Raw Reading Times (ms) - Generative Linguistics in the Old World

Marta Abrusan (Göttingen) & Kriszta Szendrői (UCL)
Experimenting with the King of France: topics, verifiability and definite descriptions
1. Theoretical situation The Fregean position is widely accepted in the semantics literature:
definite descriptions trigger an existential presupposition (Heim & Kratzer 1998). However, this
existential presupposition seems not to appear equally strongly in every sentence (Strawson 1969,
Reinhart 1981, von Fintel 2004, etc.). E.g. according to Strawson, in a context where it is known
that France has no king, (1a) is felt as “neither false nor true”, but (1b) is judged as simply false.
(1) a. The king of France is bald. b. The exhibition was visited yesterday by the king of France.
The solution of Strawson (1969) (also Reinhart 1981) was that definite descriptions trigger an
existential presupposition only in topic position. The NP ‘the king of France’ is in topic position
in (1a) but not in (1b). Thus (1a) but not (1b) leads to a presupposition failure. Lasersohn (1993)
and von Fintel (2004) dismissed the importance of topichood and argued that rather than
topicality, verifiability is important: If a sentence contains an independent NP such that the
sentence could be verified based on the properties of this NP, speakers might have enough
grounds to accept or reject the sentence whether or not the presupposition of the definite
description is satisfied. This happens in The king of France is sitting in this chair, where the sentence
could be verified based on the properties of the chair. Further, as von Fintel (2004) has shown, in
some cases even definite descriptions that are uncontroversially topics do not seem to trigger the
“squeamishness” associated with presupposition failure: Let me tell you about my friend, the king of
France. I had breakfast with him this morning. Thus according to both Lasersohn and von Fintel,
definite descriptions always trigger an existential presupposition, hence all the above examples
involve a presupposition failure. But if the speaker has independent footholds for verification, he
might judge the sentence as false.
2. Summary of the experiment and results All the data in the above papers are based on the
intuitions of the authors. We designed an experiment to verify the alleged differences between the
various (local) linguistic contexts and to test the predictions of the theories. We found that the
situation is more complex than appears from any of the above papers. Both topicality and
verifiability is a factor in its own right. We also discuss how to reconcile these seemingly divergent
factors. We distinguish two concepts: topic, what the sentence is pragmatically about, and what we
call pivot, which is the constituent in the sentence based on which the sentence is verified. We
propose, following Lasersohn (1993) and von Fintel (2004), that verifiability is the primary factor
that informs pragmatic truth value intuitions: in particular we suggest that sentences are verified
based on their pivots. The topic-effect noticed by Strawson and Reinhart comes about because
topics are default pivots. Overall, our data suggests the following picture: We should combine the
pragmatic insights of the various Strawsonian theories with a bivalent, but presuppositional
approach to definite descriptions, such as that of Stalnaker (1974, 1978).
3. The experimental setup We tested 33 native speakers of English (mostly British English),
aged 22-55. The participants first read instructions on the computer screen, reproduced in (2).
(2) In this experiment, statements will appear on your screen. If you think a statement is true, you should click on
the 'TRUE' button. If you think a statement is false, you should click on the 'FALSE' button. Sometimes,
it may happen that you cannot decide. In those cases, you should click on the 'CAN'T SAY' button. Please
do not dwell on your decision for too long. There is no right or wrong answer!
After a short practice session, they were left alone with a program which presented the items
described below one by one in pseudo-random order, 253 in total. An example of an item:
The king of France is bald.
FALSE CAN’T SAY TRUE
1

The test items were created by placing 8 definite descriptions that lack referents (listed in (3)) in 11
sentential contexts, called test conditions, illustrated with items involving the king of France in (4).
(3) the king of France; the emperor of Canada; the Pope’s wife; Princess Diana’s daughter; the beaches of
Birmingham; the Belgian rainforest; the coral reefs of Brighton; the volcanoes of Kent.
(4) C(ondition) 0 [ref. failure NP, no extra NP] The king of France is bald.
C1 [no presupposition] France has a king and he is bald.
C2 [von Fintel, indep. unknown NP] The king of France is on a state visit to Australia this week.
C3 [Lasersohn, indep. known NP] The king of France is married to Carla Bruni.
C4 [ref. failure NP in topic] The king of France, he was invited to have dinner with Sarkozy.
C5 [ref. failure NP not in topic] Sarkozy, he was invited to have dinner with the king of France.
C6 [negation of 0] The king of France isn't bald.
C7 [negation of 2] The king of France is not on a state visit to Australia this week.
C8 [negation of 3] The king of France is not married to Carla Bruni.
C9 [negation of 4] The king of France, he wasn’t invited to have dinner with Sarkozy.
C10 [negation of 5] Sarkozy, he wasn’t invited to have dinner with the king of France.
C(ondition) 1 was included to test that the participants did know that our tested definite
descriptions were referentially challenged. The difference between C2 and C3 (and similarly
between C7 and C8) was that in the latter the participants were expected to have knowledge about
the relevant properties of the independent NP in the sentence (Carla Bruni, in C3 and C8 in (7)—
this we call Lasersohn-effect), but in the former they were expected not to have such knowledge
(Australia, in C2 and C7 in (7)—this we call the von Fintel-effect). The item list also contained 165
filler sentences, 8 of which were controls for the items in C3 and C8, i.e. the conditions that tested
for the Lasersohn-effect. E.g., for C8 in (7), the control item was Carla Bruni is married to Sarkozy.
4. Results We compared the proportion (%) at which subjects replied ‘False’ to the test items in
Conditions 0-5 with ANOVA, and also compared the proportion (%) at which subjects replied
‘True’ to the test items in Conditions 6-10. We found only weak or nearly significant differences
between any of the conditions 0-5, i.e. the positive conditions; our subjects said ‘False’ to most of
these most of the time. However, we found clear significant differences among the negative
conditions: As Figure 1 shows, we found that speakers responded ‘True’ at a significantly higher
proportion to the items in C7, C8, C9 and C10 than to the items in C6 (p

Stavroula Alexandropoulou & Bert le Bruyn (Utrecht)
Inalienable possession: a semantic take
In most analyses of inalienable possession in French (see 1) it is standard to assume that the
definite article is simply not there (e.g. Vergnaud & Zubizarreta 1992) or that it is some kind of
pronoun (e.g. Guéron 1985). We maintain that expletive analyses should be a last resort option
and that pronominal analyses only make sense if we can show that there is some kind of
agreement between the anaphor and its antecedent. Given that this last condition is not met (see
1) we propose an alternative semantic analysis under the assumption that the definite article is
what it looks like: a definite article.
(1) Je 1st person, masc/fem lève la fem main. (2) ??Jean lève sa main.
I raise the hand Jean raises his hand
‘I raise my hand’
From a semantic viewpoint, we face two challenges: (i) How come we can use a definite article in
this construction (despite the non-uniqueness of hands)?; (ii) Why don’t we use a possessive
pronoun rather than a definite article (see 2) ? Given that the first challenge has been treated for
other relational uses of the definite article (see e.g. Barker in press) we focus on (ii). We propose an
analysis with a minimum of stipulations that derives the facts for French as well as for English.
The key to understanding inalienable possession is that the possessum in this construction
presupposes possession: a hand e.g. is always someone’s hand. This has two important
consequences that lead to partially conflicting requirements on the inalienable possession
construction. We will exploit these as constraints in an OT account. The first consequence is that
an inalienable possessum is defined only if we know who the possessor is. We then expect
speakers to make sure that there is no doubt about who the possessor is. The most
straightforward way to do so is to use a possessive pronoun. This leads a speaker to prefer (2)
over (1). The second consequence is that the overt marking of possession is superfluous: given
that possession is presupposed, it is uneconomic to mark it explicitly with a possessive pronoun
that – due to the fact that it imposes a binding relation – is syntactically more complex than a
definite article. We consequently expect speakers to avoid using overt possessive pronouns and
to prefer (1) over (2).
In (3) we reinterpret the two consequences we have introduced as an OT faithfulness and an OT
markedness constraint.
(3) FaithPoss(essor):Make sure an inalienable possessum has a determined possessor.
D(on’t)U(se)P(ossessive)P(ronouns): Don’t use possessive pronouns with inalienable
possessum nouns
The interpretation of DUPP is unproblematic but FaithPoss does need further explanation. We
define the notion of determined possessor in DRT:
(4) A possession relation have(x,y) contains a determined possessor y iff for every f that
embeds the input DRS K, it holds that for every f’, f’’ that extend f, f’(y)=f’’(y) and
have(f’(x),f’(y))=have(f’’(x),f’’(y)) (cf. Farkas 2002 on determined reference).
Above, we indicated one way of satisfying FaithPoss, viz. to use possessive pronouns. Here, we
discuss the two other ways we know of. Note that neither involves explicit marking of
possession. We introduce the first on the basis of (5) and make the assumptions in (6):
(5) Marie a frappé Jean sur la main.
Marie has hit Jean on the hand
(6) a. sur in combination with frapper refers either to the location or specifies the goal of the
action of hitting (semantics of the preposition)
b. if hitting an object A and hitting an object B form one and the same event, then it has
to be the case that either A is part of/equal to B or B is part of/equal to A (semantics of
the verb)
c. hands are parts of humans (semantics of inalienable possession)
From the assumptions in (6) it follows that the hand in (5) has to be John’s. More precisely, on
the goal reading of sur the hitting of John is associated with the hitting of the hand, while, by b.

and c., it is ensured that there is a part-of relation between the hand and John. Similar analyses
can be presented for several preposition/verb/inalienable possessum noun triplets (see Koenig
1999 for a similar yet less flexible analysis).
The second way FaithPoss can be satisfied without an overt possessive pronoun is through the
use of datives that can and sometimes must undergo so-called possessor raising (see Szabolsci
1983, Nicol 1997 and Landau 1999). This is illustrated in (7):
(7) Le frère k de Jean l lui l a pris la main t l.
The brother of John to_him has taken the hand
‘John’s brother took his hand’
The reasoning here is similar to the one we made on the basis of (6): taking the hand to someone
entails that the hand in question has to belong to this someone.
We are now ready to put our constraints to work in an OT analysis and to discuss its predictions.
Note that the facts we discuss are the same as the ones that have been discussed in the syntactic
literature as basic evidence in favour of an analysis involving binding.
Given that we have two constraints, we expect to have two types of languages: one in which
FaithPoss is ranked below DUPP and one in which the reverse is the case. In
DUPP>>FaithPoss languages we expect inalienable possessum nouns – wherever possible – to
occur in prepositional phrases or with a dative, satisfying FaithPoss without violating DUPP.
Wherever this is impossible, we expect them to occur with the definite article, violating FaithPoss
but satisfying DUPP. This derives the facts for French in (1), (7), (8), (9) and (10).
(8) *Il se lève la main. (9) *Le frère k de Jean l a pris la main t l.
He to_himself raises the hand The brother of John to_him has taken the hand
(10) Le frère k de Jean l l l’a pris par la main l.
The brother of John him has taken by the hand
The acceptability of (1) follows from the unacceptability of (8) and the unavailability of a
prepositional variant, the unacceptability of (9) follows from the availability of (7) and (10). The
crucial insight we propose here is that the acceptability of the definite article in the inalienable
possession construction depends on the availability of other constructions. We don’t deny that
there are interesting generalizations that govern the use of these other constructions but we do
claim that the intricacies that come with these should not be included in the analysis of
inalienable possession as they might ultimately reside in the lexicon. A clear argument in favour
of this strategy comes from the fact that similar verbs in languages that generally allow for
inalienable possession with the definite article need not allow for similar constructions. Compare
in this respect the marginality of French la tête me fait mal (‘the head to me makes ache’) to the full
productivity of Spanish me duele la cabeza (‘to me makes_ache the head’).
In FaithPoss>>DUPP languages we expect inalienable possessum nouns – wherever possible –
to occur in prepositional phrases or with a dative, satisfying FaithPoss without violating DUPP.
Wherever this is impossible, we expect them to take a possessive pronoun, violating DUPP but
satisfying FaithPoss. This straightforwardly derives the facts for English:
(11) Mary k hit John l on the hand l. (12) *John k raised the hand k.
The acceptability of (11) follows from the fact that both FaithPoss and DUPP are satisfied, the
unacceptability of (12) follows from a violation of FaithPoss.
In this paper, we have proposed an OT analysis that combines insights about the semantics of
verbs, prepositions, datives and inalienable possessum nouns with a straigthforward markedness
(DUPP) and faithfulness (FaithPoss) constraint. The result is an elegant analysis with a minimum
of stipulations and a maximum of data coverage. We in particular showed how we can avoid
stipulating that the definite article functions as an expletive or a pronoun in disguise.
References | Barker (in press) ‘Possessive weak definites’ | Farkas (2002), Journal of Semantics 19:
213-243. | Guéron (1985), in Guéron et al. (eds.), Grammatical Representation, Dordrecht: Foris. |
Koenig (1999), NLLT 17: 219-265. | Landau (1999), Lingua 107: 1-37. | Nicol (1997), PhD
dissertation, Paris X. | Szabolcsi (1983), The Linguistic Review 3: 89-102. |Vergnaud & Zubizarreta
(1992), LI 213: 595-652.

Artemis Alexiadou (Stuttgart) & Elena Anagnostopoulou (Crete)
Verb meaning, local context, and the syntax of roots in alternations
1. While it is uncontroversial that extra-grammatical context (linguistic and non-linguistic)
can influence the form and meaning of sentences, research in the area of verbal alternations
has revealed that there is another notion of context important for meaning, which we call here
local context. Meaning of verbs is computed on the basis of a ‘core element’ (the ‘root’)
which is integrated in a structural template (local context). On this view, verb classes are sets
of verbs sharing a local context while the idiosyncratic properties of a given root determine
whether and how this root can be integrated in a structural template. This basic approach has
been advocated both in models of lexical semantic decomposition (e.g. Rappaport Hovav &
Levin RH&L 1998) and in models of morphological-syntactic decomposition (e.g. work in
Distributed Morphology (DM) following Marantz 1997, 2001). From the DM perspective, a
syntactic representation is then interpreted in consultation with the encyclopedia. Crucially,
encyclopedia entries interpret structures in very specific contexts and in combinations. A
question arising in such models is to what extent the determinants of argument realization are
part of the root information and to what extent they are part of the event/syntactic template
(see Borer 2005 for a radically exo-skeletal view). In this paper, we explore how these two
meaning components interact on the basis of a case study, namely the clear-alternation. We
argue that object alternations relate to whether verbs are classified as manner or result, which
depends on the ontological types of the morphological roots they are based on and the local
contexts permissible for different ontological types of roots.
2. In English, locative verbs of placing (spray, load) and detaching (clear) alternate between
two frames (1), illustrated in (2), see Levin (1993), L& RH (1991):
(1) a. Frame A: DPAgent V DPStuff PPLoc b. Frame B: DPAgent V DPLoc PPStuff
(2) a. Lucy sprayed the paint on the wall b. Lucy sprayed the wall with paint
c. Henry cleared dishes from the table d. Henry cleared the table of dishes
Many locative verbs do not allow the alternation, and choose either only Frame A (e.g. steal
Change of Location COL) or Frame B (e.g. cover, Change of State COS). The interpretation
of the two frames is given in (3):
(3) a. COL interpretation (Frame A): [X CAUSE [Y BECOME [AT Z/AWAY FROM Z]]]
b. COS interpretation (Frame B): [X CAUSE [Z BECOME [WITH Y/WITHOUT Y]]]
The question thus is what underlies the distinction between alternating and non-alternating
verbs and why the latter choose the COL or the COS frame. In the recent literature, it has been
proposed that the (un-)availability of object alternations can be understood in terms of the
Manner vs. Result hypothesis (RH&L 1998, 2008) according to which: i) Verbs lexicalize
either manner or result (manner or result, respectively, are entailed by all uses of verbs). ii)
Verbs alternate when they lexicalize manner and they don’t when they lexicalize result.
3. Mavropoulou, Moschou, Tsikala & Anagnostopoulou (MMTA) (2011) show that Greek
has both the spray- and the clear- alternation:
(4) a. psekasa boja ston tiho b. psekasa ton tiho me boja
sprayed-1sg paint to the wall sprayed-1sg the wall with paint
c. katharisa ta psihula apo to trapezi d. katharisa to trapezi apo psihula
cleaned-1sg the crumbles from the table cleaned-1sg the table from crumbles
These authors provide lists of locative verbs that alternate in Greek, and establish the
following: i) in Greek the alternation is more systematic with verbs of detaching. This
property is partially attributed to the fact that the preposition used with this class is apo
‘from’, which is clearly directional (unlike se ‘to’) and can easily combine with manner roots
expressing COL (Frame A). ii) More verbs of detaching alternate in Greek than in English,
where according to L&RH (1991) only four verbs alternate (but others claim that several
wipe- verbs may alternate as well; see Levin 1993). In these two respects, Greek is similar to
Hebrew, as described by Segal & Landau (S&L 2009). S&L (2009) argue that alternating

clear verbs are not specified for the type of change involved (they entail neither COL nor
COS), while those that do not alternate are specified either entailing COL and appear in
Frame A or COS (and appear in Frame B). MMTA (2011) show that this holds in Greek too.
4. The morphological make-up of Greek verbs of detachment strongly suggests that a large
class of alternating verbs (i.e. verbs not specified for COL/COS) are manner verbs and nonalternating
ones (either only COL or only COS) are result verbs, as expected by the Manner
vs. Result Hypothesis. Alternating verbs typically involve manner/instrument roots and a
verbalizer e.g. -on- in (5a) (these correspond to the English wipe-class). Verbs only allowing
COL contain prepositions/prefixes/particles that overtly encode location (5b); verbs only
allowing COS are based on an adjective, plus a verbalizer, thus overtly encoding state (5c).
(5) a. sider-on-o lit. iron-v-1sg ‘iron’ b. af-er-o lit. from-lift-1sg ‘remove’
c. atho-on-o lit. innocent-v-1sg ‘acquit’
Applying a series of manner vs. result diagnostics (see Koontz Garboden & Beavers 2011)
confirms that (5a)-type verbs are manner verbs and (5b,c)-type verbs are result verbs. These
can be morphologically decomposed by using the tools of DM: verbs consist of categoryneutral,
idiosyncratic roots which are merged with categorizing heads (Marantz 2001) either
as their modifiers, direct Merge, or as their complements (Embick 2004; Harley 2005).
(6) a. modifiers of v, direct Merge: [v v √ ] b. complements of v [v √ v]
For Embick, direct merge specifies the means component of the complex predicate, and (6a)
can feed secondary resultative predication. Thus the type of merge is sensitive to the manner
vs. result/state classification of roots: manner roots merge as modifiers of v, state roots merge
as complements of v. Combining RH&L’s insights with Embick’s structures, we propose that
direct merge applies to manner/instrument roots with alternating verbs of the (5a)-type. Since
these roots merge as modifiers of v, they can be involved in resultative secondary predication,
yielding the COL and the COS frames. Following Hale & Keyser (2002), S&L (2009) and
others, we assume that in COL, a locative (source) PP is the sister of v and the stuff DP as the
specifier of P (7). In COS, a ResultP is the sister of v and the DPlocation is the specifier of v (8):
(7) [v v � [PP DPstuff [P DPlocation ]]] (8) [vP DPlocation [v [ResultP]]]
Turning to non-alternating verbs, Greek verbs showing only frame A contain prefixes, drawn
from the prepositional inventory. Most of them belong to the inventory of Classical Greek and
are no longer productive. They cannot be separated from the verbal stem, predominantly have
spatial meanings, and in combination with the morphological root give the meaning of what
L&RH label “root” in the lexical semantic sense, e.g. ek- top- iz-o ‘from -place-verbalizer-
1sg.’. We propose that the prefixes ‘lexicalize’ path and select a PlaceP complement
(Svenonius 2008), lexicalized by �top in (9). The apo phrase is in Spec,Path, and there is a
Spec-head Agreement relationship, in this case Source. Support for this analysis comes from
the fact that when Path = Goal, the verbal prefix is ‘eis’ (to) and the Goal-PP is a se-‘to’ PP.
(9) [vP iz [PathP ek [PlaceP �top ]]]
Greek non-alternating verbs showing only COS are built on the basis of an adjectival base.
The set of adjectives related to these verbs can each take a complement expressed by means
of an apo phrase introducing the stuff argument (adio apo nero ‘empty from water’), which is
then inherited by the verb derived from these adjectives. Thus the verbs appear only in COS.
5. We provided evidence that verbal alternations depend on both the ontological types of the
verbal roots involved and on the local contexts permissible for these different types. This in
turn suggests that a) roots do have some meaning in isolation (contra e.g. Acquaviva 2009,
Borer 2008, de Belder & van Craenenbroeck 2011) which consists of a limited number of
contrastive properties (manner, state and place in our case), b) these distinctions influence the
syntactic merger possibilities of roots, c) the syntactic template roots are inserted in fully
specifies the realization of verbal arguments, and d) meaning is assigned by the encyclopedia
that calculates both the input of the root and that of the syntactic template.

Artemis Alexiadou & Florian Schäfer (Stuttgart)
Naturally reflexive verbs revisited: relations between syntax, semantics, and the lexicon
1. In the literature, naturally reflexive verbs ((NRVs) e.g. wash, Kemmer 1993) have been the
topic of much controversial discussion. Here we focus on one particular aspect of this debate,
namely the question whether or not NRVs include an empty category at some level of
representation, either a null reflexive or a trace/copy, in languages like English and Greek. In
these languages, NRVs are, at the surface, intransitive either because no overt reflexive form
is present (English: John washed) or because, in addition, de-transitivizing morphology is
present (Greek: O Janis plithike 'John washed-non-active-3sg'). As the class of verbs that are
treated as naturally reflexive seems quite stable across languages, a uniform analysis has been
argued to be desirable (see e.g. Alexiadou & Doron 2011). In this paper, we argue for a nonuniform
analysis of NRVs across languages (cf. Reinhart & Siloni 's 2004 lexicon vs. syntax
parameter; see Dechaine & Wiltschko 2011 for discussion of heterogeneous approaches to
reflexives). We first show that under closer inspection, English NRVs are syntactically
intransitive, providing thus further support for the view that these predicates lack a
syntactically projected object (Reinhart & Siloni 2004). While an intransitive analysis is
available for English, it cannot extend to German, Dutch and Greek. In the former case
(German, Dutch), this is so because a syntactically projected object is overtly present, in the
latter case (Greek) because NRVs, unlike ordinary unergatives, show de-transitivization
morphology. We thus propose a tri-partition of the way languages resolve the requirement
that the two thematic roles associated with NRVs make reference to the same entity: a) in
English, this is done at the conceptual interface, b) in German and Dutch, this is done via
binding of an object anaphor, and c) in Greek, this is done via movement into a theta-position
(syntactic bundling). This reflects the type of morphology we find in the three language
groups, zero/none, reflexive pronoun, and an affix, respectively. Our analysis correctly
predicts the productivity of reflexivization noted for Greek, but not for e.g. English, which is
not captured under the homogeneous approach.
2. Some authors argued that NRVs are actually transitive, i.e. they select a specific reflexive
null morpheme, which is overt in languages like German (Hans wäscht sich ‘Hans washes
himself’), see Safir (2004) and references therein, Marantz (2009). Support for this comes
from the observation that these predicates do have transitive construals, e.g. John washed
Mary/John didn't wash Mary but himself. Others proposed that NRVs are actually
unaccusatives, the theme argument is a derived subject and leaves a trace/copy in its thematic
position (Marantz 1984, and subsequent work, McGinnis 1998, Embick 2004). Support for
this analysis comes from languages such as Greek that mark their NRVs with the same nonactive
morphology as their passives or uncontroversial unaccusatives. Both these analyses are
problematic for English. Sells, Zaenen & Zec (1987) showed that NRVs behave unlike
predicates that take an overt reflexive with respect to ‘strict’ and ‘sloppy’ readings. (1), with
an overt reflexive, is ambiguous between a strict and sloppy reading. (2), an NRV, has only
the sloppy reading, suggesting that the predicate is semantically intransitive:
(1) John defends himself better than Peter
a. John defends himself better than Peter defends himself sloppy
b. Johni defends himself better that Peter defends himi strict
(2) John washes more than George.
a. John washes himself more than George washes himself. sloppy
b. John i washes himself more then George washes him i *strict
(1) has a further reading, the so-called object comparison reading (Johni defends himself
better that he i defends Peter), which (2) lacks, as expected, see Dimitriadis & Que (2009).
Reinhart & Siloni (2004) pointed out that NRVs in English behave unlike one-place
unaccusatives. As is well-known, agentive -er nominals can only be derived from predicates
with an external argument (Levin & Rappaport Hovav 1992). Reinhart & Siloni show that

NRVs form agentive nominals (3c), similar to unergatives (3a):
(3) a. She runs so fast because she is an experienced runner.
b. * She moves so gracefully because she is an experienced mover.
c. She dresses slowly because she is an elegant dresser.
Further support for an unergative analysis comes from the application of other transitivity
tests (Bresnan 1982, Kratzer 2004, Levin 1999, Rappaport Hovav and Levin 1998, 2008).
Reduplication to get an iterative reading, out-prefixation and ‘fake’ reflexives are possible
only with non-core transitive (and unergative) verbs (4), but not with core-transitives (5). (6),
an NRV, behaves like (4), in both its readings, the reflexive and the disjoint one:
(4) a. John run and run and run/John ate and ate. (5) a.*John broke and broke and broke
b. John out-run/out-ate Mary. b. *John out-broke Mary.
c. John run/ate himself dead. c. *John broke-himself dead.
(6) a. John washed and washed and washed.
b. John out-washed his sister.
c. John washed himself raw.
3. To explain the behavior of English NRVs, it has been proposed that these have two lexical
entries, a reflexive and a disjoint one (see e.g. Moulton 2005). Assuming that the external
argument is severed from the VP (Kratzer 1996), and is introduced in Voice, it is not clear
how to formally encode that such a lexical entry brings about a reflexive interpretation.
Furthermore, such a move seems undesirable, as it would lead to an explosion of the lexicon.
We showed that NRVs are similar to other non-core transitive predicates like eat. An option
that is available for these predicates, under the assumption that thematic roles belong to the
conceptual level (Chomsky 1995), is to interpret them as two-place predicates at the syntaxconceptual
level interface. This means that the internal argument is added post-syntactically.
With verbs of consumption, the added argument is the most prototypical object for this
predicate-class, an amount of food/fluid that one can consume. NRVs are defined as carrying
“inherent in their meaning [...] the lack of expectation that the two semantic roles they make
reference to will refer to distinct entities” (Kemmer 1993:58). The most prototypical object is
thus identical to the subject, and this is computed at the conceptual interface.
4. Dutch and German have an overt object for the reflexive interpretation, and allow only the
disjoint interpretation to be resolved at the conceptual interface. In these languages, NRVs are
syntactically transitive (e.g. Steinbach 2002). As an internal argument is projected in the
syntax to be bound by the external one, these predicates lack disjoint readings. We relate this
to the special (light) reflexives forms used, an option unavailable in English.
5. Neither the unergative nor the transitive analysis is applicable to Greek due to the presence
of non-active morphology with NRVs. Embick (2004) proposed that NRVs combine with a
Voice that is agentive, but lacks a specifier, and this is realized via non-active morphology at
morphological structure. This cannot explain the absence of disjoint reference with reflexives,
but not with passives. Doron (2003) argued that NRVs combine with a special kind of Voice
(the host of non-active morphology), which does not trigger the disjoint reference effect. But
this raises the question what regulates the cross-linguistic distribution of this special Voice.
We propose instead that in Greek, the internal argument moves to Spec,Voice, combining
two thematic roles (theme & agent). This explains Papangeli’s (2004) observation that there
are many newly formed reflexives in Greek (e.g. hapakonete = to give pills to himself,
derived from the transitive verb via the addition of non-active morphology) that would be
hard to explain, if we assumed that only a closed set of verbs has a reflexive variant. We view
non-active morphology as similar to be-selection in Romance (cf. Haider & Rindler-Schjerve
1987): it is the morphological reflex of an agreement chain between T and an element within
VP, as in the case of passives and unaccusatives. With reflexives, T agrees with the whole
chain between the object and the subject position, leading again to non-active morphology.

Anke Assmann, Doreen Georgi, Fabian Heck, Gereon Müller & Philipp Weisser (Leipzig)
Ergatives move too early
Claim: We claim that the inability of ergative arguments (DPerg) to undergo Ā-movement
(wh-movement, focussing, relativization) in many morphologically ergative languages should
not be brought about by restrictions on the movement of ergative DPs. Rather, we argue that
movement of the ergative argument is not prohibited per se but if it applies, it applies too early,
thereby undermining case assignment to the absolutive argument (DPabs). As a consequence,
the derivation crashes.
Background & Data: It has been noted in the literature that in many ergative languages DPerg
cannot be Ā-moved, in contrast to DPabs, cf. (1).
(1) Katukina-Kanamari—Wh-Movement (Queixalos 2010)
a. hanian tu Nodia nah=hoho-nin?
b. *hanian tan dyuman tahi yu?
whom Q Nodia ERG=call-DURATIVE who here spread water Q
‘Whom is Nodia calling?’
‘Who spread water here?’
There are at least two possible analyses: (i) The trace of DPerg is not licensed (e.g. in GB
terms, it is not strictly governed); (ii) (covert) movement of DPabs blocks movement of DPerg,
either due to minimality (Campana 1992), or DPabs blocks the only escape hatch within vP
(Aldridge 2004, Coon 2010). Both approaches suffer from technical and empirical problems.
As for (i), constraints on traces cannot be formulated in the Minimalist framework. As for (ii),
Campana’s analysis is based on a non-standard concept of intervention while Aldridge (2004)
and Coon (2010) must stipulate a ban on multiple specifiers. All three accounts must resort to
covert movement of DPabs, which is hardly motivated on independent grounds. Empirically, the
analyses in (ii) make the wrong prediction that DPabs not only blocks movement of DPerg but
also movement of other vP-internal elements like adjuncts or obliques (2). They also predict that
similar movement asymmetries between coarguments should be found in nominative-accusative
languages, contrary to fact.
(2) Mam —Wh-Movement of Passive Agent (England 1983)
al uPn xhi kub’ tzy-eet qa-cheej?
Q RN DEP-3PL.ABS DIR GRAB-pass PL-horse
‘By whom were the horses grabbed?’
Assumptions: [A1] Following Müller (2009), we assume that (i) case is assigned under Agree,
(ii) in all languages, T assigns unmarked case (NOM/ABS) and v marked case (ERG/ACC),
(iii) the only difference between accusative and ergative case systems is the order in which
the basic operations Merge and Agree apply within vP. Since v triggers two operations (it assigns
case and selects an external argument), languages must give preference either to Agree or
Merge, given Earliness (Pesetsky 1989) and the tenet that operations cannot apply simultaneously.
[A2] Instead of minimality, we assume a Specifier-Head-Bias (SHB) which states that
agreement between a head and its specifier is preferred to agreement between a head and an element
its c-command domain (Chomsky 1986, 1995, Koopman 2006; see Béjar & ˇRezáč 2009
for a similar idea with a bias inversed). The SHB is compatible with equi-distance effects, which
pose a problem for path-based definitions of minimality. [A3] Movement to SpecCP must make
an intermediate stop in SpecTP. This is ensured by assuming that either TP is a phase (Richards
2011), any XP is a phase (Müller 2010) or strict locality (Chomsky 2005). [A4] Edge features
on phase heads are freely available (Chomsky 2000). [A5] Arguments may receive more than
one case (cf. approaches to case stacking: Andrews 1996, Nordlinger 1998, Richards 2007).
[A6] Agree is not sensitive to the PIC (see e.g. Boˇskovič 2007).
Analysis: In ergative languages, preference is given to Merge over Agree with the result that v
first selects the external argument (DPext) before it assigns case. Due to the SHB, the marked
case of v ends up on its specifier while the internal argument (DPint) receives case from T,

given [A6]. In accusative languages, preference is given to Agree over Merge, such that v has
to assign case to DPint before Merge of DPext, which in turn receives case from T (cf. Müller
2009). Now, on the T head, the same indeterminacy as on v arises: it assigns case and must
have an edge feature if one argument is to undergo Ā-movement. Assuming that the languagespecific
order of operations remains constant throughout the derivation, we can derive the ban on
ergative movement and the asymmetry between ergative and accusative languages, considering
two different derivations: [D1] DPext has an additional [wh]-feature and moves to an operator
position in the left periphery via SpecTP ([A3]; [A4]) to check this feature; [D2] DPint has a
[wh]-feature and moves to an operator position. As for [D1], in accusative languages DPint has
received accusative within vP. DPext receives case via Agree as soon as T is merged because
Agree is preferred over Merge. Afterwards, DPext is free to move and check the edge feature on
T. In ergative languages, DPext receives case within the vP; DPint remains unvalued. As soon as
T is merged, it first attracts DPext to satisfy its edge feature (preference for Merge over Agree).
Due to the SHB ([A2]), DPext checks case on T ([A5]) with the result that DPint does not
receive any case. The derivation crashes because DPext has absorbed the case features provided
for DPint. As for [D2], in accusative languages, DPint receives its case from v while DPext is
still unvalued. When T enters the structure, it first assigns case to DPext before it attracts DPint
to its specifier (preference for Agree). Thus, the context for multiple case-checking does not
arise in the first place. In ergative languages, DPint is attracted to SpecTP where it receives its
case due to the SHB while DPext receives case from v. The derivation converges. In summary,
out of the four derivations in which one argument is extracted, three derivations converge. Only
the derivation in which DPext in an ergative language is extracted is ungrammatical because
DPerg moves before T has assigns case to DPabs. Hence, ergatives move too early.
Conclusion: The present analysis has several advantages: (i) It captures the intuition by Polinsky
et al (2011) that movement of DPerg is not problematic per se but leads to a problem for the
identification of DPabs. (ii) It is not forced to assume unmotivated covert movement steps of the
absolutive. (iii) It avoids stipulations about the different nature of ergative and accusative syntax.
One parameter, namely the ordering of Merge and Agree, derives the difference in argument
encoding as well as the difference that there is a movement asymmetry between coarguments in
ergative but not in accusative languages. (iv) It is empirically superior to other existing theories
because it makes the correct prediction that in languages which exhibit a ban on movement of
the ergative other elements like adjuncts, passive agents and obliques are still free to move (cf.
(2)). It should also be clear that our analysis implies a strictly derivational syntax in which the
order of operations plays an important role in deriving properties of the grammar.
Outlook: Finally, we address the related question of why not all ergative languages instantiate
a ban on ergative movement and discuss several possible answers: (i) The order of operations
on T differs from the order on v. (ii) T is not a phase head. (iii) DPs cannot check multiple
case features. Furthermore, we examine repair strategies for the ban on ergative movement
such as antipassive or agent focus (Stiebels 2006, Aissen 1999). We argue that the agent focus
morpheme is the morphological realization of an added probe which assigns case to DPint,
thereby preventing a crash of the derivation (cf. Béjar & ˇRezáč 2009, Coon 2010).
Selected References: Aldrige, E. (2008): Generative Approaches to Ergativity, Language and Linguistics Compass
2(5), 966-995. • Béjar, S. & M. ˇRezáč (2009): Cyclic Agree, Linguistic Inquiry 40(1), 35-73. • Boˇskovič,
ˇZ. (2007): Agree, Phases, and Intervention Effects. In Linguistic Analysis 33: 54-96. • Campana, M. (1992):
A Movement Theory of Ergativity, PhD thesis, McGill University, Montréal. • Coon, J. (2010): A-Bar Extraction
Asymmetries. Manuscript. McGill University. • Müller. G. (2009): Ergativity, Accusativity, and the Order of
Merge and Agree. In K. Grohmann (ed.), Explorations of Phase Theory. Features and Arguments, 269-308. Berlin:
Mouton de Gruyter. • Pesetsky, D. (1989): The Earliness Principle. Ms. • Polinsky, M., C. Gómez Gallo, P. Graff
& E. Kravtchenko (to appear): ‘Subject Preference and Ergativity’, Lingua. • Richards, M. (2011): Deriving the
edge: What’s in a phase? Syntax. 14.1, 74-95.

