Date: 20-Jul-2010
From: Eugenia Romanova <eugeniaromanovame.com>
Subject: Linguistic Variation Yearbook
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EDITORS: Van Craenenbroeck, Jeroen; Rooryck, JohanTITLE: Linguistic Variation YearbookVOLUME: 8PUBLISHER: John Benjamins Publishing CompanyYEAR: 2008
Eugenia Romanova, Department of Linguistics, Institute of InternationalRelations, Yekaterinburg
SUMMARY
This is an outstanding collection of papers, united by the topic of variation,but fairly diverse otherwise, covering the subfields of syntax, semantics andlanguage acquisition. With respect to language selection, the volume discussesboth Indo-European languages, like English, French and Dutch; and a number oflanguages that have received less attention in the literature, like Halkomelem,Hmong and San Lucas Quiavini Zapotec. The majority of the authors whose worksare included in the book are renowned linguists like, for example, Richard Kayneor Norbert Hornstein, but there are also contributions from younger scientistslike Robert Truswell or Oana Lungu. In a word, the volume is an attractive readfor specialists with a formal background in theoretical linguistics and a widevariety of research interests.
It opens with an Introduction by the editors, Jeroen Van Craenenbroeck and JohanRooryck, in which they give a short outline of the collection. The first articlethat follows it is ''Antisymmetry and the Lexicon'', by Richard S. Kayne (pp.1-31). The article may ignite a lot of discussions, since it introduces a novelcriterion for distinguishing between open and closed word classes and arrives atthe conclusion that verbs and nouns belong to different classes. The distinctionrests on the idea that only unvalued features can lead to parametric variation.Since nouns represent the category that can denote, they should enter thederivation with no unvalued features (p. 7) (cf. the criterion of identity inBaker 2003). As a consequence, nouns do not have specifiers. Verbs, on the otherhand, do carry unvalued features and, according to the author, are invariablyformed by way of conflation a la Hale and Keyser (1993). In other words, 'allverbs are light verbs' (p. 9). Naturally, they make up a closed class. Anotherdistinction between nouns and verbs is that the former ''invariably undergosingleton-set formation rather than merging with a phrase-set'' (p. 12). Therepercussion of this claim is that nouns do not have complements either. Theremainder of the article is devoted to showing that the 'that'-clause after 'thefact' is not a complement but rather a relative. The reasoning is extended tothe analysis of 'of'-phrases following derived nominals.
''Tense marking in the nominal domain. Implications for grammar architecture'', byArtemis Alexiadou (pp. 33-60): This article deals with an interesting phenomenonof temporal morphology in the nominal domain, which occurs, for example, inSomali and Halkomelem, discussed in the paper:
1. Somalidhibaata-dii Khaliij-ku way dhammaatay.demonstrations-DEF[+past] Gulf-DETm.NOM F.3s ended+pastThe Gulf crisis ended.
2. Halkomelemi'mex te-l si:la-lh.walk DET-1sg.poss grandfather-pastMy late grandfather walked.(p. 34)
The author argues against the notion of 'temporal tenses', showing that nominalshave no expletives or nominative Case and do not allow raising. In addition,clauses having TP (Tense Phrase) should be headed by C (Complementizer) ratherthan D (Determiner). Tense morphology on Somali nouns is comparable tospecificity markers in other languages and performs similar functions. Moreover,it provides extra evidence for splitting DP into definiteness and specificitylayers, postulated in analyzing, for example, Scandinavian nominals. Tensemorphology on Halkomelem nouns is comparable to such English modifiers as'former' and does not represent a functional formal feature. This is aninterpretable T (Tense) feature, which does not require valuation and thus thepresence of TP. The claim that there is no TP in Halkomelem is supported by a)facts listed on p. 51, and b) by identical behaviour of nominal and verbalprojections in Salishan languages.
