata which, via the cloning of so-called multiple nodes, may adapt to potentially infinitely many contexts when they are applied. This mechanism makes adaptive star grammars more powerful than context-free graph grammars. Nevertheless, they turn out to be restricted enough to share some of the basic characteristics of context-free devices. In particular, the underlying substitution operator enjoys associativity and confluence properties quite similar to those of context-free graph grammars, and the membership problem for adaptive star grammars is decidable.

The goal of this paper is to investigate the syntax and semantics of obligatory control predicates in Persian. After reviewing present syntactic approaches to control, the facts of Persian are shown to lead to the conclusion that it is not possible to identify the controller in Persian on purely syntactic grounds. Rather, the properties of obligatory control constructions in this language provide evidence for the necessity of considering semantic factors in the proper analysis of this construction. These properties are shown to follow a semantic treatment along the lines of Jackendoff and Culicover (2003) and Culicover and Jackendoff (2005). We propose that in Persian obligatory control constructions, the control predicate licenses an event complement with the controller being the argument to which the control predicate assigns the role of actor for the action stated in the complement clause. Classes of exceptions, not to be discussed in this paper, may be treated as coercion in the sense of Sag and Pollard (1991), Pollard and Sag (1994); followed by Jackendoff and Culicover (2003) and Culicover and Jackendoff (2005), in which internal conventionalized semantic materials, not present in syntax, are added.

Most familiar syntactic frameworks recognize the category ‘phrase’, and are built around phrase structure relationships. However, the Word Grammar dependency model does not acknowledge the category ‘phrase’ as a primitive in the grammar; instead, all relationships are word-based, with phrases having no syntactic status. Here, I investigate the theoretical validity of the notion ‘phrase’ by examining the phenomenon in Welsh known as syntactic soft mutation, contrasting a phrase-based account with a dependency account. I conclude that an empirically adequate analysis of syntactic soft mutation must make reference to phrases as a category, thus ruling out the dependency account. A further theoretical question concerns the role played in the grammar by syntactically present but phonetically unrealized elements, including empty categories such as wh-traces and unrealized material in ellipsis. Syntactic soft mutation proves an interesting testing ground in these contexts, but the data again fail to support the dependency account. The conclusion is that a phrase-based account of the mutation is better motivated and empirically more accurate than the alternative dependency account.

This paper argues that language variation plays a critical role in the shaping and understanding of mental grammars and that Optimality Theory is a crucial player in demonstrating the relevance of variation data for advancing our knowledge of mental grammars. It takes the position that experimental, quantitative and variationist studies need to formalize the results of their research (cf. Díaz-Campos & Colina 2006) and propose grammars that generate the variable patterns described, as well as their interaction with non-variable patterns. Similarly, existing formal models of variation need to be tested against quantitative and variable corpora and data, and analyses and predictions need to be compared to evaluate formal accounts of variation (Auger 2001 and Cardoso 2001). The optimality-theoretic studies reviewed show that this is already an emerging and important line of research that opens the doors to unprecedented progress both in variationist and formal phonology.

Research over the last decades has shown that language development in its multiple forms is characterized by a succession of stable and unstable states. However, the variation observed is neither expected nor can it be accounted for on the basis of traditional learning concepts conceived of within the Universal Grammar (UG) paradigm. In this paper, I argue that modularly organized grammars bear much more of a dynamic potential than admitted thus far, and I propose a dynamic approach to the development of grammars, based on a conception of change as developed in the realm of Dynamic Systems Theory (DST). In my discussion of the available evidence of system-internal inconsistencies in different types of language acquisition and diachronic language change, I suggest that the nonlinear behavior observed results from a complex information flow modeled by internal and external feedback processes and that changes in grammars are tied to the amplification of new information leading to system-internal conflicts. Finally, I reconsider the role of UG in the apparent dichotomy of chance and necessity in the evolution of grammars. I argue that their stability is tied to universal principles and constraints on the format of natural languages (hence the self-similar or fractal nature of language), whereas the potential for change is given in the functional categories and their associated properties (the loci of grammars' bifurcation sensitivity).

We propose that the antecedent of a donkey pronoun takes scope over and binds the donkey pronoun, just like any other quantificational antecedent would bind a pronoun. We flesh out this idea in a grammar that compositionally derives the truth conditions of donkey sentences containing conditionals and relative clauses, including those involving modals and proportional quantifiers. For example, an indefinite in the antecedent of a conditional can bind a donkey pronoun in the consequent by taking scope over the entire conditional. Our grammar manages continuations using three independently motivated type-shifters, Lift, Lower, and Bind. Empirical support comes from donkey weak crossover (*He beats it if a farmer owns a donkey): in our system, a quantificational binder need not c-command a pronoun that it binds, but must be evaluated before it, so that donkey weak crossover is just a special case of weak crossover. We compare our approach to situation-based E-type pronoun analyses, as well as to dynamic accounts such as Dynamic Predicate Logic. A new 'tower' notation makes derivations considerably easier to follow and manipulate than some previous grammars based on continuations. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.1.1 BibTeX info See also the interactive tutorial about the system in this paper

The reference of the following sentence should be Adani et al. (2014) rather than Adani (unpublished). “Adani et al. (2010) and Adani (unpublished) found that both English and Italian speaking children showed better performance in a sentence-picture matching task when the object and the subject of the object relative clause mismatched in number (e.g., Show me the elephant that the lions are washing is better understood than Show me the lion that the elephant is washing).” Adani et al. (2014) should thus be added to the References.