Anke Assmann & Fabian Heck (Leipzig)
Opaque Intervention in German Scrambling
Claim: Based on hitherto unnoticed facts from German, we claim that an argument’s capacity to bind a
parasitic gap (PG) or to associate with a floating quantifier (FQ) is not dependent on the argument’s surface
position. Rather, the distribution of PGs and FQs is often opaque: (i) There are cases where binding of
a PG by an argument is impossible although no co-argument intervenes on the surface (counter-feeding);
(ii) and there are cases where a wh-phrase can associate with a FQ although a surface intervener is present
(counter-bleeding). We suggest that opacity arises because there is an earlier derivational stage where (i ′ )
a co-argument binds the PG and then scrambles to a position where it ceases to intervene on the surface;
and where (ii ′ ) the wh-phrase occupies a position such that it is the closest element to associate with the
FQ, and later it moves on to a higher position, giving the surface impression to involve intervention.
Observations: (i) An indirect object cannot bind a PG by scrambling if a direct object co-argument has
scrambled, too, not even if the co-argument does not intervene on the surface between the indirect object
and the PG (1-a). A direct object can bind a PG even if the indirect object co-argument intervenes (1-b).
(1) a. *wenn jemand das Buch der Anette2 [ ohne PG2 zu vertrauen ] ausleiht
if someone theacc book thedat Anette without to trust
“if someone lends Anette the book without trusting her”
lends
b. wenn jemand das Buch2 der Anette [ ohne PG2 durchzulesen ] zurückgibt
if someone theacc book thedat Anette without through-to-read
“if some returns the book to Anette without having read it”
returns
(ii) A wh-subject cannot associate with the FQ alles if an indefinite object intervenes on the surface (2-a).
The same holds for an indirect wh-object and an indefinite direct object (2-b). However, if the grammatical
functions of wh-phrase and indefinite are reversed, surface intervention is unproblematic (3-a,b).
(2) a. *Wer1 hat einen Koch alles1 bezahlt?
whonom has aacc cook all
“Who all paid a cook?”
paid
b. *Wem1 hat er einen Koch alles1 gezeigt?
whodat has er aacc cook all shown
“To whom all did he show a cook?”
(3) a. Wen1 hat ein Koch alles1 beleidigt?
whoacc has a cooknom all
“Who all did a cook insult?”
insulted
b. Was1 hat er einem Koch alles1 geborgt?
whatacc has he adat cook all lent
“What all did he lend to a cook?”
Assumptions: Our analysis is embedded in the theory of Chomsky (2001) (thus presupposing phases,
their impenetrability, and Agree). We follow Richards (2004) in assuming that scrambling is triggered by
edge features (EFs, Chomsky 2007). In a scrambling language like German, such EFs can be inserted (at
least) on v and T. Following Müller (2010), we assume that EF-insertion on a head H is only possible as
long as H is active, i.e., H still bears some other feature that is to trigger some syntactic operation. As
Müller (2011) shows, this leads to the Intermediate Step Corollary (ISC), which states that internal Merge
to SpecX triggered by an EF precedes external Merge (triggered by a selectional feature). Together with
the Extension Condition (Chomsky 1995), this implies that internal Merge triggered by an EF always
targets an inner SpecX while the outermost SpecX is created by external Merge (provided external Merge
applies at all). If EFs are undeletable (see Chomsky 2007), it is plausible to assume that they are inserted
on a head H only once per derivation. Once an EF has been inserted on H, it attracts all the categories
C1, C2, . . ., Cn that are supposed to reach H’s specifier domain. Suppose now that the EF first attracts
C1, C2, . . ., Cn in a top down fashion, starting with the closest Ci (closeness being defined in terms of
asymmetric c-command). Every time a Ci is attracted, it is placed on a stack. Only after all of C1, C2, . . .,
Cn have been placed on the stack, they are subsequently merged in H’s specifier domain. Note that Merge
exclusively has access to the Ci on top of the stack. Once Ci is removed, Ci−1 occupies the top and thus
becomes accessible. As a consequence, C1, C2, . . ., Cn are moved in parallel: due to the first in – last out
procedure, they are merged in the inverse order in which they have been attracted, see also Stroik (2009).
Our assumptions about PGs and FQs are as follows. Adjunct clauses containing PGs are merged in Specv
(above or below the subject). PGs must establish Agree with their binder (see Assmann 2010). Once
an argument has established Agree with a PG, it does not induce any Minimal Link Condition effects

(MLC, Fanselow 1991, Chomsk 1995) with respect to other Agree-relations involving PGs. FQ alles
must associate with an indefinite (see Reis 1992). Association involves Agree. Alles is merged in the TP.
Analysis: In (1-a), the direct object is merged as sister of V, the indirect argument as its specifier. The
adjunct clause (containing the PG) is merged in Specv. As long as the subject is not merged, v remains
active and an EF can be inserted on it. According to the assumptions in Müller (2010), an EF inserted
on H must serve its purpose before other features of H can be accessed. Therefore both objects are first
attracted by the EF to Specv. Movement proceeds in parallel (via the stack), resulting in the objects’
relative order der Anette ≻ das Buch. Both c-command the PG. But since das Buch is closer to the PG,
der Anette cannot bind it without violating the MLC (see also Fanselow 1993). Next, the subject is merged
in Specv. When T is merged, it is active (due to its Φ-probes) and therefore accessible to EF-insertion.
EF on T attracts (again in parallel) subject and direct object to SpecT, resulting in (1-a). Although, on the
surface, der Anette is closest to the PG, binding is impossible as the PG has already established Agree
with das Buch. By the same reasoning (1-b) is grammatical. In (2-a), the direct object is merged as sister
of V. In order to remain PIC-accessible (to ultimately reach SpecT) it is attracted by an EF to Specv. Due
to the ISC, this happens before the subject is merged, yielding the order wer ≻ einen Koch within vP.
Next, alles enters the TP. Since T is active (Φ-probes), an EF can be inserted. Subject and object are
attracted in parallel, conserving their relative order. As a result, einen Koch ends up closer to alles than
wer. The MLC prevents wer from establishing Agree with alles. Instead, alles enters Agree with the
indefinite, which does not qualify for an associate, presumably due to semantic reasons. This accounts for
the ungrammaticality of (2-a). Similar considerations apply to (2-b). In (3-a) the direct object is attracted
to Specv (before the subject is merged), yielding the order ein Koch ≻ wen within vP. After alles is merged
in TP and an EF is inserted on T, the arguments are moved (in parallel) to SpecT. As their relative order
is not altered, wen is closer to alles and establishes Agree with it, thereby creating the association. In
a later step, the wh-phrase moves away, giving the superficial impression of being separated from alles
by a potential intervener. Again, the derivation of (3-b) is analog. The analysis also accounts for facts
about German PGs that have been noted elsewhere. Thus, it has been observed that no intervention in
PG-binding arises (a) if the potential intervener is the subject (Fanselow 1993), (b) if it is a pronoun (den
Dikken & Mulder 1991, Fanselow 1993), or (c) if it binds another PG (again Fanselow 1993).
Consequences: Opacity in phonology has traditionally served as an argument for derivational theories
(Kenstowicz & Kisseberth 1979). However, with the advent of containment theory (Prince & Smolensky
1993) things changed: now it was possible to analyze opacity representationally. Not surprisingly,
then, the instances of counter-feeding and counter-bleeding discussed above can be reanalyzed by making
reference to traces, too. However, there is a reason why one should refrain from doing so. On the
one hand, Brody (2001) argues that a theory that is inherently derivationally to begin with any resort to
representational concepts should be minimized. To the extend that this is convincing, opacity effects in
a derivational syntax should be analyzed without reference to traces/copies, as was proposed above. On
the other hand, it can be argued that strengthening the representational character of the theory as a whole
by deriving scrambling via base-generation is ceteris paribus, not able to derive the facts about opaque
intervention in the context of PG-binding and FQ-association discussed above.
Selected references: •Assmann, Anke (2010): Parasitic Gaps in Derivational Grammar. Master’s thesis, Universität
Leipzig. •Brody, Michael (2001): Some Aspects of Elegant Syntax. Ms., University College London. •Chomsky, Noam
(2001): Derivation by Phase. In: Kenstowicz, ed., Ken Hale. A Life in Language. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts,
pp. 1–52. •Chomsky, Noam (2007): Approaching UG from Below. In: Sauerland & Gärtner, eds, Interfaces + Recursion =
Language? Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, pp. 1–30. •Dikken, Marcel den and René Mulder (1991): ‘Double Object Scrambling’,
MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 14, 67–82. •Fanselow, Gisbert (1993): ‘Die Rückkehr der Basisgenerierer’, Groninger
Arbeiten zur Germanistischen Linguistik 36, 1–74. •Fanselow, Gisbert (2001): ‘Features, θ-Roles, and Free Constituent Order’,
Linguistic Inquiry 32, 405–437. •Müller, Gereon (2010): ‘On Deriving CED Effects from the PIC’, Linguistic Inquiry 41, 35–
82. •Müller, Gereon (2011): Constraints on Displacement. Benjamins, Amsterdam. •Reis, Marga (1992): The Category of
Invariant alles in Wh-Clauses. In: Tracy, ed., Who Climbs the Grammar Tree? Niemeyer, Tübingen, pp. 465–492. •Richards,
Marc (2004): Object Shift and Scrambling in North and West Germanic: A Case Study in Symmetrical Syntax. PhD thesis,
University of Cambridge. •Stroik, Thomas (2009): Locality in Minimalist Syntax. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Rebekah Baglini (Chicago)
Reduced clausal structure in comparatives: evidence from Wolof
(Keywords: syntax, phrasal comparatives, clausal comparatives, subject/non-subject asymmetry)
Introduction: A central topic in the study of comparative constructions cross-linguistically is the syntactic
complexity of the standard constituent: whether a simple nominal standard is base generated as a phrase or
derived from a full clause. Clausal standards are assumed to be typologically rarer and restricted to certain
grammatical strategies. Although underlying clausal structure has been demonstrated in particle comparatives
in English, German (Lechner 2001), and Greek (Merchant 2009), Stassen (1985) claims that exceed
comparatives (a cross-linguistically widespread strategy in which comparison is expressed via a transitive
verb meaning ‘exceed’) are categorically restricted to phrasal standards.
This paper represents the first formal challenge to Stassen’s prediction, and draws on novel evidence
from Wolof to demonstrate that some exceed comparatives must involve underlying clausal structure in the
standard.
Evidence: The expression of unequal quality comparison in Wolof involves the comparative main verb
gen-a, ‘exceed’ or ‘surpass’, combining with a gradable predicate (GP) (1):
(1) Mu-a gën-a-gatt Binta.
3sg-clf surpass-short Binta.
‘S/he is shorter than Binta.’
Stassen’s (1985) classification of gen-a as a phrasal exceed comparative initially seems plausible: no prepositions
or special morphology introduce the standard in (1) and the nominal following gen-a+GP appears
to be a simple individual denoting-expression, a DP. Thus, the surface structure of a Wolof comparative
construction like (1) seems consistent with a phrasal analysis, in which both the target and standard are
arguments of the transitive gen-a+GP compound verb.
I argue, however, that the apparent surface simplicity of comparative sentences like (1) is misleading.
First, it is crucial to note that the target is obligatorily clefted in Wolof comparatives. This is curious
as clefting is not widespread in Wolof, but restricted to the expression of focus and the formation of whquestions
(Torrence 2005). Clefted arguments within an embedded clause receive no special marking, but
clefting within the matrix clause is indicated by distinctive morphology. The attachment site of the copular
cleft marker -a- distinguishes subject cleft (SC) sentences like (1)-(2) from non-subject cleft (NSC) sentences
like (3): -a- follows a subject (pro)nominal in SC, and an expletive l- in NSC.
(2) subject cleft
Ma-a gën-a-bëgg djënn (*ci) Binta.
1sg-clf surpass-like fish (*ci) Binta.
‘I like fish more than Binta (does).’
(3) non-subject cleft
Ginaar l-a-a gën-a-bëgg ci djënn.
Chicken l-clf -1sg surpass-like ci fish
‘I like chicken more than fish.’
Besides the different morphological marking of SC and NSC comparative constructions, there is a crucial
asymmetry exhibited by (2) and (3): the standard of comparison may be introduced by the word ci in NSC
constructions, but not in SC constructions. Ci most commonly occurs as a locative preposition in Wolof,
but it is also known to function as a (prepositional) complementizer introducing a CP (Torrence 2005), as
illustrated in (4)-(5):
(4) Da-ma soon ci tóx póón
do-1sg tired c smoke tobacco
‘I’m tired of smoking tobacco.’
(5) Da-ma dogu ci jënd-kó.
do-1sg decide c buy-3s.
‘I decided to buy it.’
If ci in sentences (2) and (3) were a simple preposition, there would be no obvious explanation for the
contrast in grammaticality. I argue instead that ci is a prepositional complementizer in these sentences.
Following Merchant (2009)’s analysis of Greek reduced clausal comparatives, I propose that the standard
in both SC and NSC comparatives in Wolof is generated within a full clause and clefted to clause-initial
1

position, triggering clausal ellipsis. According to the standard account of clefting in Wolof, clefted subjects
move to SpecTP, non-subjects to SpecCP (Torrence 2005). Thus, the observed asymmetry between (2)-(3)
with the complementizer ci is entirely predicted: while the standard in both (2) and (3) is generated inside
a clause, only the latter projects a full CP structure and thus co-occurs with ci.
(2’) sc standard (3’) nsc standard
TP
PP
Bintai
T vP
ti
bëgg
likes
v’
djënn
fish
ci CP
djënnk
fish C TP
tk
T vP
1sg v’
Besides explaining the asymmetry observed in (2)-(3), an additional positive consequence of the clausal
analysis proposed here is that it accounts for the otherwise mysterious clefting of the target in Wolof comparatives.
According to my analysis, Wolof comparatives embed a full-fledged clausal domain in which the
standard undergoes movement to a clause-initial position, just as has been proposed for clausal comparative
constructions in English, German, Greek, and other languages. The clefting of the target is thus readily
explained as obligatory parallel movement to license ellipsis under identity with the standard. The trees in
(2’) and (3’) illustrate the proposed underlying clausal structure for the standard in sentences (2)-(3).
Conclusion: This paper shows that the Wolof gen-a construction is a clausal comparative, in which both
target and standard are moved to a clause peripheral position to license ellipsis. This finding has significant
implications for the study of comparatives cross-linguistically, indicating that clausal comparatives are not
as typologically rare as is often assumed, nor incompatible with exceed strategies of comparison.
References
Lechner, W. 2001. Reduced and phrasal comparatives. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 19:683–735.
Merchant, J. 2009. Phrasal and clausal comparatives in Greek and theabstractnessofsyntax. Journal of
Greek Linguistics 9:134–164.
Stassen, L. 1985. Comparison and universal grammar. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Torrence, W.H. 2005. On the Distribution of Complementizers in Wolof. Doctoral Dissertation, UCLA.
2
bëgg
like
tk

Stefan Baumann (Köln)
Types of Secondary Prosodic Prominence and their Relation to Information
Structure
A linguistic element is prosodically prominent if it stands out from its neighbouring
elements by virtue of its suprasegmental properties. The prosodic differences between
the elements can vary considerably, though. Thus, prosodic prominence is both gradual
and relational in nature. These characteristics lead to problems in the annotation of
naturally spoken language, since the annotator is forced to classify intonational events
as categories.
In order to circumvent this general problem of gradience/relativity versus categoriality,
several types of 'secondary' prominences have been proposed in the literature, e.g.
duration accent (Kohler 2005), secondary accent (Chafe 1994), ornamental accent
(Büring 2007), subordinate/secondary nucleus (Crystal 1969), or phrase accent (Grice et
al. 2000). However, the various concepts refer to quite different phenomena or levels,
namely
(a) presence or absence of a pitch movement, i.e. tonal vs. non-­‐tonal prominence
(b) accent type, i.e. the form of a pitch movement on a metrically strong syllable
(c) accent position or the status of a prominence in the prosodic hierarchy
The current paper presents experimental investigations on these three types of
secondary prosodic prominences and their relation to various aspects of information
structure. First, in several acoustic and articulatory production studies on Second
Occurrence Focus (SOF), i.e. words which are both focussed and contextually given, it
could be shown that SOF items receive an intermediate degree of prominence (e.g. Féry
& Ishihara (2009) and Baumann et al. (2010) for German) which is not triggered by
tonal movement but by increased duration and intensity (compared to background
elements). The same pattern can be observed in some cases of bridging or 'implicit
inferrability' (Partee 1999), which do not display segmental copies of first occurrence
expressions (cf. Riester & Baumann 2011).
Second, a number of production studies confirmed that different accent types are
related to different degrees of (perceived) givenness or information status of discourse
referents (Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg 1990, Baumann & Grice 2006). Latest results of
a perception study on German (Röhr & Baumann 2011) revealed a stepwise decrease in
the degree of perceived givenness from deaccentuation and prenuclear accents through
low and early peak nuclear accents to high and rising nuclear accents. Further evidence
for the relevance of different accent types in the processing of an item's information
status comes from a neurolinguistic perception study on the prosody of inferentially
accessible referents (Schumacher & Baumann 2010): Three different accent types on a
meronymic expression revealed significant differences in processing effort
(deaccentuation > H* > H+L*) indicated by variations in event-­‐related brain potentials
(in particular N400). Crucially, the 'secondarily prominent' accent type H+L* proved to
be the most appropriate marker of the 'secondarily given' referent.
Third, the syntagmatic relation between prosodic prominences influences their
perceived strength degree. In a recent perception study on German (Jagdfeld &
Baumann 2011) subjects clearly distinguished between strongly accented and
unaccented words in two different positions within an utterance. However, an order
effect was found for weak pitch accents, which were not perceived as accents in
prenuclear but in nuclear position. In general, listeners proved to be less sensitive to
categorical prominence judgements in prenuclear position (also reflected in longer

eaction times) than in nuclear position, which indicates the special functional status of
nuclear accents.
The insights of these studies lead to the proposal of a model of prosodic prominence
integrating the three levels discussed (see (1)). The model aims at being 'truly
autosegmental-­‐metrical' in that it does not equate prominence with pitch movement but
that it also takes non-­‐tonal criteria such as duration and intensity into account. It
furthermore considers the relative position of prominences within an utterance.
(1) + phonological prominence -­‐
References
nuclear non-­‐nuclear
prenuclear postnuclear
metrical level
-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐
pitch accents non-­‐tonal prominences tonal level
high ... low duration accent, phrase accent
rising ... falling
Baumann, Stefan & Martine Grice (2006). The Intonation of Accessibility. Journal of Pragmatics 38 (10).
1636-­‐1657.
Baumann, Stefan, Doris Mücke & Johannes Becker (2010). Expression of Second Occurrence Focus in
German. Linguistische Berichte 221. 61-­‐78.
Büring, D. (2007). Intonation, Semantics and Information Structure. In: Ramchand, G. Reiss, C. (Eds.), The
Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Interfaces.
Chafe, W. (1994). Discourse, Consciousness, and Time. University of Chicago Press, Chicago/London.
Crystal, D. (1969). Prosodic Systems and Intonation in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Féry, C. & Ishihara, S. (2009). The phonology of second occurrence focus. Journal of Linguistics 45, 285–
313.
Grice, M., Ladd, D.R., Arvaniti, A., (2000). On the Place of Phrase Accents in Intonational Phonology.
Phonology 17 (2), 143-­‐185.
Jagdfeld, Nils & Stefan Baumann (2011). Order Effects on the Perception of Relative Prominence.
Proceedings 17th ICPhS, Hongkong, China. 958-­‐961.
Kohler, K.J. (2005). Form and Function of Non-­‐Pitch Accents. AIPUK 35a. Prosodic Patterns of German
Spontaneous Speech. 97-­‐123.
Partee, B. (1999). Focus, Quantification, and Semantics-­‐Pragmatics Issues. In: P. Bosch & F. van der Sandt
(eds.), Focus: Linguistic, Cognitive, and Computational Perspectives (Studies in Natural Language
Processing), Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press.
Pierrehumbert, J.B. & Hirschberg, J. (1990). The Meaning of Intonational Contours in the Interpretation of
Discourse. In: P.R. Cohen, J. Morgan, M.E. Pollack, (eds.), Intentions in Communication. Cambridge: MIT
Press. 271-­‐311.
Riester, Arndt & Stefan Baumann (2011). Information Structure Annotation and Secondary Accents. In:
Dipper, Stefanie & Heike Zinsmeister (eds.): Beyond Semantics: Corpus-­‐based Investigations of Pragmatic
and Discourse Phenomena. Bochumer Linguistische Arbeitsberichte 3. 111-­‐127.
Röhr, Christine & Stefan Baumann (2011). Decoding Information Status by Type and Position of Accent in
German. Proceedings 17th ICPhS, Hongkong, China. 1706-­‐1709.
Schumacher, Petra & Stefan Baumann (2010). Pitch accent type affects the N400 during referential
processing. NeuroReport 21 (9). 618-­‐622.

Kristine Bentzen (Tromsø/CASTL) & Merete Anderssen (Tromsø)
Discourse effects on the availability of Object Shift
In Norwegian, like in the other Mainland Scandinavian language, weak/unstressed pronominal
objects typically undergo Object Shift (OS) across negation, while full DP objects remain in situ:
(1) a. Jeg fant {*huset} ikke {huset}. b. Jeg fant {det} ikke {*det}.
I found house.the not house.the I found it not it
‘I didn’t find the house.’ ‘I didn’t find it.’
However, as shown by Andréasson (2008) and Anderssen et al. (to appear), the pronominal
object det ‘it’ has special properties with respect to OS. When this pronoun, which is the neuter
form of the third person singular personal pronoun, refers back to an identifiable noun in the
neuter gender, it undergoes OS, as in (1). However, det ‘it’ may also have a clausal or VP
referent, or a DP referent with a type interpretation (cf. Houser et al. 2007, Josefsson 2010,
Borthen 2003, Lødrup to appear), and in such contexts, it resists OS, despite being unstressed:
(2) A: Har hun gått hjem? B: Jeg tror {*det CLAUSE} ikke {det CLAUSE}.
has she gone home I think it. NEUT not it. NEUT
‘Has she gone home?’ ‘I don’t think so.’ (det = ‘that she has gone home’)
(3) A: Spiste du noe frukt? B: Nei, jeg gjorde {*det VP} ikke {det VP}.
ate you any fruit. MASC no I did it. NEUT not it. NEUT
‘Did you eat any fruit?’ ‘No, I didn’t.’ (det = ‘eat any fruit’)
(4) A: Hva med fisk til middag? B: Nei, Per spiser {#det} ikke {det}.
what with fish. MASC to dinner no Per eats it. NEUT not it. NEUT
‘How about fish for dinner?’ ‘No, Per doesn’t eat that.’ (det=fish as a type of food)
Influenced by Andréasson (2008), Anderssen et al. (to appear) propose an analysis of OS in
terms of IP-internal topicalization, and furthermore argue that such topicalization only applies to
pronominal objects with an individuated referent, as in (1), while objects with a non-individuated
referent, such as those in (2)-(4) refrain from OS. We adopt this approach and develop it further.
1. Type of topichood matters
First of all, we connect the availability of OS with pronominal det ‘it’ to what type of topic this
pronoun constitutes. We argue that det ‘it’ in (1) has the typical characteristics of familiar topics
(Frascarelli 2007, Frascarelli & Hinterhölzl 2007); it is distressed, informationally given, and dlinked
in the sense that it has an accessible referent in the discourse. In contrast, det ‘it’ in (2)-(4)
refers to what the sentence is about, and is hence analysed as an aboutness topic. We thus
propose that OS only applies to familiar topics in Norwegian, while aboutness topics typically
remain in situ. Furthermore, although the pattern in (2)-(4) out of context is the default word
order when det ‘it’ has a non-individuated reference, in certain discourse situations OS of even
such instances of det is preferred. The following dialogue between speakers ‘Karmøy03_gm’ and
‘Karmøy04_gk’ is taken from spontaneous speech in the Nordic Dialect Corpus 1 :
(5) Discourse topic: The problem of tourists hiking on foot in the ski tracks:
Karmøy03_gm: Men problemet var at når da alle fotturistene kom så fant jo ut de at det var
finest å gå i skisporene for da slapp de å vasse.
‘But the problem was that when all the hiking tourists came, they found out
that it was best to walk in the ski track ‘cause then they didn’t have to walk
through snow.’
1
http://www.tekstlab.uio.no/nota/scandiasyn/Search_Facilities.html, cf. Johannessen, Priestley,
Hagen, Åfarli & Vangsnes 2009.

Karmøy04_gk: mm. Var akkurat det så skjedde nå i Bjørgene og sant # at # så alle for og
trødde og så # ødela de.
‘Right. Exactly what happened now in Bjørgene, right, # that #, so everyone
stepped around and messed it up’
Karmøy03_gm: mm. Ja # for der er jo ikke kultur her veit du for… Så de skjønner det ikke.
‘Right. Yes # ‘cause there they have no tradition for… So they don’t get it.’
[det = that they shouldn’t hike on foot in the ski tracks]
In this dialogue, we see that in ‘Karmøy03_gm’s final utterance, he uses the pronoun det ‘it’ to
refer to a whole clause. However, in contrast to (2), it is here perfectly natural to place this
pronoun in the OS position. We argue that the reason for this is that the pronoun here refers to the
topic of the whole discourse. Hence it functions as a continuing topic. According to Frascarelli &
Hinterhölzl (2007), continuing topics syntactically/phonologically behave like familiar topics.
Thus, it is expected that it will undergo OS. We therefore propose that OS applies to pronominal
objects that constitute either familiar or continuing topics, but not to aboutness topics.
2. Parallels between ±OS and it vs. that in English
According to Gundel et al. (1993) it and that differ in cognitive status, it being IN FOCUS (i.e.
topic) and that being merely ACTIVATED. Andréasson (2008) has argued that OS in Swedish and
Danish applies to IN FOCUS elements. We adopt that proposal, and argue IN FOCUS elements are in
fact familiar topics. Moreover, comparing the distribution of it and that in English (to the
distribution of shifted and non-shifted det ‘it’ in Norwegian, we demonstrate there is a striking
correlation between: In contexts where det ‘it’ typically does not undergo OS in Norwegian,
Enlgish uses that. In contrast, when det ‘it’ in Norwegian undergoes OS, this corresponds to the
use of it in English. Two examples are provided here:
(6) a. John liker å svømme. Maria liker ikke det. b. John liker å svømme. Maria liker det ikke.
John likes to swim Maria likes not it John likes to swim Maria likes it not
‘John likes swimming. Maria doesn’t like that.’ ‘John likes swimming. Maria doesn’t like it.’
(det/that = ‘that John likes swimming’) (det/it = ‘swimming’)
(7) John gikk til jobben. Maria forventet ikke det 1 . Susanne forventet det 2 heller ikke.
John walked to work.the Maria expected not it Susanne expected it either not
‘John walked to work. Maria didn’t expect that. Susanne didn’t expect it either.’
(both det/that/it = ‘that John walked to work’)
In both these examples, we argue that the shifted det and English it are continuing topics,
whereas the non-shifted det and English that are aboutness topics. This correlation therefore
provides support for our proposal that OS applies to both familiar and continuing topics.
Selected references:
Anderssen et al. To appear. The acquisition of Norwegian Object Shift. Language Acquisition.
Andréasson 2008. Not all objects are born alike. In Proceedings of the LFG08 Conference. Borthen
2003. Norwegian Bare Singulars. Ph.D. thesis, NTNU. Frascarelli 2007. Subjects, topics and the
interpretation of referential pro. NLLT 25. Frascarelli & Hinterhölzl 2007. Types of topics in German
and Italian. In On Information Structure, Meaning and Form. Gundel, Hedberg & Zacharski. 1993.
Cognitive status and the form of referring expressions in discourse. Language. Houser, Mikkelsen &
Toosarvandani 2007. Verb phrase pronominalization in Danish: Deep or surface anaphora? Proceedings
of the Thirty-Fourth Western Conference on Linguistics. Josefsson 2010. “Disagreeing” pronominal
reference in Swedish and the interplay between formal and semantic gender. Lingua 120. Lødrup to
appear. Are Norwegian ‘type anaphora’ really surface anaphora? Journal of Germanic Linguistics.

Valentina Bianchi (Siena) & Mara Frascarelli (Roma III)
ON HOW TO BE ROOTED IN A CONTEXT
1. Introduction. The impact of information-structural categories on the formal properties of
the sentence has led some authors to assume dedicated discourse/contextual projections in the
C-domain (Rizzi 1997 and related work). However, this conflicts with a strongly modular
view according to which only features that are truth-conditionally relevant, but not purely
contextual features, belong in the syntactic computation (Horvath 2010, Fanselow–Lenertova
2010). The arguments are often focussed on a single phenomenon; we contend instead that an
approach comparing different phenomena allows a more comprehensive view of the interplay
between syntax and context. This will be shown by considering a set of ‘root phenomena’
which can apply in distinct types of embedded clauses, requiring a fine-grained distinction in
their distributional properties. Our discussion will focus exclusively on declarative clauses.
2. Data. We show that it is necessary to distinguish at least two types of ‘root phenomena’:
– Type I phenomena occur in clauses embedded under bridge verb (e.g. the question tag in
(1)), and their interpretation does not interact with elements in the matrix clause: (a) In Italian,
a fronted focus cannot associate with a matrix clause negation (2); (b) In English, a Left
Dislocated QP in the embedded clause does not scopally interact with a matrix QP (3):
(1) I {think/?*am glad} you like it, don’t you?
(2) ?* Leo non ha detto che [DI SARA] è innamorato.
Leo NEG has said that WITH SARA (he) is in-love
(3) ? Every student tells me that one exam, I can prepare it in two weeks (*∀>∃)
– Type II phenomena (German V2, English Topicalization) also occur in clauses embedded
under non-bridge verbs (4), and they do not require an independent interpretation of the
embedded clause w.r.t. the matrix clause: cp. (5) to (2) and (6) to (3):
(4) I am glad that this unrewarding job, she has finally decided to give up.
(5) (?) Hans glaubt NICHT, Peter hat GEWONNEN... (Truckenbrodt 2006, (67))
Hans believes not, Peter has won...
(6) a. Jeder meiner Kollegen meinte auf ein Examen kann ich mich innerhalb von 2 Wochen
vorbereiten. b. Every student tells me that one exam, I can prepare in two weeks ( √ ∀>∃)
Drawing a first distinction, type I phenomena occur in discourse active embedded clauses (in
the sense of Dayal–Grimshaw 2009): the proposition expressed bears a non-vacuous update
potential w.r.t. the discourse context, because the modal base introduced by the matrix verb
is not realistic. Type II phenomena also occur in embedded clauses whose update potential
gets ‘absorbed’ into the derived context introduced by the matrix attitude verb (Gärtner 2002,
Truckenbrodt 2006; cf. also Krifka 2011, §3.6), with no impact on the discourse context. Our
conclusion is that root phenomena are not a unitary class; the debate about whether or not
‘assertive potential’ is a necessary condition for root phenomena (Bentzen et al. 2007) is due
to the failure to distinguish the two subclasses.
3. Analysis. Step 1: How to characterize the two types of root-like embedded clause?
In Stalnaker/Heim update semantics, the Context Change Potential (CCP) of an assertion
updates the set of shared beliefs of the conversational community (common ground), while in
Gunlogson (2003) it updates the set of public commitments of a single participant. Farkas–
Bruce (2010) propose a componential view of the context which subsumes both these aspects:
an assertion has the effect of updating the speaker’s commitment set and also of projecting an
updated common ground. Suppose, however, that these two updates can be separated; we then
have the following parameters w.r.t. CCP: (i) individual commitment / (proposed) shared
commitment; (ii) discourse context / derived context introduced by a matrix attitude verb.We

assume that derived contexts do not comprise a shared common ground, but only individual
commitment sets (cf. Truckenbrodt 2006, 281). We obtain the following combinations:
1. Simple assertion 2. Non-discourse- 3. Discourse-active
active subordinate subordinate
discourse derived discourse derived discourse derived
context context context context context context
Individual commitment + (nil) - + - +
Shared commitment + (nil) - (nil) + (nil)
This view of discourse-active subordinates agrees with Dayal–Grimshaw’s claim that the
speaker does not commit herself to the truth of the proposition expressed by the subordinate
(pace Hooper–Thompson 1973), yet the latter has a proper CCP w.r.t. the discourse context.
In other terms, the speaker places the embedded proposition ‘on the table’ as a potential
relevant update of the shared common ground, without taking responsibility for its truth.
Step 2: The permissible contexts for root phenomena depend on their interpretive impact.
– Type I phenomena are linked to the conversational dynamics. Specifically, we show that:
a) Question tags implement a request for the addressee to confirm the relevant proposition;
b) Italian focus fronting implements a correction (partial reversal of a previous assertion);
c) English LD implements a topic shift, steering the conversation toward a new topic.
These conversational moves update the shared commitments of the conversational
community: this is why type I phenomena are only allowed in the first and third clause type.
– Type II phenomena, instead, have no impact on the conversational dynamics, but they at
most implement the structuring of information within a single assertion: hence, they only
require the presence of an individual commitment set, either in the discourse context or in a
derived context. This is why they are licensed in all three clause types.
– Type I phenomena are only licensed if the proposition expressed by the embedded clause
has autonomous CCP w.r.t. the matrix clause: this is why there cannot be any scopal
interaction (or association with focus) between a matrix element and an element included in
the embedded clause (cf. (2)-(3)), contrary to type II phenomena (cf. (5)-(7)).
4. Consequences. The data in (2)-(3) show that the discourse active status of the subordinate
clause rules out a syntactically and semantically permissible relation between a matrix and an
embedded element. The two competing views of the syntax–context interface then reduce to
the opposition between failure–proof grammar vs. «free generation + filtering» (Boeckx 2010,
a.o.). If syntax and semantics are blind to the discourse active status of the embedded clause,
(2)-(3) must be filtered out at the interface with the context. (CP-extraposition (Meinunger
2004) may account for (2)-(3), but, if it is interface-driven, it still requires reference set
computation and filtering of the non-interface-complying outputs.) If instead the syntax
encodes the CCP status of a clause in its C head, the relevant scope interactions will be
blocked in the course of the derivation. We believe that, by considerations of computational
efficiency, failure-proof computation should be regarded as the null hypothesis.
[1] Bentzen et al 2007. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 79, 93–118. [2] Boeckx
2010. In Putnam (ed.), Exploring Crash-Proof Grammars, 105–124. Benjamins. [3] Dayal–
Grimshaw 2009. Subordination at the interface. Ms., Rutgers Univ. [4] Fanselow–Lenertova
2011. NLLT 29, 169-209. [5] Farkas–Bruce 2010. J. Semantics 27, 81–118. [6] Gärtner 2002.
Theoretical Linguistics 28, 33–42. [7] Gunlogson 2003. True to Form. Routledge. [7] Horvath
2010. Lingua 120, 1346–1369. [8] Hooper–Thompson 1973. LI 4, 465–497. [9] Krifka 2011.
Embedding speech acts. Ms., Humboldt Univ. zu Berlin. [10] Meinunger 2004. In Lohnstein–
Trissler (eds.), The Syntax and Semantics of the Left Periphery, 313–341. Mouton de Gruyter.
[11] Rizzi 1997. In Haegeman (ed.), Elements of Grammar, 281–337. Kluwer. [12]
Truckenbrodt 2006. Theoretical Linguistics 32, 257–306.

