SYNTAX & SEMANTICS CIRCLE
university of california, berkeley
Spring 2025
NEXT MEETING:
25 may
Andrew Simpson (USC)
Obligatory object shift in Chinese: Aspect, definiteness, and affectedness
While the basic/underlying word order in Chinese languages is SVO, SOV patterns are also attested, and in Mandarin Chinese frequently arise for reasons of focus or (inner) topicalization (Ernst and Wang 1995, Paul 2005). In contrast to such optional OV, in many varieties of Wu Chinese an obligatory OV sequencing often occurs, which cannot be attributed to information structure. Instead, the positioning of the object relative to the verb regularly varies according to the interaction of aspect, definiteness, and affectedness. In Jiaxing Wu Chinese, with predicates that are telic, objects which are both definite and affected must occur pre-verbally (OV), whereas indefinite objects and objects that are definite but unaffected naturally follow the verb (VO). This talks develops an analysis of the licensing of objects in OV/VO alternations, in which V-Asp and V-V resultative verb constructions are suggested to pattern like impersonal passives in French, with the elimination of structural Accusative Case but retention of inherent Partitive Case (Belletti 1988) accompanying feature sharing/inheritance between Aspect and Voice in telic clauses. The talk expands the typological description of the cross-linguistic phenomenon of object shift and the morpho-syntactic factors which may cause object shift to occur, argues for an increased inventory of Voice heads, and also adds support for the assumption of connections between Accusative case marking and affectedness (Naess 2003, Kittila and Malchukov 2012, Kizilkaya et al 2022).
UPCOMING MEETINGS:
2 may
Amy Rose Deal (UC Berkeley)
Case sensitivity reflects case structure: Agreement, extraction, and clitics
A variety of syntactic phenomena seem to be conditioned by morphological case (an effect known variously as `case discrimination', `case targeting', `case opacity', or simply `case sensitivity'). In this talk I address three such phenomena—phi-agreement, A' movement, and clitic-doubling—with the eye to two related questions: What is the representation of (marked) case on a nominal? And how are syntactic operations sensitive to this representation? In place of the relatively standard view of case as a feature on a DP, I argue that a full understanding of case sensitivity in syntactic operations calls for a view of (marked) case as a structure around DP, i.e. a KP. Treating case assignment as structure addition, and case sensitivity as structure sensitivity, I show how we can capture proposed hierarchies of case sensitivity in phi-agreement (Bobaljik 2008) and A' movement (Otsuka 2006), as well as a novel case-hierarchy effect in the realm of clitic-doubling.
9 may
Shweta Akolkar (UC Berkeley)
TBA
PAST MEETINGS:
18 april
Katherine Johnson (Stanford)
Focus and clefts in Tiriki: evidence for hyperactivity
Cross-linguistically, nominals are taken to become inactive in certain syntactic positions. After moving to a Case-assigning A-position (e.g., Spec of finite TP), nominals are typically considered to no longer serve as eligible Goals for subsequent A-probes — they cannot move to another Case-assigning position (Chomsky 2000). Similarly, after moving to a criterial position, nominals freeze and can no longer be Agreed with or moved out of that position (Rizzi 2006). Through an exploration of Tiriki (JE.413), I demonstrate that these Activity patterns are not entirely cross-linguistically consistent. Tiriki has previously been shown to have hyperactive nominals, as evidenced by the availability of hyperraising constructions (Diercks et al. forthcoming, Johnson and Diercks in press). In this work, I demonstrate that Tiriki nominals remain hyperactive not only after moving to an A-position (as in hyperraising), but also after moving to a criterial position. This is shown through an exploration of cleft constructions, where I demonstrate that the pivot of a cleft, after undergoing A- and A’-movement within an embedded clause, can subsequently be A-Agreed with by a phi-probe on matrix T°. This finding adds to the growing body of literature showing that nominals in many Bantu languages are hyperactive (Carstens 2011, Diercks 2012), and it contributes the novel finding that hyperactivity is attested not only in A-positions but also in A'-positions. I propose an analysis wherein a defective probe on embedded T° fails to deactivate the nominal in cleft and hyperraising constructions; criterial freezing is taken to be a surface phenomenon wherein elements in criterial positions can be Agreed with but must not move.
18 april
WCCFL practice presentations.
- Feature interaction in the Tira agreement complex (Peter Jenks)
- Perceptual adaptation in Spanish: Implications for vowel-specific factors in the learning of novel accents (Nikolai Andrés Schwarz-Acosta)
- Transitive subject relativization restriction in Northern Tujia and beyond (Kang Franco Liu)
10 april
Hashmita Agarwal (UCLA)
Read-Only: Rethinking phasehood
I propose a novel conception of phases titled Read-Only, wherein phase locality is a result of phase complements undergoing Feature Freezing and Cyclic Linearisation (Fox & Pesetsky 2003, Bošković 2003). Unlike Chomsky's (2000, 2001, 2004) Transfer, Read-Only does not eliminate phase complements from the syntax, so material set to Read-Only may participate in cross-phasal dependencies, but only those that comply with Feature Freezing and Cyclic Linearisation. A constituent that Read-Only has applied to is thereby predicted to be a possible goal for movement or phi-agreement under this theory, but not case assignment. A careful study of Hindi-Urdu objects—particularly in ditransitives—supports Read-Only's predictions w.r.t. cross-phasal case assignment, phi-agreement, and movement.
