Showing papers in "Natural Language and Linguistic Theory in 1989"
TL;DR: This paper argues for a theory in which epenthesis results from the interrelated requirements of prosody and not from obligatory skeletal insertion rules.
Abstract: This paper argues for a theory in which epenthesis results from the interrelated requirements of prosody and not from obligatory skeletal insertion rules. Prosodic Licensing requires the incorporation of unsyllabified melodies into higher prosodic structure; syllabification conditions determine the particular insertion site; and contrasting epenthesis strategies are predicted by general prosodic principles of directionality and maximality
448 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, it is argued that the data can be accounted for by considering Subjacency to be a condition on representation and that Absorption applies at S-structure, as well as LF, in these languages, whereas in languages like English, it applies only at LF.
Abstract: This paper deals with two types of Wh-constructions that occur in German and Romani: partial and multiple Wh-movement. In these constructions a Wh-phrase moves to the specifier of a CP that is lower than the CP over which the Wh-phrase takes scope. In partial Wh-movement, the scope position contains a scope-marker, and in multiple Wh-movement, the scope position contains another Wh-phrase. Both constructions are restricted by a Subjacency-like constraint. It is argued that the data can be accounted for by considering Subjacency to be a condition on representation. In addition, it is claimed that Absorption applies at S-structure, as well as LF, in these languages, whereas in languages like English, it applies only at LF. The possibility of S-structure Absorption unifies partial and multiple Wh-movement and accounts for their existence in a language.
271 citations
TL;DR: Most solutions to bracketing paradoxes involve the restructuring of either the morphological or the phonological structure as discussed by the authors, which is not the case in Indonesian, where there is no independent evidence for the primacy of either morphological structure.
Abstract: Most solutions to bracketing paradoxes involve the restructuring of either the morphological or the phonological structure. Yet the bracketing paradoxes cited in the literature offer no independent evidence for the primacy of either morphological or phonological structure. Indonesian has bracketing paradoxes and also offers the crucial evidence needed to decide between these types of approaches: evidence from cyclic assignment of stress shows that the only possible type of solution is one in which the morphological structure is primal and there is restructuring to account for the phonological facts.
164 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explain the distribution of complex codas as well as the application of vowel shortening by a coda condition which restricts syllabification to two rime positions, but which no longer holds at the word level.
Abstract: Complex codas in English syllables have an asymmetrical distribution: rimes of more than two positions are limited to word edges. This fact is attributed to a coda condition which restricts syllabification to two rime positions, but which no longer holds at the word level. At Level 1, the principle of structure preservation (Kiparsky 1985) enforces conformity with the Coda Condition, thus explaining the distribution of complex codas as well as the application of vowel shortening. Apparent exceptions to the Coda Condition result from an independent principle which licenses an additional rime position if the position is half of a partial geminate (Ito 1986). After Level 1, Structure Preservation is turned off, and as a result, syllable structure is less restrictive, allowing larger codas and making vowel shortening unnecessary.
60 citations
TL;DR: It is shown that by allowing association lines to cross in ways which are tightly restricted by a hierarchy of parameters, the full typology of reversal processes found in language games can be explained.
Abstract: In this paper I argue that the Crossing Constraint, which forbids the crossing of association lines, is actually composed of several different parameter settings, and that processes of reversal are to be analyzed as the result of introducing crossed association lines into the representation. Within ordinary languages, the ‘no crossing’ setting is in effect (and therefore reversal is rarely found in this domain), whereas in certain language games, the marked ‘crossing’ setting may be utilized. I will show that by allowing association lines to cross in ways which are tightly restricted by a hierarchy of parameters, we can explain the full typology of reversal processes found in language games.
49 citations
TL;DR: This paper argues against this feature system on the grounds that it cannot both capture the distribution of various classes of pronouns observed in natural languages and correctly characterize their semantics.
