Coreference, Modality, and Focus: Studies on the syntax-semantics interface (Linguistik Aktuell Linguistics Today)

257 Pages·2007·1.79 MB·English

by  Luis Eguren

Coreference, Modality, and Focus
Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today (LA)
Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today (LA) provides a platform for original monograph
studies into synchronic and diachronic linguistics. Studies in LA confront empirical
and theoretical problems as these are currently discussed in syntax, semantics,
morphology, phonology, and systematic pragmatics with the aim to establish robust
empirical generalizations within a universalistic perspective.
General Editors
Werner Abraham Elly van Gelderen
University of Vienna / Rijksuniversiteit Arizona State University
Groningen
Advisory Editorial Board
Cedric Boeckx Christer Platzack
Harvard University University of Lund
Guglielmo Cinque Ian Roberts
University of Venice Cambridge University
Günther Grewendorf Lisa deMena Travis
J.W. Goethe-University, Frankfurt McGill University
Liliane Haegeman Sten Vikner
University of Lille, France University of Aarhus
Hubert Haider C. Jan-Wouter Zwart
University of Salzburg University of Groningen
Volume 111
Coreference, Modality, and Focus. Studies on the syntax–semantics interface
Edited by Luis Eguren and Olga Fernández Soriano
Coreference, Modality, and Focus
Studies on the syntax–semantics interface
Edited by
Luis Eguren
Olga Fernández Soriano
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Amsterdam / Philadelphia
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
8
American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Coreference, modality, and focus : studies on the syntax-semantics interface / edited by
Luis Eguren, Olga Fernández Soriano.
p. cm. -- (Linguistik aktuell/Linguistics today, issn 0166-0829 ; v. 111)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Grammar, Comparative and general--Syntax. 2. Semantics. 3. Reference (Linguistics)
4. Modality (Linguistics) 5. Focus (Linguistics) I. Eguren, Luis. II. Fernández
Soriano, Olga.
P291.C635 2007
415--dc22 2007035182
isbn 978 90 272 3375 2 (Hb; alk. paper)
© 2007 – John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands
John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa
Table of contents
Preface vii
Tensed modals 1
Claudia Borgonovo & Sarah Cummins
Weak Crossover, specificity and LF chains 19
Michelangelo Falco
Conditions on sub-extraction 45
Ángel J. Gallego & Juan Uriagereka
Focus, exhaustivity, and deletion in English Pseudogapping 71
Kirsten Gengel
Reconstruction and scope in exclamative sentences 89
Raquel González Rodríguez
Reconstruction without movement 113
Nicolas Guilliot & Nouman Malkawi
From polarity to modality: Some (a)symmetries between bien
and sí in Spanish 133
M. Lluïsa Hernanz
Beyond the Infinitive vs. Subjunctive Rivalry: Surviving changes in Mood 171
Itziar San Martin
Romance infinitives with subjects, subjunctive obviation and Control Theory 191
Ioanna Sitaridou
On the syntactic features of epistemic and root modals 221
Karen Zagona
Subject index 237