4 april
Jasper Jian (Stanford)
From the Igbo left periphery to the functional sequence
Syntactic cartography (Cinque & Rizzi 2009) has been an influential perspective on how to investigate functional categories cross-linguistically and their relative sequence within the clausal spine. The 'One Feature-One Head' Principle has been a guiding assumption within this program: it states that lexical items enter syntactic derivations bearing only a single feature of the extended projection. Focusing on Igbo (Niger-Congo; Nigeria), I show that empirical coverage of interrogative constructions, including a set of subject/non-subject licensing asymmetries, requires us to posit a lexical item which bears multiple features of the extended projection (Martinović 2015, 2023; Deal 2018; a.o.). As a result, we must reject the 'One Feature-One Head' Principle. I then discuss how co-occurrence restrictions show that languages, like Igbo, where features are not always hosted on separate heads within the clause, can still display evidence of the same functional feature sequence posited for languages where they are (e.g., Rizzi 2001; Aboh 2004).
28 march
No meeting. Happy spring break!
21 march
Masoud Jasbi (UC Davis)
Definiteness and plurality in a language with no definite determiner and two types of plurals
Persian (Indo-European, Indo-Iranian, Western Iranian) lacks any morpheme that can correspond to a definite determiner. Definiteness is instead conveyed via a conspiracy of several factors, including phrasal stress or intonation, and the presence/absence of indefinite or specificity morphemes. Plurals can be formed using two different strategies: 1. adding a plural suffix and 2. adding numerals and classifiers. I first present data to support these generalizations on Persian singular and plural definites. I show that contrary to prior accounts, both pluralization strategies in Persian can be interpreted as definite or indefinite depending on the conspiracy of factors mentioned earlier. I then present more data and generalizations to create the basic desiderata for a formal and compositional account of definiteness and plurality in Persian. For example, the data will support the generalization that bare nominals are number neutral in Persian, and that the plural suffix is exclusive. I then present a preliminary formal account that captures some of these generalizations, and as always, leaves much more to be developed and improved in the future.
14 march
Line Mikkelsen (UC Berkeley)
Cross-clausal movement and its limits
Keine (2020) posits a universal Height Locality Connection, according to which movement to a high position is subject to less locality restrictions than movement to a low position, i.e. higher = freer. Against this backdrop, I consider two movement constructions in Kalaallisut (Inuit, Greenland): hyperraising to object and focus fronting. I show that hyperraising can cross a finite clause boundary, whereas focus fronting cannot. Thus movement to low position (hyperraising) is less restricted than movement to a high position (focus fronting), i.e. lower = freer. This finding suggests that the Height Locality Connection is not universal. I propose an analysis of the Kalaallisut pattern in terms of phase unlocking (Rackowski & Richards (2005) among others) and compare it to Deal's (2017) Delayed Opacity analysis of covert hyperraising to object in Nez Perce.
7 march
Ahmad Jabbar (Stanford)
Conditional rhetorical questions
Conditional questions (CQs) are conditionals with questions as their consequents (Isaacs & Rawlins 2008). Rhetorical questions (RhQs), like (1) Is John out of his mind?, are analyzed as questions (Caponigro & Sprouse 2007, Biezma & Rawlins 2017; but see Han 2002). As such, conditional RhQs should be felicitous whenever (a) their consequent can get a rhetorical reading in contexts which entail the truth of their antecedent (such as (1) uttered in a context where John pours a bucket of water over Tim's head) and (b) they are uttered in a context that does not entail their antecedent, i.e., conditionalization is not futile. However, this is not the case. Consider (2) If John pours a bucket of water over Tim's head, is John out of his mind? or (3) If John pours a bucket of water over Tim's head, would John be out of his mind?. The former seems weird; the consequent in the latter is not rhetorical. On the other hand, there are conditional rhetorical questions that are felicitous. Consider a context where A, after an all-nighter, gets in bed at 6am, saying that A only aims to rest their eyes and not sleep. A and B have an important 8am class. B says to A: (4) If you sleep now, will you attend the 8am class in your dream?. Can there be a uniform analysis of rhetorical questions that explains the infelicity of conditional rhetorical questions like (2) and (3), on the one hand, and the felicity of (4), on the other? Using tools from van Rooij (2003), Condoravdi & Lauer (2012), Yalcin (2012), and Rudin (2018), we attempt a uniform analysis.
