The World Atlas of Language Structures Online

From Discourse to Logic

The Languages of Native North America. Marianne Mithun. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 773 pp.

The Languages of Native North America

Phonology and morphology

In 'On binding', Chomsky reformulates the Propositional Island Condition and the Specified Subject Condition as conditions on logical form, called the Nominative Island Condition (NIC) and the Opacity Condition (OC), respectively. He also replaces cyclic nodes by 'bounding' nodes in the formulation of the Subjacency Condition. An investigation of NIC and OC shows that the claim that they are universal is virtually empty and that they cannot be regarded as natural conditions. Furthermore, they account for a quite limited range of data and the mechanisms that have been proposed to supplement them are ad hoc or problematic in other ways. Subjacency is no more satisfactory. It seems unable to account for various relevant facts. A consideration of these issues suggests that some of Chomsky's most basic assumptions should be abandoned and that more concrete frameworks are likely to prove more adequate. On binding' (Chomsky, 1980) represents an important new stage in the development of the ideas that Chomsky has been exploring since 'Conditions on transformations' (Chomsky, 1973). It introduces two important innovations. One, which forms the central theme of the paper, is the reformulation of the Propositional Island Condition (PIC) and the Specified Subject Condition (SSC) as conditions on logical form, called the Nominative Island Condition (NIC) and the Opacity Condition (OC), respectively. The other, which is rather less prominent but of comparable importance, is the replacement of cyclic nodes by 'bounding' nodes in the formulation of the Subjacency Condition. In this paper, we will take a critical look at the theoretical framework which Chomsky outlines in his paper. Chomsky suggests that the On binding' framework constitutes 'a highly unified theory, with a few abstract principles governing a wide range of phenomena' (1980: 10). We will argue that this assessment is Linguistics 19 (1981), 1133-1164. 0024-3949/81/0019-1133 $2.00 © Mouton Publishers 1134 R. D. Borsley and G. M. H rn untenable. We will develop a number of criticisms of NIC and OC, and the Subjacency Condition. These criticisms not only argue against Chomsky's assessment of the On binding' theory but also cast doubt on the general approach to syntax which Chomsky is pursuing. In our view, this approach compares unfavourably with the less abstract approaches developed in Bresnan (1978) and Horn (1979, to appear). We cannot discuss this matter in detail here but we will touch on it in a number of places. Since On binding' was written, numerous papers have appeared which revise and extend Chomsky's proposals. We will make no attempt to survey this literature. We will, however, consider some of the changes which Chomsky himself proposes in his Lectures on Government and Binding (Chomsky, 1981). In this work, which appeared when the present paper was largely complete, Chomsky develops a somewhat different framework, which he calls the government binding theory. Some of the criticisms that we advance against the On binding' theory are not applicable to the new theory. Others, however, remain valid. We will comment on this matter where appropriate. The paper is organised as follows. In section 1, we will consider the basic nature of the conditions. We will argue that the claim that they are universal is virtually unfalsifiable and that they cannot be regarded as natural conditions. In section 2, we will consider the supposed motivation for the conditions. We will show that they leave many facts unaccounted for and that the additional mechanisms that have been proposed to supplement them are ad hoc or problematic in other ways. Finally, in section 3, we will consider the Subjacency Condition. We will show that it too is effectively unfalsifiable and, more importantly, that it cannot provide an illuminating account of the various facts that it is supposed to handle. 1. The nature of NIC and OC In essence, the reformulation of PIC and SSC as conditions on logical form is an attempt to make concrete the view advanced in Chomsky (1977) that they should be seen not as general conditions on rule application but as conditions on anaphora. The new conditions are formulated as follows: (1) The Nominative Island Condition: A nominative anaphor cannot be free in S. (2) The Opacity Condition: If α is in the domain of the subject of β, β minimal, then α cannot be free in β.

On ‘On binding’

http://people.umass.edu/roeper/711-05/Mtheiu%20wh-opt02.pdf

The mapping of form and interpretation: the case of optional wh-movement in French

The theoretical aim of this article is to integrate the singulative into the theory of division proposed by Borer (2005) and other theoretical linguists (e.g., Krifka 1995, Doetjes 1996, 1997, Chierchia 1998, Cheng and Sybesma 1999). To illustrate my claim, I offer a brief case study of Ojibwe, an Algonquian language, which I argue uses gender shift (from inanimate to animate) to mark singulativization. Singulatives, as morphological markers, are primarily known from Celtic, Afro-Asiatic, and Nilo-Saharan languages, but are not a known feature of Algonquian languages. Further support for my claim that the grammar of Algonquian languages embeds a singulative system comes from Fox (Mesquakie).

Flavors of Division

The goal of this chapter is to give an account of the distribution of left-periphery elements in Old French. In addition to the familiar FinP and TopicP categories that are traditionally taken to have existed in the pre-verbal area in V2 languages, I argue that the Old French CP consisted of a rich array of additional topic positions. Three positions are identified: one for Stylistically Fronted elements, one for left dislocated elements, and one for hanging topics. The decomposition of the CP layer in Old French gives a rationale for the possibility of V3 and V4 order in that language. Stylistic Fronting is argued to be available throughout the Old French period (both the Early and the Late period), making Old French consistently a non-Generalized V2 language (contra Labelle (Lingua 117:289–316, 2007) and several others). Finally, it is shown that left dislocated and hanging topics appeared much earlier than traditionally thought in the literature.

The Left-Periphery in Old French

(1) “Or consider the Algonquian language Ojibway (Richard Rhodes 1990:153-4, and personal communications). Nouns which might be expected not to have a plural do in fact form plurals freely, interestingly with the unit reading and not with the sort reading. Thus mkwam ‘ice’ or ‘piece of ice’, mkwamiig (plural) ‘pieces of ice’. Rhodes is unable to find a noun that cannot be pluralized in Ojibway.” (Corbett 2000:87)

On the mass/count distinction in Ojibwe

Abstract The aim of this paper is two-fold: on the one hand, its purpose is to show that Stylistic Fronting was very productive in Old French; on the other, its rationale is the introduction of a novel hypothesis according to which Stylistically Fronted elements in Old French target a special Topic phrase. This phrase is labelled TopicP+ to distinguish it from TopicP, the position where topicalized elements in V2 structures raise to in Old French. The special topic position accessed by Stylistic Fronting is motivated by the main pattern emerging from a series of carefully studied Old French texts: two elements can undergo SF at the same time, but the two elements cannot both be XPs or both be heads. It is further demonstrated that the subject gap constraint that accompanies Stylistic Fronting in Modern Insular Scandinavian languages is also relevant for Old French and that the most natural way to account for it is to suppose that Stylistically Fronted XPs move through (rather than into, cf. Holmberg 2000) the specifier of Spec-TP. This is made to follow from the fact that TP in Old French is a (strong) phase. The account relies on the splitting of the EPP between two features, [P] and [D], and on the idea that these features may not necessarily come packaged as a bundle. [P] can appear on one head while [D] surfaces on another, with [P] depending on [D]. In the second part of the paper, an explanation is given as to why Stylistic Fronting disappeared from French grammar: the hypothesis put forward is that once verbal agreement lost its pronominal properties, the EPP could no longer undergo feature fission and spread its features on distinct heads, since the mechanism by which the [D] feature on T0 is checked by the verb's agreement is a necessary condition for the occurrence of Stylistic Fronting.

Eric Mathieu

Papers

The mapping of form and interpretation: the case of optional wh-movement in French

Flavors of Division

The Left-Periphery in Old French

On the mass/count distinction in Ojibwe

Stylistic Fronting in Old French