Jason Bishop (UCLA)
Information structure, prosodic prominence and individual differences:
evidence from on-line processing
In the present study we explored listeners’ knowledge about how prosody can express
information structure in English. In particular, we probed listeners for expectations regarding
how prosodic prominence relates to the size of the focus constituent (broad vs. narrow) in
SVO constructions. While it is well-known that the prosodic realizations of contrasts along
this dimension are ambiguous in terms of nuclear pitch accent location, recent studies have
shown that speakers can distinguish them using gradient phonetic cues. In particular, it has
been reported that (a) narrow focus on an object is associated with phonetically lower
prenuclear prominence and/or phonetically higher nuclear prominence, and (b) broader VP
and Sentence focus show the opposite pattern (e.g., Breen et al. 2010 and references therein).
Further, it has also been shown that, in perception, listeners exhibit expectations for exactly
this asymmetry (e.g., Bishop 2010). In the present study, we made use of the cross-modal
associative priming paradigm to probe on-line processing mechanisms for a similar
sensitivity.
In the experiment presented, 174 English-speaking listeners made lexical decisions
about 32 visual targets (e.g., BRUNETTE) which followed auditorily-presented SVO sentences
in which the object was the prime (e.g., He kissed a blonde).
To test for the effects of
prosody, sentences were heard by listeners with two different patterns of prominence: high
prenuclear prominence/low nuclear prominence (ToBI annotations with H* on the verb and
!H* on the object) and low prenuclear/high nuclear prominence (unaccented verb and (L+)H*
on the object). To hold their acoustic properties constant, the primes in the two conditions
were identical productions, spliced into different SV productions (see Fig 1). These two
prosodic conditions were then crossed with two focus conditions. The first represented our
primary information structural interest, namely focus size (broad VP vs. narrow object focus);
however, we also explored the possible effect of focus type (non-contrastive/WH focus vs.
contrastive focus). Focus size and type were manipulated using lead-in questions (e.g., What
did John do? for broad VP focus and Who did John kiss? for narrow object focus), with
explicit alternatives offered (Did John kiss Mary?) in the case of contrastive focus.
Mixed-effects linear regression was used to model listeners’ reaction times in the
lexical decision task as a function of our manipulations, and also several stimuli and listener
variables. Among these were scores on the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ; Baron-Cohen et
al. 2001), recently shown to be a predictor of performance in speech perception and
pragmatic tasks by “normal-functioning” adults (Yu 2010; Xiang, Grove and Giannakidou
2011). Results were as follows. The most significant finding was that lexical decision times
were slowest following a prime that was interpreted as a narrow contrastive focus, but bore
an accent that was low in relative prominence (Fig 2). This disruption to priming is
interpreted as the result of a focus/ prosody mis-match, and is consistent with our prediction
regarding listeners’ expectations. Also consistent with those predictions was the fact that
response times were fastest when the prime was narrowly focused and high in relative
prominence. Interestingly, however, it was found that the advantage from this focusprominence
match depended considerably on listeners’ AQ scores, as listeners with more
“autistic” traits benefited less (Fig 3). Taken together, the results provide strong evidence that
English-speaking listeners have conventionalized knowledge about the relationship between
focus size and prosodic prominence, as this knowledge was found to have psychologically
real consequences. We discuss these results and their further implications for the relationship
between prosody and information structure, sentence and lexical processing, and the
relevance of individual differences in linguistic processing.

Fig1. Example of the two prosodic conditions. Sentences were presented with either high
prenuclear/low nuclear prominence (left), or low prenuclear/high nuclear prominence (right).
Primes (always the nuclear accented object) were thus relatively high or relatively lower in
prominence.
Fig 2. Mean reaction times to targets as a
function of a preceding prime word’s focus
size and relative prosodic prominence.
Fig 3. Benefit from a focus-prominence
match: mean RTs to targets following a
prominent prime that was narrowly
focused and highly prominent. Three AQ
groups of listeners are shown (higher AQ
scores indicate more prominent “autistic”
traits).
References
Bishop, J. (2010). Information structural expectations in the perception of prosodic
prominence, UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics, 108, 223-225.
Baron-Cohen, S., Wheelwright, S., Skinner, R., Martin, J., Clubley, E. (2001). The Autism-
Spectrum Quotient (AQ): evidence from Asperger Syndrome/high-functioning autism,
males and females, scientists and mathematicians. Journal of Autism and Developmental
Disorders 31, 5-17.
Breen, M., Fedorenko E., Wagner., M, & Gibson, E. (2010). Acoustic correlates of
information structure. Language and Cognitive Processes 25, 1044-1098.
Yu, A.C.L. (2010). Perceptual compensation is correlated with individuals' “autistic” traits:
implications for models of sound change. PLoS ONE, 5, e11950.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0011950
Xiang, M., Grove, J., Giannakidou, A. (2011). Interference “licensing” of NPIs: pragmatic
reasoning and individual differences. Poster presented at the 2011 CUNY Conference on
Sentence Processing.

In search of (im)perfection: the illusion of counterfactual aspect
Puzzle: It has long been noticed that in certain grammatical contexts, morphemes that otherwise
contribute temporal meanings suddenly fail to do so. One such context is counterfactual
conditionals (CFs), which in many languages are marked by “fake” tense and aspect (Iatridou,
2000).Example (1) from Greek illustrates both past and imperfective morphology used to mark
afuture-less-vividconditional:
(1) [An
if
Bronwyn M. Bjorkman (Northeastern) & Claire Halpert (MIT)
peTene
die.PST.IMP
o
the
arXiGos]
chief
Ta
FUT
ton Tavame stin korifi tu vunu
him bury.PST.IMP on.the top the mountain
‘If the chief died, we would bury him on the top of the mountain.’ (Iatridou, 2000)
The use of “fake” past morphology associated with CF interpretations has been widely
documented (Steele, 1975; James, 1982; Iatridou, 2000, a.o.). Several proposals analyze fake
past as the locus of CF semantics, either by construing “past”asamarkerofmodal,ratherthan
temporal, remoteness (Steele, 1975; Iatridou, 2000; RitterandWiltschko,2010)orbyderiving
CF meaning from a purely temporal past (Ippolito, 2002; Arregui, 2009). It has been claimed
that fake imperfective is also involved in CF marking, though itsuseislesswell-understood:
for Iatridou (2000, 2009) imperfective in CFs is a default aspect; Arregui (2004) claims that
it reflects incompatibility between perfective and CFs; while Ippolito (2004) proposes that a
“modal imperfective” reflects a speaker’s indirect evidence foraproposition. Iatridou(2009)
proposes that imperfective-marked CFs occur in a subset of the languages with past-marked
CFs, a generalization she based on the fact that Slavic languages have “fake” past but “real”
aspect in CFs. In this paper we show that a full typology includes languages with “fake”
perfective aspect in CFs as well, contradicting these previous approaches.
Proposal: We argue that the apparent requirement for imperfective in CFs in some languages
is illusory, amorphologicalreflexoftheneedtorealizeatruePAST feature. “Past
imperfective” morphology in these languages actually expresses only PAST, weclaim;itreceives
an imperfective interpretation due to contrast with atruePERFECTIVE. In CFs, this
“past imperfective” morphology reflects only CF “past”; it does not reflect syntactic IMPER-
FECTIVE features. We illustrate this proposal with the morphological paradigm of three types
of languages: (a) Greek, Romance, and Zulu, where imperfective unspecified and seems to occur
in CFs; (b) Arabic, where perfective is unspecified and occurs in CFs; and (c) Slavic, where
PAST is specified independently of aspect, and CFs preserve full aspectual contrasts.
Pattern A: In languages like Greek and Romance, where the puzzle of fake CF imperfective
initially arose, CFs are always marked with past-imperfective morphology, while “real” tense
and aspect is suppressed, as illustrated above in (1).
We argue based on independent evidence that this pattern arises because the “past imperfective”
encodes only PAST features and is unspecified for aspect; “past perfective”, by contrast,
expresses only PERFECTIVE aspect, and receives a past interpretation by default, due toincompatibility
between perfective and present tense (Dahl, 1985). The imperfective interpretation of
the “past imperfective” arises due to the absence of a privative PERFECTIVE feature.
The absence of “real” aspect marking in CFs in these languages arisesbecausePAST and
PERFECTIVE morphemes compete for realization in a single position. In Zulu, which we argue
has the same morphological specifications as Greek and Romance and thus appears to require
“past imperfective” marking in CFs, a perfective suffix can co-occur with this “fake imperfective”
in perfective CFs, though the two are normally incompatible (due to the redundancy of
marking both PAST and PERFECTIVE when both are interpreted temporally):
(2) [ukuba be- ngi-thimulile ]be-ngi-zo-dingaithishi
if PST.IMP1SGsneeze PFV IMP-1SG-FUT-need 5tissue
‘If I had sneezed, I would have needed a tissue.’
1

What distinguishes Zulu from languages like Greek and Romance is that PAST and PERFEC-
TIVE do not compete for a single morphological “slot”; as a result, realPERFECTIVE features
and fake PAST features can both be realized on a single verb.
Pattern B: Further evidence for our approach comes from CF marking in Arabic, a language
in which perfective, ratherthanimperfective,isrequiredinCFs. Wearguethatthe
morphological specification in this language is the reverse of Pattern A languages: here “past
perfective” is simply specified for syntactic PAST features, while “imperfective” is underspecified
for tense (see Benmamoun 2000, Karawani & Zeijlstra 2010, Bjorkman 2011, a.o. for
independent evidence of this feature specification).
(3) [iza úileQ halaP,] kaan b-iwsal Qal waPt la l-muèaadara
if leave.PST.PFV now, be.PST B-arrive.IMP on the-time for the-lecture
‘If he left now, he would arrive on time for the lecture.’ (Halpert and Karawani, 2011)
Like Zulu, Arabic expresses real tense and aspect in CFs via an auxiliaryinaseparate
position from fake past. Auxiliary kaan, whichisa“perfective”formoftheverb,markspast
tense alone, while real temporal morphology occurs on the main verb:
(4) [iza kanno b-yitlaQ bakkeer kul yom,] kaan b-iwsal Qa l-waPt
if be.PST B-leave.IMP early every day, be.PST B-arrive.IMP on the-time
‘If he were in the habit of leaving early, he would arrive on time.’ (H&K)
This ability of the past perfective auxiliary kaan alone to mark CFs supports the view that
the “past perfective” CF marking in (3) is the exponent of PAST features only.
Pattern C: Finally, Slavic allows full aspectual contrasts in CFs, as in(5)fromRussian:
(5) a. Esli by Dˇzon umer, my poxoroni-l-i by ego na gor-e.
if SUBJ J. die.PFV.PST we bury.PFV-PST-PL SUBJ he.ACC on mountain-LOC
‘If John died, we would bury him on the mountain.’
b. Esli by Dˇzon umira-l, s nim by-l by doktor.
if SUBJ J. die.IMPF-PST with he.INSTR be-PST SUBJ doctor
‘If John were dying, the doctor would be with him.’
We propose that in these languages, unlike in Patterns A and B, PAST, PERFECTIVE, and
IMPERFECTIVE all have separate morphological exponents. Evidence for this can be found in
the existence of morphological past and present forms for imperfective and perfective verbs
in Slavic (though a morphological “present” perfective receives a future interpretation). As a
result, real aspectual features PERFECTIVE and IMPERFECTIVE can both be realized in addition
to the fake PAST marking required by CFs and the illusion of counterfactual aspect disappears.
Implications: The claim that “past imperfective” morphology expresses only PAST features,
and that “imperfective” in past-marked CFs is illusory, brings us closer to understanding
the broader contextual requirement for PAST in CFs. We argue that perfective morphology
cannot mark CFs in Pattern A because “past perfective” does not express PAST features in
these languages. Given that past perfectives have past interpretations, we argue that it is past
tense features, ratherthanpasttenseinterpretations, thatresultinCFinterpretations. Iftrue,
this proposal is an argument in favor of analyses in which PAST features represent a broader
temporal or modal “exclusion” (Iatridou, 2000) or [-coincidence] (Ritter and Wiltschko, 2010)
feature, and against the view that the past marking of CFs reflects the contribution of past tense
interpretation (Arregui, 2009; Ippolito, 2002).
Selected References: Arregui, A. 2009. On similarity in counterfactuals. L&P 32.; Halpert, C., & H. Karawani.
2011. Aspect in counterfactuals from A(rabic) to Z(ulu). WCCFL 29.; Iatridou, S. 2000. The grammatical ingredients
of counterfactuality. LI 31.; — 2010. Some thoughts about the imperfective in counterfactuals. Handout.;
Ippolito, M. 2002. On the Semantic Composition of Subjunctive Conditionals. Ms. MIT/Tübingen.; — 2004.
Imperfect modality. In The syntax of time. MITPress.;Ritter, E., & M. Wiltschko. 2010. The composition of
INFL. LingBuzz/001078.
2

Andreas Blümel (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main)
Successive-cyclic Movement as intermediate Labelling Indeterminacies
Background: Chomsky (2008) proposes (1-a) as an algorithm to determine the label when two
syntactic objects undergo external merge (EM, a symmetric process of set-formation) and (1-b)
for internal merge (IM). Both statements express the fact that the set resulting from IM/EM
must be identified to participate in further operations. But especially the stipulation (1-b) is
dubious on conceptual grounds and failures of the application of (1-b) have been claimed to be
empirically desireable to derive free relatives among other constructions (Chomsky 2008, Citko
2008, Ott 2011a). Thus (1-b) is better derived from independent factors. There is no shortage
of proposals according to which ‘reprojection’ of the moving XP may take place (Citko 2008,
Georgi/Müller 2010, Hornstein/Uriagereka 2002), but in these works violations of (1-b) serve
as descriptive devices, not as sources of (failures to apply) (1-b).
Already for EM Chomsky (2008:fn.34) addresses an exception to the application of (1-a),
namely EM of a subject-DP to v*P as in (2): “[T]hese structures lack a label and have an
inherent instability, so that one of the two members [. . . ] must raise.” An attractive side-effect
of this idea is that it gives a partial explanation for the EPP: the symmetry created by EM
is broken by IM of the subject to Spec-TP. Recently, a number of works have capitalized on
this idea and suggested that instances of IM are ‘triggered’ by the interfaces’ avoidance and
intolerance of symmetry and ambiguity created by narrow syntax (Boecks 2008:116-118, Moro
2008, Ott 2011b). When one of the two members in (2) moves at the phase level, an asymmetry
and concomitantly the label (3) is created: IM of DP yields a discontinuous object, a set of
occurrences of DP, while v* is identified as the label (boldfaced on the right in (3)); just as only
the head of a movement chain can move and cause intervention for Agree, only the head of a
movement chain is elegible for labelling.
Proposal: Adopting phase theory, I propose that such ‘instable’ structures may not only result
from EM but also from IM (cf. also Chomsky 2010): symmetry-breaking movement effectively
leaves the in-situ category as the label. But IM results again in a symmetric, unlabellable
structure in need of desymmetrization once we partially dispense with (1-b). Thus the process
solves the labelling problem downstairs, but only to create a new one in the target. I claim that
this principally infinite symmetry-destroying/symmetry-creating character of derivations is the
source, i.e. the ‘trigger’ of intermediate steps of successive-cyclic A’-movement, the empirical
domain to which I confine myself here. The symmetry-avoiding character at Transfer (i.e. at
the next higher phase) is thus what derives (1-b): the target category becomes the label due to
the fact that the moving XP must move further to break the newly created symmetry. Of course,
this powerful mechanism needs taming. I propose that Agree between a phase-head and the
moving WH-element does just that: at the point when a C-head with an unvalued Q-feature
is merged, it probes for (the interpretable Q-feature on) the WH-element. It is the successful
probing relationship which ultimately and effectively brings the WH-element to a halt, captured
in (4) (taken from Boeckx 2008:91-98): as the probe becomes the label by (4), movement of
XP to Spec-probe creates a symmetry which is unproblematic, because (4) renders the structure
sufficiently asymmetric for label determination. The probe functions similar to what Boeckx
(2003) calls ‘Strong Occurrences’ and Rizzi (2006) ‘Criterial Positions.’
Consider (5), an abstract partial representation of the pervasive, structurally unbounded phenomenon
of successive-cyclic WH-movement: an object WH-element ends up in the specifier
of the phase head v* (for independent reasons). At this derivational stage v* or WH may determine
the label. At the point when C merges, IM of the WH-phrase to Spec-CP asymmetrizes
the structure, solving the labelling problem as far as the TP is concerned: TP-internally, v* determines
the label because IM applies to WH, stabilizing the structure (6). But in the resulting
1

workspace the label indeterminacy problem once again arises, i.e. the edge{WH{C{. . .}}} is
again ‘too symmetric’ and unstable. In this sense the edge configurations in (2)/(5) and (6) are
parallel. Again the asymmetry is restored once WH moves on (on the right in (6)).
In (7-a) the matrix verb doesn’t select an indirect question. A spurious [WH]/[EPP]-feature
on the embedded C head to derive intermediate movement steps is thus dubious and ad hoc.
Under the present analysis, the successive-cyclic character of long WH-movement follows automatically
from the symmetry-avoiding character the interfaces impose on each intermediate
configuration. What blocks movement to the matrix Spec-C in cases like (8-a), i.e. why don’t
we have to get (8-b)? I propose that interrogative C bears a probing Q-feature which Agrees
with the WH-word. Such a feature appears plausible as the CP is selected by wonder. By contrast,
such an Agree relation between non-interrogative C (=that) and which book is crucially
missing in (7-a), which is why (7-b) is out: the WH-word is stuck in the symmetric structure{WH{C=that
. . .}}, where an intermediate labelling indeterminacy arises which remains
unresolved. In (8-a)/(9) on the other hand, Agree(uQ,WH) determines C as the label by (4).
Whether or not IM of WH takes place at this point is irrelevant for labelling: if WH moves, no
problematic symmetry arises, as (4) renders C the label. But notice that WH has to move, because
the labelling question between v and WH is still not decided. Once the labelling question
is settled for v/WH (i.e. by moving WH), no further movement is enforced despite the fact that
the WH-element ends up being a sister of C. As no further movement is enforced by symmetry,
I take it that further movement must not take place. In this sense, the function of (4) in the
current system is to stop further movement, i.e. to prevent further symmetries. Notice also that
after Agree(uQ,WH) Q is valued, which means that for SEM it becomes indistinguishable from
interpretable Q-features. As such it must be selected by interrogative-embedding predicates,
and no further distinctions (as in Pesetsky/Torrego 2007) are needed.
Consequences: The current analysis reconciles tensions between ‘late trigger’ theories of successivecyclic
movement that rely on (variants of) stipulations like Shortes Steps or the Minimize Chain
Links Condition (cf. Boeckx 2003 and references therein) on the one hand, and ‘early trigger’
theories that rely on spurious intermediate WH/EPP/Edge-features on the other (cf. Pesetsky/Torrego
2007 among others). The former are problematic in that they violate the Extension
Condition and are incompatible with phases. The latter rely on stipulated intermediate features
to trigger movement. Also, the current analysis is less costly than Boˇsković’s (2007) in
requiring less features: movement is a by-product of labelling, which in his work is implicitly
presupposed (and stipulated) to work without justification. But goal-driven movement is
superfluous under the current assumptions.
(1) a. if EM of XP and simplex H yields{H, XP}, then H is the label
b. ifαundergoes IM toβ, forming{α,β} then the label ofβis the label of{α,β}
(2) {DP{v* . . .}}
(3) C{DP{T{〈DP〉{v* . . .}}}}→C{DP{T{〈DP〉{v* . . .}}}}
(4) Probe-Label Correspondence Axiom: The label of{α,β} is whichever ofαorβprobes
the other, where the Probe=Lexical Item whose uF gets valued
(5) {WH v*{. . .}}
(6) {WH C{. . . T{〈WH〉 v*{. . .}}}}→WH . . .{〈WH〉 C{. . . T{〈WH〉 v*{. . .}}}}
(7) a. [Which book]i do you [vP ti think/believe [CP ti C=that Mary [vP ti wrote ti]]]
b. *You think/believe which book (that) Mary wrote?
(8) a. John wonders [what C Mary will eat]
b. *What does John wonder Mary will eat?
(9) [C [uQ] [. . . [v∗P what[Q] [v*=eat . . . ]]]]
2

Lucas Champollion (Tübingen)
Temporal dependencies: Anaphora vs. movement
Temporal dependencies provide a useful testbed for syntactic and semantic theories of
meaning/context interaction. In this talk, I consider two kinds of temporal dependencies:
those that hold between temporal adjuncts as in (1a) and (1b), and those that hold
between before and its complement, as in (2a).
(1) a. Last year, it rained every day.
b. Last year, it rained in the afternoon.
(2) a. John left before Mary claimed she would arrive.
b. John left before Mary made the claim that she would arrive.
These dependencies are reminiscent of well-known phenomena such as quantifier domain
restriction, pronoun binding, and movement. For example, it looks like Last year restricts
the domain of every day in (1a) and provides an antecedent to in the afternoon in (1b).
The dependency in (2a) is like movement in that it can be either local (John left before
Mary’s claim) or long-distance (John left before Mary’s claimed time of arrival), and in
that its long-distance interpretation is blocked by island constraints (2b). Despite these
similarities, there is currently no consensus on the status of temporal dependencies. For
example, it is not agreed whether the process that allows last year to restrict the domain of
the quantifier every day in (1a) is due to movement (von Stechow, 2002) or variable binding
(Pratt and Francez, 2001, henceforth P&F), presupposition accommodation (Onea,
2011) or contextual processes as in Recanati (2002). Determining the nature of temporal
dependencies is therefore crucial in elucidating the role of context in interpretation.
The Pratt&Francez/von Stechow debate. P&F analyze temporal dependencies
between adjuncts semantically. Technically, they add an extra temporal argument λI to
the meaning of nouns, as in (3a), and transfer this up the tree by some ad hoc rules
resulting in contextualized constituent meanings as in (3b)-(3d).
(3) a. [day] = λIλx[day(x) ∧ τ(x) ⊆ I]
b. [every day] = λP λI∀x[day(x) ∧ τ(x) ⊆ I → P (x)]
c. [it rains every day] = λI∀x[day(x) ∧ τ(x) ⊆ I → it-rains(τ(x))]
d. [(1a)] = λI∀y[year(y)∧τ(y) ⊆ I → ∀x[day(x)∧τ(x) ⊆ τ(y) → it-rains(τ(x))]]
This solution is criticized by Stechow as “too local” because it does not allow for long
distance dependencies as in (2a). Stechow favors a syntactic approach, where only one
temporal adjunct attaches to the VP, and where the others are embedded in it and undergo
quantifier raising at LF. For example, Stechow’s LF of (1a) would be this:
(4) [Last year] λi [every day (within) ti] λj [it rained (on) tj].
This proposal. I argue that neither the semantic account of P&F nor the movementbased
approach of Stechow captures the whole picture, since there is a previously unnoticed
dichotomy within the field of temporal dependencies: Attitude-verb dependencies,
like (2a), are subject to syntactic movement constraints and should therefore be handled
by a Stechow-style movement-based account. By contrast, dependencies between
adjuncts, like (1a), systematically violate constraints on syntactic movement, as shown
by the novel data below in (5) and (6). Specifically, they can span because-clauses (5a),
relative clauses (5b), if -clauses (5c), sentential subjects (5d), etc. Moreover, they show
the same range of interpretations as pronouns and implicit variables: donkey readings
(6a), quantificational (6b) and modal subordination (6c).

(5) a. Every year, John got anxious because he needed to file taxes in April.
b. Every year, some guy who needs to file taxes in April gets anxious in March.
c. Last year, I wonder if John went to France in August or in September.
d. On most days, that it rains in the afternoon is a good possibility.
(6) a. Whenever John spends a week in the Alps, he hikes every day.
b. Every year, John spends a week in the Alps. Some years, he hikes every day.
c. John might spend the next summer in the Alps. He would hike every day.
Formal implementation. The parallel between temporal adjunct dependencies and
anaphora has not been previously noticed and can shed new light on existing formal accounts
of anaphoric dependencies. Following Partee (1989), it is common to avoid making
a principled distinction between implicit dependencies and overt phenomena such as pronouns.
We can therefore take several routes in modeling temporal adjunct dependencies.
The textbook account of pronoun binding (Heim and Kratzer, 1998) requires quantificational
antecedents to move (possibly string-vacuously) – otherwise they cannot create
an index, which in that system is required for binding a pronoun. This movement appears
unmotivated in the case of adjunct dependencies. I will present and discuss two
systems which allow binders to remain in situ: dynamic semantics and variable-free semantics
(VFS). Each of these systems has been successfully applied to implicit arguments
(Condoravdi and Gawron, 1996; Pedersen, 2011). VFS is especially appealing because it
allows us to free P&F of its drawbacks. It represents anaphoric dependencies as additional
lambda slots, in the same way as P&F represent temporal dependencies. For example,
the λx in (7) is directly comparable to the λI in (3a)-(3d). Through its g (Geach) rule,
VFS provides a principled way of passing up these slots, including at long distances if
necessary. We therefore no longer need to rely on the ad hoc rules in P&F.
(7) a. [him] = λx.x b. [Mary loves him] = λx[love(mary, x)]
References
Condoravdi, C. and Gawron, J. M. (1996). The context-dependency of implicit arguments.
In Kanazawa, M., Piñón, C., and de Swart, H., editors, Quantifiers, deduction and
context, pages 1–32. CSLI Publications, Stanford, CA.
Heim, I. and Kratzer, A. (1998). Semantics in Generative Grammar. Blackwell Publishing,
Oxford, UK.
Onea, E. (2011). On temporal quantification. In Reich, I., Horch, E., and Pauly, D.,
editors, Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 15, pages 451–465. Universaar – Saarland
University Press.
Partee, B. H. (1989). Binding implicit variables in quantified contexts. In Wiltshire,
C., Music, B., and Graczyk, R., editors, Papers from CLS 25, pages 342–356. Chicago
Linguistics Society, Chicago, IL.
Pedersen, W. A. (2011). Implicit arguments, paychecks and variable-free semantics. In
Ashton, N., Chereches, A., and Lutz, D., editors, Proceedings of SALT 21, pages 155–
175. Rutgers University.
Pratt, I. and Francez, N. (2001). Temporal prepositions and temporal generalized quantifiers.
Linguistics and Philosophy, 24(2):187–255.
Recanati, F. (2002). Unarticulated constituents. Linguistics and Philosophy, 25:299–345.
von Stechow, A. (2002). Temporal prepositional phrases with quantifiers: Some additions
to Pratt and Francez (2001). Linguistics and Philosophy, 25:755–800.

Hsu-Te Cheng (UConn)
Ellipsis: its Correlates with Phase and Movement
Synopsis The aim of the paper is to argue for two generalizations regarding ellipsis: (1) Phases cannot be
elided. (2) The Movement Ellipsis Generalization (MEG): For a certainly category XP, if XP can be
elided, it cannot be moved and vice versa. It will be argued that these two generalizations can capture a
wider range of data regarding Argument Ellipsis (AE), and provide some insight on how to detect phases.
Introduction It is well known that languages differ in whether they allow free occurrence of null
arguments (Huang (1984)). One special type of null arguments, AE, where arguments, but not adjuncts,
may be elided (cf. Oku (1998), Saito (2007), Takahashi (2008), among others), has received close
inspections recently. Japanese, for example, allows objects and subjects to be elided, as evidenced by the
availability of the sloppy reading in (1)-(4), irrespective of their categories (DP, PP, CP, etc). AE,
however, is fairly constrained. Cheng (2011) argues that the paradigm and the distribution of AE may be
represented in (5). Only languages listed in (5a), but not those in (5b), are claimed to allow AE.
(1) Taroo-ga [NP zibun-no hahaoya-o ] sonkeisiteiru Ziroo-mo [NP e ] sonkeisiteiru
Taroo-nom self-gen mother-acc respect Ziroo-also respect
‘Taroo respects his own mother. ‘Ziroo also respects e.’( OK strict, OK sloppy)
(2) a. Taroo-wa [NP zibun-no teian-ga ] Hanako-o odorokasu to omotteiru
Taroo-top self-gen proposal-nom Hanako-acc surprise that think
‘Taroo thinks that his proposal will surprise Hanako.’ (Takahashi (2008), p.404)
b. Ken-wa [NP e ] Yumiko-o odorokasu to omotteiru ( OK strict, OK sloppy)
Ken-top Yumiko-o surprise that think ‘lit. Ken thinks that e will surprise Yumiko.’
(3) a. Taroo to Hanako-ga [PP otagai kara ] meeru-o uketotta
Taroo and Hanako-nom each.other from e-mail-acc received
‘Taroo and Hanako received e-mail from each other.’
b. Ken to Yumiko-wa [PP e ] tegami-o uketotta
Ken and Yumiko-top letter-acc received ‘Ken and Yumiko received letters.’
(4) a. Taroo-wa [CP zibun-no teian-ga Hanako-o odorokasu to] omotteiru
Taroo-top self-gen proposal-nom Hanako-acc surprise that think
‘Taroo thinks that his proposal will surprise Hanako.’
b. Ziroo-mo [CP e ] omotteiru
Ziroo-also think ‘Ziroo also thinks (that his proposal will surprise Hanako).’
(5) a. Languages that allow AE (and sloppy interpretation): Japanese Korean Chinese, Turkish…
b. Languages that DO NOT allow AE (and sloppy interpretation): English, French, German, Dutch…
The Proposal I propose that there is a general ban on ellipsis that phases cannot be elided, as in (6).
English provides supports for this generalization. Arguments in English have been argued to be DPs (cf.
Abney (1987)), and it has been argued that DPs are phases (Svenonius (2004), among others). Therefore,
it is then expected that AE is not available in English, given (6), since arguments are phases (DPs) in
English, as in (7). Moreover, it has been argued that vPs and CPs are strong phases in English. (8b) shows
that CPs cannot be elided, conforming with (6). As for vP ellipsis, Merchant (2008) argues that it is really
VP ellipsis, based on the facts in (9) that ellipsis tolerates voice mismatches. Under the assumption that
voice is hosted in v, it follows that what is elided is VP, not vP, conforming with (6). For Japanese and
Chinese, it has been argued that DP is missing in these languages (Bošković (2008)). The existence of AE
in these languages then follows, given that NP is not a phase (Despić (2011)) and thus can be elided.
(6) The Non-Elidability Condition of Phases: If XP is a phase, XP cannot be elided in the PF component.
(7) a. *John likes his mother, and Bill also likes [DP e ].
b. *John thinks that his son is smart. Bill also thinks that [DP e ] is smart.
(8) a. John suspects [CP whether Mary will pass the exam]. b. *Bill also suspects [CP e ].
(9) a. This problem was to have been looked into, but obviously nobody did [VP e ].
b. Actually, I have implemented it with a manager, but it doesn’t have to be [VP e ].
Analysis Having substantiated the validity of (6), I argue that it may be derived from other independently
motivated assumptions about phases and Spell-Out. I adopt the three commonly assumed proposals in
(10a-c) plus the condition in (10d). Given these assumptions, the ban in (6) may be derived. As shown in

(11a), when the sentence is built to a phase (e.g. vP), the complement (VP) will be sent to Spell-Out. The
PF component can choose whether to realize it properly (with full phonological realization) or not, as in
(11b). Later, when the structure is built to the next higher phase, as in (11c), the shaded element in (11c),
namely v to IP, will be sent to Spell-Out, given the cyclic (phase-by-phase) nature of Spell-Out. The
whole result will be either sluicing, if these elements are spelled out as null, as in (11d), or VP ellipsis, if
they are properly realized, as in (11e). The condition in (6) is thus derived. The complement and the edge
of the phase are always in two different spelling out cycles. The only way to elide the whole phase is, in
the second Spell-Out, to realize the edge of the phase as null but to assign the rest of the spelling out cycle
proper realization. This option, however, is impossible, given that PF cannot handle elements with
inconsistent phonological features in one spelling out cycle, as in (10d). In other words, in (11c) PF
cannot realize v and vP as null but realize I and IP properly. The ban on eliding phases is thus derived.
One consequence of this condition is that the category that may be elided is restricted to complements of
phase heads, given that only the complement of phase head HP may be sent to Spell-Out, as in (12).
(10) a. Derivations proceed successive cyclically and cycle is defined by phase (Chomsky (2000, 2001)).
b. Transfer: In phase P with head HP, Transfer applies to the complement domain of HP as
soon as the edge of P is extended. (Hiraiwa (2003))
c. At each Spell-Out cyle, the PF component must decide whether to spell out the elements properly
or not (with null/zero phonological realization). (cf. Holmberg (2001))
d. PF Uniformity: In each cycle, PF can only handle elements with consistent phonological features.
(11) a. [vP [ v [VP eat a cake ]]] b. [vP [ v [VP Δ ] ]] c. [CP C [IP I [vP v [VP ] ] ] ]
� sent to Spell-Out � VP realized as null � sent to Spell-Out
d. [CP C [IP Δ ] ] � sluicing (IP-ellipsis) e. [CP C [IP I [vP v [VP Δ ] ] ] ] � VP ellipsis
(12) a. [Phase H [ …… [Phase Specifier H [XP complement] ]]]
|_____Spell-Out______| |__Spell-Out__|
The Movement Ellipsis Generalization (MEG) MEG, as in (13), can then be derived from the condition
in (6). For a phrase to undergo ellipsis, it must be the complement of phase heads, which has been argued
to be immobile, given the interplay of PIC and Anti-Locality (cf. Abels (2003) and others), as in (14). On
the other hand, for a phrase to undergo movement, it must NOT be the complement of phase heads so that
movement will not be blocked by PIC and Anti-Locality. However, not being the complement of phase
will in turn exclude it to be eligible for ellipsis. MEG thus predicts that movement and ellipsis are
mutually-exclusive for a given phrase, and this is empirically substantiated. (15-17) show that MEG holds
for CP, DP, and IP. For VP, while it may be elided (18a), it cannot be moved (18b), evidence coming
from Huang’s (1993) binding examples showing what’s fronted is vP, which contains the subject trace.
(13) MEG: For a certainly category XP, if XP can be elided, it cannot be moved and vice versa.
(14) a. [Phase Spec [ HP XP ] ] b. [Phase Spec [ H XP ] ]
(banned by Anti-Locality) (banned by PIC)
(15) a. [CP that John will marry a supermodel]1, I will never believe t1 .
b. *John believes that Mary is smart, and Bill also believes [CP e ].
(16) a. [DP Banana]1, John really likes t1 . b. *John likes this book, but Bill does not like [DP e ].
(17) a. *[IP Sam likes Sue]1, Joe doesn’t believe that t1 . b. Joe saw someone, but I don’t know who [IP e ].
(18) a. Sam will come, but Sue will not [VP e ]. b. Sami said that [wash himself*i/j] Joej certainly would tvP.
Discussion I further argue that the existence of scrambling and AE in Japanese does not pose a problem
to MEG. Following Ohtaki (2011), I will argue that what is elided is not a full DP/NP in Japanese, but a
sub-part of it, licensed by (null) KP, a phase. I will argue that the same holds for Mandarin Chinese as
well. MEG thus provides us a tool to detect what a phase is, which may be moved but not elided.
Selected References Abels, K. (2003). Successive cyclicity, anti-locality, and adposition stranding. UConn
dissertation. Abney, S. (1987). The English noun phrase in its sentential aspect. Doctoral Dissertation, MIT.
Bošković, Ž. (2008). What will you have, DP or NP? In Proceedings of the 37 th North NELS. Chomsky, N. (2000).
Minimalist Inquires. In Step by step, 89-155. Huang, J. (1984). On the distribution and reference of empty
pronouns. LI 15: 531-574. Oku, S. (1998). A theory of selection and reconstruction in the minimalist perspective.
Doctoral Dissertation, UConn. Saito, M. (2007). Notes on East Asian argument ellipsis. Language Research 43:
203-227. Takahashi, D. (2008). Noun Phrase Ellipsis. In The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Linguistics, 394-422.