28 february
Melissa Cronin (Stanford)
On the decomposition and anteriority of used to
Used to is a periphrastic form that is broadly characterized as a 'past habitual.' As a past habitual, used to intuitively contributes two semantic components: anteriority—which encodes a precedence relationship between two temporal intervals—and habituality, which, at a high level, makes reference to a plurality or iteration of events. From a morphological perspective, used to is opaque: it is inflectionally frozen and does not co-occur with overt TAM morphology. This raises the following question: what functional heads are responsible for encoding anteriority and habituality? I argue that anteriority does not come from past tense, by presenting data showing that used to does not give rise to Sequence of Tense (SOT) effects; used to consistently blocks the simultaneous reading, which is often taken to arise when the semantics of anteriority is obviated (Ogihara 1995, von Stechow & Grønn 2013, among others).
I follow Boneh & Doron (2013) in assuming that used to spells out two aspectual operators—Retro(spective) and Imp(erfective)—and that there is a locally c-commanding T, from which Retro inherits its perspective time. I diverge from Boneh & Doron in two ways. First, by adopting the semantics of the imperfective proposed in Deo (2009, 2015), as opposed to that assumed by Boneh & Doron, I ascribe the habituality of used to directly to Imp, without the need for an additional habitual operator. Secondly, unlike Boneh & Doron, who argue that T is fixed to be the time of utterance (TU), I argue that T is set to the local evaluation time (in the sense of Abusch, 1997). Support for this claim comes from the fact that, unlike any other past-referring habitual form (simple past, past progressive, habitual would), used to cannot co-occur with forward-shifting adverbials (e.g. #After John won the lottery, he used to go on vacation). I argue that, in these cases, the forward-shifting adverbial determines the value of T in a way that clashes with the semantics of Retro.
21 february
Margaret Asperheim (UC Berkeley)
Possessors and numerosity predicates in Nukuoro 'have'-constructions
Possessor raising is a crosslinguistically widespread phenomenon in which a nominal functions semantically as a possessor but syntactically as a core argument (Deal 2017). In this talk, I present data from an in-progress project on possessor raising in Nukuoro, an underdescribed Polynesian outlier language spoken in the Federated States of Micronesia. Specifically, I will focus on 'have'-constructions in Nukuoro, i.e. sentences that express meanings like I have (some/many/three) children (see e.g. Myler 2016). Both possessive and existential constructions in Nukuoro have sentence-initial numerosity predicates, e.g. E dahi naa daonga i dogu boo 'There will be a party on my birthday’ (lit. `The party on my birthday will be one'). In possessive `have’-constructions, the possessor appears in genitive case as a modifier of the theme argument, and also optionally in unmarked case in sentence-initial position, e.g. (Au) e dahi agu ada o Emily 'I have a picture of Emily', lit. 'I is/am one my picture of Emily'. I show that this optional sentence-initial possessor behaves more like a subject than a topic, prompting two questions: (1) what exactly is the status of the possessor in 'have'-constructions, and (2) how can we represent the argument structure of numerosity predicates like dahi? Finally, I show that the same optional 'raising to subject' takes place when a numerosity predicate takes a theme argument modified by a genitive relative clause.
14 february
Zachary O'Hagan (UC Berkeley)
Relative clauses, interrogative clauses, and focus in Chamikuro
In this presentation, I provide the first description of relative clauses, interrogative clauses, and focus in Chamikuro—a highly endangered and one of the most severely underdocumented languages of Peruvian Amazonia—based on a recent collaboration with 99-year-old speaker Alfonso Patow Chota. The description is intended to be accessible to a general audience, and I am especially interested in feedback in terms of critical unanswered questions and what direction to take the analysis in formally.
Relative clauses show distinct marking for the relativization of intransitive subjects, transitive subjects, and objects; a special verb form also found under negation and in subordinate clauses; and, in transitive clauses, agreement patterns that are sensitive to the person of both the relativized and non-relativized arguments. Furthermore, 3/3 configurations exhibit the morphology of intransitive subject relativization in addition to a particular verbal suffix. Similar morphosyntactic patterns are found in interrogative clauses and the focus of arguments, which are also described. Notably, while it is possible to wh-extract an object directly, it is not possible to wh-extract an intransitive or transitive subject without their corresponding relative clause constructions. The description is situated in a broader description of basic VSO clause structure and agreement in the language, and is contrasted with the extraction of obliques, which exhibits different morphosyntax.
7 february
Carol Rose Little (University of Oklahoma)
Dependent case, first person plural and impersonal morphosyntax in Finnish
There is variation across languages as to whether the theme of an impersonal initiator is in dependent (accusative) case or unmarked (nominative) case. For example, in Lithuanian, themes of impersonal initiators appear with accusative case (Šereikaitė 2022). In Finnish, the focus of this presentation, themes of impersonals appear in unmarked nominative. What's interesting is this form can also be used in spoken Finnish to refer to first person plural, with an overt first person plural; both the subject and object appear in the unmarked nominative case. (This impersonal qua first person plural is similar to how the on impersonal can refer to first person plural in French.) In spoken and written Finnish case computation for other transitive constructions behaves as expected expected: nominative subjects, accusative objects. I build on previous work in Finnish such as Mailing (1993), Anttila & Kim (2017) and Poole (2022) to investigate the connection between case and impersonal morphosyntax.
31 january
No meeting.
24 january
No meeting. Happy new semester!