''Copy-reflexive and copy-control constructions. A movement analysis'', by CedricBoeckx, Norbert Hornstein and Jairo Nunes (pp. 61-100): The discussion in thispaper is based on syntactic peculiarities of such languages as Hmong and SanLucas Quiavini Zapotec (SLQZ). These languages provide evidence for analysingantecedent-anaphora and control structures from the point of view of movement,which equals copy and merge operations. Reflexive and control sentences in Hmongand SLQZ can be expressed like (3) and (4) below ((1-b) and (2-b), p. 63 in thearticle):
3. John saw John. (= John saw himself.)4. John wants John to eat. (= John wants to eat.)
First, the authors show that reflexive structures like (3) above are reflexiveindeed, since they display sloppy readings under ellipsis (p. 65) and are theonly ones violating Principles B and C ((7) and (8) on p. 66). The reflexivestructure is achieved by (A-)movement. The claim is supported by theunacceptability of coordination of copy-reflexives with other nominals (movementfrom one of the conjuncts is illegitimate, (12), p. 68). The next point indiscussion addresses the satisfaction of Case requirements which demandssomewhat more complicated machinery, based on Hornstein's (2001) analysis ofEnglish.
The second half of the paper deals with problematic cases featuring certainrestrictions. For instance, overt copies are not allowed in the case ofquantified expressions either in SQLZ ((40), p. 79), or in Hmong ((44), p. 80).Another issue addressed here is why there are so few languages like the twoabove, where we observe overt multiple copies left behind by movement. Theexplanation given hinges mostly on the LCA (Linear Correspondence Axiom) byKayne (1994).
''Sequence of tense in (French) child language'', by Hamida Demirdache and OanaLungu (pp.101-130): This paper is about a parametric variation betweenEnglish-like languages, on the one hand, and Japanese-like languages, on theother, and the two parameters in child language. The difference between thesetwo types of language is that the former have sequence of tenses (SOT), and thelatter do not. Discussing a number of detailed experiments with young Frenchspeakers (French is the English-type language) the authors demonstrate that at acertain stage of language acquisition child grammar is radically different fromadult grammar of French in the area of sequence of tenses. The main approach totreating sequence of tenses is adopted from Kratzer (1998) and is calledzero-tense morphology. In its turn Kratzer's theory is based on a referentialtheory of tenses (Partee 1984). From this position, the embedded tense is azero-tense that gets bound by the matrix tense ((11), p. 107). In SOT languagesthe temporal features of a zero-tense are determined by PF (Phonetic Form)agreement between the embedded tense and its antecedent; in non-SOT languagesthe temporal features of a zero-tense are the default/unmarked features ((12),p. 107). In SOT languages sequence of tenses holds both in relative andcomplement clauses. The following readings are possible: a) backward-shiftedinterpretation when the SIT-T (Situation Time) of the embedded clause precedesthe SIT-T of the matrix clause ((2-a), p. 103); b) forward-shiftedinterpretation when the SIT-T in the past of the embedded event follows theSIT-T in the past of the matrix clause ((2-b), p. 103); c) simultaneous readingof past under past when the SIT-T of the embedded clause coincides with theSIT-T of the matrix clause ((3), p. 104); d) Double Access (DA) reading when theSIT-T of the embedded clause in the present can be interpreted as eithercoinciding with the SIT-T of the matrix clause or with the UT-T (UtteranceTime); and e) Indexical non-simultaneous interpretation when the SIT-T of theembedded clause coincides with the UT-T.
In the series of experiments with children a number of different situations wereoffered (pp. 110-113). The first experiment included altogether four constructions:1) a relative clause with double access (DA),2) a relative clause with a simultaneous reading,3) a SOT construction with DA,4) and a SOT construction with a simultaneous reading.
Surprisingly, the children accepted present on the simultaneous construals (whenan indexical construal is enforced in the target grammar) and pure simultaneousconstruals of present tensed complement clauses (when a DA construal is enforcedin the adult grammar) (pp. 128-129)
One of the conclusions made on the basis of the experiments is that childrenacquiring an SOT language go through a stage of multiple grammars; and judgingby the results of similar experiments with Japanese children, this is also trueof children acquiring a non-SOT language.
''Prepositional stranding, passivisation, and extraction from adjuncts inGermanic'', by Robert Truswell (pp. 131-178): The author proposes a parameterwhich neatly splits the Germanic languages into clear groups according towhether they allow P-stranding i) at all; ii) under A- or A'-movement; iii)under A'-movement only; or iv) under A-movement only. He claims that there areno languages of type (iv). So, one of the main questions of the article is whatis the relation between pseudopassivization and A'-movement, since the formercannot exist unless the latter is an option too. One more structure enters thepicture here: Bare Present Participial Adjuncts (BPPAs), extraction from whichhas a very similar crosslinguistic distribution to P-stranding. Despite being atoken of A'-movement, extraction from BPPAs patterns with pseudopassivization.