Sofiana Chiriacescu (Stuttgart)
Focusing on indefinite noun phrases in German and English: consequences of reference
form on the subsequent discourse.
One of the fundamental questions underlying theories of language production concerns
referent-tracking, including what referents are preferred to be picked up in the subsequent
discourse and what types of referring expressions are used for this purpose. A body of
linguistic and psycholinguistic studies found out that several factors and criteria influence the
frequency of re-mention of referents, such as prominent syntactic positions (e.g. subjects,
focus of clefts) and different thematic roles (e.g. Stimulus role in a transitive event with
Stimulus and Experiencer roles). Given their high accessibility or prominence in terms of
syntactic and semantic factors, these referents are furthermore likely to be picked up in the
following discourse by means of a more reduced type of referring expression (typically a
pronoun) compared to their less-prominent counterparts (Ariel 2001, Grosz, Joshi and
Weinstein 1995). In this paper, we focus on referents mentioned in non-prominent positions
in English and German, i.e. as direct objects realized as indefinite noun phrases, and argue
that they differ in terms of frequency of subsequent mention and likelihood of
pronominalization. The results are discussed in terms of how different types of indefinite
noun phrases affect the discourse structuring potential of their referents during reference
production.
Study1: The English data (Indefinite-this vs. indefinite-a)
According to several studies (Prince 1981, Ionin 2006), English this can be used as an
indefinite determiner alongside the simple indefinite article a(n). The Experiment (Exp1)
investigates whether referents introduced by this and a(n) differ in terms of likelihood of
subsequent mention and likelihood pronominalization. Design. We used a sentencecontinuation
task with no pronoun-prompt. Participants (n=20) read story fragments (e.g. (1))
and were asked to add five logical and natural-sounding sentence continuations to each of the
stories. All critical referents were constructed in direct object position and were realized as
indefinite noun phrases. We only manipulated the morphological realization of the direct
objects (2 conditions: this-condition and a(n)-condition). Note that indefinite this occurs
mainly in conversational English, thus, the test items were kept in a colloquial tone.
(1) Sample experimental item from Exp1
this-condition a(n)-condition
Yesterday evening was so warm that Yesterday evening was so warm that James
James decided to hang out with friends decided to hang out with friends at the local
at the local coffee shop. On his way coffee shop. On his way downtown, he saw
downtown, he saw this kid coming down
the street.
a kid coming down the street.
Each target item contained individual references to two characters. In (1), for example, the
first referent (James) is the clearly established topic constituent of the story fragment, as it is
mentioned twice (with a proper name and pronoun) in grammatical subject position. The
critical item in (1), this kid, is introduced as an indefinite noun phrase in direct object position
in the last clause of the story fragment. In light of previous studies on indefinite-this
(Gernsbacher & Shroyer 1989), we predict that this-referents will be: (i) more frequently
picked up and (ii) more likely to be mentioned with a pronoun in the subsequent discourse,
compared to a-referents. Results. The first part of our prediction was confirmed, as thisreferents
were picked up in the subsequent discourse more often than a-referents (in 85% vs.
15% of the cases). The second part of our prediction was not confirmed, as the anaphoric

expressions used for both indefinite types were definite noun phrases (Fig1).
Fig. 1. Type of referring expression used for the first re-mention of the referents in the this-condition and a(n)-condition
Study2: The German data (Indefinite-so’n vs. indefinite-ein)
The German determiner so’n can be used in a similar way as English indefinite this (von
Heusinger 2011). Experiment 2 (Exp2) had the same design, but tested the discourse behavior
of indefinte-so’n compared to that of the simple indefinite headed by ein(e) (‘a(n)’). Again,
we manipulated only the type of indefinite noun phrase, which resulted in 2 conditions: so’ncondition
and ein(e)-condition, as in (2). Our prediction is, that if the accessibility of so’nreferents
is comparable to that of referents preceded by indefinite-this, then the results of the
two experiments should be similar. Results: Similar to the findings of Exp 1, so’n-referents
were picked up more often in the ensuing discourse than the ein(e)-referents (in 80% vs. 17%
of the cases), but did not show a preference for pronominalization (Fig.2).
Fig. 2. Type of referring expression used for the first re-mention of the referents in the so’n-condition and ein(e)-condition
Conclusions: First, both indefinite this and indefinite so’n signal the likelihood of subsequent
mention of their referents. Second, the findings of both Exp1 and Exp2 underline the
necessity to dissociate between likelihood of subsequent mention and likelihood of
pronominalization (confirmation of recent studies on language production, e.g. Kehler, Kertz,
Rohde & Elman 2008), as they do not point to the same type of accessibility of a referent.
Third, we argue that the different markers of indefinite noun phrases (i.e. this in English and
so’n in German) were developed to distinguish between accessible and non-accessible
referents when realized as direct objects, as such referents are better competitors for the
subject referents, at least in terms of likelihood of subsequent mention.
References:
*Ariel, M.: Accessibility theory: An overview. In Ted J.M. Sanders, Joost Schilperoord & Wilbert Spooren
(eds.), Text representation: Linguistic and psycholinguistic aspects, 29–87. Amsterdam: John Benjamins (2001).
*Gernsbacher, M & Shroyer, A.: The cataphoric use of the indefinite this in spoken narratives. Memory &
Cognition 1989, 17 (5), 536-540. *Grosz, A. Joshi, A. & Weinstein, S.: Centering: a framework for modelling
the local coherence of discourse. Computational Linguistics 21: 203 - 225 (1995). *Ionin, T.: This is definitely
specific: specificity and definiteness in article systems. Natural Language Semantics. Springer. 14. 175-234
(2006). *von Hesinger, K.: Specificity, referentiality and discourse prominence: German indefinite
demonstratives. In Reich, Ingo et al. (eds.), Proceedings of Sinn & Bedeutung 15, Saarland University Press:
Saarbrücken, Germany (2011). *Kehler, A., Kertz, L., Rohde, H., & Elman, J. L.: Coherence and coreference
revisited. Journal of Semantics, 25, 1–44 (2008).

Kaily Clackson (Essex), Vera Heyer (Potsdam) & Harald Clahsen (Potsdam)
Online application of Binding Principles A and B:
Evidence from eye movements during listening
Previous experiments examining the time course of the application of binding constraints
during online processing in adults have yielded mixed results. Early cross-modal priming
experiments suggested that only grammatically accessible antecedents were considered as
potential antecedents for a pronoun or reflexive, leading to the proposal that binding
principles act as an ‘initial filter’, restricting the search for an antecedent to syntactically
appropriate positions (Nicol & Swinney 1989). More recent studies have shown that other
sources of information such as gender, discourse salience and recency also contribute to
determine the referent, although the question of whether these factors operate in parallel
with syntactic constraints or somewhat later is still controversial (see e.g. Badecker and
Straub 2002, Sturt, 2003).
To investigate the moment-to-moment processing of reflexives and pronouns, the present
study employed the visual world paradigm, monitoring the eye-movements of 42 adult native
speakers to ‘task-relevant visual contexts’ (Trueswell, 2008: 145) while they listened to
stories such as (1) and (2).
(1) Reflexives
Peter/Susan was waiting outside the corner shop. He/She watched as Mr Jones
bought a large box of popcorn for himself over the counter.
(2) Pronouns
Peter/Susan was waiting outside the corner shop. He/She watched as Mr Jones
bought a large box of popcorn for him/her over the counter.
Each story involved two characters and an object (e.g. popcorn in (1)). One character was
structurally accessible as an antecedent for the reflexive/pronoun (e.g., Mr. Jones in (1)),
and one character was structurally inaccessible (e.g., Peter/Susan in (1)). The gender of the
inaccessible antecedent either matched or mismatched the gender of the reflexive/pronoun.
Participants first saw a picture of the object, then were asked to listen to the story, indicating
as quickly as possible ‘who is it for?’ by pressing a button corresponding to one of 4 pictures:
the two characters mentioned, the object, and a distracter character (whose gender did not
match the reflexive/pronoun). A video camera recording the participant’s face provided an
online measure of gaze direction at the point of the pronoun/reflexive, and button presses
provided online reaction times and accuracy scores reflecting participants’ final offline
interpretation of the pronoun/reflexive.
Offline accuracy scores showed that for reflexive sentences the experimental manipulation
had little effect on the final interpretation (Match: 95%; Mismatch: 98%), but for the pronoun
sentences accuracy was significantly lower when the gender of the inaccessible antecedent
matched that of the pronoun (Match: 86%; Mismatch: 96%). In Match conditions almost all
erroneous responses selected the inaccessible antecedent. In both reflexive and pronoun
sentences, reaction times were significantly slower when the inaccessible antecedent
matched in gender with the pronoun/reflexive (108ms difference for reflexive sentences,
243ms for pronoun sentences).

For both reflexives and pronouns, gaze direction was affected by the gender of the
inaccessible antecedent, with participants’ gaze moving more quickly away from the picture
of the inaccessible antecedent when it mismatched in gender with the reflexive/pronoun.
Statistical analysis showed significant 3-way interactions between Time, Antecedent
(accessible/inaccessible) and Gender of inaccessible antecedent (match/mismatch) from the
earliest point at which eye-movements reflect processing of the pronoun/reflexive (200ms
after the onset of the reflexive/pronoun).
Results show that although the final interpretation of a reflexive is constrained by principle A,
a discourse salient inaccessible antecedent is also considered as a potential referent from
the earliest measurable time. In the case of pronouns (where the structural constraint does
not pick out a particular referent), the final interpretation is affected by a recently mentioned
gender matching inaccessible antecedent, and this competition is also reflected in online
measures.
Our results provide support for the view (e.g., Badecker & Straub, 2002) that from the
earliest measurable point in time binding constraints work in tandem with other sources of
information to determine the referent for a reflexive or pronoun.
References
Badecker, W., Straub, K. (2002) The processing role of structural constraints on the
interpretation of pronouns and anaphors. Journal of Experimental Psychology:
Learning, Memory and Cognition, 28 748-769
Nicol, J., Swinney, D. (1989) The role of structure in coreference assignment during
sentence comprehension. Journal of Psycholinguistic research, 18 5-19.
Sturt, P. (2003) The time-course of the application of binding constraints in reference
resolution. Journal of Memory and Language, 48 542-562.
Trueswell, J. (2008). Using eye movements as a developmental measure within
psycholinguistics. Developmental Psycholinguistics: On-line methods in children‘s
language processing, 73-96.

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NPI licensing by exclusives: Just scope could ever explain it
We offer an analysis of the NPI licensing properties of a range of exclusives, including adverbial
and adjectival only, mere, exclusive, and just. Our proposal is that all exclusives license NPIs
within their semantic scope, and differences in behavior arise from differences of scope, which in
turn derive from differences of semantic type: some exclusives correspond to one application of the
Geach type-shifting rule to Beaver and Clark’s (2008) lexical entry for only, and others correspond
to two.
Data. Despite the synonymy between He is only a child and He is a mere child, the two exclusives
cannot both license NPIs in the VP of a clause whose subject they modify:
(1) Only a child said anything.
Elizabeth Coppock (Lund) & David Beaver (U. Texas, Austin)
(2) *A mere child said anything.
The adjectival exclusives only and exclusive do not license NPIs in the VP either, although they do
license NPIs in their syntactic scope:
(3) a. *The only author got any royalties.
b. The *(only) student who asked any questions got an A.
(4) a. *The exclusive supplier of gas energy got any new contracts.
b. As part of our agreement with your group, the Club is the *(exclusive) supplier
of any beverage served on our property.
Unlike only and exclusive, mere does not license NPIs in the modified noun phrase ((5)), but it
does license NPIs outside its syntactic scope in certain constructions ((6)):
(5) *He is a mere author of any children’s books
(6) I toiled for decades on a Wisconsin campus on which *(a mere) 18 percent of the entering
freshmen [VP ever graduate ].
Just sometimes behaves like mere, and sometimes like only. (7) can be paraphrased as (8).
(7) Just the thought of him sends shivers down my spine.
(8) The mere thought of him sends shivers down my spine.
On this reading (the scalar reading), his touch would send shivers too, if nothing worse. On the
non-scalar reading, nothing other than the thought of him, including his touch, would send the
shivers. This is the most prominent reading with only:
(9) Only the thought of him sends shivers down my spine.
It is only on the non-scalar reading that just licenses NPIs. (10) is acceptable when it means (11),
but not on the most prominent reading of the subject NP (≈ a mere smile from him).
(10) ?Just a smile from him would make any difference.
(11) Only a smile from him would make any difference.

Scalar particles and competition
Synopsis. We provide an account for the variation in the distribution of scalar particles that is based
on three assumptions: (i) scalar particles may move at LF (cf. Karttunen & Peters 1979), (ii) some
scalar particles are morphologically complex (cf. Guerzoni 2003, Lahiri 2010), and (iii) scalar
particles form scales and compete for insertion.
1. Cross-linguistic variation. At first sight there appear to be many distributional differences
between scalar particles in different languages. However, a more careful examination reveals that
their distribution varies along only two dimensions: the pragmatic strength of the associate in the
immediate surface scope of the scalar particle and, roughly, whether the scalar particle can be
characterized as an n-word (cf. Gast & van der Auwera 2011).
1.1. First dimension of variation. Scalar particles can be classified with respect to whether they may
associate with pragmatically weak or strong elements in their immediate surface scope – we call
these particles weak and strong scalar particles, respectively. With respect to this criterion, there are
three main groups of scalar particles: (i) scalar particles that may be weak or strong (e.g. even in
English, même in French), (ii) scalar particles that may only be strong (e.g. sogar in German, hasta in
Spanish), and (iii) scalar particles that may only be weak (e.g. so much as in English, auch nur,
einmal in German). This idiosyncratic distribution is schematized in (1), while the relevant implicational
generalization is in (2).
(1) a. Hans read { even / sogar / *auch nur } SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES
b. If Hans read { even / *sogar / auch nur } ONE book, he passed the exam
(2) There is a scalar particle that is only strong in the language
⇒ There is a scalar particles that is only weak in the language
1.2. Second dimension of variation. Scalar particles that may only be weak can be split into three
subclasses: (iii.a) scalar particles that may occur both in the immediate scope of negation and in other
DE environments (so much as in English), (iii.b) scalar particles that occur only in the immediate
scope of negation (e.g. einmal in German, niti in Slovenian), and (iii.c) scalar particles that never
occur in the immediate scope of negation (e.g. auch nur in German, tudi in Slovenian). This
distribution is schematized in (3), while the relevant implicational generalization is in (4).
(3) a. Hans didn't read { so much as / einmal / *auch nur } ONE book
b. If Hans read { so much as / *einmal / auch nur } ONE book, he passed the exam
(4) There is a scalar particle that may only be weak and only occurs in the immediate scope of
negation in the language ⇒ No other weak scalar particle that may only be weak occurs in
the immediate scope of negation in the language
2. Derivation. We derive the variation described above from two parameters (whether a particle
spells out one or two scalar components, whether a particle bears a negative feature) and independent
principles in grammar (Maximize Presupposition, Relativized Minimality).
2.1. Morphology. All scalar particles share the scalar component that requires its sister to denote a
proposition that is less likely than a relevant alternative (Bennett 1982, Kay 1990). We represent this
component with EVEN (5a). There is another component to scalar particles, which is however not
shared by all scalar particles: a scalar component that requires its sister to denote a proposition that is
most likely among the alternatives (cf. Guerzoni 2003, Lahiri 2010). We represent this component
with NUR (5b). These two components may move at LF (cf. Karttunen & Peters 1979) and they
associate with the same focused element (cf. Krifka 1991). Finally, in some languages, the NUR
component may bear an uninterpretable negative feature, making the scalar particle comparable to nwords
or n-indefinites of the language.
(5) a. [[ EVEN ]] g,c (C, p, w) is defined only if ∃q∈C [p < c q].
If defined, [[ EVEN ]] g,c (C, p, w) = 1 iff p(w) = 1
Luka Crnic (Hebrew University)

. [[ NUR ]] g,c (C, p, w) is defined only if ∀q∈C [q < c p].
If defined, [[ NUR ]] g,c (C, p, w) = 1 iff p(w) = 1
In a language like German, sogar spells out (6a), auch nur spells out (6b), while (nicht) einmal spells
out (6c). In English, even is ambiguous between (6a) and (6b), while so much as spells out (6b); there
is no scalar particle in English that bears a negative feature.
(6) a. [EVEN] ↔ even; sogar b. [EVEN] [NUR] ↔ even; so much as; auch nur
c. [EVEN] [NUR] [uNEG] ↔ (nicht) einmal
2.2. Explaining distribution. The characterization in (6) does not suffice to account for the peculiar
restrictions on the associates of sogar and auch nur. For example, sogar could occur with a weak
associate where EVEN would move at LF. We block this by assuming that sogar, auch nur and (nicht)
einmal form a scale and compete for insertion (7). The same holds for its kin in other languages.
(7) < [EVEN], [EVEN][NUR], [EVEN][NUR] [uNeg] >
The competition of the particles in (7) is governed by Maximize Presupposition, which requires one
to use among contextually equivalent alternatives the one with stronger presuppositions (Heim 1991).
On the one hand, this necessitates sogar to be base-generated adjoined to clauses denoting strong
propositions: if the clause denoted a weak proposition, auch nur would have to be inserted since this
would lead to stronger presuppositions of the sentence (8).
(8) a. ✗ [EVEN C 3] [I doubt [[EVEN C 3] you read one F book]] (spell out: sogar)
b. ✔ [EVEN C 3] [I doubt [[EVEN C 3] [NUR C 0] you read one F book]] (spell out: auch nur)
On the other hand, auch nur may only be adjoined to clauses denoting weak propositions: if it were
adjoined to a strong clause, then NUR would either trigger an incorrect presupposition (9b) or it
would have to move above EVEN which is ruled out by Relativized Minimality (9c). Furthermore,
[EVEN][NUR] must be embedded under an appropriate non-upward entailing operator since the two
scalar components would otherwise trigger clashing presuppositions (cf. Guerzoni 2003).
(9) a. ✔ [I doubt [[EVEN C 3] you read (all) twelve F books]] (spell out: sogar)
b. ✗ [EVEN C 3][I doubt [[EVEN C 3][NUR C 0] you read twelve F books]] (spell out: auch nur)
c. ✗ [NUR C 3][I doubt [[EVEN C 3][NUR C 0] you read twelve F books]] (spell out: auch nur)
[EVEN][NUR] [uNEG] may be spelled out only in the immediate scope of negation where its negative
feature, which has no semantic reflex, can be checked. An Elsewhere Condition then dictates that in a
language that has both weak scalar particles, [EVEN][NUR] may not be spelled out in the immediate
scope of negation but only in other non-upward-entailing environments. Thus, (nicht) einmal and
auch nur are treated analogously to indefinites nie and je, respectively (e.g. Penka & Zeijlstra 2005).
As expected, they exhibit a parallel distribution, e.g. both the indefinite je and auch nur may occur
under (covert) negation in the presence of an n-indefinite (10). This is different in Slavic languages
where all indefinites and weak scalar particles under clausemate negation must be n-marked.
(10) a. Niemand hat { je, *nie } etwas gegessen
n-indef-nobody has { indef, *n-indef } something eaten
b. Ich habe nie { auch nur, *nicht einmal, *einmal } EIN Buch gelesen
I have n-indef-never { auch nur, *nicht einmal, *einmal } one book read
3. Conclusion. We have derived the five classes of scalar particles – (i)-(iii.c) above – in a
framework that, first, allows for movement of EVEN and, second, assumes morphological variation
among scalar particles. We left aside the issue of additivity of scalar particles; we propose that this is
derived along the lines put forward by Rullmann (1997). Another issue left aside is the noncanonicity
of movement of EVEN. A further inquiry into this is mandated.
Selected references. Gast, V. & J. van der Auwera (2011) "Scalar additive operators in languages of Europe." Guerzoni,
E. (2003) Why even ask? Lahiri, U. (2010) "Some evens are even ifs." Rullmann, H. (1997) "Even, polarity and scope."

Ian Cunnings & Patrick Sturt (Edinburgh)
The Time-Course of Reference Resolution in Picture Noun Phrases:
Evidence from Eye-Movements During Reading
Although binding theory (Chomsky, 1981) as originally formulated predicts that reflexives
and pronouns should be in complementary distribution (e.g. ‘John1 injured himself1/him*1’), a
number of researchers have noted that complementarity breaks down in certain contexts (e.g.
Pollard & Sag, 1992; Reinhart & Reuland, 1993). One construction in particular where
complementarity appears to break down is the picture noun phrase (PNP), as in ‘John1 saw a
picture of himself1/him1’, and the question of whether or not possessed picture noun phrases
(PPNPs; e.g. ‘John’s1 picture of himself1/him?1’) should also be exempt from binding theory
has been the subject of some debate (see e.g. Runner et al. 2006).
Psycholinguistic research has examined to what extent binding constraints are violable during
online sentence processing. While it has been argued that, at least for reflexives, binding
theory applies early to help guide the antecedent search for binding theory accessible
antecedents (e.g. ‘John’ in ‘Steven knew that John had injured himself’) rather than
inaccessible ones (e.g. ‘Steven’; see e.g. Sturt 2003) during online sentence comprehension, it
has been claimed that inaccessible antecedents can have early effects on processing in (P)PNP
contexts (Kaiser et al. 2009; Runner et al. 2006).
We examined the processing of reflexives and pronouns in PNP and PPNP contexts in four
eye-tracking experiments. In each experiment, 28 different native English speakers read 32
critical and 64 filler texts while their eye-movements were monitored. Experiments 1 and 2
examined reflexives. Critical texts contained one accessible and one inaccessible antecedent,
and gender congruence (match vs. mismatch) between each antecedent and the reflexive was
manipulated in a 2x2 design. Congruence between the reflexive and inaccessible antecedent
was manipulated using proper names (Jonathan/Jennifer), while pre-tested gender stereotypes
were used for the accessible antecedent (the soldier… himself/herself). PNP and PPNP
contexts were tested in Experiments 1 and 2 respectively:
Jonathan/Jennifer was walking through the military barracks. He/she heard...
(1a) ... that the soldier had a picture of himself/herself in the middle of the mess hall.
(1b) ... about the soldier’s picture of himself/herself in the middle of the mess hall.
Experiments 3 and 4 examined pronouns in PNP and PPNP contexts. Similar manipulations
between the accessible and inaccessible antecedents and a pronoun were used, except that this
time we avoided use of the female pronoun as a result of its temporary ambiguity as a full
noun phrase or specifier (see Clifton et al. 1997):
The medical staff had a meeting in the office. The surgeon/nurse recalled...
(2a) ... that Jonathan/Jennifer noticed a portrait of him over at the back of the room.
(2b) ... about Jonathan’s/Jennifer’s portrait of him over at the back of the room.
The results of Experiments 1 and 2 indicated the same relative time-course of antecedent
effects for reflexives in both PNP and PPNP contexts. In both experiments, comparatively
earlier reading time measures were longer when the accessible antecedent mismatched the
stereotypical gender of the reflexive compared to when there was a gender match, while
effects of the inaccessible antecedent were in comparison delayed. For example, in (1b),
stereotypical gender mismatches between the reflexive and accessible antecedent incurred
longer reading times during the initial inspection of both the reflexive and a spillover region
consisting of the two words after the reflexive, whereas effects of the inaccessible antecedent
were only observed in second pass times of the spillover region. In Experiments 3 and 4, we

observed reliable effects of the accessible antecedent only. For example, in both experiments,
second pass times of the pronoun were found to be reliably longer following a stereotypical
gender mismatch between the pronoun and accessible antecedent in comparison to when there
was a stereotypical gender match.
The results of Experiments 1 and 2 extend previous findings that binding theory applies early
to help guide the resolution of reflexives (Sturt, 2003). Although previous offline studies have
shown that comprehenders will accept a non-local ‘inaccessible’ antecedent as a potential
antecedent for a reflexive inside a (P)PNP (e.g. Asudeh & Keller, 2001; Runner et al. 2003
Experiment 1), our data suggest that, contra the results of Runner et al. (2006) who did not
include gender (mis)matching control conditions in their visual world experiments, accessible
antecedents only are initially considered as a potential antecedent for a reflexive during earlier
stages of processing during reading. The antecedent search for pronouns in (P)PNP contexts
appears to be similarly constrained.
References.
Asudeh, A. & Keller, F. (2001). Experimental evidence for a predication-based binding
theory. Papers from the 37 th meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, 1-14.
Chomsky, N. (1981). Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht, Foris.
Clifton, C., Kennison, S., & Albrecht, J. (1997). Reading the words her, his, him: Implications
for parsing principles based on frequency and on structure. Journal of Memory and
Language, 36, 276-292.
Kaiser, E., Runner, J., Sussman, R., & Tanenhaus, M. (2009). Structural and semantic
constraints on the resolution of pronouns and reflexives. Cognition, 112, 55-80.
Pollard, C. & Sag, I. (1992). Anaphors in English and the scope of Binding Theory. Linguistic
Inquiry, 23, 261-303.
Runner, J., Sussman, R. & Tanenhaus, M. (2003). Assignment of reference to reflexives and
pronouns in picture noun phrases: evidence from eye-movements. Cognition, 2003,
B1-B13.
- (2006). Processing reflexives and pronouns in picture noun phrases. Cognitive
Science, 30, 193-241.
Reinhart, T. & Reuland, E. (1993). Reflexivity. Linguistic Inquiry, 24, 657-720.
Sturt, P. (2003). The time-course of the application of binding constraints in reference
resolution. Journal of Memory and Language, 48, 542-562.

Roberta D’Alessandro & Marc van Oostendorp (Leiden)
Cyclic syntax mirrors cyclic phonology. Southern Italian Vocatives in context.
1. The issue. Vocatives pose a number of problems for various modules of linguistic theory. For
syntax, they raise the issue where exactly such 'case', as vocative is traditionally defined, is
supposed to be assigned, given that it does not fit the traditional taxonomy of inherent vs. structural
case: vocative is neither linked to any obvious thematic role, nor to any classical case position. Yet,
it displays a dedicated ending (or special phonological form; pace Schaden 2010). Syntactically,
vocatives have been identified with topics (Lambrecht 1969, Portner 2004) or with isolated
elements (Zwicky 2004), and their function has been classified in various ways (Schlegoff 1968,
Zwicky 1974, Portner 2004, Schaden 2010) according to their semantics. None of the syntaxsemantics
based analyses, however, offers a solution for the following phonological puzzle:
vocatives are expressed in many languages as truncation patterns (e.g. Yapese, Jensen 1977;
Indonesian, Cohn 2005; Arabic, Russian, Yadroff 1996), even though truncation is otherwise very
marked, while there are no convincing examples of e.g. Nominative or Dative being expressed in
this way in any language. Observe that it has been noted that in the verbal domain, imperatives
show a very similar behavior to that of vocatives (e.g. in Hebrew, Bat-El 2002, and much of the
work by Zanuttini & Portner on imperatives and exclamatives).
2. Proposal. In this paper, we suggest that the syntactic and the phonological puzzles should be
solved in tandem, as they are two sides of the same issue: the exocentric phonological behaviour is
a result of the peripheral/external syntactic position and of the fact that discourse-related features
(which we will include among the edge features) are read by a different phonological cycle than φ-
and case features. Following Zanuttini (2008), we claim that vocatives are different from imperative
subjects. Yet, we maintain that they are linked to an [addressee] position, though being external to
the spine (much like Chomsky’s adjuncts). Their position is within the left periphery of the clause,
and it is precisely such position which allows for prosodic exponence (in the sense of intonation).
We argue that truncation is – at least in the systems we are studying here - Southern Italian dialects
– actually a response to the demands of an intonational pattern imposed by the [addressee] head.
There is converging evidence that there are two “submodules” in syntax, although authors do not
concur on their actual implementation: one type is 'core syntax' dealing with thematic relations etc.
and corresponding roughly to propositional semantics. The other is ‘peripheral syntax’, and deals
with 'edge features' (Chomsky 2000 ff.), i.e. features inducing movement which impacts semantic
interpretation, and corresponds to discourse semantics (topic-focus structure, question formation,
etc.). The fact that these two types of syntax also roughly correlate with different phonological
implementation is less frequently observed, although it seems quite evident: in typical non-tonal
languages, (intonational) tone can be used to mark e.g. questions, or focus, but it is never used to
mark e.g. passive formation or number agreement.
The syntactic split has received several types of formalization. Most prominently, there have been
those who argue that the split is somewhere in the syntax, so that there are at least two kinds of
syntactic features (φ –and case- features, mainly active in the A-domain, and “edge” and discourse
features like Speaker and Addressee, mainly active in the left periphery, Speas 2000, 2004;
Sigurðsson 2000, 2001 ff.) corresponding to different semantics (and, we would say, different
phonologies), vs. those who claim that information structure is only extrasyntactic. We argue that
vocatives shed light on this issue, especially if looked at from a cross-linguistic point of view. On
the one hand, they have many of the properties of 'external' syntax, but on the other hand, it is
difficult to link them precisely to information structure, and more importantly, they can also be
expressed in some languages by non-intonational morphological means (e.g. the special case
endings of Latin for the vocative). We claim that this argues for a syntax-phonology implementation
of the split.
3. Data. As observed above, truncation has been attested as the phonological exponence of the
vocative for a number of languages. Here we concentrate on the case of Southern Italian dialects. In
these dialects, a vocative is formed by a prefix (a or o) and a truncated form of the DP, which
consists of all the phonological material up until and including the stressed vowel:

(1) a. (A) Mariagiova’! c. (A) Sje’! [Abruzzese]
Mariagiovanna (VOC) Sjef (VOC)
b. (A) Robbe’! d. (A) surelle de lu padre di Giuwa'!
Roberto (VOC) Sister of Giovanni's father (VOC)
These examples show that the original size of the DP does not matter: everything until the stressed
vowel is included, and everything following it (including coda consonants) is deleted. An analysis
of the phenomenon necessarily calls for a syntax-phonology interface analysis.
4. Phonological analysis. Phonologically, there is one major issue to be resolved: the rather curious
shape of the truncation. Alber (2010) argues that there are two (OT) Alignment constraints at work:
one ensuring that the left edge of the constituent is preserved, and one making sure that the
truncation ends in a stressed vowel. (Yet another constraint ensures that everything between two
preserved segments is also preserved.) Although this is definitely descriptively adequate, it should
be noted that having a constraint aligning a stressed vowel with the edge of a phrase is somewhat
suspicious for a template. Furthermore, phonological accounts so far do not take into account why it
is exactly vocatives that show this behavior. We therefore propose a different analysis: the exponent
of the vocative is (at least) a pitch accent, which is specified for being at the same time a boundary
tone (i.e. H*%). The fact that it is specified as a pitch accent makes it want to be on the stressed
syllable; the fact that it is a boundary tone makes it want to be at the edge of the constituent. The
paradox is resolved by making the stressed vowel be exactly on the edge of the constituent – i.e. by
truncation of everything following it.
5. Syntactic analysis. Although we believe that this phonological account describes the truncation
in a more elegant way (as well as one which makes more precise predictions about the intonational
pattern), it does not yet explain why truncation patterns are so typical for vocatives (as well as for
imperatives) and why they do not occur for other morphological cases or verbal tenses. As a point
of departure for a formalization of the 'two syntaxes' mentioned above, we take Chomsky's (2000)
distinction between 'edge features' and 'φ-features', where the latter seem typical for 'internal'
syntax, and the former for 'external syntax'. We take ‘edge features’ to include all “semantic” and
discourse-related features (i.e. not only topic-focus or wh, but also Speaker and Addressee). We
propose that these two types of features are derivationally distinct, and syntax has, as it were, two
independent cycles: first, one in which φ-features operate, and afterwards one in which edge
features are operative. Each of these two cycles has its own spell-out: the former to segmental
phonology (and propositional semantics), the second to intonational and other types of prosodic
phonology (and discourse semantics). The reason why intonation etc. can only play a role in the
second cycle is obvious: syntactic heads which phonologically consist of only suprasegmental
material can only be realized if segmental material has already been provided on an earlier cycle. A
model such as this has as its advantage, furthermore, that both modules are syntactic (thus staying
close to the conservative assumption that syntax is the sole mediator between phonology and
semantics) while they are also ordered and have different functions (thus capturing some of the
insights of the information structure based accounts).
Vocative 'case' is obviously not assigned in the earlier cycle, since it has no connection to thematic
structure and is not a structural case in any way. We argue that it is assigned by an [addressee] head.
Vocative is therefore different from other morphological cases, since it is assigned in the 'outer
cycle' of syntax. This opens the possibility for it to be realized by intonational tones.
6. Possible extensions. We show how an intonational analysis might also work for some of the
other truncated vocatives of languages of the world, as well as possibly to imperatives (which
similarly may be linked to an [adressee] head).
Selected References
Alber, Birgit. (2010) An exploration of truncation in Italian. Rutgers Working Papers in Linguistics vol. 3: 1-30. Bat-El,
Outi. (2002). True truncation in Colloquial Hebrew Imperatives. Language 78.4: 651-665. Cabré, Teresa & Maria del
Mar Vanrell. (2010) Non-templatic truncation: the case of vocatives. Cohn, Abby. (2005). Truncation in Indonesian.
Evidence for violable minimal words and AnchorRight. Proceedings of NELS 34, 175-189. Howell, Mortimer Sloper.
1986. A grammar of the Classical Arabic language. Delhi: Gian Publishing House. Jensen, John Thayer. (1977). Yapese
Reference Grammar. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii. Michael Yadroff (1996). Modern Russian Vocatives: A Case
of Subtractive Morphology. Journal of Slavic Linguistics, pp. 133-153.

Alexandre Delfino, Maria Luiza Cunha Lima & Pablo Arantes (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais)
Prosodic marking of referential status in Brazilian Portuguese
A rising trend in the area of reference processing claims that prosodic and contextual
information are processed along with grammatical information as the hearer receives
the input. A view widely accepted (Gundel, 1993, inter alia) posits referential
expressions as taking a whole range of referential statuses. One central question on
the production and perception of prosodically-encoded information structure relates
to determining which of these different statuses can receive a specific prosodic
counterpart. Different methods have been used to tap into these differences, ranging
from phonological descriptions to ERP experiments.
In west Germanic languages as English and German, a three-way distinction - new,
given and accessible - is said to be distinct in terms of prosodic encoding (Baumann,
2006; Baumann & Grice, 2006). Using ToBI representation, new referents tend
to be marked with a phrasal accent (H*), given referents tend to be deaccented
and accessible referents tend to be marked with an intermediate phrase accent
(H+L*). Using an ERP experiment, Schumacher & Baumann (2010) investigated
how the prosodic information can affect the processing of referents with three
different informational statuses: given, new and accessible. The N400 and latepositivity
results lead the authors to conclude that (i) the three-way classification
of the informational status makes difference not only for production, but also for
perception, and (ii) the prosodic information is processed very early, along with other
grammatical and context information.
We propose that these methods can be fruitfully aided by more concrete acoustical
analyses. We also intend to investigate which acoustic parameters are more heavily
involved with this prosodic marking. Another goal is the description of the prosodyinformational
status relationship in Brazilian Portuguese, a language scarcely
studied, expanding the investigation about prosody and referential status relationship
to languages different from the West Germanic languages. More specifically,
we tried to see if the proposed three-folded statuses can be found in Brazilian
Portuguese as well.
For this study, we designed a corpus of approximately 30 groups of sentences,
distributed into three conditions: given, new and accessible. For each group
of sentences, we set one target word, which is embedded in a control phrase.
Preceding text determined if the target NP was given, new or accessible. The
sentences below illustrate the construction of the informational status from the
context (target words in bold):
New
Um terremoto causou destruição em boa parte da costa leste. Várias cidades não
tinham um programa de evacuação, o que deu trabalho para as equipes de resgate.
(An earthquake caused destruction in a huge part of the East coast. Several cities
did not have an evacuation program, which caused problems to the rescue teams)
Given
O governo decidiu fechar a usina nuclear após o terremoto ocorrido no mês
passado. O terremoto causou destruição no núcleo do reator, aumentando o risco
de contaminação. (The government decided to shut down the nuclear plant after the
earthquake occurred last month. The earthquake caused destruction to the reactor
nucleus, increasing the risk of contamination.)