Abstract: It has become customary to classify pronouns according to the values of the features [anaphor] and [pronominal], and to constrain their distribution through Binding Theory, which is formulated in terms of these features. This paper argues against this feature system on the grounds that it cannot both capture the distribution of various classes of pronouns observed in natural languages and correctly characterize their semantics. An alternative approach is proposed for lexical pronouns, where the various classes of pronouns are distinguished according to the licensers and binders they require, and their distribution is determined through the specification of the position of their licensers and binders and the specification of the relation that must hold between them.
42 citations
TL;DR: The authors show that the empirical generalization underlying Stump's analysis is quite dubious and that it is impossible to prevent a topicalization analysis for affirmative subject-initial sentences; indeed, evidence from coordination shows that the topicalisation analysis must be available.
Abstract: Like the other Celtic languages, Breton is generally considered to be a VSO language. Stump (1984) argues that affirmative subject-initial sentences in Breton are ordinary subject-verb sentences, and not topicalized verb-subject sentences. His argument is based on the fact that these sentences show no verbal agreement. Stump suggests that this lack of agreement is an instance of a Complementarity Principle, a generalization which states that overt argument NPs do not cooccur with agreement in Breton. In this paper, we show that the empirical generalization underlying Stump's analysis is quite dubious. Moreover, it is impossible to prevent a topicalization analysis for affirmative subject-initial sentences; indeed, evidence from coordination shows that the topicalization analysis must be available. We suggest that the absence of agreement is due to a different generalization: there is no agreement with wh-trace subjects in affirmative clauses. Thus there is no reason to think that Breton has a class of ordinary subject-verb sentences.
38 citations
TL;DR: The story of the abundance of snow descriptors used by the Eskimos and their multiple words for snow has been well-known in linguistics courses as discussed by the authors, but it has not yet been widely recognized.
Abstract: Most linguistics deparllnents have an introduction-to-language course in which students other than linguistics majors can be exposed to at least something of the mysteries of language and communication: signing apes and dancing bees; wild children and lateralization; logographic writing and the Rosetta Stone; pit and spit; Sir William Jones and Professor Henry Higgins; isoglosses and Grimm's Law; Jabberwocky and colourless green ideas; and of course, without fail, the Eskimos and their multiple words~for snow. Few among us, I 'm sure, can say with certainty that we never told an awestruck sea of upturned sophomore faces about the multitude of snow descriptors used by these lexically profligate hyperborean nomads, about whom so little information is repeated so often to so many. Linguists have been just as active as schoolteachers or general knowledge columnists in spreading the entrancing story. What a pity the story is unredeemed piffle. Anthropologist Laura Martin of Cleveland State University spent some of her research time during the 1980s attempting to slay the constantly changing, serf-regenerating myth of Eskimo snow terminology, like a Sigourney Weaver fighting alone against the hideous space creature in the movie Alien (a xenomorph, they called it in the sequel Aliens; nice word). You may recall that the creature seemed to spring up everywhere once it got loose on the spaceship, and was very difficult to kill. Martin presented her paper at the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association in Washington D.C. in December 1982, and eventually (after a four-year struggle during which bonehead reviewers cut a third of the paper, including several interesting quotes) she published an abbreviated version of it in the 'Research Reports' section of AAA's journal (Martin 1986). This ought to have been enough for the news to get out. But no, as far as widespread recognition is concerned, Martin labored in vain. Never does a month (or in all probability a week) go by without yet another publication of the familiar claim about the wondrous richness of the Eskimo conceptual scheme: lmndreds of words for different grades and types of snow, a lexicographical winter wonderland, the quintessential demonstration of how primitive minds categorize the world so differently from us.
33 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present an interpretation of the Welsh morphophonological phenomenon known as soft mutation which generalises beyond the occurrence of soft mutation in NPs to its occurrence in other categories.
Abstract: The Welsh morphophonological phenomenon known as soft mutation is one which attracts recurrent attention from linguists, both for its phonological properties and for its relationship with morphosyntax. In this paper I review two recent discussions by Lieber and Zwicky which attempt to account for a particular subclass of soft mutation by an appeal to case. I argue that neither successfully accounts for the full range of relevant data and suggest a novel interpretation of the phenomenon which generalises beyond the occurrence of soft mutation in NPs to its occurrence in other categories. Instead of an account founded on a treatment of soft mutation as a manifestation of case, I propose that it can be satisfactorily and elegantly accounted for if we recognise phrasal categories as triggers of phonological phenomena.