Discussing the intricacies of P-stranding the author gives an overview of twoexisting approaches to prepositional stranding, one offered in Hornstein andWeinberg (1981) (Reanalysis Theory) and the other in Abels (2003) (Escape HatchTheory). Neither of them fully satisfies the author.
The reanalysis theory states that V (verb) and right-hand material within it,for example P (Preposition), form a complex verb V*, also called a semanticword, and other material is the complement of this complex verb, so it is quitemobile. One of its predictions is that extraction from extraposed PPs(Prepositional Phrases) is not allowed. The author, however, finds the contrastsillustrating the prediction ((16), (17), (18), p. 139) very subtle for nativejudgment. In addition, the reanalysis theory is not restricted enough.
The escape hatch analysis is based on the head constraint. The author uses itsmodified version (Abels 2003). PP is claimed to be a bounding node, andextracted material should pass through a so-called 'escape hatch' on theperiphery of the projection (for example, [Spec, P] (Specifier, Preposition)).Abels (2003) postulates that heads of PPs are phases establishing Agreerelations in their c-command domain and intervening for the establishment ofsuch Agree relations by higher heads ((31), p. 145). So, languages differ as towhether P is a phase or not. In the former case the complement of P cannot moveand so P cannot strand. The second parameter in Abels's theory is whether Pobligatorily assigns Case to its complement, or optionally. Despite all itsvirtues, this approach, however, cannot explain the problem of a relationbetween A'-movement and P-stranding, demonstrated by the co-existence of BPPAsand pseudopassivization.
The author offers his own solution to this problem, based on Abels's theory. Itlies in the (uninterpretable) feature suppression mechanism. Inpseudopassivization the ability of P to assign Case is suppressed, and inextraction from BPPAs the suppressed feature is the phasehood of the participialhead. The solution is not unproblematic either, but additional questions (orrather prospects) are formulated towards the conclusion.
''Variation in the expression of universal quantification and free choice. Thecase of Hausa koo-wh expressions'', by Malte Zimmermann (pp.179-232): Thisarticle is devoted to the semantic variation of morphologically complexexpressions simultaneously containing a wh-element and a disjunctive elementthat the author calls WH-DISJ. These elements have different interpretations indifferent languages. For example, in Hausa (the language under discussion) theyhave an interpretation of distributive operators with a universal force, on theone hand (koo-mee = koo+what 'everything', 'anyone', p. 180) and a Free Choicereading similar to English 'any'. In Japanese and Malayalam, in their turn,WH-DISJ expressions receive an existential interpretation. Semantic differenceslead to differences in the syntactic distribution of these expressions.
While describing the quantificational system of Hausa, the author subdivides itstypes into lexical quantification (a quantificational operator is introducedinto the semantic representation of NP as part of its lexical meaning) andsyntactic quantification (a quantificational operator is not introduced as partof NP; it assigns the NP its quantificational force by binding the variableintroduced by the Noun Phrase (Heim 1982).
In their universal reading koo-wh expressions in Hausa are similar to English'each/every'. A number of questions arise in this respect, e.g. what is thesource of the universal force of koo-wh expressions or why analogous expressionsare interpreted differently (existentially) in other languages. Here theimportance of the second possible readings of koo-wh in Hausa becomes apparent.
The Free Choice Item (FCI) reading is available in intensional or modalcontexts, but the universal interpretation is not excluded from such contextseither. So, there are no strict contexts with strictly one interpretation ofkoo-wh expressions, which is taken to be an argument against treating them aslexically ambiguous (pp. 203-204). The author also rejects treating them asindeterminate pronouns (pp. 204-205). She concludes that the observable surfaceinterpretations of these expressions can be derived from their basic universalreading.
The article makes two attempts at a unified syntactic and semantic analysis ofWH-DISJ expressions across languages. The first account suggests treating thedisjunction marker as the Boolean join-operator. The universal force in Hausaarises from the local composition of the join-operator and the set ofalternatives provided by the WH-element. In languages like Japanese or Malayalamthe disjunction marker operates at the clausal level at LF and combines with theWH-element contained in the clause as well. For a number of reasons (pp.212-215), however, this kind of analysis for Japanese and Malayalam (andKannada) is rejected in favour of the indeterminate pronoun analysis.
Further in the article the indeterminate pronoun analysis is tried for Hausa toaccount for the free choice interpretation of the koo-wh expressions. Theunified approach fails here too for the reasons explained on pp. 224-227. Koo-whexpressions are proposed to be generalized quantifiers, like in the previousapproach.
