SYNTAX & SEMANTICS CIRCLE
university of california, berkeley
Spring 2026
NEXT MEETING:
26 april
Samba Kane (Stanford University)
A Subject Extraction Asymmetry in Pulaar Relative Clauses
Pulaar (Niger-Congo; Senegal) displays a subject vs non-subject asymmetry in relativization. I argue that non-subject relative clauses (RCs) are derived via operator movement to Spec,CP, while subject RCs involve verb movement to C. Evidence for operator movement comes from the long-distance and island sensitive nature of relativization, while evidence for verb movement comes from word order and the surface manifestation of complementizer agreement, among other things. I suggest that the observed asymmetry can be understood as the result of a type of C-trace effect. Specifically, I argue that in subject RCs operator movement is blocked by anti-locality. As a result, a different relativization strategy is required to ensure satisfaction of C’s features. Inspired by Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou (1998) and Pesetsky & Torrego (2001), I propose that in subject RCs, due to subject-verb agreement, verb movement is able to satisfy the same set of features on C that operator movement does in non-subject RCs. While C-trace effects are widely attested across languages, they take on many forms and languages differ on how they respond to such effects (Pesetsky 2017). This Pulaar case study enriches the typology of strategies a language may deploy to respond to a C-trace effect. It also lends further support to a unified account of head and phrasal movement.
UPCOMING MEETINGS:
1 may
Peter Jenks (UC Berkeley)
PAST MEETINGS:
17 april
Wendy L. A. López Márquez (UC Berkeley)
Internally-Headed Relative Clauses in Nuntajɨɨyi: Structure, Interpretation, and Restrictions
Internally-headed relative clauses (IHRCs) are a typologically rare syntactic construction in which the relativized head remains inside the relative clause rather than appearing externally. Within the Mixe-Zoquean language family, IHRCs have been reported in Zoquean languages of Chiapas and Oaxaca (Faarlund 2012; Jiménez 2014; Zavala 2021), as well as in Mixean languages of Oaxaca (Zavala 2021; Aguilar Morales 2025). However, IHRCs have not been documented for Gulf Zoquean languages or for Mixean languages of Veracruz. In this talk, I present evidence that Nuntajɨɨyi, a Gulf Zoquean language of southern Veracruz, Mexico, has IHRCs, and that these constructions belong to the maximal type in Grosu’s (2012) typology. I further identify a set of constraints on their formation, including restrictions on head category, syntactic ergativity, and word order. Finally, I propose a Q-based analysis (Cable 2010), arguing that IHRCs in Nuntajɨɨyi are derived via movement of a Q(relative)-particle to Spec,CP, where it is adjoined to the phrase containing the relativized head.
10 april
Elise Kim (UC Berkeley)
Case co-occurrence constraints are both syntactic and morphophonological: evidence from Tamang
In Tamang, a case-marking clitic /=ta/ appears on some direct objects and all indirect objects, making Tamang an example of oblique differential object marking (DOM). Interestingly, the language limits multiple occurrences of =ta in a sentence. This constraint can be understood as an ''anti-identity'' phenomenon, in which the grammar disprefers repeated identical elements. The Japanese double-o constraint is an analogous phenomenon (Hiraiwa 2010); additionally, other oblique DOM languages such as Hindi (Mohanan 1994), Spanish (Ormazabal & Romero 2013), and Basque (Von Heusinger et al. 2018) exhibit similar constraints. On what level of the derivation are indirect and direct object markers ''identical,'' such that they trigger anti-identity constraints? Prior work on oblique DOM languages has argued that DAT and ACC are syntactically distinct but homophonous cases that are subject to morphophonological constraints during spell-out. I argue that while a spell-out constraint is active in Tamang, indirect and direct object markers also do not co-occur because they represent a single, unified object-marking case: both morphophonological and syntactic mechanisms are required to explain the distribution of Tamang object marking. This work touches on cross-linguistic variation in oblique DOM systems, as well as ways in which anti-identity constraints affect case marking.
