Author Archives: Joseph Pater

Dayal colloquium Friday April 12th at 3:30

Veneeta Dayal of Yale University will present “The Fine Structure of the Interrogative Left Periphery” in the GLSA Linguistics colloquium series Friday April 12th at 3:30. All are welcome!

Abstract: In this talk I explore the possibility that there are three points on the left periphery where interrogative meaning is built up, CP+WH, Force-P+Q, SAPASK:

[SAP SA0ASK [Force-P Force0+Q [CP C0+WH [TP]]]]

At CP, the +WH specification takes the TP denotation and creates a set of propositions, the semantic type for questions. At SAP, the question is anchored to the context of utterance via speaker and addressee co-ordinates. CPs are canonically what we find in complement positions, SAPs what we find in matrix questions and quotations. This two-way distinction, I would venture to say, is relatively uncontroversial or at least less radical sounding than the postulation of a three-way distinction.

I argue for a third structural position, in between CP and SAP, with a distinct semantic profile. I call this position Force-P+Q. While the term Force-P is familiar from Rizzi (1997), the characterization of this position is likely different from what has so far been assumed in the literature. I argue that Force0+Q takes a set of propositions (a question denotation) and turns it into a centered question, a question that is crucially active for someone. This allows Force-P to either feed into SAP, and be linked to a contextually provided anchor, or enter into a complementation relation with a predicate and be linked to an argument of that predicate.

The empirical justification for the three-way distinction in interrogative syntax-semantics comes from the following inter-related phenomena, which will be discussed in some detail in the course of the talk: embedding predicates, subject-aux inversion, biased questions, (polar) question particles, intonational contours, alternative vs. polar questions. In doing so, I draw on earlier collaborative work with Jane Grimshaw (Dayal and Grimshaw 2009) and Rajesh Bhatt (Bhatt and Dayal 2014 and subsequent versions), while absolving them of all responsibility for anything in this proposal that they may not have signed on to.

Pater’s “Phonological typology in OT and FLT” to appear in Phonology

Joe Pater’s short article “Phonological typology in Optimality Theory and Formal Language Theory: Goals and future directions” will appear in Phonology. A preprint can be downloaded here: https://works.bepress.com/joe_pater/37/.

Abstract. Much recent work has studied phonological typology in terms of formal language theory (e.g. the Chomsky hierarchy). This paper considers whether Optimality Theory grammars might be constrained to generate only regular languages, and also whether the tools of formal language theory might be used for constructing phonological theories similar to those within Optimality Theory. It offers reasons to be optimistic about the first possibility, and skeptical about the second.

Foley colloquium at 3:30 Friday March 1

Steven Foley (UCSC) will present “Why are ergatives hard to process? Reading-time evidence from Georgian” in ILC N400 at 3:30. All are welcome!

ABSTRACT: How easily a filler–gap dependency is processed can depend on the syntactic position of its gap: in many languages, for example, subject-gap relative clauses are generally easier to process than object-gap relatives (Kwon et al. 2013). One possible explanation for this is that certain syntactic positions might be intrinsically more accessible for extraction than others (Keenan & Comrie 1977). Alternatively, processing difficulty might correlate with the relative informativity of morphosyntactic cues (e.g., case) ambient to the gap (Polinsky et al. 2012; cf. Hale 2006). Ergative languages are ideal for disentangling these two theories, since they decouple case morphology (ergative ~ absolutive) and syntactic role (subject ~ object). This talk presents reading-time data from Georgian, a split-ergative language, which suggests that case may indeed be a crucial factor affecting real-time comprehension. Across four self-paced reading experiments, ergative DPs in different configurations are read consistently slower than absolutive ones — bearing out the predictions of the informativity hypothesis. However, the case is not closed: it seems that accusative morphology, at least in Japanese and Korean, does not seem to be associated with a processing cost, even though it is just as informative as ergative is. To reconcile this ergative–accusative processing asymmetry, I turn to the debate in formal syntax between different modalities of case assignment, and argue that a theory in which case is assigned by functional heads (Chomsky 2000, 2001) gives us better traction for understanding both Georgian-internal and crosslinguistic processing data than does a configurational theory of case (Marantz 1991).

Syrett colloquium Fri. Feb. 22 at 3:30

Kristen Syrett of Rutgers University (https://sites.rutgers.edu/kristen-syrett/) will present “Playing with semantic building blocks: Acquiring the lexical representations of verbs and adjectives” in ILC N400 Friday Feb. 22 at 3:30. All are welcome!
ABSTRACT: Early lexicons and initial child productions reflect a preponderance of object-denoting lexical items (nouns), while those that denote properties of objects or events (adjectives and verbs) lag behind. If nouns are the “Marsha” of the Brady Bunch, adjectives and verbs compete for the role of “Jan.” In many ways, this asymmetry privileging nouns makes sense: it’s much easier to track event participants than to track ephemeral events and the properties of those participants, which are much less stable, and both verbs and adjectives require nominal elements both syntactically and semantically. But the process of language acquisition is rapid, and within a matter of a few years, the child fairly quickly achieves proficiency, enough so to appreciate polysemy or word play. Given this state of affairs, we might ask two questions about the acquisition of these predicates: (1) What strategies or information sources do children recruit to pin down the lexical meaning of verbs and adjectives?, and (2) When they enter into the lexicon, how rich is children’s semantic knowledge of these words? In this talk, I provide one answer to (1), showcasing the role of the linguistic context. I then highlight a set of examples in response to (2), illustrating children’s early command of selectional restrictions for both categories. In doing so, I also demonstrate that once these words are established as part of the children’s receptive and productive vocabulary, there are certain advantages afforded to the language learner—although here, we uncover an asymmetry between verbs and adjectives implicating other aspects of the grammar and the context. Together, what this body of work reveals is the complex, interrelated process of acquiring and assembling the semantic building blocks of language.