This paper is concerned with the distribution and interpretation of yekan and its cognates. Syntactically they require negation, but semantically the sentences in which they occur are positive ones that make monotone increasing inferences possible. This syntax-semantics discrepancy can be best accounted for by showing that yekan and its cousins must be strictly c-commanded by metalinguistic negation at the surface structure and that the positive meaning of the sentences they are part of is derived from the cancellation of the pragmatic upper-bounding implicatum associated with them. These also enable us to explain why they do not occur in the environments where typical NPIs do and why only certain forms of negation license them. (Inha University)

This paper argues that phonological representations are not trees, but strings structured through boundary symbols. Because trees are richer in information than strings, our main argument rests on a demonstration that tree-based phonology is too strong, in that it allows rules for which there is no empirical basis. We discuss three contrasts between syntax and phonology that can be understood if phonology lacks trees. The first is that syntax has recursive structures, whereas phonology does not. The second is that syntax allows nonterminal nodes with feature content (as a result of percolation), but that no convincing case can be made for the feature content of putative nonterminal nodes in phonology. Finally, syntactic dependencies are conditioned by c-command, while phonological dependencies are, by and large, conditioned by adjacency. The second and third difference between syntax and phonology can also be used to demonstrate that a tree-based phonology is too weak, in that independently motivated conditions on trees do not allow existing phonological rules.

A comparison between (strongly) distributive sentences in two typologically different languages, i.e. Romanian and Chinese is proposed. It is argued that the same factors, namely the inherent properties of the quantifiers more than the c-command relations obtaining between them constrain the possible interpretations of distributive sentences. The importance of the two factors is relatively different: in Romanian, the semantic factor cannot be superseded by the configurational one, whereas in Chinese c-command is at least equally important, thus partially confirming the isomorphism thesis.

Throughout this book, I have assumed that adpositions (prepositions and postpositions) are not lexical categories, but rather functional categories. As such, they have more in common with determiners, pronouns, Pred, and complementizers than they do with nouns, verbs, and adjectives. It is therefore a good thing that my theory of lexical categories has no natural place for them. While this view of adpositions is far from unprecedented, it runs contrary to the more standard generative treatment, championed by Jackendoff (1977: 31–33), in which adpositions constitute a fourth lexical category, filling out the logical space of possibilities defined by the two binary-valued features +/−N and +/−V. In this appendix, I briefly outline some arguments in favor of classifying adpositions with the functional categories, focusing on evidence from incorporation patterns. I also claim that adpositions create a projection that has neither a referential index nor a theta-role. As a result, PPs do not make good arguments or good predicates, but make excellent modifiers. P can thus be thought of as an adjective-like functional category, much as determiner/pronoun is a noun-like functional category and Pred is a verb-like functional category. The properties I have discussed throughout this book as defining the lexical categories can thus be seen also to provide a partial typology of the functional categories. Evidence that adpositions are functional There has always been some uneasiness about including adpositions as a lexical category. The popularity of treating them as such has perhaps been caused more by the theoretical attraction of having all combinations of the features +/−N and +/−V be attested than by compelling empirical considerations.

English speakers' intuitions are strong that pronouns as sentence subjects may not precede their referents (" She spoke after Susan …"). However, a pronoun in a subordinate clause may precede its referent (''After she spoke, Susan …"). According to Government and Binding Theory, these intuitions are subsumed by the principle of c-command, a phrase structure descriptor whose success at describing diverse grammatical phenomena has been widely interpreted as support for the autonomy of syntax hypothesis. We investigate an alternative view, that syntax signals (inter alia) foregrounding/backgrounding structure. Listeners may consult this foregrounding/backgrounding information when inferring pronominal coreference. We backgrounded the main clause using progressive or pluperfect aspect, as in "She had been speaking for several hours when Susan …" A rating study showed coreference was allowed more frequently for pronouns in main clauses when those clauses contained progressive or pluperfect aspect. A follow-up ...

In the better-developed sciences it is the departures from symmetry rather than the symmetries that are typically taken to be in need of explanation. Mirror theory is an attempt to look at some of the central properties of syntactic representations in this spirit. The core hypothesis of this theory is that in syntactic representations complementation expresses morphological structure: X is the complement of Y only if Y-X form a morphological unit'a word. A second central assumption is the elimination of phrasal projection: a head X in a syntactic tree should be taken to ambiguously represent both the zero-level head(s) and its (their) associated phrasal node(s).

The paper concentrates on the locality problem that arises in the context of raising verbs when the embedded subject moves over the experiencer. I review the major approaches put forth in the minimalist program, showing how each of them is inadequate. I propose a solution that crucially relies on the timing of operations. To the extent that it is successful, the present analysis provides evidence for the strictly derivational approach to syntactic relations.