3 april
Yağmur Kiper (UC Santa Cruz)
Two distinct mechanisms for genitive case assignment across nominalizations
Genitive case in Turkish and other Turkic languages surfaces on embedded subjects and is typically analyzed as a reflex of nominal structure. Previous accounts derive genitive from a single case-assignment mechanism tied to nominal architecture, either via a spec–head configuration (Chomsky 1986) or through Agree with a nominal functional head, with variation attributed to clausal size or properties of the case-assigning head (e.g., Kornfilt 2003; Miyagawa 2011; Predolac 2017). I argue instead that genitive across nominalizations is realized through two distinct mechanisms. In one class of nominalizations, it reflects the spell-out of unmarked case within a DP-domain under configurational case assignment (Marantz 1991, Baker 2015). In another, it is licensed by nominal functional structure, parallel to possessive DPs. I evaluate whether this licensing is best analyzed as a structural case under Agree (e.g., Kornfilt 2003) or as an inherent-case-like mechanism associated with nominal heads (e.g., Woolford 2006). I provide evidence from case (dis)connectivity in sluicing and the distribution of the pronominal ki particle for such distinction. The analysis supports the view that morphological case identity does not entail a uniform syntactic source.
27 march
No meeting! Enjoy the spring break ;-)
20 march
Aslı Kuzgun (Stanford University)
A puzzle in the distribution of genitive case in Turkish
This talk presents a puzzle regarding the distribution of genitive case in Turkish and proposes an account within the framework of Distributed Morphology. When genitive case appears on possessors or on subjects of nominalized clauses, its distribution is uniform. In these contexts, genitive case appears on all nominal types including pronouns, common nouns, and proper nouns. By contrast, when genitive case appears on the nominal complements of postpositions, only bare pronouns appear in genitive whereas common nouns, proper nouns, and inflected forms of pronouns appear without the genitive. We address this contrast by positing two types of genitive in Turkish, one assigned structurally to the nominal argument in the specifier position of a DP and the second assigned lexically by postpositional heads. Although these two types of genitive are assigned by two distinct case mechanisms, they appear with the same surface forms yielding a syncretism. We account for the syncretism by resorting to a subset/superset relation between the featural contents of the two case types. s
13 march
Amy Rose Deal , Margaret Asperheim, Chase Boles, Alice Lee-Kleinberg (UC Berkeley)
On diagnosing clitic doubling semantically: Amharic objects revisited
The question of how to diagnose agreement vs. pronominal clitics has occupied a prominent place in syntactic theorizing for two decades. Recent work has proposed that the key to the diagnosis is semantic restrictions on what can be indexed (e.g. definiteness). Baker and Kramer 2018 apply this diagnostic to Amharic, arguing that in order to capture the distribution of object markers (OMs) in this language, OMs must be pronominal clitics. We show how an Agree-based analysis can capture the Amharic OM data and in fact improve in various respects on Baker and Kramer's predictions. The key innovation is bringing into the picture the idea of indexed definiteness (Jenks and Konate 2022) and its quantificational counterpart, indexed quantification.
6 march
Career panel
27 february
Madelaine O'Reilly Brown (Stanford University)
A new paradigm : person-conditioned asymmetries in Uyghur nominalized clauses
Turkic languages are typologically notable for the inflectional morphology that surfaces in possessive constructions, typically identified as possessive agreement, and for their robust inventory of nominalized clause types. In many Turkic languages, the same inflectional morphology found in possessive constructions is also obligatory in nominalized clauses; while in the former this morphology indexes the phi-features of the possessor, in the latter it indexes the phi-features of the subject. These inflectional morphemes are standardly treated as the reflex of Agree between a nominal functional head and the possessor/subject (Kornfilt 2008c: Uyghur, Sakha; Asarina 2011: Uyghur; Ótott-Kovács 2023: Kazakh, a.o.). I present data from Uyghur (China) demonstrating that there are pervasive asymmetries between 1st/2nd person and 3rd person subjects of nominalized clauses. I argue for a bifurcation in the nominal inflectional paradigm, wherein 3rd person morphology is, as is standardly assumed, the reflex of Agree with a functional head, but 1st/2nd person inflectional morphemes are (case and theta-role-bearing) subject clitics. This view has implications for our understanding of the properties of agreement, nominalized clauses, case, and pronominal inventories in Uyghur, and potentially in related languages.