Acessible
Estudiosos da Sismologia têm procurado analisar os dados de tremores para prever
novas ocorrências. O terremoto causou destruição sem que ninguem pudesse se
prevenir.
(Seismology experts have tried to analyse the tremors data to predict new
occurences. The earthquake caused destruction without any one being able to
prevent it.)
Four participants read a list containing ninety randomized groups of sentences,
presented one by one in a computer screen. In order to ascertain that the three
referential statuses have distinct prosodic patterns, a number of acoustic features
(traditionally seen as correlates of prosodic prominence) were analyzed: (a) target
word duration, (b) F0 mean, standard deviation (SD) and range and (c) timenormalized
F0 contours of the DP containing the target word. Data from the four
subjects were analyzed separately. Analysis of variance was used to determine if
differences in mean values of the acoustic parameters were statistically different.
The statistical analysis showed that referential status does not significantly affect
F0 SD and range for all speakers. Mean F0 and word duration were affected by
referential status for three of the subjects (new referents have higher mean F0 and
are longer than given and/or accessible ones). Analysis of the time-nomalized F0
contours revealed that F0 contours of new referents are different from the given and
accessible ones. Despite individual variability, new referents are characterized by the
presence of two major pitch peaks, one extending through the chain of pre-stressed
syllables and the other aligned to the stressed syllable. Given and accessible
referents contours are very similar to each other and tend to: (a) have just one peak,
either aligned to the pre-stressed syllables or to the stressed or (b) be relatively
flat. The current results lead us to conclude that from the speech production side
prosody plays an important role signaling referential status, mainly differentiating
new referents from others.
References
BAUMANN, S. 2006. The Intonation of Givenness - Evidence from German.
Linguistische Arbeiten, n.508. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
BAUMANN S, GRICE, M. 2006. The intonation of accessibility. Journal of
Pragmatics. v. 38, 1636–1657.
GUNDEL, J. et al. 1993. Cognitive Status and the Form of Referring Expressions. In:
Discourse. Language, v. 69, n. 2, 274-307.
SCHUMACHER, P. & BAUMANN, S. 2010. Pitch accent type affects the N400
during referencial processing. NeuroReport, vol. 21, n. 9, 618-622.

Ewan Dunbar (Maryland), Brian Dillon (UMass Amherst) & William Idsardi (Maryland)
Learning phonetic categories by learning allophony & vice versa: a computational model
We consider the infant’s early problem of grouping signals into phonetic categories, (Werker and
Tees 1984), as well as the problem of learning allophonic processes, and demonstrate how these
relate to Tesar et al.’s (2003) problem of mutual dependence in language acquisition: learning
one component of a full grammatical system affects what the (best) hypotheses about some
other component will be, and vice versa. We present the results of an unsupervised Bayesian
statistical model of phonetic category and process learning which learns categories and grammar
jointly, allowing for interaction between the two learning problems. We compare our model to
modular learners, which separate phonetic category learning from grammatical learning, and
demonstrate that the phonetic category learning problem and the grammar learning problem are
mutually dependent. This implies that standard phonological learning models cannot be taken
at face value, because, as they are conventionally formulated, they take inputs pre-categorized
into phones or features, and thus build in an implicit modularity assumption. We show further
that our model succeeds in learning contextual rules without observing the contexts themselves.
In particular, we consider data from Inuktitut (Eskimo-Aleut, Northern Canada), a language
with a three-vowel system. Uvular consonants trigger allophony for all three vowels: before
[q] and [K], /i u a/ → [e o A] respectively (see Figure 1). We use phonetic data elicited from a
native speaker (F1 × F2, segmented; Denis and Pollard 2008) and fit a Bayesian model of phonetic
category systems as simple dependent Dirichlet processes (Ferguson 1973; MacEachern
1999). Each category is a multivariate Gaussian distribution which is shifted by some amount
in the context of a uvular. (The shift is a real vector, i.e., we model the allophonic process as
sub-categorical; see Port and O’Dell 1986; Cohn 1990.) The output of learning is a system of
categories and processes learned jointly. The model is unsupervised: it learns the number of
categories, their locations and shapes, and the degree of pre-uvular retraction per category, entirely
on the basis of the statistics of the input. In Model 1, the learner is told whether each token
preceded a uvular. The learner finds the three vowel phonemes of Inuktitut (Figure 2) with results
more accurate than a standard phonetic category model (Dirichlet process mixture model,
e.g. the distributional learning algorithm of Feldman et al. 2009, F statistic for classification
0.75 for our model vs 0.69 for the standard model, 12 runs; t = 4.26, p < 0.001). Crucially, if
we encourage a distributional learner to find more categories, leading to the discovery of all six
allophones, and then use these categories’ context distributions as input to the GLA (Boersma
1997) or the statistical allophone learning model of Peperkamp et al. (2006), we fail to learn the
relevant categorical rule, as the learned allophones are too poorly aligned with the true ones.
In Model 2, the learner is not told whether a uvular followed, but only the approximate frequency
of following uvulars. This simulates a learner who has not fully learned to categorize
the relevant features of the context, or one who is learning a language in which a triggering
environment is obscured by a later process in a counterbleeding relation. This model succeeds
in learning the vowels of Inuktitut and simultaneously discovering the uvular/non-uvular distinction
only by observing vowel tokens (Figure 3). As before, the model finds three categories
and three rules (although it cannot reliably determine which phones are the output and which
the input of the rules). We show that this is not an accident of Inuktitut uvulars, and that the
model also learns a subset of English vowel categories along with systematic sex differences in
the pronunciations of those vowels, without observing the sex of the speaker.
Our results demonstrate that (1) allophony and other contextual effects are crucial in learning
phonetic categories; (2) the shape of phonetic categories themselves can be helpful in detecting
the effects of context. This mutual dependence is consistent with the strongly interactive
character of category identification in speech perception (Liberman et al., 1953; Whalen et al.,
1997). We conclude that this lack of strong modularity extends to learning.

Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3
Figure 1: Phones of Inuktitut; [e], [A] and [o] are allophonically related to [i], [a], and [u].
Figure 2: Output of Model 1. Dotted lines: categories shifted by learned contextual rules.
Figure 3: Output of Model 2 (contextual rules learned without knowledge of context).
References
de Boer, B., and P. Kuhl. 2003. Investigating the role of infant-directed speech with a
computer model. Acoustics Research Letters Online 4.129–134.
Boersma, P. How we learn variation, optionality, and probability. IFA Proceedings 21.37–42.
Cohn, A. 1990. Phonetic and phonological rules of nasalization. UCLA dissertation.
Denis, D., and M. Pollard. 2008. An Acoustic Analysis of The Vowel Space of Inuktitut.
Presented at Inuktitut Linguistics Workshop, University of Toronto.
Feldman, N., T. Griffiths, and J. Morgan. 2009. Learning Phonetic Categories by Learning a
Lexicon. Proceedings of 31st Annual Conference of Cognitive Science Society 2208–2213.
Ferguson, T. 1973. Bayesian analysis of nonparametric problems. Ann. of Stats 1.209–230.
Liberman, M., and J. Pierrehumbert. 1984. Intonational invariance under changes in pitch
range and length. In Language sound and structure. Cambridge: MIT Press.
MacEachearn, S. 1999. Dependent nonparametric processes. ASA Proceedings of the Section
on Bayesian Statistical Science 50–55.
McMurray, B., R. Aslin, and J. Toscano. 2009. Statistical learning of phonetic categories:
Insights from a computational approach. Developmental Science 12.369–78.
Peperkamp, S., R. Le Calvez, J-P. Nadal, and E. Dupoux. 2006. The acquisition of allophonic
rules: statistical learning with linguistic constraints. Cognition 101.B31–B41.
Port, R., and M. O’Dell. 1986. Neutralization of syllable-final voicing in German. J. of
Phonetics 13.455–471.
Teh, YW, M. Jordan, M. Beal, and D. Blei. 2006. Hierarchical Dirichlet processes. Journal of
the American Statistical Association 101.1566–1581.
Tesar, B., J. Alderete, G. Horwood, N. Merchant, K. Nishitani, and A. Prince. 2003. Surgery in
language learning. In Proceedings of the 22nd West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics.
Vallabha, G., J. McClelland, F. Pons, J. Werker, and S. Amano. 2007. Unsupervised learning
of vowel categories from infant-directed speech. Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences of the United States of America 104.13273–8.
Werker, J., and R. Tees. 1984. Cross-language speech perception: Evidence for perceptual
reorganization during the first year of life. Infant Behavior and Development 7.49–63.

Francesca Foppolo (Milano-Bicocca), Marco Marelli (Milano-Bicocca), Luisa Meroni (Utrecht) & Andrea Gualmini (Utrecht)
Parsing Semantic Ambiguity: strategies and commitments
Consider sentence (1) in the scenario in Fig. 1:
(1) The small square is the only one that is a policeman
Sentence (1) is ambiguous depending on what referent is
considered for one: either the set of all geometrical
figures/things in the context (exhophoric interpretation)
or the set of squares (anaphoric interpretation). The way
we interpret one has an effect on the truth value of the
whole sentence: (1) is True if we interpret one
anaphorically (amongst the squares, the small one is
indeed the only one to be a policeman) but it is False if
we interpret one exophorically (in fact, amongst the
things in the context, the small square is not the only one
to be a policeman).
Fig.1
Testing children and adults with sentences similar to (1), Crain et.al. (1994) concluded that
����������� ������� �������� �� ��������� ������������ - ��
exhophoric interpretation) while �������� ������� ��� ��������� �������
choose the weaker-anaphoric interpretation). We intend to argue against this conclusion on the basis
of two experimental studies in which we show that adults do not conform to a Minimal
Commitment strategy (Exp.1) or to a Maximal Commitment strategy (Exp. 2).
We conclude by proposing a more general principle of processing and ambiguity resolution that
instructs the parser to consider the highest number of available referents .
Our experimental studies. We tested two groups of Italian speaking adults by means of two
studies employing a Visual World Paradigm in which subjects were asked to judge a series of
sentences (as True or False) relatively to a scenario while their eye-movements were recorded. The
rationale behind the two experiments was the same: sentences were presented auditorily against a
visual scenario similar to the one in in Fig. 1 displaying 4 sets of geometrical figures, letters or
digits. We tested 30 were critical statements like (1) that contained the ambiguous expression è
�����������
(is the only one) that needed to be interpreted. The scenario used in both experiments
was identical, but the two experiments differed in the presence/absence of negation in the sentence.
For example, (1) was given in Exp.1 against the scenario in Fig. 1 and (5) was given in Exp. 2:
(5) The small square is not the only one that is a policeman
We also tested 36 unambiguous true and false control sentences �������������
All/Three/None/Some
of the N-(Adj) is doing P������ varied with respect to the type of exploration strategy required to
evaluate them: (a) controls �������������������
required the exploration of the whole scenario to be
judged true or false: e.g., to evaluate (2) All the yellow numbers are kings one needs to check all the
yellow items in the scenario to make sure that all of them are kings; (b) controls ���������������
required the exploration of only one of the quadrants in order to come up with a decision: e.g., to
evaluate (3) Three crosses are playing football, it suffices to check only the quadrant that contains
crosses; (c) controls �������� ������ an exploration ��������� at random in order to find a
counterexample and tell if the sentence was true or false: e.g., to evaluate (4) None of the blue
letters are happy ��������������
suffices to find a letter that is blue and happy and then stop exploring
Crucially, the presence of the negation in the critical sentences presented in Experiment 2 reverses
the entailment pattern between the two interpretations, so that the anaphoric interpretation becomes
the strongest: if ambiguity resolution were based on the entailment relationship between the

alternative readings, then an opposite pattern of exploration should be expected in the two
experiments. In particular, if adults followed a Minimal Commitment strategy, as Crain et al.
suggest, they should always select the weakest interpretation, the one that makes the sentence True.
This corresponds to the anaphoric interpretation in Exp. 1 (it is true that the small square is the only
square that is a policeman) but to the exophoric interpretation in Exp. 2 (it is true that the small
square is not the only thing that is a policeman).
Results. ������� acceptance rate of the critical sentences was below 10% in Exp. 1 and above 90%
in Exp. 2. This shows that they always interpreted one exhophorically, independently of the
entailment pattern between interpretations: i.e., they do not conform to a Minimal or to a Maximal
Commitment strategy. The pattern of exploration revelaed by the eye-movement recordings is
consistent with this hypothesis: in both studies, towards the end of the sentence, subjects followed
an exploration pattern that ���������� ���� ��������� in which they had �������
to look for a
counterexample and all quadrants had equal probability to be looked at, and differed significantly
����� ���� ���������� in which fixations ����������
were concentrated on a single quadrant (Fig. 2,
based on Exp. 1 as an example).
critical trials ����������������� ������������������������������
Fig. 2. The proportion to looks to target/quadrant 1 (arbitrary chosen) are plotted as a function of the sentence timecourse:
IP1 (from 0 to red line) correspond to the (Q)N+Adj segment (e.g. The small square); IP2 (in between the lines)
corresponds to the critical segment is the only one that in the critical trials and to a short pause in the controls; IP3:
(from green line to the end) corresponds to the whole VP (e.g. is a policeman).
Instead of focusing on the quadrant of the squares (anaphoric interpretation), adults moved around
to check for the truth/falsity of the exhophoric interpretation, as if they were scanning the whole
scenario in search of a counterexample. This result was corroborated by a series of logistic
regression models in which the likelihood of looking at the target quadrant was modeled as a
function of the strategy of exploration (cf. Table 1, based on Exp. 1 as an example): in the decisionmaking
period (IP4), after the end of the sentence, the proportion of looks to target in the critical
��������������������������������������������������
=.182).
IP 1 IP 2 IP 3 IP 4
Table 1 Estimate p Estimate p Estimate p Estimate p
critical trials -.37 .0397 .71 .0001 -.34 .0037 -.58 .0001
controls ����� -.97 .0269 -2.08 .0001 -1.08 .0001 -.35 .1820
controls ��������� -.69 .0351 -1.79 .0001 -0.71 .0001 -.47 .0154
controls ���������-1.04
.0005 -.71 .0011 1.72 .0001 1.21 .0001
Conclusions. We found no evidence of a bias that would be based on the truth value of the readings
under consideration or the entailment relationship between them: in both studies, adults interpreted
one exhophorically, always considering the whole scenario. This finding, in conjunction with
�������������������������������������������������������
the need to postulate a preference for
the strong reading of the same sentences in children, invites us to consider whether such truth
conditional properties play any role in ambiguity resolution. Instead, our findings suggest that
adults follow a more general parsing strategy in solving semantic ambiguity: when a (visual/rich)
context is given, the parser maximally exploits it.

Michael Freedman (Yale)
Contextual Disambiguation of Have-Sentences
Background: Have-sentences can encode relations that express kinship (1a), part-whole (1b),
possessor-possessee (1c), and container-containee (1d) relationships. They also seem to be able
to encode completely context dependent relations (1e).
(1) (a) KINSHIP: John has a sister. (Partee, 1999)
(b) PART-WHOLE/INALIENABLE POSSESSION: John has a hand.
(c) TRUE POSSESSION/CONTROL: John has a pen.
(d) CONTAINER: That glass has wine. (Gutierrez-Rexach, 2006)
(e) ASSIGNMENT (BY CONTEXT): Eliza has the mirror (to wash). (Tham, 2004)
Problem: A subset of have-sentences are ambiguous in what relation they express (table 1). But
it is clear that one reading is available out-of-the-blue, which I will refer to as inherently salient.
Because the other reading(s) need context to become salient; I will call these contextually licensed.
The questions that I aim to address are (1) what mechanism explains why certain readings are inherently
salient and (2) what is the interaction with context that explains when the other (contextually
licensed) readings become available.
Sentence inherently salient contextually licensed
John has a sister kinship control, assignment(?)
John has a dinosaur tail part-whole/control
Eliza has a mirror. control assignment
The dumpster has a hand part-whole container
Table 1: Have-sentences and their possible readings.
In this paper, I argue that a pragmatic filter can disambiguate the different readings of havesentences
and that the amount of ambiguity present comes not only from the underspecification
of the relation encoded by have but by the context dependence of some verbal complements.
Analysis: Assume that have encodes a relation between individuals (cf. Beavers et al. (2008),
Partee (1999)). Relational nouns then need to be treated as properties (type 〈e, t〉) in order for the
ordinary derivation of sentences with transitive verbs to take place. I treat relational nouns as this
type (〈e, t〉) but with a free contextual argument, following work on other relational predicates like
local and win (Condoravdi & Gawron (1996)). Concretely, have is treated as an underspecified
relation fixed by an assignment function (as in (2d)) and a relational noun is represented as a relation
that has a free variable as an argument (as in (2a)). A full compositional treatment of the sentence
John has a sister is provided in (2):
(2) (a) [sister]= λx.sister(x,y), where the value of y is fixed by an assignment function.
(b) [a]= λPλQ∃z[P(z) ∧ Q(z)]
(c) [a sister]= λQ∃z[sister(c,z) ∧ Q(z) ]
(d) [have](type-raised) = λPλw[P(λv[π(w,v)])]
where π is an underspecified relation fixed by an assignment function.
(e) [have a sister]= λPλw[P(λv[π(w,v)])](λQ∃z[sister(c,z) ∧ Q(z) ])
= λw[∃z[sister(c,z) ∧ π(w,z)]]
(f) [John]= j
(g) [John has a sister]= λw[∃z[sister(c,z) ∧ π(w,z)]](j)
= ∃z[sister(c,z) ∧ π(j,z)]
A pragmatic mechanism is necessary because simply positing a context variable makes no
predictions on what relation the variable will express. I will assume a question-based model of
discourse (QUD) (Roberts, 2006) in order to resolve the variables in have and in relational nouns;

in addition, I will have the discourse model track what elements (individuals, relations) are salient
(similar to Grosz & Sidner, 1986). Salient individuals are the set of individuals and salient relations
are the set of relations that have been introduced into the discourse either explicitly or through
the use of discourse questions. The QUD is the current question that needs to be addressed in
some way as the next “move” in the discourse. In addition, I assume that there is a default relation
that have expresses when there is no context; CONTROL is the default when the subject is animate.
This relation is a reasonable default because it is closest to the core notion of possession. I will go
through three cases to illustrate how the system works:
Case 1 (In context): In a standard discourse the resolution of have and relational nouns is determined
jointly by what is salient and what the current question is. The variable associated with have
resolves to a salient relation, if there is a relational noun, the variable associated with it resolves
to a salient individual, and the sentence as a whole addresses the current question under discussion.
In (3), the QUD is “where are the victim’s arms”, the salient relations are the hand-relation (from
the utterance) and the container relation (based on the use of the locative in the QUD), and the
only salient individual is the victim. π is resolved to the container-relation because the relation is
salient and because with that relation the QUD is partially answered (the subquestion “where is
one of the victim’s hands” is answered); c resolves to the victim because the victim is salient and
because it is coherent as part of a response that partially answers the QUD. This example shows
how a CONTAINER reading for have can be contexutally licensed.
(3) Scenario: Two police detectives John and Mary are at a crime scene
in an alley. A murder victim has been dismembered and the detectives are looking for the
victim’s remains. John asks “where are his arms?” Mary replies “that dumpster has a hand”.
(4)
QUD: Where are the victim’s arms?
Salient sets: hand(x,y), contains(x,y)
Salient individuals: the victim
QUD relevant = contains
⇒ c = the victim, π = contains(x,y)
Case 2 (Out-of-the-blue): In out-of-the-blue scenarios, there is no QUD and no salient individuals
or relations prior to the first utterance of the discourse. In a sentence without a relational noun,
the meaning of have will assume a default value of CONTROL (for animates) or CONTAINER (for
inanimates). For instance, if person A says to person B out-of-the-blue “I have a pen” there is
no QUD, and no salient relations. Person B can give meaning to person B’s utterance by giving
a value to π which comes from what remains of the “bleached” default lexical meaning of have
(CONTROL). This example shows why have expresses a CONTROL relation when there is no prior
discourse context and the subject is animate.
Case 3 (Inherently salient w/ relational noun complement): If there is a relational noun in object
position, then the relation associated with the relational noun gets added to the list of salient
relations and becomes a suitable relation for have to express and so π is resolved to that relation.
The resolution of the variable associated with the relational noun will be to an individual that is
salient in that utterance (i.e. the subject). So, if out-of-the-blue Speaker A says to Speaker B “I have
a sister”, the meaning of have resolves to the sister relation. The c variable resolves to the subject
becausethe subject is the only salient individual. This example shows why have takes the relation
of its complement if there is no discourse context and the complement is a relational noun.
Selected References: Beavers, J., S. Wechsler, and E. Ponvert. (2008) Possession of a controlled substantive: Light
have and verbs of possession. Condoravdi, C. & Gawron, J.M. (1996). The context-dependency of implicit arguments.
Grosz, B. & Sidner, L. (1986) Attentions, Inentions, and the Structure of Discourse. Gutierrez-Rexach, J. (2006).
Beyond the (in)definiteness restriction: A unified semantics for have. Partee, B. (1999). Weak NP’s in HAVE Sentences.
Roberts, C. (1996) Information Structure in Discourse. Tham, S. (2004) The Definiteness Effect in English Have
Sentences.

Long­distance
Anaphora
in
Mandarin,
the
PCC,
and
Cyclic
Agree
Mandarin
contains
a
reflexive
form,
ziji,
that
can
function
as
a
local
reflexive.
However,
ziji
can
also
take
an
antecedent
outside
its
local
domain.
As
shown
in
(1a‐e),
ziji
can
be
bound
 by
 the
 closest
 subject
 or
 the
 matrix
 subject
 (Cole,
 et
 al.,
 2006
 and
 references
therein).
Such
long‐distance
binding
is
constrained
by
a
blocking
effect,
such
that
subject
DPs
that
differ
in
person
features
appear
to
block
higher
subject
DPs
from
binding
ziji.
However,
a
difference
in
person
features
is
not
a
sufficient
condition
for
the
blocking
effect.
 Instead,
 we
 see
 that
 subjects
 in
 a
 1>3
 configuration
 allow
 long‐distance
antecedents
but
subjects
in
a
3>1
configuration
block
long‐distance
antecedents.
Thus,
the
 interference
 pattern
 that
 emerges
 in
 the
 blocking
 effect
 is
 not
 symmetrical
 (see
examples
(1a‐g)).
1)
a)

 Zhangsani
zhidao
Lisij
bu


xihuan
zijii/j
 e)
 Nii





zhidao
Lisij

bu


xihuan
zijii/j
Zhagshan

know


Lisi

not

like






self
 
 You



know


Lisi


not

like






self
‘Zhangsan
 knew
 that
 Lisi
 did
 not
 like
 ‘You
 knew
 that
 Lisi
 did
 not
 like
me/himself’
you/himself
b)
 Woi
zhidao
Lisij
bu


xihuan
zijii/j
 f)
 Lisii



zhidao

Woj



bu


xihuan
ziji*i/j
I






know


Lisi

not

like






self
Lisi




know



I









not

like






self
‘I
 knew
 that
 Lisi
 did
 not
 like
 ‘Lisi
 knew
 that
 I
 did
 not
 like
me/himself
*him/myself’
c)
 Woi





zhidao
Nij



bu


xihuan
zijii/j
 g)
 Lisii





zhidao
Nij



bu


xihuan
ziji*i/j
I











know


you

not

like






self
 
 Lisi






know


you

not

like






self
‘I
 knew
 that
 you
 did
 not
 like
 ‘Lisi
 knew
 that
 you
 did
 not
 like
me/yourself’
*him/yourself’
d)
 Nii




zhidao
Woj
bu


xihuan
zijii/j
You


know


I






not

like






self
‘You
 knew
 that
 I
 did
 not
 like
you/myself’
Strikingly,
this
interference
pattern
replicates
a
pattern
of
intervention
that
is
known
as
the
 person­case
 constraint.
 Anagnostopoulou
 characterizes
 the
 PCC
 such
 that
 “[i]n
 a
combination
of
a
weak
direct
object
and
an
indirect
object
[clitic,
agreement
marker,
or
weak
pronoun],
if
there
is
a
third
person
it
has
to
be
the
direct
object”
(2005,
p.
203).
Compare
Tables
1
and
2.
INDIRECT

 DIRECT

 PCC
 
 HIGHEST
SUBJECT
 LOWEST
SUBJECT
 ZIJI
OBJECT
1
OBJECT
3
 �
PERSON
1
PERSON
3
LDR
�
1
2
2
1
�
�
1
2
2
1
�
�
2
 3
 �
 
 2
 3
 �
3
 1
 �
3
 1
 �
3
 2
 �
 
 3
 2
 �
Table
1
–
Interference
pattern
for
PCC
 
 







Table
2
–
Interference
pattern
for
ziji
Following
an
analysis
in
Cole,
et
al.
(2006),
I
propose
that
long‐distance
binding
of
ziji
is
the
result
of
covert
head
movement
and
that
ziji
is
sensitive
to
person
hierarchies
as
conceived

in
Bejar
and
Rezac
(2009).
These
two
facts
restrict
the
configurations
that
license
the
long‐distance
binding
of
ziji.
Iain Giblin (MIT)

2)
 [IP
Zhangsan
[I
zijii
]
[VP
yiwei
[IP
Lisi
[I
t’i
]
[VP
piping‐le
ti
]
]
]
]
Zhangsan



self









think






Lisi

















criticize‐Perf
In
 (2)
 above,
 each
 I0 
 agrees
 with
 its
 specifier
 and
 ziji
 must
 therefore
 agree
 with
 the
subject
 upon
 adjunction
 to
 I0 .
 
 However,
 if
 ziji’s
 ϕ‐features
 are
 structured
 so
 they
 are
sensitive
to
the
person
hierarchies
of
Bejar
and
Rezac
(2009,
see
Table
3
below)
we
can
generate
the
blocking
effect
and
its
asymmetrical
structure.
Table 2
Person specifications
C Y C L I C A G R E E 43
A: Person specifications B: Shorthand 1�2�3 C: Shorthand 2�1�3
3rd 2nd 1st 3rd 2nd 1st 3rd 2nd 1st
Table
3
–
Bejar
and
Rezac
person
hierarchy
/
articulated
probe
Let
us
assume
that
ziji
is
a
partially
articulated
probe
that
searches
for
[participant]
and
therefore
seeks
to
check
[3][2].
In
1/2
>
3
configurations
movement
of
ziji
to
the
lowest
I0 
 checks
 the
 [3]
 segment
 of
 the
 anaphor
 therefore
 allowing
 ziji
 to
 be
 valued
 by
 I0 .
However,
this
leaves
an
unchecked
[2].
Thus,
the
unchecked
[2]
on
the
anaphor
licenses
further
movement
of
ziji
to
the
higher
I0 
in
search
of
a
[+participant]
argument.
If
the
higher
I0 
has
obtained
[+participant]
features
through
agreement
with
the
subject,
then
ziji
can
adjoin
to
the
higher
I0 
and
valuation
can
take
place.
Thus,
a
higher
argument
can
be
 [+participant]
 and
 a
 lower
 argument
 can
 be
 [‐participant].
 However,
 the
 converse
does
 not
 hold.
 If
 ziji
 first
 adjoins
 to
 an
 I0 
 that
 is
 [+participant]
 both
 of
 ziji’s
 person
features
 ([3]
 and
 [2])
 will
 be
 checked
 leaving
 no
 residue
 that
 would
 license
 further
movement
(unless
the
higher
I0 
agrees
for
[+participant]).
Thus,
a
higher
[3]
argument
is
inaccessible
because
the
anaphor
has
been
marked
as
[+participant]
and
the
higher
I0 [�] [�] [�] [3] [3] [3] [3] [3] [3]
[participant] [participant] [2] [2] [1] [1]
[speaker] [1] [2]
(structure) [F] entails a feature (structure) [F′] if and only if [F′] is a subset (including identity)
of the least set containing [F]. For example, being specified as [speaker] entails being specified as
[participant] and as [�].
is
[‐participant].
The
proposed
analysis
has
some
welcome
consequences.
Firstly,
it
explains
the
blocking
effect.
Secondly,
it
provides
a
principled
explanation
of
the
asymmetry
in
the
blocking
effect
 that
 is
 not
 explained
 by
 the
 head
 movement
 approach
 alone.
 Thirdly,
 it
demonstrates
 that
 AGREE
 based
 approaches
 to
 binding
 offer
 principled
 empirical
coverage
 and
 can
 help
 explain
 some
 of
 the
 more
 recalcitrant
 phenomena
 of
 binding
theory.
References
Anagnostopoulou,
E.
(2005).
Strong
and
weak
person
restrictions:
A
feature
checking
analysis.
In
 L.
 Heggie
 and
 F.
 Ordonez
 (Eds.),
 Clitics
 and
 Affixation
 (pp.
 199‐235).
 Amsterdam:
 John
Benjamins.
5 These entailments translate into degrees of privative feature specification
through a heuristic of logical underspecification, where �-values are differentiated only by the
presence versus absence of features, as in table 2 (A). This requires specifying default interpretations
for underspecified representations: for example, [�] is common to all persons, but a bare
[�] feature is interpreted as 3rd person.
(6) Entailment: [speaker] N [participant] N [�]
We adopt these feature specifications, but for convenience we employ a shorthand from here on:
we write [�] as [3], [participant] as [2], and [speaker] as [1], and we refer to each of [3], [2],
and [1] as a segment, meaning ‘feature in a hierarchical feature structure’. The representations
corresponding to table 2 (A) in this abbreviated system are given in table 2 (B). The notation is
convenient because the interpretation can be transparently read by inspecting the bottommost
segment in the feature bundle. It is important, however, that these segments not be read as person
categories. For example, [1] in table 2 (B) does not refer to the category of 1st person; rather, it
refers to [speaker]. It is only the feature structure as a whole that corresponds to a traditional
category like 1st person.
The system assumes limited variation in the selection of features (see Harley and Ritter
2002). Of relevance below will be that some languages differentiate 1st and 2nd persons by
specifying the latter as [addressee] rather than by specifying the former as [speaker], and by
contrast interpreting a bare [participant] as 1st person. This is shown in table 2 (C).
In light of this feature-theoretic approach to �-specification, matching requirements can be
relativized to specific �-structures by manipulating the specifications of a probe: the more highly
articulated a probe is, the more highly specified a DP must be to match all of a probe’s features
(cf. Béjar 2003). (7)–(9) show this for the three possible articulations of the probe: a flat probe
that is just [u�] ([u3] in our notation) in (7), a partially articulated probe in (8), and a fully
articulated probe in (9). For each probe, a DP as highly specified as (or more highly specified
Bejar,
S.
and
Rezac,
M.
(2003).
Person
licensing
and
the
derivation
of
PCC
effects.
In
Y.
Roberge
and
 A.
 T.
 Perez‐Leroux
 (Eds.),
 Romance
 linguistics:
 Theory
 and
 acquisition
 (pp.
 49‐62).
Anderson’s (1992) [�me, �you].
Amsterdam:
John
Benjamins.
5 The entailment relation between feature segments is integral to our formalization of the operations Match and
Value, as we will show directly. This excludes feature systems that do not encode intrinsic entailment relations, like
Cole,
P.,
Hermon,
G.,
and
Huang,
C.‐T.
J.
(2006).
Long‐Distance
Binding
in
Asian
Languages,
The
Blackwell
Companion
to
Syntax.
Vol.
3,
Ch.
39.
London:
Blackwell.

Yael Greenberg & Keren Khrizman (Bar Ilan)
Bixlal: A general strengthening operator in Hebrew
Basic observations: bixlal is the Hebrew translation of the NPI at all, as in (1). However,
Migron (2003) shows that, unlike at all, bixlal can also appear in positive (and other UE)
constructions (as in (2),(4),(5)). In addition, we get different interpretations of bixlal depending
on whether it is stressed ((1)-(2)) or not ((3)-(5)):
(1) dani lo gavoha [bixlal]F (“Danny is not tall at all‟)
(2) A: Yosi is tall! B: ve-dani [bixlal]F gavoha (“And Danny is clearly tall / even taller”)
(3)A: Are they married? (B: hem bixlal lo [makirim]F!) (“They don‟t even [know]F each other”)
(4) A: Do they know each other? B: hem bixlal [nesuim]F! (“They are even [married]F!”)
(5) A:Rina is from Jerusalem B: lo,hi bixlal mi-[Tel Aviv]Contrastive F (“No, she is actually from
[Tel Aviv]Contrastive F")
Analysis Following a preliminary suggestion in Migron (2003), we suggest that bixlal p
indicates that p is stronger than its contextually salient alternatives, where its particular
effects depend on the interaction between (a) the nature of the strengthening relation (b) the
nature and placement of focus and (c) the polarity of the sentence.
We start with (1)-(4), in which p is stronger than q iff p entails q and q does not entail p.
When focus is on the predicate (as in (3)-(4)) we get standard “Roothian” alternatives to p. With
positive and negative cases (as in (4), (3) respectively) the context has to contain a salient
alternative which is weaker or stronger than p, respectively. In contrast, when bixlal itself is
focused the alternatives are different interpretations of p. For example, in the negative (or DE)
(1) p is “Danny is not tall under the most liberal precision standard”, and the alternatives are of
the form “Danny is not tall under a stricter precision standard” (as in Krifka 1995)).
Unlike Migron‟s view, we show that bixlal is also felicitous with non-entailment,
evaluative scales, where p is stronger than q since it is considered more significant than q, as in
(6) (cf. Beaver & Clark 2008 on only and Amaral & del Prete (2010) on almost):
(6) moshe zaxa be dekel ha zahav ve yosi bixlal zaxa [ba oskar]F
„Moshe won the Golden Palm and Yosi even won the [Oscar]F.‟
We discuss two potential mechanisms in the case of stressed bixlal. (a) the stress on the
operator induces an alternative operator (cf. Beck (2006), Fery (to appear)). This direction is
supported by the existence of sentences like (7):
(7) efSar liknot Sam dagim [bixlal]F ve-dgey yam [bifratF]
"You can buy there fish in general, and sea fish in particular"
But since (a) cannot account for the range of readings expressed by bixlal we suggest (b) The
stress the operator indicates no stress on any other element in p (cf. Egg & Zimmerman 2011)
and hence no “Roothian” alternatives. But since the strengthening semantics of bixlal makes
reference to alternatives, we end up with different alternative versions of p. We support (b) with
e.g. the behavior of the Hebrew stressed stam (Orenstein & Greenberg (2010)).
Turning now to (5), which involves contrastive focus, and in which p is neither stronger
nor weaker than q, we show that the presence of bixlal in such cases indicates „significant
contrast” between p and its q. E.g. bixlal in (5) indicates that being from Tel Aviv is
significantly incompatible with being from Jerusalem. Thus, for example, in a context where this
incompatibility is not significant (e.g. in an international forum where each participant has to say
where he or she is from) the use of bixlal in (5) is odd.