The author concludes that ''WH-DISJ expressions are interpreted by differentinterpretive mechanisms in different languages, in spite of their parallelmorpho-syntactic structure'' (p. 215).
''Collective numeral constructions in Dutch. Remarkable plurals, regular syntaxand silent nouns'', by Norbert Corver and Huib Kranendonk (pp. 233-268): Thisarticle deals with the following constructions in Dutch:
5. a)Wij tweeën geven vandaag een lezing.we two-en give today a talk'The two of us give a talk today'.
b)Ze heeft ons tweeën niet herkend.she has us two-en not recognized'She didn't recognize the two of us.'
6.We schrijven met z'n negenen een artikel.we write with POSS-PRON nine-en an article'The nine of us are writing an article'. ((3), (4), p. 234)
The suffix -en usually marks plurality of a noun, as in een boek 'one book' -twee boeken 'two books'. However, in the examples above -en does not expressplurality of the numerals twee 'two' or negen 'nine'. In addition, the 'normal'plural form of 'nine' looks like negens ((5-b), p. 235).
The analysis the authors propose for this phenomenon employs the notion ofsilent nouns developed by Kayne (e.g., 2007). The silent noun in theconstructions under discussion is PERSOON 'person' and the suffix -en attachesto it rather than to a numeral. On pp. 239-240 the evidence for silent nouns inDutch is given, then the examples with a non-silent grammatical noun 'persoon'are offered ((32), p. 241):
7.Jan gaf mij informatie over [Anna's persoon].Jan gave me information about Anna's person'Jan gave me information about Anna.'
The authors conclude that silent grammatical nouns require a licenser, andaccording to Kayne (2003) there should be some sort of antecedent ''which makesit possible to recover the (semantic) contents of the silent noun'' (p. 248). Thesilent grammatical noun PERSOON in Dutch sentences like the above can onlyappear in the presence of a personal pronoun with the features [+person,+plural, +human] as demonstrated in (54), p. 248 (wij vier PERSOON-en 'we fourperson-en' = 'the four of us' is possible, whereas *vier PERSOON-en 'fourperson-en' is not). Since the feature [+human] is associated with the strongpronoun in D, the resulting syntactic analysis for wij/ons tweeen looks like thefollowing:
8. [DP wij/ons] [NumP twee]] [NP PERSOON-en]] ((65), p. 252)
The construction met z'n tweeen requires more complicated machinery, since itcontains the weak pronoun z'n, whose person, number and gender features(phi-features) are unspecified. The only grammatical feature it has is'possessive'. This possessive pronoun z'n is analysed from the point of view ofPredicate Inversion (Den Dikken (1998)). Without going into the intricacies ofthis analysis applied to z'n, I should mention that what we see neatly reflectsthe transformations changing the small clause configuration (XP) with the NumP(Number Phrase) as its subject and the dative PP as its predicative phrase intoa possessive construction. Thus, the element ''z'' is the spell-out of thefunctional head F dominating the XP, and the second element '''n'' is taken to bea so-called spurious indefinite article, which ''typically shows up in contextsof DP-internal predicate movement'' (p. 259).
The article ends with a micro-comparative perspective (pp. 261-264), whichdemonstrates the realizations of wij vieren and met z'n/ons vieren acrossdifferent Dutch dialects.
EVALUATION
I found the book impressive in the quality of the contributions and in the rangeof topics discussed under the rubric of linguistic variation. A number of paperswere particularly clear and easy to follow, like the ones by Artemis Alexiadou,Norbert Corver & Huib Kranendonk, and especially Robert Truswell.
This is partly true of the article by Richard Kayne as well. The main difficultyfor me was his reasoning in favour of the non-complement (relative) character ofpostnominal material, like in 'the fact that they're here', ((23), p. 12) or'the removal of the evidence', ((50), p. 17)). The machinery is overcomplicatedand some moves seem poorly motivated. However, readers will find this pieceoriginal and worthy of lengthy discussions.
The article by Boeckx, Hornstein and Nunes represents a strong argument in thedispute about movement analysis of control structures (see, e.g., Boeckx &Hornstein (2006), Landau (2006) and Davies & Dubinsky (2006)). It is one of themost curious and inspirational papers of the volume with a lot of interestingdata. However, readers might have doubts about Case requirements circumvented onp. 70. The curious premise that nominal copies 'can be phonetically realizedonly if they are Case licensed' (p.71) poses the question how to represent astructure like 'he was killed by himself', where the movement to aTheta-position would violate some locality constraints, in my opinion. It isalso stated that if we have an unchecked Case feature, a local movement to aTheta-position is impossible; if we don't, it is necessary. But then I don't seehow we account for movement in reflexive structures vs. passive structures.