ZOOM ONLY
20 february
Alessandro Duranti (UCLA) (Dwinelle 1229 (note the different location))
Kinds of “We”: The Constitution of Togetherness in Samoan
In the literature on collective intentionality, group cooperation, and intersubjectivity, little attention has been paid to how the notion of “we” is differentiated across languages, how distinct forms of “we” are deployed in spontaneous interaction, and whether lexical choices among available first-person plural forms matter for invoking or recognizing what David Carr (1986) and Margaret Gilbert (1990) independently termed the “plural subject.” Contributing to debates on the role of linguistic choice in the constitution of experience, I examine the use of first-person plural pronouns and possessive adjectives in Samoan, a Polynesian language that distinguishes inclusive from exclusive “we/our,” as well as dual from plural forms, and lacks a generic or default “we/our” of the kind found in modern Indo-European languages. Drawing on analyses of spontaneous verbal interaction, I show that the distribution of these forms varies systematically across speech genres. By relating these patterns to the types of speech events in which they occur, I argue that Samoan first-person pronouns and possessive adjectives function as indexicals of distinct forms of togetherness.
13 february
Nikolas Webster (UC Santa Cruz)
Delayed argument saturation in Korean double ACC constructions
This work argues for an analysis of delayed internal argument (IA) saturation (with insights from Higginbotham 1985; J. Yoon 1990; Chung & Ladusaw 2004; Legate 2014), utilizing a high applicative head (APPL) as a general tool for introducing an IA into the structure (above the Root, but below Voice), effectively binding an unsaturated argument variable. Empirical motivation comes from Korean double accusative (ACC) constructions (DACs), and the structural challenges they pose for theories of argument structure (AS). I argue that Korean DACs, despite surface form similarity to double object constructions (DOCs), are underlyingly transitive: what looks like a lower IA is in fact an ACC-marked modifier (Jo 2024), which restricts the transitive predicate (Chung & Ladusaw 2004; Legate 2014). The 'affected object' constraint (Larson 1988; J. Yoon 1990; Tomioka & Sim 2005) that Korean DACs share with DOCs then arises due to both constructions having IAs introduced by APPL.
6 february
Yi-Chi (Yvette) Wu (Harvard University)
The decomposition of Philippine-type voice: implications for phasehood and movement
This talk takes a morphological starting point to Austronesian voice, and argues in favor of positing several distinct syntactic projections whose various combinations give rise to surface voice alternations (cf. Pearson 2005, Travis 2010). In particular, this includes 1) the functional projection Mood, responsible for (non-)finite and (ir)realis marking, and 2) functional projections M(iddle)T(opic) (cf. LaCerda 2020) and Appl (cf. Georgala 2012), responsible for argument advancement as a sort of 'leapfrogging' movement (Bobaljik 1995). Evidence comes from affix ordering of verbal morphemes, morphological decomposition in indicative and irrealis voice paradigms, and the distribution of voice markers in clausal complementation in Seediq and other Formosan languages. I will discuss the implications this has on phasehood and locality in movement, tentatively proposing that there are three phases in the clause: one for internal arguments, one for all arguments, and one for the finite clause. This is ongoing work as part of a dissertation on Austronesian voice in Seediq [Taiwan; Atayalic].
30 january
Freja Lauridsen (Lund University)
A modal in motion: On the emergence of the English modal mun
The Old English preterite-present verb (ge)munan, meaning 'to remember' or 'to be mentally active', is attested throughout the Old English period. Deriving from the Proto-Germanic preterite-present lexical verb munan, it belongs to a class of verbs many of which grammaticalised into modal auxiliaries during Old and Middle English. (Ge)munan itself appears to have undergone partial grammaticalisation, as suggested by numerous attestations of modal mun in Middle English and Early Modern English, before ultimately being displaced by the dominant English modals. A central question, however, is whether this modal development can be traced directly to the Old English verb (ge)munan, or whether (ge)munan instead fell out of use during the Old English period, with the modal mun entering English only later, in Middle English, through contact with Old Scandinavian, where munu had already developed future modal semantics - a view commonly assumed, yet unexamined, in the literature.
My roject addresses this hypothesis by examining the distribution, syntactic properties, and frequency of (ge)munan in Old English and mun in Middle English, alongside parallel munu-derivatives in Scandinavian, in order to determine whether the English modal mun arose through internal grammaticalisation or via contact-induced borrowing.
23 january
No meeting. Happy new semester!