To capture this 'stronger contrast' use we rely on Umbach‟s (2007) idea that contrast as
involves both similarity and dissimilarity, and make use of Morzycki‟s (2011) alternative-based
model for capturing degrees of (im)precision based on similarity, (originally developed to
analyze metalinguistic comparatives). In this system, the interpretation function is relativized to
contexts and degrees of precision (which are based on degrees of similarity). E.g. [[tel aviv]] d,C
= {fl: f �d,C tel aviv} (l is location}, i.e. the set of locations sufficiently similar (similar to a
degree d) in C to Tel Aviv, Where d is a real number in the interval [0,1].
Using this system, we propose that using standard contrastive focus on an element in p in
the presence of an alternative q in a context c, the speaker indicates that the degree of precision
w.r.t p is true is not necessarily 1 (i.e. the speaker can consider "He is from [Aviv]Contrastive F even
if Danny lives close to Tel Aviv), but that this degree of precision is higher than the degree w.r.t.
q is true (e.g. in (5) „Tel Aviv‟ is taken as not „similar enough‟ to „Jerusalem‟), thus making q
false in c. Crucially, the addition of bixlal makes the contrast significant. This is captured by
taking the degree of precision w.r.t p is true to be much higher than the degree of precision w.r.t.
q is true (so p is considered highly dissimilar from q), Thus, bixlal leads again to strengthening,
but not of p (relative to q), but of the contrast created by using p+contrastive focus in C. It may
thus be seen here as a strengthening operator on a speech act (cf. Cohen & Krifka (to appear)).
We compare our analysis of bixlal to Anderssen‟s (2006) analysis of the similar German
uberhaupt in terms of widening, where, e.g. the German counterpart of (8) involves widening of
the comparative class needed for fixing the standard associated with the adjective:
(8) A: Danny is tall for his age B: hu [bixlal]F gavoha („He is tall in general‟).
We show, however that bixlal is felicitous also in cases where no domain is relevant (e.g. (3-5)),
as well as in cases where the domain doesn‟t change (9), or even gets narrower (10):
(9) biSvil yalda bat 10, rina lo gvoha [bixlal]F (‘For a ten years old girl, Rina is not tall at all’)
(10) ba-balSanut hu tov, ve-be-semantika hu [bixlal]F tov!(‘He is good at linguistics, and he is
even better / very good at semantics’)
This, as well as similar data with multidimensional adjectives (Sassoon 2010), indicates
that widening is just one of the ways in which strengthening can be satisfied with bixlal.
Moreover, unlike e.g. any (under Kadmon & Landman 1993, Chierchia (2006), strengthening
seems lexically associated with bixlal and not triggered by informaitvity-based considerations.
This conclusion is further supported by the compatibility of bixlal with nonentailment scales,
which do not involve informativity. Thus, bixlal can be seen as a lexicalization of an emphatic
operator (perhaps similar to Krifka‟s EMPHATIC ASSERT operator).
Finally, given Beaver & Clark's (2008) (B&C), model nonstressed bixlal is predicted to
conventionally associate with focus, since it can be taken to impose an ordering on the set of
alternatives in the CQ and to indicate that p is stronger than a salient alternative in this set.
Empirically, however, unlike rak („only‟) and tamid („always‟), which behave as predicted in
B&C‟s tests (they pattern as conventionalized and free, respectively), the behavior of bixlal is
not consistent with e.g. extraction and reduced pronouns. We examine potential explanations for
this behavior, and connect it to the fact that, unlike rak, bixlal operates on a completely different
scale of alternatives when stressed.

Daniel Gutzmann (Frankfurt) & Katharina Hartmann (Humboldt)
Dissociating verum from focus
The term verum focus as it is commonly used refers to a special kind of H*L accent that instead of
focusing the accent bearing expression, is used to focus a covert operator called verum that provides
the truth value/polarity of the propositional content of a sentence (Höhle 1992). While this focus
accent thesis, or fat as we call this approach henceforth, may be plausible for languages like German
or English, we argue that it is not so if typological more diverse languages are taken into consideration
as well. Instead, we suggest an alternative thesis, which we call the lexical operator thesis or lot.
According to the fat, verum focus is what the term suggests: it is an ordinary focus accent on
the covert verum operator (Büring 2006; Höhle 1992; Zimmermann & Hole 2008). In order for the
fat to work properly, verum must be present in every sentence and the accent focusses it. In order
to ensure that, in the absence of a verum accent, verum has no efficient contribution to the meaning
of a sentence, it has to be rendered as an identity function on truth values/propositions, therefore
being the reverse of negation (Zimmermann & Hole 2008). The fat can be summarized as follows.
(fat) verum focus ∶= covert propositional identity function + focus marking
In contrast, the lot does not assume an omnipresent identity function. Instead, velum is rendered as
a conversational operator (cf. Gutzmann & Castroviejo Miró 2011; Romero & Han 2004) for different
formalizations of this idea) that, by convention, is realized by an accent.
(lot) verum focus ∶= conversational operator realized by accent
In languages like German and English, this happens to be realized by a pitch accent just like focus
is. However, this rather is a kind of homonymie. According to the lot, verum focus is no focus at
all, despite the traditional term.
Both theories make different predictions. (i) Means of focus/verum marking. Since verum focus
is focus, the fat predicts that verum focus is marked by the same means as focus, whereas the lot
does not predict that there is a necessary overlap between verum and focus marking strategy. (ii) Cooccurrences
of focus and verum. If a language exhibits multiple foci, the FAT predicts that verum and
focus can also co-occur. Furthermore, the co-occurrence of verum and focus is not to be expected
if a languages prohibits multiple foci. In contrast, the LOT does not predict such a correlation and,
ceteris paribus, all four combinations should be possible (Of course, there could be other reasons
why one or the other combination is not possible or widespread). (iii) Association with focus. Since,
according to the fat, the verum operator is an ordinary focus, it should be possible to have focus
sensitive operators to be associated with verum focus. The lot excludes this possibility.
While it is hard to differentiate between the two theses on the basis of German or English alone,
taking into account languages that differ from the well-studied languages can help to evaluate them
properly. We will present arguments for Chadic languages that favor the lot over the fat.
Ad (i). In contrast to intonational languages like German or English, that do not exhibit formal
differences in the marking of focus and verum, the realization of verum differs considerably from the
marking of constituent focus in the Chadic languages. In Bura, for instance, subject focus is marked
by the subsequent focus marker án (Hartmann & Zimmermann t.a.), cf. (1a). In contrast, verum is
marked by the particle ku, as in (1b).
(1) a. subject focus: án
[Pindar]F án sá mbal.
P. FM drink beer
“Pindar drank beer.”
b. verum: ku
Pindár ku sá mbal.
P. VERUM drink beer
“Pindar did drink beer.”
Chadic languages exhibit quite a variety in focus marking. Crucially, focus marking formally differs
1

from verum marking in all languages we investigated so far (South Marghi, Bura (Central Chadic),
Hausa, Bole, Ngizim (West Chadic)).
Ad (ii). Like English or German, Bura allows for multiple focus and/or question marking:
(2) a. Ga masta mi ama ri?
2SG.S buy what where Q
b.
“What did you buy where?”
Iya masta [kwara ni]F [akwa kwasuku]F, iya masta …
1SG.S buy donkey DEF at market 1SG.S buy
“I bought the donkey at the market, I bought …”
However, contrary to what the fat predicts, verum cannot co-occur with wh-questions and focus in
the Chadic languages, see Bura again for illustration.
(3) a. Wán (*ku) sá mbal? *subj wh + verum
b. [Pindár]F án (*ku) sá mbal. *subj foc + verum
intended: “Pindar did drink the beer.”
While the English and German pattern does not conflict with the fat, the Chadic data is at odds
with it and favors the lot. We leave it for further investigation the availability of the remaining two
configurations.
Ad (iii). Focus sensitive particles are generally impossible in the presence of the verum operator
ku in Bura as shown in (4) (Hartmann, Jacob & Zimmermann 2008: 35). The focus sensitive particle
daci, which may associate at a distance (Hartmann & Zimmermann 2008), neither associates with
the contrastively focused verb, nor with the verum operator itself. This would be unexpected given
the fat.
(4) Mwala ní adí tsá ní wá ama tsá (*ku) buhá ní daci.
woman DEF EXIST hit 3SG NEG but 3SG VERUM push 3SG only
“The woman didn’t hit him, but she only pushed him”.
We conclude that both analyses of verum are in principle able to account for the observed facts in the
intonational languages. The Chadic languages, however, do not show evidence in favour of a focus
accent analysis of verum. Instead they support a lexical analysis of verum as an epistemic conversational
operator, an approach that disassociates verum from the notion of focus. If we generalize
these finding to languages like English or German – which gave rise to the focus analysis in first place
– the accent pattern traditionally associated with verum focus is not licensed by the focus status of
the covert verum operator. Instead, the accent itself is the realization of the lexical operator. That is,
verum focus is no focus at all.
Büring, Daniel. 2006. Intonation und Informationsstruktur.
Grammatik und darüber hinaus. In Hardarik Blühdorn, Eva
Breindl & Ulrich Hermann Waßner eds., Text — Verstehen,
144–163. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter.
Gutzmann, Daniel & Elena Castroviejo Miró. 2011. The dimensions
of verum. In Olivier Bonami & Patricia Cabredo-
Hofherr eds., Empirical Issues in Syntax and Semantics 8,
143–165.
Hartmann, Katharina, Peggy Jacob & Malte Zimmermann. 2008.
Focus asymmetries in Bura. In Shinshiro Ishihara, S. Petrova
& Anne Schwarz eds., Interdisciplinary Studies on Information
Structure 10, 45–92. Potsdam: Universitätsverlag Potsdam.
2
Hartmann, Katharina & Malte Zimmermann. 2008. Not only
“only” but “too” too. Alternative sensitive particles in Bura.
Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 12. 196–211.
Hartmann, Katharina & Malte Zimmermann. t.a. Focus marking
in Bura. Semantic uniformity matches syntactic heterogeneity.
Natural Language and Linguistic Theory.
Höhle, Tilman N. 1992. Über Verum-Fokus im Deutschen. In
Joachim Jacobs ed., Informationsstruktur und Grammatik,
112–141. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.
Romero, Maribel & Chung-hye Han. 2004. On negative yes/no
questions. Linguistics and Philosophy 27(5). 609–658.
Zimmermann, Malte & Daniel Hole. 2008. “Predicate focus,
verum focus, verb focus. Similarities and difference”. Talk at
the Potsdam-London IS Meeting. 12. 12. 2008.

When Maria is considered to be he. Gender mismatch effects during pronoun resolution
Pronoun resolution is an integral part of sentence comprehension. To accomplish this task, the
parser uses various sources of information, including syntactic, semantic and pragmatic information
(for an overview see Garnham, 2001). With regard to syntactic information, we can
distinguish two kinds of constraints: phrase-structural constraints which restrict the set of candidate
antecedents in terms of phrase-structure geometry (e.g., Binding Principles, Chomsky,
1981) and morpho-syntactic constraints which restrict the set of candidate antecedents in terms
of feature compatibility. The online-application of both types of constraints has been attested in
prior studies (e.g. Badecker & Straub, 2002; Kennison, 2003; Sturt, 2003; van Gompel & Liversedge,
2003; Kazanina, Lau, Lieberman, Yoshida & Phillips, 2007). The exact timing, however,
remains an open issue, and in particular the question whether syntactic constraints constrain the
search for an antecedent from the onset on or only later in a second step evaluating candidates.
The present study, which focuses on person, gender and number agreement, addresses two main
questions: (i) Do agreement requirements exclude featurally inappropriate NPs immediately or
only at a later stage? (ii) Are there differential effects of person versus gender agreement? The
study makes use of a mismatch paradigm: the pronoun is preceded by an NP which matches
or mismatches the pronoun in agreement features. In contrast to previous studies (e.g., Kennison,
2003), the mismatch sentences do not represent incoherent discourses lacking a proper
antecedent for the pronoun. As shown in (1), the pronoun is sandwiched between two potential
antecedents – one, the ‘distractor’, preceding the pronoun and another one, the actual antecedent,
following it.
(1)
Als
When
Distractor
Maria
M.
Jana Häussler (Potsdam) & Markus Bader (Frankfurt)
hörte,
heard
dass
that
er
he
abreist,
departs
war
was
der Mann
the man
Pronoun Antecedent
schon
already
weg
away
The cataphoric pronoun is contained in a fronted adjunct clause, for which Gordon & Hendrick
(1997) have shown that cataphoric reference is highly acceptable. In the experiments the fronted
adjunct clause is complex itself consisting of a matrix clause containing the distractor and
an embedded clause containing the pronoun. The actual antecedent occurs in the main clause
thereafter.
We present two self-paced reading experiments that investigate sentences following the schema
in (1). Both experiments vary the feature specifications of the distractor (1st person pronoun, feminine
proper name or masculine proper name). Experiment 1 furthermore varies the pronoun,
which was either er (‘he’) or sie (‘she’). Experiment 2 concentrates on the number ambiguous
pronoun sie (‘she/they’) and varies its number specification signaled by subject-verb agreement
on the corresponding verb, cf. (2).
(2) Als Maria erfuhr, . . . (‘When Maria heard’)
a. dass sie abreisen muss, hatte die Tante die Stadt längst verlassen.
that she depart must.SG had.SG the aunt the town already left
‘When Maria heard that she had to depart the aunt had already left the town.’
b. dass sie abreisen müssen, hatten die Tanten die Stadt längst verlassen.
that they depart must.PL had.PL the aunts the town already left
‘When Maria heard that they had to depart the aunts had already left the town.’
1

Reading times in the pronoun region are prolonged when pronoun and distratcor mismatch in
gender. In Experiment 1, the effect starts on the pronoun itself and lasts through the whole
embedded clause; in Experiment 2, the effect is slightly delayed and starts only immediately
after the pronoun. We interpret this mismatch penalty as an indication for the parser’s attempt to
link the pronoun to the inappropriate distractor. Despite the feature incompatibility and although
the pronoun occurs in a configuration where it could well be (and in fact is) a cataphor, the parser
yields to the pressure of establishing an antecedent as soon as possible. In a way, this pressure
overrules the agreement constraint and lets the parser ignore the alternative offered by binding
constraints, namely establishing a cataphoric binding relation. At the same time, the agreement
violation is noticed as reflected in the prolonged reading times. Hence, the agreement constraint
is active but it does not guide the parser’s first choice. Taken together, this argues for a twostep
model: first a referential link is established and only in a second step its appropriateness
is evaluated. However, gender and person features are treated differently. Notably, a mismatch
effect occurs only in case of a gender mismatch but not with a person conflict. Apparently,
the first-person pronoun distractor is not considered a potential antecedent for the third-person
pronoun. We conclude that person features restrict the set of candidate antecedents immediately.
We will discuss our findings in the context of the feature delay hypothesis (van Gompel &
Liversedge, 2003) and the active search hypothesis (Kazanina et al., 2007).
Furthermore, Experiment 2 provides evidence for the hypothesis that the parser’s association
with a once established antecedent is really strong. Remember that the pronoun sie is number
ambiguous. Disambiguation is achieved by subject-verb agreement with the corresponding verb
(muss/müssen in (2)). While reading times for this verb do not show any difference between
singular and plural in sentences with a 1st-person distractor, disambiguation towards plural
causes a processing disruption in sentences with a feminine distractor. To our view this suggests
that just adjusting the pronoun’s number feature is basically costless whereas breaking up the
link to a seeming antecedent is particularly hard.
Literatur
Badecker, W. & Straub, K. (2002). The processing role of structural constraints on the interpretation
of pronouns and anaphors. Journal of Experimental Psychology 28, 748–769.
Chomsky, N. (1981). Lectures on government and binding. Dordrecht: Foris.
Garnham, A. (2001). Mental models and the interpretation of anaphora. Hove: Psychology
Press.
Gordon, P. C. & Hendrick, R. (1997). Intuitive knowledge of linguistic co-reference. Cognition
62, 325–370.
Kazanina, N., Lau, E. F., Lieberman, M., Yoshida, M. & Phillips, C. (2007). The effect of
syntactic constraints on the processing of backwards anaphora. Journal of Memory and Language
56, 384–409.
Kennison, S. M. (2003). Comprehending the pronouns her, him, and his: Implications for theories
of referential processing. Journal of Memory and Language 49, 335–352.
Sturt, P. (2003). The time-course of the application of binding constraints in reference resolution.
Journal of Memory and Language 48, 542–562.
van Gompel, R. P. & Liversedge, S. P. (2003). The influence of morphological information on
cataphoric pronoun assignment. Journal of Experimental Psychology 29, 128–139.
2

Claire Halpert (MIT)
Structural case and the nature of vP in Zulu
Recent work has demonstrated that in Icelandic and Faroese, a nominal can move around a head
before the head probes (Holmberg and Hroársdóttir 2004; Sigur�sson and Holmberg 2008, Asarina
2011). As a result of this order of movement and probing, the trace of the moved nominal does
not act as an intervener. I show that we find independent evidence for this type of ordering in two
syntactic puzzles in Zulu: (1) the ‘conjoint/disjoint’ alternation (van der Spuy 1993; Buell 2005)
and (2) the distribution of augmentless nominals (Buell 2011). I argue for a unified account of these
two puzzles, drawing on recent work that argues for the ability of syntactic operations to be countercyclic
and asymmetrical without yielding a crash (Ndayiragije 1999, Legate 2005, Preminger 2009,
2010, 2011). This analysis also suggests that nominals in Zulu are subject to the Case Filter (contra
Harford Perez 1985, Diercks to appear, a. o. on the lack of case effects in Bantu).
Puzzle 1: Conjoint/disjoint. In certain tenses, Zulu verbs alternate between a ‘conjoint’ form
(marked by Ø in present) and a ‘disjoint’ form (marked by -ya- in present). This alternation is
syntactically conditioned: the conjoint form is used if vP contains overt material other than the
verb and the disjoint form is used if not (van der Spuy 1993; Buell 2005, 2006):
(1) uSipho u- *(ya)- dla (2) ku- (*ya)- dla uSipho (3) uSipho u- (*ya)- dla iqanda
1Sipho 1s- *(YA)- eat 17s- (*YA)- eat 1Sipho 1Sipho 1s- (*YA)- eat 5egg
‘Sipho is eating.’
‘SIPHO’s eating.’
‘Sipho is eating an egg.’
Puzzle 2: Augmentless nominal distribution. Nominals in Zulu are typically marked with an
initial vowel (the ‘augment’) that reflects noun class. In a subset of environments that permit
augmented nominals, this vowel may be omitted. The omission of the augment is subject to various
conditions (see Buell 2011), but the ones I focus on here are structural: augmentless nominals must
appear inside vP, and are limited to certain configurations within vP.
(4) a. SVO with augmentless object
c. �VSO +augment -augment
umuntu a- ka-dli qanda
a- ku-dli muntu iqanda
1person NEG1Seat NEG egg
NEG17Seat NEG 1person 5egg
‘A/the person didn’t eat any egg.’
‘NOBODY is eating the/an/any egg.’
b. *VSO -augment -augment
d. *VSO +augment -augment
*a-ku-dl-i muntu qanda
a- ku-dli umuntu qanda
NEG-17S-eat-NEG 1person egg
NEG17Seat NEG 1person 5egg
Solution. The analysis depends on three components–failure to agree, asymmetrical case relationships,
and the ability of an argument to move around a head before that head probes.
Recent work by Preminger (2009, 2010, 2011) suggests that it is not obligatory for a probing
head to undergo Agreement in order for a derivation to converge. Preminger argues, however, that
Agree itself is not optional: heads probe obligatorily and so will always Agree if a goal is present.
If a probe fails to find a goal, the derivation will still converge as long as probing was attempted.
We can understand the Zulu conjoint/disjoint pattern in terms of Preminger’s proposal: the head
responsible for the alternation is an (unrelativized) probe that searches the vP for an XP to agree
with. When the vP is empty, and thus lacks a goal, the derivation still converges, as predicted by
Preminger. In Zulu we see a morphological marker of this failure: where Agree does not occur, the
probing head spells out as -ya-, rather than Ø.
I propose that augmented nominals, which exhibit no structural restrictions, are inherently cased
in Zulu. Augmentless nominals, on the other hand, do display structural restrictions in line with
classic case effects. I argue that this structurally-restricted distribution is evidence for structural
case assignment within vP. In line with Ndayiragije (1999), the case probe can check even DPs that
1

don’t need case, such as augmented nominals. However, while for Ndayiragije Bantu nominals
generally don’t require case, and thus the case probing is always driven by the probing head in
Bantu languages, I argue that augmentless nominals do require case in Zulu and must be checked
to prevent a crash. The result of the possibility for asymmetrical probe-goal relationships is the
following: the case-licening head does not specifically probe for an augmentless nominal and will
not cause a crash regardless of whether it finds any XP to check. Augmentless nominals that are
not checked, however, do cause a crash and thus only surface in particular configurations.
With these concepts in place, we can understand the mechanism driving conjoint/disjoint alternations
and augmentless nominal distribution. Both phenomena depend on a head, L, that is
immediately above vP (because vP-internal subjects are in its probing domain) and that probes for
the highest XP. We can understand the patterns in (4) in terms of this structure: the licensing head
probes vP and checks the highest XP, which is the object in (4a) and the subject in (4b,c,d). In
(4a), the object is augmentless but is licensed through Agree with the functional head. Similarly,
the augmentless subjects in (4b,c) Agree with and are licensed by the head. In (4c,d) the construction
is ungrammatical because of the presence of a lower augmentless nominal: the object. Here,
the subject intervenes and prevents the object from being licensed, causing a crash. As discussed
above, all of the forms in (4) use conjoint morphology because the licensing head is able to Agree.
In cases where nothing appears in vP, the licensing head fails to Agree, but the derivation still
converges, with the head spelling out as -ya-. The proposed structure is schematized below in (5):
(5) LP
L(icenser) vP
S
augment
optional
v o VP
V O
augment
necessary
(6) LP
L
ya
tS
vP
v o VP
V
probing
fails!
The timing of operations. Both puzzles described here are sensitive to syntactic movement. The
head L o treats constructions in which elements move out of vP during the derivation in the same
way as constructions in which the vP is empty throughout. This is a familiar pattern from Icelandic
and Faroese, where dative experiencers are able to move around a number probe before it probes
(Holmberg & Hróarsdóttir 2004, a.o.). In Icelandic, however, we find optionality in agreement,
indicative of both orders of movement and probing. If operations are freely ordered within the
phase (Chomsky 2005), this is an expected result. In Zulu, however, we only see the counter-cyclic
movement-before-probing order. I propose that this pattern is due to the Activity Condition: nominals
in Zulu cannot undergo A movement after entering into a case-checking relationship with
L (Chomsky 2000, 2001). While recent work has suggested that Bantu languages lack both case
and Activity effects in the TP domain (Carstens 2011, Carstens and Diercks to appear, Diercks to
appear), I argue that we find both case and Activity at work in the lower part of the clause in Zulu.
Selected References: Buell, L. 2005. Issues in Zulu Morphosyntax. PhD diss. Carstens, V. 2011.
Hyperactivity and Hyperagreement in Bantu. Lingua. Diercks, M. to appear. Parameterizing case
theory: evidence from Bantu. Syntax. Holmberg, A. & T. Hroársdóttir 2004. Agreement and
movement in Icelandic raising constructions. Lingua. Ndayiragije, J. 1999. Checking economy.
LI. Preminger, O. 2009. Breaking agreements: distinguishing agreement and clitic doubling by
their failures. LI. Van der Spuy, A. 1993. Dislocated noun phrases in Nguni. Lingua.
2

Bart Hollebrandse, Petra Hendriks & Jacolien van Rij (Groningen)
Eye gaze patterns reveal subtle discourse effects on object pronoun resolution
Discourse coherence plays a major role in interpreting sentences. This paper shows
that adults are sensitive to very subtle information from discourse. To do this, we use
the well-known phenomenon of Delayed Principle B Effect (Chien and Wexler, 1990;
Koster, 1993) and show that children are capable of circumventing the DPBE on the
basis of subtle discourse information.
Issue Spenader, Smits & Hendriks (2009) found that coherent discourse helps the
DPBE-child to find the correct referent for a pronoun. The discourse-introduction of a
single referent made the effect disappear. By adding a condition in which we varied
the order of referents as potentials antecedents for object pronouns we are zooming
into subtle discourse prominence effects such as first-mention bias (cf subject
pronouns in Arnold, Eisenband, Brown-Schmidt & Trueswell (2000)).
Our Study We have not only collected accuracy as a measure, but also eye-gaze.
It is especially eye-gaze which can give us subtle online insights into the resolution of
pronouns and the discourse effects on it. We tested the Agent–Patient order, the order
Patient-Agent and the introduction of a single referent (1)-(3).
(1) Double Topic Agent-Patient Condition
Hier zie je een olifant en een dino. De olifant heeft hem met een hamer geslagen.
here see you an elephant and a dinosaur. The elephant has him with a hammer hit
“Here you see an elephant and a dinosaur. The elephant has hit him with a
hammer.”
(2) Single Topic Condition
Hier zie je een dino. De olifant heeft hem met een hamer geslagen.
here see you a dinosaur. The elephant has him with a hammer hit
“Here you see a dinosaur. The elephant has hit him with a hammer.”
(3) Double Topic Patient-Agent Condition
Hier zie je een dino en een olifant. De olifant heeft hem met een hamer geslagen.
here see you a dinoaur and an elephant. The elephant has him with a hammer hit
“Here you see a dinosaur and an elephant. The elephant has hit him with a
hammer.”
Participants and Design 33 Dutch children between the ages 4;2 and 6;5 (mean=
5;4) were tested on the conditions (1) - (3), as well as 37 adults, using a Picture-
Verification task. Each participant saw 48 items (16 items introducing two referents,
divided equally in the two orders and testing pronouns and reflexives; 16 items
introducing single referents, testing pronouns and reflexives; 16 fillers). All items
were tested in matched and mismatched cases, but participants saw only one variant
of each item.
Results The data was analyzed by comparing linear mixed-effects models
(including the maximum random effects structure supported by the data) to test the
effects of Context, Match and Group. In addition to a significant main effect of Match
(χ2()=), showing that children are more likely to say yes than no, we found a marginal
effect of introduction of reference (χ2(1)= 18.621; p < .001) on children’s off-line
performance (yes/no-answers) on the task: children perform more adult-like in the
Single Topic condition than the Agent-Patient Condition (β=0.860, SE=0.376, zvalue=2.288,
p=.022), and perform better in the Patient-Agent Condition than in the
Agent-Patient Condition (β=-0831, SE=0.476, z-value=-1.747, p=.081). This shows
that children are indeed capable of resolving the DPBE by use of discourse clues.

Adults show ceiling performance in the offline answers. However, in their gazebehavior,
adults show an effect of Context (see Figure 1). Adults look more at the
patient in the Agent-Patient order (1) than in the other two referent introductions,
whereas children do not show differences in gaze behavior between the different
conditions. In the second 500 ms bin (500-100 ms from the onset of the anaphor) of
the mismatch-items we found a marginal significant interaction of Context and
AgeGroup (χ2(2)=5.40; p=.067).
Conclusions Our findings support two important points: 1. Children are sensitive
to very subtle effects of discourse prominence such as topicality and the first mention
bias. This is shown in their offline data, but data of younger children alludes to online
differences as well. 2. The adult online data clearly shows a different gaze pattern for
the Agent-Patient introduction than for the other ones. This online finding supports
the idea that different referent introductions, the Agent-Patient order, have an effect
on pronoun resolution.
patient
equal
agent
patient
equal
agent
Adults
0 500 1000 1500
Children
0 500 1000 1500
Figure 1: Eye gaze for pronoun resolution in the mismatched case (0 indicates onset
of the pronoun).
Arnold, J. E., Eisenband, J. G., Brown-Schmidt, S. & Trueswell, J. C. (2000). The
rapid use of gender information: evidence of the time course of pronoun
resolution from eyetracking. Cognition, 76, B13–B26.
Chien, Y. C., & Wexler, K. (1990). Children's Knowledge of Locality Conditions in
Binding as Evidence for the Modularity of Syntax and Pragmatics. Language
Acquisition, 1(3), 225-295.
Koster, C. (1993). Errors in anaphora acquisition. Doctoral dissertation, Utrecht
University, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Spenader, J., Smits, E. J., & Hendriks, P. (2009). Coherent discourse solves the
Pronoun Interpretation Problem. Journal of Child Language, 36(1), 23-52.
CAP
CPA
S
CAP
CPA
S

Eliminating rightward movement: Extraposition as flexible linearisation of adjuncts
Traces were introduced into syntactic theory to serve two purposes: they allowed displaced
elements to be construed as semantically related to their pre-movement positions, and allowed
constraints on the locality of movement to be stated. These concerns pertain not only to the
more canonical instances of leftward movement, but also to apparent instances of rightward
movement: the relative clause must be interpreted as a modifier of ‘book’ in (1), and must be
ruled to have violated some constraint on locality in (2).
(1) A book appeared [which was written by Chomsky]
(2) * It was believed [that a book appeared] by everybody [which was written by Chomsky]
The locality constraints on rightward movement have long been known to differ from those on
leftward movement, raising significant theoretical issues: (i) why should there be two kinds of
movement? and (ii) why should the two kinds correlate so precisely with the linear direction
of the displacement? We propose an account of the interpretive and locality properties of this
extraposition phenomenon that does not involve movement or traces. We instead rely only on
the independently-motivated derivational flexibility in the introduction of adjuncts proposed by
Hunter (2010), thereby unifying extraposition of adjuncts with the well-known flexibility in (3)
and with the anti-reconstruction properties of adjuncts discussed by Lebeaux (1988) in (4).
(3) a. Read a book quietly (is what) John did (‘quietly’ interpreted and linearised as part of VP)
b. Read a book (is what) John did quietly (‘quietly’ interpreted but not linearised as part of VP)
(4) a. * Which argument that Johni is a genius did hei believe?
b. Which argument that Johni made did hei believe?
A central assumption of Hunter’s analysis is that each maximal projection is a spellout domain.
Hence a derivation is naturally partitioned into “chunks”. During each chunk C, there is
a single syntactic head X such that every merge step in C establishes either a complement or
a specifier of X. At the end of this chunk, spellout applies and produces an atomic word-like
object, lacking internal syntax but with the semantics, phonology, and formal features of the derivedXP,
which can participate in a subsequent chunk of the derivation. Under this conception,
“adjunction” of an elementAtakes place whenAis introduced into the derivational workspace
but never merged. As before, semantic interpretation and linearization of A take place at the
point of spellout, but, because of the absence of merger, these processes proceed without the
benefit of the configurational guidance that governs the interpretation and linearization of arguments,
e.g. the UTAH and the LCA. Hunter (2010) argues that this derivational dichotomy
is supported by the interpretive and ordering flexibility found in adjuncts but not arguments.
Typically, adjunction ofAtoXP takes place during the chunk where its semantic associateXP
is constructed. This is what takes place in (3a): ‘quietly’ is introduced during the derivational
chunk of the VP it modifies and is spelled out at the conclusion of this chunk, concatenating
‘quietly’ at the end of the VP. This allows fronting of ‘read a book quietly’.
Note though that because adjunction
of A to XP does not require
reference to the internal syntax of
XP, there is an alternative: A can
be introduced and spelled out during
the next higher chunk, say with head
Y . Because spellout has access not
Tim Hunter & Robert Frank (Yale)
John
VP
read [a book]DP
TP
quietly
quietly
T [read a book]VP
spellout
−−−−−−→ read a book quietly
spellout
−−−−−−→ John read a book quietly
only to Y , but also to the units merged as Y ’s complement and specifier, spellout can interpret
A as semantically modifying one of these units, say XP; with regard to linearisation, we assume
that there are two options: either (i) the adjunct A may be concatenated to the edge of
its hostXP, which reproduces the effects of Lebeaux’s (1988) counter-cyclic adjunction, or (ii)
the adjunct A may be concatenated to the edge of the entire Y P chunk’s output, an operation
we will call “outer adjunction”. Outer adjunction is responsible for (3b): ‘quietly’ is introduced
during T’s chunk, interpreted at spellout as semantically modifying T’s complement, namely

VP, but concatenated to the edge of TP. Because spellout applied to VP during a prior chunk, it
functions as a unit and can be subsequently fronted without the adjunct ‘quietly’.
On this account, extraposition amounts to the outer
adjunction of a DP modifier at the phrase immediately
TP who knew his brother
containing the host, i.e. VP for objects, or TP for subjects.
This explains the strict locality properties observed
by Baltin (1981): material extraposed from sub-
some
would [ride with Fred]VP
ject position can (and must) be stranded under VP fronting/ellipsis, as shown in (5), whereas
material extraposed from object position cannot be, as shown in (6).
(5) [Some ] would ride with Fred [who knew his brother].
a. Ride with Fred, some would who knew his brother. (RC stranded by fronting)
b. * Ride with Fred who knew his brother, some would. (RC brought along by fronting)
(6) John said that he would call [people ] up [who are from Boston], and . . .
a. * . . . call people up he did who are from Boston. (RC stranded by fronting)
b. . . . call people up who are from Boston he did. (RC brought along by fronting)
As a result, elements extraposed from objects
will in general precede those extraposed from sub-
CP which were on the table
jects; but if the object undergoes movement to a
position higher than the subject, this gives rise to
an additional derivational option for late adjunc-
[which books]DP
did [someone pick up . . . ]TP
tion. The adjunct can be introduced at the point where the object merges into a higher specifier,
giving rise to the possibility of the object modifier appearing at the far right.
(7) a. ? Which book did someone pick up [which was on the table] [who didn’t really
want to]?
b. Which book did someone pick up [who didn’t really want to] [which was on the
table]?
Fox and Nissenbaum (1999) note that extraposition obviates Condition C effects, but strikingly,
this obviation is restricted to adjuncts; see (8). This recalls the pattern in (4) discussed
by Lebeaux. Since our outer adjunction and counter-cyclic adjunction are instances of the same
mechanism (differing only in questions of linearisation), this is as we would expect.
(8) a. * I gave himi an argument [that supports Johni’s theory] yesterday
b. I gave himi an argument yesterday [that supports Johni’s theory]
c. * I gave him an argument yesterday [that this sentence supports John’s theory]
This interacts in just the expected way with possibility of outer adjunction to non-base positions
as in (7): extraposition from moved objects can obviate Condition C effects even in cases
induced by a subject binder, as shown in (9) (from Culicover and Rochemont (1990)).
(9) a. * Hei invited several girls to the party that Johni dated in high school.
b. How many girls did hei invite to the party that Johni dated in high school.
However, our implementation of counter-cyclic adjunction differs from Lebeaux’s in a crucial
respect: it correctly predicts that anti-reconstruction should be sensitive to the depth of
embedding in a manner similar to extraposition, as in (10) (Landau, 2007).
(10) a. Food that Maryi cooks, shei knows I would never eat.
b. * Eat food that Maryi cooks, shei knows I never would. (cf. (6a))
Note finally that we have considered only right-adjuncts; there should in principle be similar
phenomena with left-adjuncts. We will suggest that floated quantifiers constitute such a case.
Baltin, M. (1981). Strict bounding. In Baker, C. L. and McCarthy, J., editors, The Logical Problem of Language
Acquisition. MIT Press.
Culicover, P. W. and Rochemont, M. S. (1990). Extraposition and the complement principle. Linguistic Inquiry.
Fox, D. and Nissenbaum, J. (1999). Extraposition and Scope: A case for overt QR. In Proceedings of WCCFL 18.
Hunter, T. (2010). Relating Movement and Adjunction in Syntax and Semantics. PhD thesis, U. of Maryland.
Landau, I. (2007). Constraints on Partial VP-fronting. Syntax, 10(2):127–164.
Lebeaux, D. (1988). Language acquisition and the form of the grammar. PhD thesis, UMass Amherst.