Another big question is why in the languages under discussion are all the overtcopies personal names or name-like expressions? The account (pp. 84-87) alongthe lines of morphological fusion and removing copies from the visual field ofthe LCA seemed a bit disappointing, for, intuitively, I expected somethingsimpler and neater, like sentential (quantificational or focus) elements merginghigh and, of course, not appearing in copies (cf. Sportiche (2005)).
My less theoretical criticism concerns the article by Malte Zimmermann. I thinkit could be shorter and contain fewer repetitions, that is, the layout seemed abit unfortunate. After having admitted that languages differ with respect tointerpretation of the WH-DISJ expressions on p. 215 the author tries anotheranalysis which undermines this statement. It was also unclear whether the authorconsiders QR (Quantifier Raising) a possibility (p. 212) or a problematicassumption (p. 209). The paper is, however, one of the most complicated in thecollection.
In spite of these imperfections, the book would be a good acquisition for atheoretical linguist's scientific library.
REFERENCES
Abels, Klaus. 2003. Successive Cyclicity, Anti-locality and AdpositionStranding. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Connecticut.
Baker, Mark C. 2003. Lexical Categories. Verbs, Nouns and Adjectives. CambridgeUniversity Press, Cambridge.
Boeckx, Cedric and Norbert Hornstein. 2006. The Virtues of Control as Movement.Syntax, 9:2, pp. 118 - 130.
Den Dikken, Marcel. 1998. Predicate Inversion in DP. In Alexiadou, Artemis andChris Wilder (Eds.) Possessors, Predicates and Movement in the DeterminerPhrase, pp. 177 - 214, Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Davies, William D. and Stanley Dubinsky. 2006. The Place, Range and Taxonomy ofControl and Raising. Syntax 9:2, pp. 111 - 117.
Hale, Ken and Samuel Jay Keyser. 1993. On Argument Structure and the LexicalExpression of Syntactic Relations. In Hale, Ken and Samuel J. Keyser (Eds.) TheView from Building 20. Essays in Linguistics in Honor of Sylvain Bromberger, TheMIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., pp. 53 - 109.
Heim, Irene. 1982. The Semantics of Definite and Indefinite Noun Phrases. Ph.D.dissertation, UMass, Amherst.
Hornstein, Norbert. 2001. Move! A Minimalist Theory of Construal. Oxford:Blackwell.
Hornstein, Norbert and Amy Weinberg. 1981. Case Theory and PrepositionStranding. Linguistic Inquiry 12, pp. 55 - 91.
Kayne, Richard S. 1994. The Antisymmetry of Syntax. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Kayne, Richard S. 2003. Silent Years, Silent Hours. In Delsing, Lars-Olof,Cecilia Falk, Gunlog Josefsson & Halldor A. Sigurdsson (Eds.) Grammar in Focus:Festschrift for Christer Platzack, vol. 2. Lund: Wallin and Dalholm, pp. 209 -226.
Kayne, Richard S. 2007. Several, Few and Many. Lingua 117, pp. 832 - 858.
Kratzer, Angelika. 1998. More Structural Analogies between Pronouns and Tenses.Proceedings of SALT VIII. CLC Publications, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.
Landau, Idan. 2006. Severing the Distribution of PRO from Case. Syntax 9:2, pp.153 - 170.
Partee, Barbara. 1984. Nominal and Temporal Anaphora. Linguistics and Philosophy7, pp. 243 - 286.
Sportiche, Dominique. 2005. Division of Labor between Merge and Move: StrictLocality of Selection and Apparent Reconstruction Paradoxes, in Proceedings ofthe Workshop Divisions of Linguistic Labor, The La Bretesche Workshop(http://ling.auf.net/lingBuzz/000163)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eugenia Romanova is a lecturer of linguistic disciplines at the Institute of International Relations, Yekaterinburg, Russia. Her PhD dissertation, written at the University of Tromsø, Norway, deals with the syntactic derivation of prefixed verbs in Russian. Her scientific interests lie in the domain of syntax and semantics of aspect and argument structure of Russian verbs.
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