31 citations
TL;DR: Borsley and Stephens as discussed by the authors argued that the analysis of Breton agreement developed by Stump (1984) is untenable for two reasons: first, they argue that the fundamental empirical generalization which his analysis is designed to capture (the complementary principle) is invalid; second, contrary to the assumptions underlying Stump's analysis, S cannot be a barrier to government in Breton.
Abstract: Borsley and Stephens (1989/this issue) argue that the analysis of Breton agreement developed by Stump (1984) is untenable for two reasons: first, they argue that the fundamental empirical generalization which his analysis is designed to capture (the ‘Complementarity Principle’) is invalid; second, they argue that contrary to the assumptions underlying Stump's analysis, S cannot be a barrier to government in Breton. Here, Borsley and Stephens' claims are evaluated: it is shown that contrary to their first claim, the Complementarity Principle is a valid generalization for most if not all varieties of Breton; and while the truth of their second claim is acknowledged, it is nevertheless shown that the two principal claims embodied in the 1984 analysis can be maintained in a simple revision of that analysis. The revised account is shown to be fully consistent with the evidence cited by Borsley and Stephens, and is contrasted with the alternative analysis of Breton agreement proposed by Hendrick (1988).
31 citations
TL;DR: The modal (‘capability’) reading for a Passive, available under appropriate pragmatic conditions, proves to be consistently associated with the impersonal Passive structure.
Abstract: Under certain conditions, Marathi personal and impersonal Passive are homophonous. The modal (‘capability’) reading for a Passive, available under appropriate pragmatic conditions, proves to be consistently associated with the impersonal Passive structure. Neutralization of the personal vs. impersonal distinction is traceable to a single, typologically unusual, case marking rule which, depending on an animacy criterion, can mark a nominal bearing the 2 relation ‘dative’ regardless of whether it also advances to 1 via Passive. True ‘dative subjects’ occur in Marathi personal Passives. This in turn bears on the analysis of Inversion clauses, where the datives, by contrast, are not subjects at the final level, contrary to popular counteranalyses.
TL;DR: A new theory of inherent Case assignment is proposed that allows for the possibility of the Irish construction, but is sufficiently restrictive so as to account for the rarity of nonthematic inherent Case assignments.
Abstract: This paper provides a new analysis of an exceptional raising construction in Modern Irish, and examines its consequences for two putative principles of Universal Grammar (UG): (i) Chomsky's (1981) Projection Principle, which excludes nonthematic complement positions, and (ii) Chomsky's (1986a) Uniformity Condition, which excludes nonthematic inherent Case assignment. McCloskey (1984) argues that the Irish raising construction involves NP-movement to a VP-internal position, contrary to the Projection Principle. The new analysis proposed here claims that it really involves movement (of an inherently Case-marked NP) to subject position, and thus poses no problem for the Projection Principle. However, this analysis does pose a direct challenge to the Uniformity Condition, since it involves a verb assigning inherent Case to an NP that it does not theta-mark. The paper proposes a new theory of inherent Case assignment that allows for the possibility of the Irish construction, but is sufficiently restrictive so as to account for the rarity of nonthematic inherent Case assignment.
TL;DR: In this paper, it is argued that the best candidate for the subject of the impersonal construction is arbitrary PRO, in contrast to other languages such as Spanish, which has been analyzed as having an arbitrary pro subject.
Abstract: This paper investigates Irish impersonal sentences marked by the inflection traditionally known as “autonomous” and examines ways to account for the empty subject position in such sentences. The various empty categories of Government-Binding Theory are considered. It is argued that the best candidate for the subject of the impersonal construction is arbitrary PRO, in contrast to other languages such as Spanish, which has been analyzed as having an arbitrary pro subject. Some problems resulting from allowing PRO in a tensed S are discussed. The proposed solution is linked to the fact that Irish tensed clauses need not include AGR.