Laura Kalin (UCLA) & Coppe van Urk (MIT)
A novel aspect split in Senaya
Summary: This paper adds to the typology of aspect-based case/agreement splits by presenting
the unusual system of the Neo-Aramaic dialect of Senaya. In Senaya, a nominativeaccusative
system in the imperfective alternates with what resembles an antipassive in the
perfective. We argue that this system can be derived from the assumption that imperfective
aspect introduces additional structure, developed in recent work on split ergativity (Laka
2006; Coon 2010; Coon & Preminger 2011). Specifically, we argue that in Senaya imperfective
aspect introduces an additional case assigner not present in the perfective. We extend
our analysis to other dialects of Neo-Aramaic in which the addition of the same φ-probe in
the imperfective results in a complete reversal of agreement.
The data: Most northeastern dialects of Neo-Aramaic display aspect-based split ergativity,
with an ergative agreement alignment in the perfective but an accusative one in the
imperfective (Doron & Khan 2010). In Senaya, however, this aspect-based split surfaces
in an unusual way. As in other Neo-Aramaic languages, there are two sets of agreement
morphemes — the so-called L-suffixes and S-suffixes. In the imperfective, an S-suffix on the
verb references the subject (1a-b), while definite objects are marked by an L-suffix (1b):
(1)a. Axnii damx-ox. b. Aanii xazy-ii-lan
we sleep.impf-1pl.S they see.impf-3pl.S-1pl.L
‘We sleep.’
‘They see us.’
In the perfective, however, something closer to an antipassive is found, as the examples in
(2a-b) illustrate. The subject is marked on the verb with an L-suffix (the object marker of
the imperfective), while objects cannot be marked and are therefore obligatorily indefinite:
(2)a. Axnii dmex-lan.
b. Axnii xa yaala xzee-lan.
we sleep.perf-1pl.L we one child see.perf-1pl.L
‘We slept.’
‘We saw a child.’
Imperfective aspect involves a locative head: Dixon (1994) observes that if a system
has an aspect-based split, it is the perfective side of the split that displays an ergative
pattern. To account for this generalization, it has been proposed that imperfective and/or
progressive aspect may introduce complex structure that disturbs the usual mechanisms of
case assignment, either in the form of a biclausal structure (Laka 2006; Coon 2010) or an
additional phase boundary (Coon & Preminger 2011). Coon (2010) relates this to work
by Demirdache & Uribe-Etxebarria (2000, 2007), who propose that aspect is encoded using
spatiotemporal relations. They argue that nonperfective aspects make use of prepositional,
locative relations, such as WITHIN, BEFORE, and AFTER; perfective aspect, on the other
hand, cannot be expressed this way, arising instead as a default when Asp is empty. As such,
nonperfective aspects involve a locative predicate absent from perfective.
The proposal: We assume the theory of aspect-based splits outlined above and propose
that, in Senaya, the prepositional locative head selected by imperfective Asp introduces
a φ-probe, whose reflex in the morphology is an S-suffix. This P head agrees
with and assigns case to the subject. As a result, the ordinary case/agreement pattern is
disturbed, since it enables the φ-probe on T (a morphological L-suffix) to license a definite
object. In addition, we assume that, aside from T and P under Asp, there is no locus of
agreement or case assigner in the verbal spine in Senaya. As such, in the perfective, only
indefinite objects are licit, since indefinite objects may pseudo-incorporate into the verb as
NPs and hence do not require case (Dayal 2011, Massam 2001).

Derivations: Perfective (in)transitive(3): NolocativePhead; Tprobesthesubject, valuing
case/agr., seen as an L-suffix. No case/agr. locus is available to license a definite object.
Imperfective intransitive (4): The P head under Asp probes and finds the subject, valuing
case/agr., seen as an S-suffix. T probes but finds no active argument. Imperfective transitive
(4): Same as above, but T probes the object; agreement with T spells out as an L-suffix.
(3)
(4)
T
[nom]
L-suffix
DP subj
v
V (NP indef obj )
T
[nom]
L-suffix Asp
P
[loc]
S-suffix
DP subj
v V (DPobj )
Extension to agreement reversal dialects: The analysis outlined here can be extended
straightforwardly to so-called “extended ergative” dialects of Neo-Aramaic (Doron & Khan
2010), e.g., Christian Barwar. In these dialects, the perfective base can host agreement with
an object, an S-suffix, resulting in a complete reversal of agreement from the imperfective:
(5)a. Tpít-le
sneeze.perf-3ms.L
‘He sneezed.’
b. Qtil-á-le.
kill.perf-3fs.S-3ms.L
‘He killed her.’
c. Mtăm@zz-a.
clean.impf-3fs.S
‘She cleans.’
d. Qatl-á-le.
kill.impf-3fs.S-3ms.L
‘She kills him.’ (Khan 2008)
The morpheme -le (3ms) marks the nominative argument in the perfective, (5a,b), but
the accusative one in the imperfective, (5d). The morpheme -a (3fs) marks the accusative
argument in the perfective, (5b), but the nominative one in the imperfective, (5c,d).
The difference between these dialects and Senaya, we argue, is the mechanism underlying
L-suffixes. In Senaya, L-suffixes result from φ-agreement, evidenced by the fact that they
trigger stress shift, as true affixes do in Senaya. In C. Barwar and similar dialects, however,
L-suffixes are clitics (Doron & Khan 2010). Following Anagnostopoulou (2003) and Rezac
(2011) among others, we assume: (i) φ-probes split into number and person, (ii) person
probes before number, and (iii) clitic-doubled arguments are ignored by subsequent probes.
Ifweposit, then, thatthepersonprobeonTinextendedergativedialectsindiscriminately
triggers clitic-doubling with the first argument encountered, then the rest of the differences
between Senaya and these dialects fall out naturally. In the perfective, T licenses both
the subject, by means of its person probe (⇒ clitic-doubling), and the object, by means
of its number probe (⇒ agreement). In the imperfective, the φ-probe on P licenses the
subject, such that it is the object that gets clitic-doubled by person on T. Importantly,
this account explains the fact that the object is limited to third person in the perfective:
this is a standard Person Case Constraint (PCC) effect (Bonet 1991), and the above is
straightforwardlycompatiblewithexisting accountsofthePCC(e.g., BéjarandRezac2003).
Selected references: Coon, J.2010. Complementation in Chol: A theory of split ergativity.
Doctoral dissertation, MIT. – Doron, E., & G. Khan. 2010. The typology of morphological
ergativity in Neo-Aramaic. ms. – Rezac, M. 2011. Phi-features and the modular architecture
of language. Dordrecht: Springer.

Laura Kertz (Brown)
Referential Processing Influences the Resolution of Verbal Anaphors
Interest in verb phrase ellipsis has rebounded in recent years, as various proposals have
sought to refine predictions from linguistic theory by introducing processing-based assumptions.
The long-standing Surface/Deep Hypothesis of Hankamer & Sag (1976) holds that verb phrase
ellipsis (like other surface anaphors) is governed by a parallelism constraint which does not
apply to deep/proform anaphora. Under this approach, parallelism is implicated in both the
licensing and interpretation of elliptical anaphors. It has been demonstrated that non-parallel verb
phrase ellipses, for example, take longer to read and are rated less acceptable than comparable
parallel structures. It is well-known, however, that the parallelism effect under ellipsis is
unreliable and that parallelism effects are observed even for deep anaphors.
Moreover, there is scant evidence to demonstrate that parallelism actually constrains possible
interpretations for an ellipsis. Rather, it is the case that the auxiliary verb governing the ellipsis
site can force either a parallel or a non-parallel interpretation, as in (1).
(1) The accident was investigated by the police, and the insurance company did/was too.
Indeed Garnham & Oakhill (1987) show that when the auxiliary is ambiguous, the preference for
a parallel interpretation competes with a preference for choosing the most plausible antecedent.
If it is not the case that parallelism constrains possible interpretations, the question emerges:
What role does parallelism play in processing ellipsis?
A recent proposal (Arregui et al 2006) holds that non-parallel antecedents induce extra
processing costs associated with syntactic repair at the ellipsis site. Similarly, Kim et al (2010)
argue that parallelism effects arise as a function of parsing heuristics that favor canonical
(parallel) VP antecedents. Both of these proposals seek to reconcile a categorical licensing
mechanism with an inherently gradient performance model. An alternative view holds that
parallelism effects under ellipsis are epiphenomenal. Kehler (2000, 2002), for example, argues
that parallelism effects arise as an interaction between the establishment of discourse coherence
relations and processes supporting ellipsis resolution, while Kertz (2010) argues that parallelism
effects follow from general information structural constraints on the alignment of contrastive
arguments. Each of these latter two proposals makes the specific prediction that parallelism
effects arise in ellipses where the subject of the target clause is contrastive with a syntactically
non-parallel argument in the antecedent clause.
The current study tested this prediction by comparing effects of the referential status of the
subject noun phrase preceding an ellipsis on the processing of that ellipsis. Stimuli used for the
study featured either a lexical NP (the firefighters) which contrasted with an argument in the
preceding clause or a pronoun (it) which was co-referent with an argument in the preceding
clause. The referential status of the pronoun was crossed with the form of the antecedent
(parallel vs. non-parallel). A sample stimulus set is shown in (2)-(3).
(2) The rangers didn’t inspect the campsite as thoroughly as
the firefighters did. [lexical NP, parallel] / it could have been. [pronoun, non-parallel]
(3) The campsite wasn’t inspected by the rangers as thoroughly as
the firefighters did. [lexical NP, non-parallel] / it could have been. [pronoun, parallel]
A parallel discourse relationship was made explicit by the use of an equative adverbial
construction. Thus participants were not faced with the task of determining the coherence
relation obtaining between the antecedent and the target. Interpretation of the ellipsis, however,

did require properly identifying co-referent/contrastive arguments across the two clauses. For
pronouns, coreference was unambiguously signaled by number marking; for lexical NPs, we
predicted that identification of the intended contrast between the firefighters and the rangers
would be dependent on whether the rangers in the antecedent occurred in a parallel (subject)
position. We further predicted that successful identification of the intended contrast in the
parallel condition would lead to facilitation at the auxiliary verb region, where ellipsis resolution
is initiated.
Sixteen stimulus sets like (2)-(3) were tested in an offline magnitude estimation task (n=36).
Stimuli were adapted to include a spill-over region following the ellipsis for a self-paced reading
task (n=48). Statistical analysis was conducted on log-transformed ratios of stimulus to modulus
in the ME task and on both raw and residual reading times trimmed to 3sd by region for the SPR
task. (Results for raw and residual analyses were identical.) For all analyses, a mixed effects
analysis with forward model selection for inclusion of random effects was conducted.
Offline results showed an interaction where non-parallel structures were dispreferred
compared to parallel structures, but that difference was greater with lexical NPs. Online, no
statistically reliable effects of parallelism were observed. At the subject NP region, a crossover
interaction was observed where lexical NPs were read more slowly in the parallel condition
while pronouns were read more quickly. At the auxiliary verb region an effect of subject type
only was observed. No reliable effects were observed in the post-ellipsis spill-over region.
0.2
0
-0.2
-0.4
Offline
Acceptability
parallel non-parallel
lexical NP pronoun
550
500
450
400
350
300
the firefighters
it
Raw Reading Times (ms)
did
could have been
after the
after the
lexical NP
parallel
lexical NP
non-parallel
pronoun
parallel
pronoun
non-parallel
Consistent with findings in, e.g. Birch & Rayner (1997), we interpret the increased reading times
for the lexical NPs in the parallel condition as evidence that readers treated these NPs as
linguistically focused constituents, i.e. readers recognized the intended contrast between the two
arguments. Identification of focus in this region had a downstream effect of reducing processing
time at the ellipsis. In the non-parallel, lexical NP condition, this facilitative effect was not
observed, and in the pronoun conditions, no effects of parallelism were seen.
These results thus confirm the prediction that parallelism interacts with referential processing
for contrastive noun phrases, which can in turn influence verbal anaphor resolution. This
interaction was also seen to influence offline acceptability. While the results are not incompatible
with models that would retain a categorical licensing mechanism for ellipsis, the results do show
that parallelism constraints on processing are weak/violable and crucially interact in a
predictable manner with other aspects of the discourse context.

Ezra Keshet (Michigan)
Scopal Effects of Embedded Coherence Relations
Researchers since Hobbs (1979) have proposed that an important part of understanding a mult-­‐
sentence discourse is understanding the (often unspoken) relationship between the various
sentences (see also Kehler 2002 and Asher and Lascarides 2003). For instance, the two
sentences of (1) below are not understood as being independent of one another. Instead,
speakers tend to infer a relationship between paraphraseable as in (2):
(1) John ate the shellfish. He got horrible food poisoning.
(2) John got horrible food poisoning because he ate the shellfish.
Such connections between sentences in a discourse are known as coherence relations. In (1),
the second sentence is understood to be the result of the first, and therefore the coherence
relation in effect here is called the Result relation.
This phenomenon immediately raises interesting questions about the interaction between
grammar and context: for instance, what is the grammatical status of such coherence relations?
Are they due to purely pragmatic reasoning, or is there some syntactic component responsible
for such inferences? Do they only hold at the sentence level, or can they affect sentence-­‐
internal meaning? Rohde, Levy, and Kehler (2011) take a stab at this last question, examining
cases like (3), a single sentence whose internal clauses seem to exhibit the same potential for
coherence relations as the separate sentences of (1). Example (3) is usually understood as in
(4), thus exhibiting an Explanation relation between the matrix clause and the relative clause.
(3) John detests the coworkers who are arrogant and rude.
(4) John detests the coworkers who are arrogant and rude because they are arrogant and
rude.
Rohde et al (2011) show experimentally that such sentence-­‐internal coherence relations can
influence the processing of a purely syntactic phenomenon, namely where to attach a
prepositional phrase. This suggests that whether coherence is pragmatic or in the grammar, it
plays a role in sentence-­‐internal meaning.
This paper takes a step further and suggests that coherence relations arise due to a covert
syntactic operator, which can interact with scopal elements such as quantifiers. Take (5), for
instance, which seems to have a sentence-­‐internal Result relation between the relative clause
in the subject and the matrix sentence:
(5) Everyone who ate the shellfish got horrible food poisoning.
Imagine that party guests A, B, and C all ate the shellfish and got food poisoning. The crucial
observation is that the coherence infe������������������������������
������������������������������������������������
shellfish ingestion r���������������������������������������
in ���������������������������������������������
�����������������������������������������������
thought to lead to his or her own poisoning. Some similar examples:

(6) Everyone who John detested was arrogant and rude. [Explanation]
(7) No one who drank pomegranate juice regularly got cancer. [Result]
(8) No one who John detests is ever nice to him. [Explanation]
I propose to capture these connections with a set of covert syntactic operators that presuppose
a relationship between the event represented by the sentence they appear in and a
contextually previous event (assuming that events may be states or dynamic events). For
instance, the structure I propose for (1) is given in (9), and a few relevant operator definitions
are given below:
(9) [[John ate the shellfish] =e1] [[Result(e1) [He got food poisoning]] =e2]
(10) ������������������������������������������
(11) ����������������������������������
����������������������������
�������������������������������
(12) �������������������������������������������
����������������������������������������
An example like (5) arises when such operators scope below a quantifier, as shown below:
(13) [Everyone whox [[x ate the shellfish] =e1]]x [[Result(e1) [x got food poisoning]] =e2]]
Here, the variable e1 is an e-­‐type pronoun ranging over events where different individuals x eat
shellfish. The Result operator that scopes below the quantification DP relates each such event
to the event where the same individual x gets food poisoning. (I named all the individual
variables in (13) x since they all end up picking out the same individual.)
If such operators exist, they should in principle give rise to scope ambiguities, and this is exactly
what I propose happens in (14):
(14) John is arrogant and rude. Everyone he works with detests him.
One reading of (14) is that each individual coworker happens to detest John for the same
reason � namely that he is arrogant and rude. Co-­‐worker A detests him for this reason, co-­‐
worker B detests him for this reason, etc. I argue that this reading arises when a Result
operator scopes below the quantificational DP Everyone he works with analogously to structure
(13). However, there is another reading of (14) � one where the fact that John is arrogant and
rude explains why every one of his co-­‐workers detests him. Perhaps co-­‐workers A and B detest
arrogant people, and C and D detest rude people. It is because John is arrogant and rude that
the whole office detests him. I argue that this reading arises when a Result operator scopes
above the quantificational DP.
This new evidence suggests a close connection between coherence relations and grammar.
After making this argument, the paper concludes by examining the interaction of such
coherence operators with other scopal operators, such as modals, and by looking at the effect
this analysis might have on a theory of anaphora.

Arnout Koornneef & Eric Reuland (Utrecht)
Grammar and Processing Economy
One of the intriguing issues in the relation between grammar and the processing
system concerns the resolution of anaphoric dependencies. What is the role of the
various sub-components of the language system (syntax, logical form, discourse) and
how can their roles be distinguished as the interpretation of an utterance develops
through time? We know that at least two fundamentally different types of interpretive
processes must be distinguished in anaphora resolution (leaving aside lexical and
strictly syntactic encoding): Coreference (contingently assigning the same value to
two expressions) and Variable Binding (VB) (Heim 1982, Reinhart 1983, Reuland
2001, 2011). VB is encoded in the grammatical system and sensitive to particular
structural conditions (e.g. c-command), but the former is freely available, modulo a
regulatory principle such as Reinhart and Grodzinsky (1993)’s Rule I, or Reuland
(2011)’s Rejection is Final. The operative principle here is an economy preference for
binding over co-reference. For details about the economy metric, based on the idea
that cross-modular steps carry a cost, see Reuland (2001, 2011).
This ties in with a debate in processing studies. A consistent finding in offline
studies on the interpretation of ambiguous VP-ellipses is that bound-variable (BV)
based interpretations are preferred over coreferential interpretations, see Frazier and
Clifton 2000 (F&C) for an overview.
On the basis of such results – see also Avrutin (1999), and Vasic´ et al. (2006)
for a more recent result in agrammatic aphasics - F&C formulate and test, using selfpaced
reading and questionnaires, the hypothesis in (1):
(1) LF only/first hypothesis: Bound-variable interpretations are preferred because
the perceiver need only consult the LF representation (not the discourse
representation) in order to identify the bound-variable analysis of the sentence.
F&C find two problems with (1): i. With some qualifications, a BV-preference also
appears to obtain across sentence boundaries, as in (2), which according to them is
incompatible with the conception of LF. ii. They find a preference for a co-referential
interpretation in only-sentences as in (3b).
(2) The clown loves his cat. The acrobat does too.
(3) a. Only Alfred thinks (that) he is a good cook.
b. Only Alfred thinks that Alfred is a good cook (coreference)
c. The only person who thinks of himself as a good cook is Alfred. (BV).
As we will briefly show, problem i. is resolved by using an explicit theory of ellipsis,
as in Elbourne (2008). Our paper therefore focuses on ii. We will consider not only
the interpretation the processor assigns, but also the process leading to this
interpretation. For the latter one needs on-line evidence, which so far is almost absent.
In a combination of two experiments (i. a questionnaire; and ii. an eyetracking
experiment) we show that the binding preference is not solely an offline
phenomenon, but can be detected in real-time measures of language comprehension.
Contra F&C we found that the binding preference of the language processor shows up
in ambiguous structures with the only-operator as well.
In both experiments short stories were presented containing a critical sentence that
was ambiguous between a sloppy and a strict reading. There were 4 categories:
[Sloppy-bias, only-operator], [Strict-bias, only-operator], [Sloppy-bias, ellipsis],
[Strict-bias, ellipsis]. For space reasons we only illustrate the type of story we used:
(4) Lisa and Anouk love the music channel MTV. They were very happy when they
were selected for the show ‘‘Pimp My Room,’’ in which their rooms were
redecorated. Only Lisa thinks that her pimped room has a touch of class. Oh
well, to each their owntaste. (sloppy bias)

The aim of experiment i. was two-fold: a. to pretest materials for experiment ii; and b.
to provide a preliminary check on the solidity of F&C’s questionnaire findings.
There were 20 participants. The materials were 36 short stories. The stories were
directly followed by two inferences that were consistent with either a sloppy or a
strict interpretation. The participants had to rate both inferences, and indicate which
one they preferred. Finally, participants rated the stories on difficulty and plausibility.
Overall, the results revealed that it was easier to create a bias towards a sloppy
reading, which is consistent with the hypothesis that in the case of ambiguity the
parser prefers a bound-variable dependency over a coreferential dependency.
Furthermore, planned pairwise comparisons showed that the proper inference of
strict-biased stories in the only-condition was relatively difficult to obtain. In addition,
these stories were also rated more difficult and less plausible than strict biased stories
in the ellipsis condition. In all, these ratings suggest that in the stories with the onlyoperator,
the strict reading is less accessible, which is inconsistent with an account in
which the preference for a bound-variable dependency is stronger in ambiguous
ellipses than in ambiguous only-structures.
In the eye-tracking experiment the pretested stimuli were presented to 32
healthy adults who did not participate in experiment i. Our model predicts that readers
prefer a BV interpretation regardless of the content of the preceding discourse. That
is, they initially assign a sloppy interpretation, which requires back-tracking once all
discourse information is processed.
In the ellipsis region (note, though, that this region is absent in the onlyconditions)
the regression-path measure revealed a clear advantage for sloppy
interpretations, showing reliably that the binding preference is not solely an offline
phenomenon, but is also observable in online measures of language comprehension.
The results are consistent with the claim that in strict-biased stories readers
experience problems, because they initially try to integrate a sloppy interpretation into
a strict context. Before moving on, they have to change their interpretation to resolve
this inconsistency and longer regressions-path durations are therefore expected.
The second sentence region revealed a clear contrast between first-pass and
second-pass eye movement measures. The second-pass durations were almost twice
as long for the strict-biased stories. Apparently, readers need to reexamine the second
sentence (containing the critical manipulation) longer if they process a strict-biased
story. This was true for both ellipses and only-structures. Hence, the preference for
sloppy interpretations reflects a more general property of the language processor.
These results give a clearer picture of what happens while readers encounter
the sloppy-strict ambiguity, and support our economy based model. There were some
other intriguing findings, shedding light on the details of the interpretation process
which we will discuss if time permits.
Selected References
Avrutin, S. 1999. Development of the syntax-discourse interface. Dordrecht: Kluwer
Elbourne, P. 2008. Ellipsis Sites as Definite Descriptions. Linguistic Inquiry 39, 191-
220
Frazier, L., & Clifton, C. 2000. On bound variable interpretations: The LF-only
hypothesis. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 29, 125–139
Koornneef, A.W. 2008. Eye-catching Anaphora. Utrecht: LOT dissertation
Reuland, E. 2011. Anaphora and Language Design. MIT Press
Vasic´, N., Avrutin, S., & Ruigendijk, E. 2006. Interpretation of pronouns in VPellipsis
constructions in Dutch Broca’s and Wernicke’s aphasia. Brain and Language,
96, 191–206.

Hadas Kotek (MIT)
Wh-Fronting in a Two-Probe System
The study of wh-movement has distinguished among several types of wh-fronting languages that
permit distinct patterns of overt and covert movement, instantiated for example by the Slavic
languages, English and German (Beck 2006). In this talk I extend the cross-linguistic typology of
multiple questions by arguing that Hebrew instantiates a new kind of wh-fronting language, unlike
any that are presently discussed in the literature. I will show that Hebrew distinguishes between two
kinds of wh-phrases—those that are headed by a wh-word (wh-headed phrases: what, who, [ DP which X],
where ...) and those that contain a wh-word but are headed by some other element (wh-containing
phrases: [ NP N of wh], [ PP P wh] …). Wh-headed phrases are privileged in that they can be targeted by
Agree/Attract operations that ignore mere wh-containing phrases in the same structure.
To establish the privileged status of wh-headed phrases, I examine the behavior of multiple questions
in Hebrew. I first observe that, as with D-linked wh-phrases in English, there is a correlation in
Hebrew between apparent superiority violations and intervention effects (Pesetsky 2000). I add a
third correlate to this finding, concerning possible readings of the questions:
(1) a. Superiority-Obeying Questions (SOQs) never exhibit intervention effects; they may have
single-pair answers as well as pair-list answers.
b. Superiority-Violating Questions (SVQs) are grammatical but they are sensitive to Beck
intervention effects; they may only have pair-list answers but not single-pair answers.
I will show that these facts can be captured within the theory of Q-particles under standard
assumptions about superiority and intervention effects (Pesetsky 2000, Beck 2006, Cable 2010). In
these theories, in the derivation of SOQs, all wh-phrases move to Spec,CP by LF. In the derivation
of SVQs the higher wh-phrase is left in situ, allowing the lower wh-phrase to be the first element
attracted to Spec,CP. Intervention effects arise when a focus-sensitive element occurs between the
wh-in-situ and the head with which it Agrees. I adopt an economy principle on LFs based on the
work of Fox (2000) which, together with the work of Dayal (2002) on the presuppositions of singlepair
and pair-list answers, can explain the distribution of readings.
The evidence for the existence of two kinds of wh-phrases in Hebrew comes from the same three
sources: superiority, intervention effects and readings of the questions. We observe the special status
of wh-headed phrases when a wh-headed phrase occurs structurally lower in a question than a whcontaining
phrase. I argue that in that case, certain operations target the lower wh-headed phrase and
entirely overlook the presence of the higher wh-containing phrase. This allows the question to be
derived from a structure in which no wh-phrase remains in situ at LF; the first operation in the
derivation is one that only targets wh-headed phrases and a subsequent operation is one that can
target the (higher) wh-containing phrase. This derivation correctly predicts that such questions are
not sensitive to Beck intervention effects and have single-pair (as well as pair-list) answers.
One example of the privileged status of wh-headed phrases is illustrated by the minimal pairs in (2ac).
These example contain the optional object marker et—analyzed here as a preposition—on the
direct object of read. When et is present, the phrase et ma is headed by et and is hence a wh-containing
phrase; when et is absent, bare ma is a wh-headed phrase. Questions with the (based-generated)
configuration [wh-containing phrase 1] ≫ [wh-containing phrase 2] behave as expected: the SOQ is
grammatical, (2a), but the SVQ is ungrammatical when an intervener (here: negation) is present,
(2b). In the configuration [wh-containing phrase 1] ≫ [wh-headed phrase 2] we find that the SVQ is
unexpectedly not sensitive to the presence of an intervener, (2c), and that it can have a single-pair
answer as well as a pair-list answer, just like the superiority-obeying question.
(2) Unexpected lack of intervention effect in superiority-violating question
a. [et mi] ha-mora lo šixne’a [ likro (et) [ma] ]?
OM who the-teacher neg persuaded to.read OM what

‘Who did the teacher not persuade to read what?’
b. *[et ma] ha-mora lo šixne’a [et mi] [ likro ___ ]?
OM what the-teacher neg persuaded OM who to.read
c. ? [ma] ha-mora lo šixne’a [et mi] [ likro ___ ]?
what the-teacher neg persuaded OM who to.read
‘What did the teacher not persuade whom to read?’
The sensitivity of interrogative probing operations to material inside QP is unexpected in Cable's Qtheory
framework, given the structure in (3a). I will propose two minimal, yet significant, additions
to the theory. First, I adopt a fine-grained structure of QP in Hebrew-type wh-fronting languages: I
propose that when Q is merged with XP, it immediately attracts the next lower head, X. After X
head-moves to Q, they both project and become co-heads of the resulting phrase. The derivation of
wh-in-situ languages and of English/German-type wh-fronting languages proceeds as in Cable (2010):
if X projects we derive a wh-in-situ language like Japanese or Korean. If Q projects we derive the
familiar English/German-type wh-fronting language in which the internal structure of QP is opaque
to the outside derivation. If both X and Q project we derive a Hebrew-type wh-fronting language, in
which not only Q but also X is visible to outside probing. Crucially, we predict that a wh-word
projects to the QP level when it is the head of XP but not when it is buried somewhere within XP.
We can thus distinguish between wh-headed phrases (3bi) and wh-containing phrases (3bii).
(3) a. proposal in Cable (2010) b. proposed new QP structure for Hebrew-type wh-fronting languages:
for all wh-fronting languages (i) wh-headed phrases (ii) wh-containing phrases
QwhP
QP
X+QP
XP
XP
XP
Q
Q
Q
wh
…
X
… wh …
… wh …
Moreover, I propose that our theory must have a wh-probe in addition to the Q-probe. The Q-probe
operates in the familiar way, targeting any kind of wh-phrase. The wh-probe, on the other hand, only
targets wh-headed phrases and cannot detect the presence of wh-containing phrases. This proposal, I
argue, incorporates all of the advantages of Cable’s original theory but is empirically superior in
providing a natural explanation for an intricate set of data that is otherwise unexplained. In addition,
I suggest that this proposal is conceptually more appealing than the original theory since it allows for
all interrogative phrases in a question to undergo syntactic Agreement, whereas in Cable’s theory
some phrases trigger interrogative semantics but are invisible to the otherwise corresponding syntax.
Finally, I show that the complicated system of interrogative probing that emerges from the addition
of a second probe interacts in interesting ways with locality restrictions: Superiority reemerges when a
finite clause-boundary is introduced between the two wh-phrases. In this configuration, superiority
can be violated just in case a lower wh-headed phrase is moved over a wh-containing phrase, see (4ab).
Surprisingly, we then observe intervention effects for the question in (4b), and the only possible
answer is pair-list. I will show how my proposal can be extended to account for these facts.
(4) Superiority effect reemerges when wh’s separated by clause boundary, and the exception to the rule
a. *[et ma] ha-mora šixne’a [et mi] [ CP še-Yosi kara ___ ]?
OM what the-teacher persuaded OM who that-Yosi read
b. ? [ma] ha-mora šixne’a [et mi] [ CP še-Yosi kara ___ ]?
what the-teacher persuaded OM who that-Yosi read
‘What did the teacher persuade whom that Yosi read?’
Selected references: Beck, S. 2006. Intervention effects follow from focus interpretation. NALS � Cable,
S. 2010. The grammar of Q: Q-particles, wh-movement and pied-piping. Oxford Uni. Press. � Dayal, V. 2002.
Single-pair vs. multiple-pair answers: Wh in-situ and scope. LI � Fox, D. 2000. Economy and semantic
interpretation. MIT Press. � Pesetsky, D. 2000. Phrasal movement and its kin. MIT Press.

Ivona Kučerová (McMaster)
Case Independence and Split Ergativity: Toward a Unified Theory of Case Assignment
Two recent proposals, Coon and Preminger 2011 (henceforth, C&P) and Kučerová 2011 (henceforth, K),
argued that case assignment is sensitive to the size of the syntactic structure. While C&P, following Coon
2010, concentrated on the Ergative/Absolutive (E/A) case systems, more precisely, on the syntactic source
of split ergativity, K investigated emergence of Accusative(Acc)assignmentinsyntacticenvironmentslacking
an external argument and Nominative (Nom) case. The goal of this paper is to unify the two proposals
and argue that cross-linguistically case assignment is sensitive to the size of the syntactic structure. More
precisely, the actual case assignment reflects which heads are strong phase heads and as such constitute
Spell-out domains in the given syntactic structure (Chomsky 2001,Chomsky2005,Chomsky2008).Consequently,
case assignment splits are predicted not to be restricted to E/A systems but should be in principle
available in N/A systems as well. Data from Arabic copular clauses confirm this prediction.
C&P: C&P observed that tense and person related instances of split ergativityhavetwopropertiesincommon:
(i) Structures that exhibit the split case system are syntactically larger than the structures that exhibit
the regular E/A pattern. (ii) The split pattern is best characterized as a lack of morphological marking.
Thus, there are no distinct morphological case endings. Instead, the split pattern exhibits a lack of overt
case endings. Based on these two empirical generalizations, theyproposedthatsplitergativityisalackof
case assignment due to a non-local configuration, i.e., the two relevant DPs end up being in two separate
case domains, one of which is not local with respect to the Erg case assigner. The emerging morphological
pattern is best characterized as default case resulting from lackoffeaturechecking.
K: KarguedthatviewingAccasacasedependentonNomoronthepresence of an external argument is
empirically inadequate since we can find Acc in the absence of an external argument or an argument receiving
Nom. According to her, Acc is assigned only if the internal argument is spelled-out within the vP
phase. If v does not trigger Spell-out, Acc is not available. KadoptsRichard’sDistinctnessConditionon
Linearization (Richards 2003, 2006) according to which vP can be spelled out only if it can be linearized.
For the condition to be satisfied the merge of v and its complement cannot be the maximal projection of v
but the vP must be further extended. The required extension is usuallyachievedbymergeofanexternal
argument but in principle is independent of it. K discuses data from Polish, Ukrainian, and North Russian
in which the required extension is achieved in certain instances of have-Perfect. Even though there is no
external argument, the ‘transitivity’-like extension is achieved by adding a structure semantically associated
with subinterval properties and in some languages morphologically realized as have. Ascanbeseenin(1)
from North Russian dialects, an internal argument can get either Nom or Acc; crucially, the case assignment
is independent of agreement: in both cases, the verbal agreement shows morphological default. However,
once the have-Perfect interpretation is enforced, the internal argument must be realized as Acc, (2).
(1) North Russian (Danylenko, 2006, p. 255–256, (18), originally from Kuz’mina 1993, 135–137):
a. (u njego) syn
(bylo)
otpravleno
at him son.NOM.SG.M. be.N.SG.AUX.PRET. send-away.N.SG.PPP
‘His son has been sent away (by him).’
b. (u njego) parnja
(bylo)
uvedeno
at him fellow.ACC.SG.M. be.N.SG.AUX.PRET. take-away.N.SG.PPP
(2)
‘The guy has been taken away (by him).’
North Russian (Kucerova 2011)
a. *Vot uˇze tre goda kak u nego syn v amerku uvezeno.
here already three years how by him son.NOM to America taken away
b. Vot uˇze tre goda kak u nego syna v amerku uvezeno.
here already three years how by him son.ACC=GEN to america taken away
‘It has been three years since his son has been taken away to America.’
1

Proposal: What these two proposals have in common is the observation that creating a locality boundary
changes the case assignment properties. In the N/A system creating a locality boundary yields emergence of
aspecialmorphologicalmarking(AccinsteadoftheexpectedNom).IntheE/Asystem,creatingalocality
boundary yields loss of a special morphological marking (default or Abs instead of theexpectedErg).The
question is whether we can unify these two observations. Crucially, it has been argued that E/A and N/A
languages are not syntactically identical. In particular, the v in the E/A pattern is either defective or entirely
missing (e.g., Marantz 1984, Nash 1995, 1995, Alexiadou 2001). We argue that consequently, vP in the
regular E/A pattern is not a spell-out domain. If we assume, following most of the current literature that Erg
is assigned by a T head (Infl) while Acc is assigned by v the following empirical generalization emerges:
(3) A special morphological marking (Erg, Acc) arises only if theminimalspell-outdomainthatcontains
an internal argument is the spell-out domain that contains the head responsible for the special
morphological marking (T for Erg and v for Acc).
In other words, Acc is possible only if the internal argument is spelled-out within the vP spell-out domain
and Erg is possible only if the internal argument is not spelled out within vP but instead it is spelled-out in
the next phase. Crucially, we have to ensure that Erg would be assign only if there is more than one DP
being spelled out in the same domain. Let’s assume that something like (4) holds. (A parallel condition
might be needed for enforcing Acc/Dat distinction in double-object constructions but we leave the issue of
Dat aside for now.)
(4) Case Distinctness Condition: Erg is assigned only if there is more than one DP spelled-out in the
same Spell-out domain as the head assigning Erg.
Predictions: Under the current proposal, splits in the sense of loosing a special marking depend on the size
of the syntactic domain (as in C&P and K). In contrast to C&P, wepredictthatthistypeofcasesplitshould
not be restricted to E/A but should be equally possible in N/A systems. In particular, we predict that if there
is only one DP in a clause, this DP will be assigned Nom if vP is a weak phase (or not a phase at all) or it is
going to be assigned Acc if it is spelled out within the vP phase. This prediction seems to be borne out, for
example, in Northern Russian dialects, as we saw in (2).
If there is more than one DP in a clause, the prediction is that none of the DPs will get Acc if both DPs will
be spelled out in the same phase, more precisely within CP phase. If such a structure gets independently
extended and the two DPs get spelled out in two separate phases, the prediction is that the higher one should
be assigned Nom, while the lower one should be assigned Acc. Interestingly, this prediction is borne out in
Arabic nominal copular clauses. In particular, nominal copular clauses in Arabic show distinct case pattern
depending on the tense of the copular clause. As can be seen in (5-a), copula-less small clauses show no Acc
assignment. Crucially, as in the ergative split pattern what weseehereisnotaspecialmarkingbutalackof
marking. If the structure gets extended, which is presumably thecaseofPastandFuturein(5-b)–(5-c),the
lower DP gets spelled out in the vP phase, resulting in a distinct case assignment of the two DPs.
(5) a. Hassan Tabiib
Hassan.NOM doctor.NOM
‘Hassan is a doctor.’
b. kaan Hassan Tabiib-an
was Hassan.NOM doctor.ACC.INDEF
‘Hassan was a doctor.’
c. Sayakuunu Hassan
be.FUT Hassan.NOM
Tabiib-an
doctor.ACC.INDEF
‘Hassan will be a doctor.’
Conclusion: Case assignment reflects Spell-out properties of a given syntactic structure. Crucially, creating
aphaseboundaryalternatescasepatternsnotonlyinE/Alanguages but in the N/A pattern as well.
2

