Reconstruction Effects in Relative Clauses
Reconstruction Effects in Relative Clauses

Author: Manfred Krifka

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2018-11-19

Total Pages: 460

ISBN-13: 3050095156

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Reconstruction effects in relative clauses are a class of phenomena where the external head of the relative clause seems to behave as if it occupied a position within the relative clause, as far as some commonly accepted principle of grammar is concerned. An often cited type of example is “The [relative of his] [which every man admires most] is his mother.”, where the pronoun “his” in the relative head appears to be bound by the quantified noun phrase “every man” in the relative clause – although the latter does not c-command the former, which is commonly required for binding. Several solutions have been developed in various theoretical frameworks. One interesting aspect about reconstruction effects in relative clauses is that they can be used as a benchmark for competing theories of grammar: Which architecture of the syntax-semantics interface can provide the most satisfying explanation for these phenomena? This volume brings together researchers working in different frameworks but looking at the same set of empirical facts, enabling the reader to develop their own perspective on the perfect tradeoff between syntax and semantics in a theory of grammar.

Reconstruction Effects in Relative Clauses
Reconstruction Effects in Relative Clauses

Author: Manfred Krifka

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2018-11-19

Total Pages: 516

ISBN-13: 3110380773

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Reconstruction effects in relative clauses are a class of phenomena where the external head of the relative clause seems to behave as if it occupied a position within the relative clause, as far as some commonly accepted principle of grammar is concerned. An often cited type of example is “The [relative of his] [which every man admires most] is his mother.”, where the pronoun “his” in the relative head appears to be bound by the quantified noun phrase “every man” in the relative clause – although the latter does not c-command the former, which is commonly required for binding. Several solutions have been developed in various theoretical frameworks. One interesting aspect about reconstruction effects in relative clauses is that they can be used as a benchmark for competing theories of grammar: Which architecture of the syntax-semantics interface can provide the most satisfying explanation for these phenomena? This volume brings together researchers working in different frameworks but looking at the same set of empirical facts, enabling the reader to develop their own perspective on the perfect tradeoff between syntax and semantics in a theory of grammar.

Reconstruction and Resumption in Indirect A‘-Dependencies
Reconstruction and Resumption in Indirect A‘-Dependencies

Author: Martin Salzmann

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2017-04-24

Total Pages: 510

ISBN-13: 1614512205

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This monograph investigates A’-dependencies in Standard German, Alemannic and Dutch where the dislocated constituent is indirectly, i.e. not transformationally, related to the position where it is interpreted. The study focuses on relative clauses and shows that an important part of the relativization system in these languages, long relativization, involves a hitherto ignored construction termed resumptive prolepsis. This construction is characterized by base-generation of the operator in the matrix middle-field and a resumptive pronoun in the position of the variable. It is shown that it involves short A’-movement in the matrix clause, empty operator movement in the complement clause and an ellipsis operation that links the two operators. While the link is directly visible in German and Dutch, Swiss German provides a more abstract version of resumptive prolepsis. Through a detailed examination of reconstruction effects and the properties of resumption in these constructions, the book provides new evidence for the role of ellipsis in A’-movement and for a base-generation analysis of resumption. More generally, it makes an important contribution to the modeling of long-distance dependencies and the study of A'-syntax.

The Syntax of Relative Clauses
The Syntax of Relative Clauses

Author: Guglielmo Cinque

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-09-24

Total Pages: 415

ISBN-13: 110884605X

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Relative clauses play a hugely important role in analysing the structure of sentences. This book provides the first evidence that a unified analysis of the different types of relative clauses is possible - a step forward in our understanding. Using careful analyses of a wide range of languages, Cinque argues that the relative clause types can all be derived from a single, double-headed, structure. He also presents evidence that restrictive, maximalizing, ('integrated') non-restrictive, kind-defining, infinitival and participial RCs merge at different heights of the nominal extended projection. This book provides an elegant generalization about the structure of all relatives. Theoretically profound and empirically rich, it promises to radically alter the way we think about this subject for years to come.

Resumptive Pronouns at the Interfaces
Resumptive Pronouns at the Interfaces

Author: Alain Rouveret

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 439

ISBN-13: 9027208220

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"This volume is based on a round table on resumptive pronouns which was held at the UFR de Linguistique, Universite Paris-Diderot, on June 21 and 22, 2007."

Resumptivity in Mandarin Chinese
Resumptivity in Mandarin Chinese

Author: Victor Junnan Pan

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2016-06-20

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 3110489759

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The use of resumptive pronouns is quite productive in Mandarin Chinese; however, their distribution has rarely been studied in a systematic way. This book not only gives a thorough description of the general distribution of resumptive pronouns in different contexts but also offers a theoretical account in the framework of the Minimalist Program. Different types of A'-dependencies, mediated by gaps and by resumptive pronouns, are derived by different minimalist mechanisms, such as Agree, Match and Move. These mechanisms only apply at Narrow Syntax and do not uniformly obey locality constraints. Importantly, interpretative properties of an A'-bound element, such as reconstruction effects, is only related to its internal structure irrespective of how the A'-chain concerned is derived. From this perspective, resumptivity is an exclusively syntactic-related phenomenon and is thus not subject to any interface condition. Adopting a comparative approach, this study improves the general understanding of resumptivity crosslinguistically.

Null Pronouns
Null Pronouns

Author: Melani Wratil

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2011-10-27

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 3110238713

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Most natural languages display an inventory of pronominal elements that obligatorily or optionally remain phonologically null in a few, in many or even in all syntactic surroundings. The authors of the papers compiled in this book analyse such null pronouns in a synchronic and diachronic way and recover the specific morphological and syntactic prerequisites for their origin and insertion.

Aspects of Grammatical Architecture
Aspects of Grammatical Architecture

Author: Alain Rouveret

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-01-19

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 1351622196

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This volume collects eleven papers written between 1991 and 2016, some of them unpublished, which explore various aspects of the architecture of grammar in a minimalist perspective. The phenomena that are brought to bear on the architectural issue come from a range of languages, among them French, European Portuguese, Welsh, German and English, and include clitic placement, expletive pronouns, resumption, causative structures, copulative and existential constructions, VP ellipsis, as well as the distinction between the SVO, VSO and V2 linguistic types. This book sheds a new light on the division of labor between components and paves the way for further research on grammatical architecture.

Continuations and Natural Language
Continuations and Natural Language

Author: Chris Barker

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 0199575010

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The continuation of an expression is a portion of its surrounding context. This book proposes and defends the continuation hypothesis: that the meaning of a natural language expression can depend on its own continuation (it can denote a function on its surrounding context).

Romance Linguistics 2007
Romance Linguistics 2007

Author: Pascual José Masullo

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 373

ISBN-13: 9027248206

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The present volume includes a selection of twenty-one peer-reviewed and revised papers from the 37th annual Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL) held at the University of Pittsburgh in 2007. The papers cover a range of topics in morphology, syntax, phonology and language acquisition. A number of languages and varieties are also analyzed, including Italian, Spanish, Judeo-Spanish, Old Spanish, French, Old French, and Romanian. Contributions include papers from three of the invited speakers, Heles Contreras, Javier Gutierrez-Rexach and Julia Herschensohn. This volume highlights theoretical issues under current debate in Romance linguistics."