LINGUIST List 14.1848

Thu Jul 3 2003

Qs: Kinyarwanda Speakers; Structural Parasitic Gaps

Editor for this issue: Naomi Fox <foxlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Martha McGinnis, Looking for Kinyarwanda speakers
2. Martin Salzmann, Parasitic gaps and LF-movement

If you are a native speaker of Kinyarwanda and would be willing to
provide some judgements about Kinyarwanda syntax, please contact me at
mcginnisucalgary.ca. Many thanks in advance for your help.

Martha McGinnis
Assistant Professor of Linguistics
University of Calgary
2500 University Drive NW
Calgary, AB T2N 1N4 Canada
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~mcginnis/ 

Subject-Language: Kinyarwanda; Code: RUA 

Language-Family: ; Code: NC

Dear all,

I'm looking for languages/constructions where - contrary to the
general consensus - parasitic gaps (PGs) can be licensed at LF (and
not at S-structure), e.g. through Quantifier Raising or LF
wh-movement, i.e. grammatical counterparts of the following
(ungrammatical) English sentences:

1. *John filed every book without reading pg.
2. *John filed which book without reading pg.

Furthermore, I'd be highly grateful for information pertaining to the
properties of the purported covert movement (Does it obey subjacency,
the ECP, are there intervention effects etc.) if available.

There have been sporadic claims that at least in some languages,
LF-movement does license PGs, e.g. Campos 91 for Spanish, Wahba 95 for
Jeddah Arabic(perhaps also Tellier 89 for Moor�) and most recently,
Nissenbaum 2000 for English (in very restricted contexts). However, I
suspect that this is not the whole story - and given current concerns
to restrict well-formedness conditions to interface conditions (as in
the Minimalist Program) - surface structure licensing is completely
unexpected.

I will post a summary.

Any help will be appreciated,


Martin Salzmann

Leiden University


-Campos, H�ctor (1991): Silent Objects and Subjects in Spanish. In: Hector
Campos and Fernando Mart�nez-Gil (eds.): Current Studies in Spanish
Linguistics. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, p. 117-141.

-Nissenbaum, Jonathan W. (2000): Investigations of covert Phrase Movement.
MIT: Ph.D Dissertation.

-Tellier, Christine (89): Head-internal Relatives and Parasitic Gaps in
Moor�. In: Isabelle Haik und Laurice Tuller (eds.): Current Approaches to
African Linguistics. Dordrecht: Foris (= Publications in African Languages
and Linguistics 9), p. 298-317.

-Wahba 95 in: Musira Eid (ed.) Perspectives on Arabic linguistics VII:
papers from the seventh annual symposium on Arabic linguistics [held at the
University of Texas at Austin, March 5-6, 1993]