TL;DR: This article showed that double plurals derive from forms with transparently plural morphology and counterexemplify the Elsewhere Condition even if they are assumed to derive from basic collectives, since they are not distinct in their morphosyntactic feature content from ordinary plurals.
Abstract: Anderson (1986) has argued that Breton ‘double plurals’, though apparently disconfirming the Elsewhere Condition, can be brought into conformity with it if they are viewed as deriving from basic collective nouns rather than from plural nouns. This solution is here shown to be unworkable: on the one hand, certain double plurals derive from forms with transparently plural morphology; moreover double plurals counterexemplify the Elsewhere Condition even if they are assumed to derive from basic collectives, since the latter are not distinct in their morphosyntactic feature content from ordinary plurals. Plural diminutives present similar difficulties, since their formation requires the successive application of two rules whose application is predicted by the Elsewhere Condition to be disjunctive. Besides suggesting that the Elsewhere Condition cannot be maintained in its strongest form, the Breton evidence raises questions about the existence of a strict division between inflectional and derivational morphology.
TL;DR: This treatment of Macedonian supports the compositional analysis of antepenultimate stress and clarifies the nature of the Non-Exhaustiveness and Peripherality Conditions.
Abstract: Conditions on extrametricality can be understood as restricting either the application of extrametricality rules or the visibility of the extrametricality feature. Macedonian provides crucial evidence that only the former interpretation is viable for the Non-Exhaustiveness Condition, while the Peripherality Condition pertains necessarily to visibility. Fixed antepenultimate stress in this language is analyzed as the final extrametricality variant of penultimate stress. A consideration of stress domains consisting of several words reveals that a phrase-final monosyllabic word unexpectedly induces penultimate stress. It is argued that this Monosyllabic Head Effect results from applying Final Extrametricality lexically, but Constituent Construction postlexically. The final syllable remains extrametrical even though it no longer exhausts the stress domain; internal extrametrical syllables, on the other hand, may be stressed. This treatment of Macedonian supports the compositional analysis of antepenultimate stress and clarifies the nature of the Non-Exhaustiveness and Peripherality Conditions.
TL;DR: This paper examined the hypothesis of Varin (1979) that modern Breton as it is spoken and written by native speakers is essentially SVO in constituent order, which contrasts with the VSO sequence characteristic of the older, more Celtic-like traditions of word order within the language and characteristic also of the "purist" camp of neo-Breton writers who have learned Breton through formal training.
Abstract: Drawing on original data from a spoken subdialect of Breton and on a variety of texts written by 20th century Breton authors, this study examines the hypothesis of Varin (1979) that modern Breton as it is spoken and written by native speakers is essentially SVO in constituent order. This contrasts with the VSO sequence characteristic of the older, more Celtic-like traditions of word order within the language and characteristic also of the ‘purist’ camp of neo-Breton writers who have learned Breton through formal training. The data analyzed for this study reveal a strong pattern of preference for VSO, with SVO occurring as an important but definitely minor word order alternative.
TL;DR: It is argued here that the formal structure of GPSG is completely compatible with the existence of down-grading constructions, and the possibility of lower filler/higher gap linkages is irrelevant to theory comparison between GB and GPSG, or indeed, between any pair of theories both of which include a phrase structure component.
Abstract: Farkas (1986) argues that earlier work by Horvath on Hungarian clause structure appealing to constituent-lowering movement is incorrect, and that no such ‘downgrading’ movement exists in natural languages. Farkas then claims that while this lack of downgrading movement must be stipulated in the GB framework, it follows as a theorem from GPSG formalism. I argue here that the formal structure of GPSG is completely compatible with the existence of down-grading constructions. A rule system implementing such constructions is presented together with a compositional semantics which yields the appropriate semantic representations for such constructions. It follows that the possibility of lower filler/higher gap linkages is irrelevant to theory comparison between GB and GPSG, or indeed, between any pair of theories both of which include a phrase structure component.