Preface
This book is a collection of articles offering novel and well-founded insights on much
debated topics in theoretical linguistics. It results from a rigorous selection of the
papers presented at the XVIth Colloquium on Generative Grammar that was held in
Madrid in April 2006. A thematically coherent volume has come out of this selection,
so we believe, as all the papers included address current syntactic and/or interpre-
tive issues within the generative framework, mostly paying attention to coreference,
modality and focus/ellipsis.
There is one paper, Gallego and Uriagereka’s, that concentrates on syntactic
computations. The rest of the articles are concerned with phenomena pertaining to
the syntax-semantics interface domain, and can be grouped together as follows. Four
papers investigate coreference relations of various sorts: San Martin’s and Sitaridou’s
works re-examine the topics of Obviation and Control in a good number of languages,
Falco’s research shows that Weak Crossover effects can only occur with non-specific
wh-operators, and Guilliot and Malkawi’s paper argues for the existence of reconstruction
without movement on the basis of binding and resumption data. Four other papers
deal with modals and modality: two of them (Zagona’s and Borgonovo and Cummins’)
analyse the scopal interactions between tense/aspect and modals in English, French
and Spanish, and another two (the ones by Hernanz and González Rodríguez) study
the syntactic and semantic properties of different types of left-periphery items in
Spanish, as well as their interrelations with other operators. Finally, Gengel’s article
develops a focus-based syntactic account for both Pseudogapping and Sluicing in
English. We will now introduce the volume by presenting the papers in more detail.
The central point of Gallego and Uriagereka’s “Conditions on sub-extraction” is the
relation of CED and the operation Agree, in the framework of Chomsky (2005). This
relation is investigated with regard to preverbal subjects, adjuncts, as well as internal
arguments which have undergone Object Shift. The authors adopt Boeckx’s (2003) idea
that A-movement triggers a freezing effect so that if a DP moves out of the vP nothing
can be extracted from inside it. The main hypothesis is that this restriction (and the
so called Subject Condition) is parasitic on agreement, and not on structural factors
concerning phase edges. It is thus proposed that agreeing DPs are rendered opaque.
Evidence from Spanish and Dutch is provided for this account of subject opaqueness,
and the analysis is extended to adjuncts: these elements, not having phi-features to be
matched, are islands from the very beginning of the derivation. Finally, sub-extraction
 Preface
from objects is also addressed. The relevant generalization is that objects do not allow
sub-extraction if they are displaced to a position where accusative case is checked. This
fact is accounted for taking Chomsky’s (2005) observation that objects rise to SpecVP in
a similar fashion that subjects raise to SpecTP, that is, to establish an agreement relation.
As expected, a similar freezing effect is obtained in (optional) object shift cases, thus
explaining the impossibility of sub-extraction.
San Martin’s “Beyond the Infinitive vs. Subjunctive Rivalry: Surviving changes in
Mood” re-examines the topic of obviation, an anti-coreference effect on pronouns
whereby the matrix and the embedded subject must be disjoint in reference in certain
subordination contexts. It is standarly assumed that the (non) existence of obviation
effects is due to the presence or absence of infinitival subordination in a particular
language. On this view, the presence of infinitival subordination expressing the corefer-
ence reading (as in Romance) gives rise to obviation effects (i.e., blocks free reference)
in subjunctive subordinate clauses, whereas the loss of infinitives (as in the Balkan
languages) would explain the lack of obviation in the same contexts. The author offers
theoretical and empirical evidence showing that this idea is not adequate. She tracks,
in particular, the change from obviation to free reference in Greek, which shows that
infinitives were still used well after obviation ceased to exist in the 2nd century, and
also that the loss of obviation is contemporaneous to the emergence of a subjunctive
complementizer in that language. These facts go against a blocking analysis of obvia-
tion effects, and relate them to the (non) existence of subjunctivity markers in the left
periphery of embedded contexts. A main generalization is thus drawn: languages with
subjunctive complemetizers and/or modal particles allow for free reference, whereas
languages with no such markers show obviation effects. This observation is formally
captured by making use of a reformulation of binding domains to include phase heads
that transfer agreeing features (including [Irrealis]) to T, and by arguing that domain
extension to the matrix vP (resulting in obviation) only occurs in languages that do
not distinguish between indicative and subjunctive mood in the left periphery of
embedded clauses.
Sitaridou’s “Romance infinitives with subjects, subjunctive obviation and Control
Theory” develops a new analysis for inflected and personal infinitives in Romance.
In this paper it is argued that the disjoint reference effects exhibited by Romance in-
finitives with nominative subjects cannot be captured within the standard domain
extension approach to subjunctive obviation, since inflected infinitives do not have
any subjunctive properties besides the disjoint reference requirement. Moreover, three
different theories of Control are assessed – Case-driven accounts (Bošković 1997),
Movement-driven accounts (Hornstein 1999) and Attract-based accounts (Manzini
and Roussou 2000)- and it is shown that these theories also fail to explain the non-
obligatory control (NOC) properties of both inflected and personal infinitives. As a
way out of these unaccommodating results, Sitaridou formulates an analysis of the
NOC properties of Romance infinitives with nominative subjects based on the notion
of Agree (Landau 2000): non-obligatory control is derived from Agree not applying
Preface 
at C0, due to either agreement features on the lower clause or an overt complementizer.
This way, the matching of features between the matrix DP with the T+Agr features
of the infinitive subject is blocked, hence the non-controlled interpretation. A main
advantage of such an analysis, the author claims, is that it explains the empirical obser-
vation that, in the absence of agreement or a complementizer, the personal infinitive
cannot surface as a complement.
The central insight in Falco’s “Weak Crossover, specificity and LF chains” is that
only non-specific wh-operators are involved in Weak Crossover (WCO) effects. To
ground this claim both a notional and an operational definition of specificity are first
made explicit. As for the notional definition of specificity, the semantic formulation of
the notion of D-linking proposed in Enç (1991) is assumed. Moreover, specificity is
operationally characterized by means of a number of tests that have been used in the
literature to identify (non) specific DPs: antireconstruction effects, Weak Island extrac-
tion, participial agreement in French, clitic doubling in Romanian, extraction from
existential constructions, and scope reconstruction. It is then shown that the results
of combining these base tests with WCO in the same configuration support the idea
that WCO only occurs with non-specific wh-operators. Finally, an account for this fact
is offered building on Rizzi’s (2001) proposal on the different nature of specific and
non-specific chains at LF, plus a condition of non-distinctness of grammatical features
for chain links. Falco’s analysis is the following. In non-specific chains only the opera-
tor remains in the left periphery, without the restriction. This operator does not have
ϕ-features to satisfy the non-distinctness condition, and therefore cannot establish a
binding relation with the pronoun, giving rise to a WCO effect. As for specific chains,
a full DP with ϕ-features is present in the left periphery. These features match those of
the pronoun, which can be bound by the DP operator, and consequently WCO does
not manifest.
Guilliot and Malkawi’s “Reconstruction without movement” questions the general-
ization that reconstruction of an XP involves movement of that XP. The cases analyzed
involve resumptive pronouns. An apparent paradox is presented: in Jordanian Arabic
and French there are cases of resumption in dislocation and wh-structures within
strong islands which unexpectedly allow for reconstruction. It is further argued that
reconstruction depends on four parameters. The first parameter has to do with strong
(full pronouns or epithets) vs. weak (clitic) resumption: reconstruction within strong
islands is only possible with weak resumptives. The second one concerns the type of
binding condition involved: cases of bound variable anaphora (positive binding condi-
tions) accept reconstruction with weak resumptive pronouns, whereas cases of Con-
dition C (negative binding conditions) clearly disallow it. Strong resumption allows
for reconstruction in both cases (positive and negative binding conditions), but only
if no islands are crossed. The third parameter distinguishes between a real gap vs. a
resumptive pronoun: scope reconstruction cases are only allowed with gaps but not
with resumptive pronouns. This parameter is related to the last one: reconstruction with
resumption is banned in cases of scope relations but allowed in cases of binding relations.