Here are some recent projects:
Perfective aspect in Eastern Armenian
In my second Generals paper I study the semantics of the Perfective aspect in Eastern Armenian. Perfective aspect commonly assumed to denote a completed event that has a culmination requirement which in some languages such as in Hindi can be cancelled. This phenomenon has been discussed in the typological discussion in the context of true culmination vs the maximal version of it. It is also known, that the Perfective aspect doesn’t take stative VP arguments, however, some statives such as to believe, to know can appear with the perfective, and they are described to get an ’inchoative event’ reading in that case.
In this paper, I discuss two puzzles surrounding the meaning of Perfective aspect in Armenian: 1. the capability of taking stative VP arguments productively, 2. the culmination requirement for both types of VP arguments. I argue that this suffix is the realization of two operators: 1. an Eventivize operator that maps any type of eventuality (states (?), or events (?)) to the event type (?), and 2. a Result operator that is a relation between a state and an event that causes the state.
Pronouns and Binding Theory
BUMASA, Binding at Umass
Cuurently, I am a part of a Umass research group focused on Binding Theory. Grammatical analyses of Principle B effects suggest there may be distinct underlying mechanisms that (co)contribute to this effect. One is a preference to use the most dependent form possible in a given context (Competition) . Another is a pressure to assume that the arguments of a transitive predicate do not corefer , all else being equal (Obviation). Our goal is to evaluate two main approaches activelly discussed in recent literature on binding from the perspective of comprehension process.
This project has been presented in HSP 34.
Binding in Armenian
In my first Generals paper I study referential/binding properties of pronouns in Armenian that included both theoretical and an experimental investigation. Three pronouns are in interest: ink, inkn iren and na. The pronouns inkn iren and na are subject of the Binding Principles A and B respectively, where inkn iren is a reflexive pronoun and must get an anaphoric reading and na is a pronominal and gets free interpretation in the local domain. Ink is an uncompetitive pronoun that can get both anaphoric and free readings in the local domain and presents challanges to the Binding theory.
This work has been presented in Glow in Asia XIII and TLLC1. (Email me for the handout.)
In the experimental study main goal was to test the sensativity of ink and na to different factors such as syntactic role, word order, information structure and clausal boundary. The results has been presented in LSA annual meeting 2021 (pdf).