Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1996 21:09:44 -0400 (EDT)
From: Daniel Seely <ENG_SEELY@EMUVAX.EMICH.EDU>
Subject: Further comments from Seely to Zlatic
To: LINCONF@tamvm1.tamu.edu
Message-Id: <01IAZVPYLHCI96Y05B@EMUVAX.EMICH.EDU>
It seems to me that from the Zlatic/Seely/Reeves/May discussion of (the
_?*_ notation in) Zlatic's paper, it's been established that we're
talking about two rather different things: dialectal variation, on the
one hand; degrees of grammaticality/acceptability, on the other.
I'm just more immediatedly concerned with the latter, for reasons
given in my comments from last week.
But I do still have a question. The short version:
To what extent are the two factors relevant in the target examples,
i.e. those with the _?_ notation?
The longer version goes like this:
1. As an anchor, one relevant example from Zlatic is (4):
(4) Jovan (i) je procitao [Marijin (j) clanak o sebi (i, ?*j)].
John AUX read Mary's-ADJ article about self
'John read Mary's article about herself.'
2. Now, there is dialectal variation; Zlatic makes this clear in
response to Reeves (as Zlatic states "...the above judgments all
involving non-process nominals do involve more than one set of
intuitions.").
[On my calculation, 27% of speakers find binding of the reflexive by
the non-process nominal subject acceptable, 73% of the speakers find
the relevant case unacceptable.]
3. So the question is: does this mean completely acceptable and
completely unacceptable? Are we dealing only with dialectal
variation, or with dialectal variation and degrees of acceptability?
If the former, I agree with May that this is non-standard use of the
_?_ notation. If the latter, then the points raised in my comments
about the interplay of BT and "processing factors" stand.
I don't mean to belabor the point, but I do want to be sure
I understand your very interesting data.
--Daniel Seely