Dave Kush (Maryland)
On-line use of relational structural information in processing anaphora: evidence from English
and Hindi
We present results from three experiments that show the parser makes rapid use of relational structural
constraints in memory retrieval.
Findings on the on-line implementation of grammatical constraints are an important tool for
understanding how speakers encode and navigate hierarchical syntactic representations in memory.
On-line sensitivity to a structural relation implies that this relation is mentally encoded, and that it is
employed by the parser’s dependency-building mechanisms. Here we investigate an interesting tension
that arises when comparing different recent findings in psycholinguistics. On the one hand, a growing
body of evidence motivates a parser that relies on parallel access mechanisms in content addressable
memory [1]. Evidence comes from effects of interference from grammatically illicit licensers [2,3],
and from non-effects of syntactic dependency length [4,5]. Importantly, relational notions such as ccommand
are difficult to exploit in such memory architectures, as they are properties of configurations
rather than inherent properties of individual nodes (‘content’). On the other hand, findings on the
apparent immunity-to-interference of local anaphoric binding suggest that dependencies that obey ccommand
constraints can be accurately implemented on-line [6,7,8,9,10]. However, findings on English
local binding may be misleading. English reflexive anaphors require a clause-mate antecedent, and they
follow the verb, and so grammatically accurate retrieval might be achieved simply by retrieving a coargument
of the immediately preceding verb. Here we present results from three experiments in English
and Hindi that avoid this confound by testing (i) non-local binding relations that unambiguously involve
c-command constraints, and (ii) local binding relations in a verb-final language that must be established
before verb information is encountered.
Experiments 1 & 2 investigated the parser’s sensitivity to the c-command constraint on boundvariable
pronouns. Unlike local reflexive licensing, this constraint on bound-variable pronouns
applies across an unbounded distance, and hence provides a strong test of the parser’s use of relational
information in retrieval. We focused on the contrasting ability of clauses headed by but and when to host
bound variable pronouns in (1-2). The contrast reflects the lower attachment site of when-clauses, which
allows any janitor to c-command the underlined pronoun. Importantly, coreference does not require ccommand,
so replacing the quantified NP with a referential NP (the janitor) eliminates the contrast.
(1) Kathy didn’t think that any janitor liked his job, when he had to clean up after the prom.
(2) *Kathy didn’t think that any janitor liked his job, but he had to clean up after the prom.
The experiments manipulated the type of antecedent (quantificational vs. referential) and the structural
relation between the antecedent and the critical pronoun (WHEN/binding vs. BUT/no-binding). 24
sets of items were distributed across 4 lists in a Latin Square design and combined with 64 fillers.
In Experiment 1 (self-paced reading, n=24) immediate sensitivity to the c-command constraint was
demonstrated in an interaction of antecedent-type and structural relation at the pronoun (p < .05) 1 , due
to slower reading times in the quantifier/no-binding condition. In Experiment 2 (eye-tracking, n = 24)
the same interaction was found at the post-pronoun region (p < .05) in re-read, second-pass and total
time measures. This shows that the parser is able to rapidly exploit c-command information in on-line
dependency formation.
Experiment 3 turned to Hindi for an additional test of whether structure-sensitive anaphor
1 All data were fit to a linear mixed-effects model with subject and item as random effects. P-values were
estimated using the pvals.fnc() function in the LanguageR library [11].

processing is contingent on a verb-based retrieval heuristic, or whether it is the product of general
availability of relational information. Hindi reciprocals must be locally licensed [12], like their English
counterparts, but since Hindi is an SOV language they appear pre-verbally, thus making antecedentretrieval
through mediation by the verb’s argument structure impossible.
The design of the experiment used the interference logic of previous reflexive studies.
Reciprocals must be bound by a plural-marked, c-commanding NP, thus the relevant cue for retrieval
is [+plural]. The experiment manipulated plural-marking on the matrix subject and on a potential
interfering NP in a pre-nominal relative clause that linearly preceded the reciprocal. The structure of a
test-sentence is given in (3) below. When NP1 (the matrix subject) is plural it can bind the reciprocal.
NP2, embedded inside an RC (boundaries marked with brackets), cannot grammatically bind the
reciprocal, regardless of its number.If relational information is used in local licensing, we predict no
effect of plural-marking on NP2. If verb-mediated retrieval is required to block interference, we expect
interference in conditions in which NP2 is plural.
(3) NP1{sg/pl} [ ... NP2{sg/pl} ...] ... Reciprocal... {AdvP} V.
An example sentence is given in (4). The matrix subject doctor(s) (underlined below) can bind the
reciprocal ek-dusre when plural. The potential interferer NP patient(s) (italicized) is embedded inside
a pre-verbal RC the nurse who took care of the patients, thus removing its ability to c-command (and
therefore bind) the reciprocal.
(4) Us/un doctor(on)-ne [us/un mariz(on)-ko dekhbal karne wali nurse] ke station me
That/those doctor(s)-ERG that/those patients(s)-ACC care doing RP nurse GEN station in
ek-dusre ke-saath gupt-ruup-se bat kii.
one-another with secretly chat did.
`That/those doctor(s) talked secretly with one another at the station of the nurse who was looking after
the patient(s).'
24 sets of items were distributed across 4 lists in a Latin Square design and combined with 50 filler
items. The experiment (n=30, native-speakers of Hindi from Northwestern India, ages 18-26) revealed
immediate sensitivity to the constraint on reciprocal licensing. A main effect of Subject-Number was
observed in the region immediately following the reciprocal phrase (p

Locality in Agreement: A New Approach
Aim. The goal of this talk is to propose a new approach to syntactic structure-building
that is based upon the idea that syntactic derivations are driven by a specificity principle
on merge and agreement. The approach has the interesting property that it correctly
derives relative locality effects (i.e., locality effects in Merge and Agree that are due to
intervention) without actually invoking closeness-based principles such as the Minimal
Link Condition. This talk first presents the new theory and some of its assets and applications,
butthen focusesonaparticular empirical domain: intervention-driven agreement
alternations such as complementarity effects (e.g. complementarity in Breton agreement)
and cases of (seeming) optional alternation (e.g. defective intervention in Icelandic).
Theoretical Background. Specificity is arguably one of the main basic concepts of
morphological theory, where is used to resolve competitions between the markers of a
language which arise due to underspecification of inflectional markers (Subset Principle).
I would like to propose that structure building in syntactic derivations, too, is driven by
specificity. The syntactic constraint relevant to the local decisions made is the General
Specificity Principle, an extension of Maximize Matching Effects (Chomsky 2001:15):
(1) General Specificity Principle: A Probe undergoes a syntactic operation with the
most specific matching goal. Specificity is determined by cardinality of morphosyntactic
features: a set Q is more specific than a set H iff |Q| > |H|.
The GSP has the effect that with more than one potential Goal being available in the
search space of a Probe, the Probe always agrees first with the Goal with which it can
satisfy the highest number of features, even if it is not the closest available goal.
Analysis. Let me briefly sketch a specificity-driven derivation for two different Agreement
phenomena: complementarity in Breton agreement, and defective intervention in
Icelandic. Breton shows a complementarity effect in that the φ-features of a phonologically
null NP are coded by φ-agreement morphology on the verb (=‘rich agreement’),
whereas the φ-features of a phonologically overt NP are not coded by φ-agreement morphology
on the target (‘invariant agreement’ [=frozen 3sg agreement or bare stem]):
(2) a. Gant
with
o mamm e karf-ent /*karf-e pro bez-añ
their mother r would.love-3pl /*would.love-3sg 3pl be-inf
‘They would like to be with their mother’
b. Gant
with
Antje Lahne (Konstanz)
o mamm e *karf-ent /karf-e Azenor ha Iona bez-añ
their mother r *would.love-3pl /would.love-3sg Azenor and Iona be-inf
‘Azenor and Iona would like to be with their mother’
Jouitteau & Rezac (2006) analyse the complementarity as a locality effect. The starting
point of the analysis is the observation that v in Breton has nominal properties. It is thus
assumed to bear interpretable 3sg φ-features. Consequently, when I probes for φ-features
in its search space, then v intervenes between I and the external argument, which is contained
in the vP. I must therefore value its unvalued features with φ-features of v, which
results in 3sg (‘frozen’) agreement on I. If, on the other hand, the external argument
is an affixal pro, then it incorporates into T and thus contributes its φ-features to the
feature set of T (i.e., it becomes a bound pronoun), which surfaces as rich agreement.
While fully agreeing with the incorporation analysis, I argue that the alleged A-over-A
effect is actually a Specificity effect: The GSP has the effect that the current probe I has
to handle its selectional feature [•cat:v•] by merging with a v-type element; due to the
1

GSP, Agree between I and v must involve handling of the maximal number of matching
features. Thus, if I has more features (φ-features: [*pers*], [*num*]) that it can value
with a feature of v, then it must value it with v. This is illustrated in (3).
(3) a. b.
I ′
I o
[•v•, *φ*]
x
vP
DP v ′
v o ...
I o
[•v•, *φ*]
I ′
vP
DP v ′
v o ...
A second type of data that can be explained by means of specificity are cases of apparant
indecisiveness, namely when there aretwo goalsthat theprobecanagreewith inthesame
number of features. I argue that this constellation leads to alternation. One example is
defective intervention in Icelandic (Holmberg & Hróarsdóttir 2004):
(4) Mér finnst/finnast tölvurnar ljótar
me.dat find.sg/find.pl computers:def.nom.pl ugly
‘I consider the computers ugly’
In brief, the approach to these data is that I o has three kinds of probing features: the
EPP feature, the set of phi-features, and the case feature [∗nom∗]. However, there is no
constituent that I o can handle all three features with – it cannot use the EPP feature on
the lower DP tölvurnar (as it is an argument of the embedded predicate), and neither
can it assign nominative case to the dative subject mér – but it is possible to use two
of the three features on one goal, and the remaining feature on the other goal. There
are two possible orders in which this can be done. I would like to propose that the
order of operations is optional, and that both orders are attested: one order leads to the
singular agreement option, the other leads to plural agreement. The features [•D•] and
[*nom*] cannot be handled together, as the EPP feature cannot be used on the lower
DP. This leaves two possible feature combinations: One possibility is to handle two of the
three features, [•D•] and [n:�], with the dative argument, and subsequently using the
remaining feature [*case:nom*] on the lower DP. As a result, I shows singular agreement.
The second possibility is to use [*case:nom*] and [n:�] on the lower DP, and then handle
[•D•] with the quirky subject. The verb consequently shows plural agreement.
Consequences. The new approach yields new insights into the workings of locality in
Agreement: Agreement alternations arise due to extremely local decisions about feature
handling made during the derivation; these decisions are driven by the need of probes to
match with a goal as fully as possible, disregarding structural distances. Optionalities
arise when this need can be resolved in more than one way. Linking this insight to the
findings presented at the beginning of the talk, I would like to go one step further and
propose that Specificity, not Closeness, is the core principle that drives derivations and
yields relative locality in Merge and Agree.
References. Chomsky, Noam (2001): Derivation by Phase. In: M. Kenstowicz, ed.,
Ken Hale: A Life in Language. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., pp. 1-52. Holmberg,
Anders & Thorbjörg Hróarsdóttir (2004): Agreement and movement in Icelandic raising
constructions, Lingua 114(5), 651-673. Jouitteau, Mélanie & Milan Rezac (2006): Deriving
the Complementarity Effect: Relativized Minimality in Breton Agreement, Lingua
116(11), 1915-1945.
2

Mohamed Lahrouchi (CNRS/Paris 8)
Phasal Spellout and the glide – high vowel alternation in Berber
Berber languages present a wealth of intricate phonological alternations involving
glides and high vowels, some of which still resist standard phonological analyses. These
alternations shed light on the kind of inter-modular communication, which many current
interface theories address.
Glides typically appear in the immediate vicinity of a vowel, in complementary
distribution with the corresponding high vowels. Based on this kind of observations, standard
theories analyse glides and high vowels as phonetic reflexes of the same underlying segments.
The examples in (1) illustrate the situation in Tashlhiyt Berber:
(1)
gru ‘pick up’ agraw ‘assembly’
bri ‘crush, pound’ abraj ‘crushed seeds’
The problem arises with the corresponding dative forms grujas ‘pick to him’ and brijas
‘crush seeds to him’. Followed by a vowel-initial morpheme –as, U and I should normally
surface as glides, leading to *grwas and *brjas. Faced with similar forms in Tamazight Berber
Guerssel (1986: 3) posits “a phonemic distinction between glides and high vowels”.
The key to understanding this paradox lies, we argue, in the morpho-syntactic
structure of dative formations. In line with recent works at the syntax – phonology interface
(Marvin 2002, Marantz 2007, Pigott and Newell 2006, Samuels 2010), we argue that the
behaviour of I and U in the forms just discussed is the result of the application of spell-out
and phase impenetrability condition (Chomsky 2001) at different levels in the syntactic
structure. In particular, we show that vP corresponds to a phase where U and I are spelled-out
as high vowels before the enclitic –as is added. The resulting hiatus is then resolved by means
of j epenthesis, leading to grujas and brijas. In agraw and abraj, U and I surface as glides since
they belong to the same phase (nP) as the neighbouring a. The forms represented in (2)
illustrate the proposal:
(2) a. grujas "pick to him" b. agraw ‘assembly’
Spell-out-as-you-merge and Phase Impenetrability thus allow explaining the
paradoxical behaviour of I and U in Tashlhiyt Berber (see also Pigott and Newell 2006 about
Ojibwa). The question that arises then is the following: under the assumption that phonology
is sensitive to external morph-syntactic information, what kind of devices allows direct intermodular
communication? Do morpho-syntactic phases leave any phonological traces?
Following Scheer (2011), we will assume that empty CV units, purely phonological objects

(Lowenstamm 1996, 1999), carry morpho-syntactic information into phonology. They mark
phase boundaries. How does phonology use these empty CVs is an issue we will discuss.
References
Chomsky, Noam. 2001. Derivation by phase. In Ken Hale: A Life in Language, edited by
Michael Kenstowicz, 1-52. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Dell, François & Mohamed Elmedlaoui. 2002. Syllables in Tashlhiyt Berber and in Moroccan
Arabic. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publisher.
Guerssel, Mohand. 1986. Glides in Berber and Syllabicity. Linguistic Inquiry 17-1: 1-12.
Lowenstamm, Jean. 1996. CV as the only syllable type. In Current trends in Phonology.
Models and Methods, edited by Jacques Durand & Bernard Laks, 419-441.
Salford, Manchester: ESRI.
Lowenstamm, Jean. 1999. The beginning of the word. In Phonologica 1996, edited by John
Rennison & Klaus Kühnhammer, 153-166. The Hague: Holland Academic Graphics.
Marantz, Alec. 2007. Phases and Words. In Phases in the Theory of Gramma, edited by Sook-
Hee Choe, 191-222. Seoul: Dong In.
Marvin, Tatjana. 2002. Topics in the Stress and Syntax of Words. Ph.D dissertation, MIT.
Piggott, Glyne & Heather Newell. 2006. Syllabification and the Spell-Out of Phases in
Ojibwa Words. McGill Working Papers in Linguistics 20.2: 39-64.
Samuels, Bridget. 2010. Phonological Derivation by Phase: Evidence from Basque.
University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 16: 166-175.
Scheer, Tobias. 2011. A Guide to Morphosyntax – Phonology Interface Theories. Berlin:
Mouton de Gruyter.
Uriagereka, Juan 1999. Multiple spell-out. In Working Minimalism, edited by Samuel Epstein
& Norbert Hornstein, 251-282. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Chris Laterza (Maryland)
Gaps within Silence
This talk provides a novel account of the role of traces in the licensing conditions for VP ellipsis
(VPE). As I will show, this approach unifies the licensing conditions for canonical VPE with
related phenomena such as pseudogapping and ACD, a task that has been attempted in several
different ways since at least as early as Lappin (1992). Assuming that VPE is PF deletion
licensed by LF identity (an approach pursued, for example, by Sag (1976) and Kennedy (2003)),
my main claim (informally put) is that traces in the ellipsis clause (EC) act as “wildcard” element
for the determination of identity; just so long as there is a DP/PP in the antecedent clause (AC)
VP occupying the same type of argument/adjunct position as the trace in the EC VP, then the that
AC DP/PP and the EC trace count as identical for the purposes of licensing VPE, even if the LF
content of the AC DP/PP is not identical to that of the DP/PP which moved from the position of
the trace in the EC. To illustrate, take the following instance of VPE:
(1) John [VP met Chomsky at WCCFL]. Guess who1 Bill did [VP meet t1 at WCCFL].
A more stringent approach to ellipsis licensing would have a hard time explaining (without ad
hoc string vacuous movement) how VPE is licensed in (1), since [Chomsky] is not identical to
[t1] nor [who1] in any approach to VPE (previous versions of PF deletion, LF copying, pro-form
VPs, etc.). However, the relaxed approach to identity offered here treats (1) as a licit case of
VPE: almost everything in the AC and EC VPs are LF-identical, the sole exception being the
direct objects, and since the object in the EC is a trace, it counts as identical with [Chomsky] in
the AC under this approach and thus ellipsis is licensed. The remainder of the abstract provides
some other examples of this approach at work.
PSEUDOGAPPING: The present approach fits well with a popular treatment of pseudogapping
(as argued for by Jayaseelan (1990) and Lasnik (1999)) which states that pseudogapping is
extraction of the "survivor" from the VP followed by VPE, as shown in (2). This creates a
configuration that is short of full LF-identity between the AC and EC VPs, though it is one that
falls within the purview of the current approach and counts as a licit case of VPE, since t1 will
match [on the porch] under the current approach, even though t1 is a trace of [in the gazebo].
(2) John [VP read a book on the porch this morning], while Bill did (so) [VP read a
book t1 this morning] [PP in the gazebo]1
ACD: Virtually all analyses of relative clause formation involve some sort of movement from
the relativization site to some A'-position. Therefore, it is typical to treat cases of ACD as
involving a trace in the EC VP (whenever the relativization site is within the VP). Under the
present approach, (3) is licensed since the AC VP = [read [DP few books that Bill did]] and the
EC VP = [read t1], and t1 will match any direct object DP in the AC clause, even if it is complex
and contains the trace itself.
(3) John [VP read few (of the) books Op1 that Bill did [VP read t1 ] ]
While some argue that there is QR in (3), thereby making the current approach unnecessary for
cases of ACD, there are some cases where the content of the determiner matters for VPE
licensing, and thus it must somehow be represented within the VP. We can see this in the non-
ACD (4), as the content of the EC is clearly that Bill read few books.
(4) John read few (of the) books, and Bill did [VP read few (of the) books] too
If QR is present in (4), leaving a trace in the VP that is devoid of any content (an assumption
made by May (1985) for QR to deal with infinite regress), then it is surprising that the
determiner’s meaning, the aspect of “fewness”, is relevant for VPE. (3) differs from (4) in that
there is no DP movement out of the VP in (4), for if there were, we are left without an
explanation for why the DP’s meaning is recovered in the EC VP in (4). Thus, (4) has stricter

identity conditions than in the case of (3) which involves a trace in the relativization site, which
lightens the identity conditions under the present approach; i.e., the semantic content of the direct
object’s determiner matters for VPE licensing in (4) but not in (3). From what I can tell, the
observation of the asymmetry above between (3) and (4) (whether or not determiner meanings
matter for VPE) brought about by non-universal determiners is novel, and is explained by the
present account of traces in VPE identity conditions. It is also noteworthy that the infinite regress
problem is no problem at all for the current approach, since VPE licensing does not require the
content of the AC direct object in (3) to be represented in the position of the trace in the EC.
Further support for the AC direct object in (3) not being represented in the EC again comes from
the paradigm above involving a proportional determiner; if the AC direct object were represented
in the EC in (3) (making it relevant for VPE licensing), then why is the aspect of "fewness"
missing from this clause, in a way that it is clearly present in the non-ACD (4)? This account is
conceptually similar to Wyngaerd and Zwart (1991) in that both try to account for ellipsis
licensing in ACD constructions without being dependent on QR.
SPROUTING: Sprouting (Chung et al. (1995)) is when, in a case of sluicing, a DP/PP that was
not present in the AC appears overtly in the ellipsis clause (typically as a wh-expression).
(5) John saw The Lion King, but I don't know where
(6) There navy seals were firing, but at what is unclear
(7) Mary finished the exam on time, but with whose help is unclear
However, the possibility of sprouting seems to be limited to cases of sluicing. (8-10) below
show that the acceptability of sprouting in cases of VPE is severely degraded. Unacceptability of
sprouting in cases of VPE is, to the best of my knowledge, a novel empirical observation.
(8) *John saw The Lion King. I wonder where Bill did
(9) *The navy seals were firing, but at what the green berets were is unclear
(10) *Mary finished the exam on time, but with whose help did Susan
(Notice that the subject DPs in the ECs are different from those in their respective ACs in order
to rule out MaxElide as being responsible for the unacceptability; see Hartman (2011).) The
present approach can easily account for unacceptability of (8-10). Consider a case like (8): the
AC VP = [saw The Lion King], and the EC VP = [saw The Lion King t]; there is no
corresponding locative PP in the AC for the t in the EC to match, hence (8) is not a licit case of
VPE under the present approach since the LF-identity conditions are not met. It is unclear to me
why sprouting would be acceptable in cases of sluicing and not VPE, and it is worth pointing out
that the fact that sprouting is allowed in cases of sluicing is precisely why this account is limited
to VPE and cannot be extended to IP ellipsis. Perhaps sprouting is just another way in which
sluicing and VPE differ, on par with as Chung et al.’s (1995) observation that while sluicing can
repair island violations, VPE cannot.
References: Chung, S. et al. 1995. Sluicing and logical form. Natural Language Semantics 3:
239-282. Jayaseelan. K.A. 1990. Incomplete VP deletion and gapping. Linguistic Analysis 20:
64-81. Kennedy, C. 2003 Ellipsis and syntactic representation. In The Interfaces: deriving and
interpreting omitted structures. Hartman, J. 2011. The semantic uniformity of traces: evidence
from ellipsis parallelism. Linguistic Inquiry 42.3: 367-388. Lappin, S. 1992. The syntactic basis
of ellipsis resolution. In Proceedings of the Stuttgart Workshop on Ellipsis. Lasnik, H. 1999.
Pseudogapping puzzles. In Fragments: Studies in ellipsis and gapping, 141-174. May, R. 1985.
Logical Form. Cambridge: MIT Press. Sag, I. 1976. Deletion and Logical Form. PhD diss., MIT.
Wyngaerd, G. V., and J.-W. Zwart. 1991. Reconstruction and Vehicle Change. In Linguistics
in the Netherlands, 151-160.

Timothy Leffel (NYU)
Nonrestrictive adjectives and the theory of scalar implicature
Summary Nonrestrictive adjectives (NAs) attribute a general property to individuals in the
denotation of the adjacent noun (Larson & Maruˇsič 2004; Morzycki 2008; etc.).
(1) a. Cigarettes contain harmful toxins. b. ∴ Toxins are (generally) harmful.
Nominal modifiers typically give rise to implicatures in downward entailing contexts ((2)). Corresponding
implicatures are not triggered by NAs ((3)).
(2) a. Every harmful chemical will be eliminated by this product.
b. � Not every chemical will be eliminated by this product.
(3) a. Every harmful toxin will be eliminated by this product.
b. �� Not every toxin will be eliminated by this product.
Here I argue that the contrast between (2) and (3) is not due to the contextual knowledge that
toxins are generally harmful. First I argue that scalar alternatives should be computed structurally
(Katzir 2007) and excludability should be computed without access to contextual information
(Magri 2009). I then suggest that NAs in non-definite DPs combine with nouns via
a presupposition-introducing functional head in Cinque’s (2010) “direct modification” domain
(building on insights of Larson 1998;2000). This correctly predicts the inference in (3) to be
invalid because (3a) has a presupposition that the negation of (3b) lacks (details below).
Background on SI The computation of a sentence’s scalar implicatures (SIs) depends on what
the alternatives to that sentence are. In “Horn scale”-based approaches (e.g. Gazdar 1979;
Sauerland 2004), alternatives are obtained by replacing scalar terms with “scalemates,” so that
(4a) and (4b) are alternatives to one another (since 〈some,all〉 is a Horn scale).
(4) a. John ate some of the beans. b. John ate all of the beans.
SIs are then computed on the basis of whether an alternative is excludable in the sense that
its negation asymmetrically entails what is asserted. If an alternative is excludable, then its
negation is a predicted SI (details differ from theory to theory). Scale-based approaches do not
predict implicatures to arise from intersective modifiers as in (2), since nouns like chemical are
not on a lexical scale with harmful chemical.
Katzir’s (2007) structural theory of alternatives provides a natural explanation for (2) while
maintaining insights of scale-based approaches. Alternatives are determined syntactically: given
a sentence ϕ, ψ ∈ Alt(ϕ) iff ψ can be obtained from ϕ by a finite series of (i) deletions of constituents,
(ii) contractions (remove tree edge and identify end nodes), and (iii) substitutions of
terminal elements for other elements (which are either lexical or are subtrees of ϕ) of the same
(syntactic) category. In this framework excludability is defined in terms of a better-than relation
≺. ϕ is at least as good (�) as ψ iff ϕ is an alternative to ψ and ϕ entails ψ. If ϕ � ψ but
ψ �� ϕ, then ϕ is strictly better (≺) than ψ. Equivalently, ϕ ≺ ψ iff
(5) a. ϕ is an alternative to ψ and entails ψ; and either
b. ψ is not an alternative to ϕ, or ψ does not entail ϕ.
Determining excludability The better-than relation in (5) makes crucial reference to “entailment.”
Two candidate definitions of “entailment” are: (from Magri 2009)
(6) a. ϕ logically entails ψ iff �ϕ� ⊆ �ψ�
b. ϕ contextually entails ψ iff (�ϕ� ∩C) ⊆ �ψ�, where C is the Context Set.

Magri (2009;2011) argues that (6a) is the notion of entailment relevant for computing SIs—this
is called the “blindness hypothesis” (BH) because it says that SIs are computed without access
to world knowledge. BH is crucial in, e.g. capturing the oddness of #Some Italians come from a
warm country: it triggers the blind implicature that not all Italians come from a warm country.
I propose that BH is required for the theory of structural alternatives to work. The argument
is based on the existence of lexical items whose sole function is to introduce a presupposition:
(7) Context: It is mutually known that several people other than Mary came to the party.
a. Mary came to the party too. b. Mary came to the party.
Given the contextual information, (7a) and (7b) are equivalent. Therefore if entailment is defined
as in (6b), it follows that (7b)≺(7a), because (7b) is an alternative to (7a), but (7a) is not
an alternative to (7b) (see (5)). Hence an utterance of (7a) is incorrectly predicted to give rise to
the implicature that (7b) is not assertable. This argument can be replicated for also, even, etc.
If instead logical entailment (=(6a)) is used in (5), then (7b) is not predicted to be strictly
better than (7a), because:
(8) a. (7b) is an alternative to (7a) (delete too and contract its branch), but
b. (7b) does not logically entail (7a), since there are logically consistent worlds in
which Mary came to the party and no one else did.
and hence an utterance of (7a) is correctly predicted to not give rise to the implicature that (7b)
is not assertable. Further, logical entailment must be computed relative to local contexts (see
Schlenker 2009), since if entailment were computed globally, then (9a) should be dispreferred
to (9b), since (9a) has no global presupposition.
(9) a. John came to the party, and Mary came to the party too.
b. John came to the party, and Mary came to the party.
Nonrestrictive readings NR readings of attributive adjectives are licensed only in certain syntactic
positions, which may vary depending on the language (Bolinger 1967; Cinque 2010).
(10) a. Every unsuitable word was deleted. ✓Rest. ✓NR
b. Every word unsuitable was deleted. ✓Rest. ✗NR
Cinque (2010) has argued that NAs are introduced as the specifiers of a DP-internal functional
head in the “direct modification” domain, which in English is immediately above NP but below
a domain of reduced relative clause adjectives with intersective semantics. Larson (1998;2000)
notes that many adjectives in the direct modification domain are associated with generic interpretation.
I propose that NAs are also associated with genericity. The functional head that
introduces NAs (GENNR) is assigned the following semantics, which encodes the inference in
(1b) as a presupposition (“:” indicates definedness condition, Γ is a generic quantifier).
(11) GENNR : λPλQλy : Γx[P(x)][Q(x)].P(y)
If harmful and toxin in (3a) combine via (11), then (3a) presupposes that toxins are generically
harmful. The structural alternative Every toxin will be... to (3a) does not have this presupposition,
and so does not logically entail (3a) (by reasoning along the lines of (8)). Therefore the
inference from (3a) to (3b) is correctly predicted to be invalid. This explanation is not available
to any pragmatic theory of NR readings.
Selected references Cinque, G. 2010. The syntax of adjectives • Katzir, R. 2007. Structurallydefined
alternatives. L&P. • Larson, R. 1998. Events and modification in nominals. SALT
8. • Magri, G. 2009. A theory of individual-level predicates based on blind mandatory scalar
implicatures. NaLS. • Sauerland, U. 2004. Scalar implicatures in complex sentences. L&P.

Shevaun Lewis (Maryland) & Wing Yee Chow (Maryland)
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Charles Lin (Indiana)
Typological Perspectives on Relative Clause Processing: Thematic Mapping, Case
Markedness, Filler-Gap Integrations, and Their Relative Timing
It is well-known that in head-initial languages, relative clauses involving subject
extractions are processed with greater ease than those involving object extractions (Brazilian
Portuguese: Gouvea, 2003; Dutch: Frazier, 1987b; English: Ford, 1983, Gibson, Desmet,
Grodner, Watson, & Ko, 2005, King & Just, 1991, King & Kutas, 1995, Traxler, Morris, &
Seely, 2002; French: Cohen & Mehler, 1996, Frauenfelder, Segui, & Mehler, 1980, Holmes
& O’Regan, 1981; German: Mecklinger, Schriefers, Steinhauer, & Friederici, 1995,
Schriefers, Friederici, & Kuhn, 1995). In the processing of relative clauses that are headfinal,
however, the effect has been inconsistent. Easier comprehension of subject relative
clauses has been reported in Japanese (Miyamoto & Nakamura, 2003; Ueno & Garnsey,
2008), Korean (Kwon, Lee, Gordon, Kluender, & Polinsky, 2010), Mandarin Chinese (Lin &
Bever, 2006) and Turkish (Kahraman, Sato, Ono & Sakai, 2010), while easier processing of
object relative clauses has been reported in Basque (Carreiras, Duñabeitia, Vergara, de la
Cruz-Pavía, & Laka, 2010), Japanese (Ishizuka, Nakatani, & Gibson, 2006) and Mandarin
Chinese (Hsiao & Gibson, 2003; Gibson & Wu, 2011; Packard, Ye, & Zhou, 2011).
Research so far mostly assumed that integrating the relativized gap and the head noun
(i.e., the filler) is critical to relative clause processing. A distance-based account has been
adopted to account for the subject-object asymmetries in relative clause processing across
languages. The distance between the filler and the gap has been counted linearly based on the
number of intervening discourse entities (Gibson, 1998) and hierarchically based on the
number of intervening structural nodes (O’Grady, 1997). No theory, however, has been able
to account for the variations of the effect in both head-initial and head-final relativization.
In this talk, we review previous research (including ours) and propose a typological
theory of relative clause processing, paying special attention to head positions, case marking,
and thematic orders (Figure 1). Languages are first classified based on the head positions
inside NPs. Filler-gap dependencies (in head-initial relatives) and gap-filler dependencies (in
head-final relatives) are taken to involve distinctive processing effects. The word-order
variations within languages with head-initial relatives suggest that when the filler precedes
the gap, the processor adopts an Active Filler Strategy (Frazier, 1987): upon encountering a
filler, the parser initiates the search for a gap to minimize the working memory load.
If the gap precedes the filler as in a head-final type of dependency, the construction of
a gap-filler dependency would be complicated by issues of structural garden path regarding
where the relative clauses starts and where the gap is located (Hirose, 2006; Lin & Bever,
2011). Strategies that do not focus on constructing a filler-gap relation would be used instead.
In the literature, it has been suggested that in case-prominent languages like Basque,
Japanese, Korean, and Turkish, whether the grammatical case is marked determines
processing difficulty (Carreiras et al., 2010). In a nominative-accusative language like
Japanese, Korean, and Turkish, an object relative is more difficult than a subject relative
because the object of a transitive verb receives an accusative case, which is more marked
than the nominative case of a subject NP. In an ergative language like Basque, the subject of
a transitive verb receives the ergative case and is more marked than an object NP. Therefore,
a subject relative is more difficult than an object relative.
In a word order prominent language like Mandarin Chinese, the dominant thematic
order functions as a template to be mapped with incoming nominal arguments and verbs for
“quick and dirty” thematic interpretations (similar to the pseudosyntax of Townsend and

Bever, 2001 and the good-enough processing of Ferreira, 2003). Sequences of nominal
arguments and verbs that follow the dominant thematic orders in the language (e.g., Agentaction-Patient
in Chinese object relatives) are easier to process than those that do not.
Therefore, a subject relative is easier to process than an object relative (as was found by
Gibson and Wu, 2011).
The proposed typology demonstrates effects and strategies of structural integration,
thematic mappings as well as sensitivity to case markedness that hinge on the typological
properties of specific languages. We will further examine previous experimental results of L2
relative clause processing and discuss the implications that such a typology has for second
language studies of relative clause processing, in particular, whether the processing of
relative clauses in L1s and L2s of different types would be affected by the distinctive
processing mechanisms in either language (cf., Juffs, 2005; Clahsen & Felser, 2006, 2008).
Head-initial
Filler-gap integration
Relative Clauses
+ case-marking
Morphological
unmarkedness
Figure 1. Typology of relative clause processing
Head-final
- case-marking
Thematic template
matching

Bethany Lochbihler (McGill)
Final and non-final phase status
This paper discusses inequality between syntactic phases as final that show stronger
boundaries versus non-final phases that institute a more permeable boundary. Final phases
correspond to top level functional projections in the spirit of Grimshaw (2000), including CP,
DP, PP and AP, and act as absolute boundaries on head movement (Li 1990, 2005) and
restrict scrambling (Fowlie 2010). Non-final phases, like category defining heads v and n
(Marantz 2001) and theta-complete heads v* (Chomsky 2004), allow head movement and
scrambling past the phase boundary. I propose that non-final phases occur within extended
projections, while final phases mark the edge of an extended projection. I investigate the
phonological predictions made implicit by the syntactic literature, namely that the difference
in type of phase boundary (as more or less permeable) should affect the phonological form
that takes syntactic phase spell-out as input. I test the phonological effect of final phases in
Ojibwe, a Central Algonquian language spoken in Canada and parts of the USA, which has
syntactically complex prosodic words exhibiting word-internal phases. I show that the status
of a phase as final or non-final bears on prosodic word boundaries, stress assignment and the
order of application of phonological processes.
At the heart of the distinction between final and non-final phases is the
lexical/functional specification of categories. First, Grimshaw (2000) puts forth the notion of
extended projection where a lexical head resides within a functional shell (e.g. V within InflP
and CP) but shares its categorical properties with these functional projections. Edges of
extended projections are marked by the maximal projection of a top level functional head
(e.g. C for a V head). I want to claim that these top level functional projections in fact define
final phases because they create a firm boundary between the extended domains of lexical
heads (e.g. between verbs and their nominal arguments) and show unique properties with
respect to syntactic movement, discussed below.
Second, final phases interact with head movement. Li (1990, 2005) looks at verb
incorporation where a lexical verb combines with a causative morpheme via head movement,
forming one prosodic word. Li argues that incorporation of a lower verb into a higher
causative Vº cannot pass through Inflº and Cº (as was proposed by Baker 1988) since
embedded inflection is never realized and verbs taking full clausal complements cannot
undergo verb incorporation. Li proposes that movement of a lexical head cannot go through a
functional head back to a lexical one, parallel to improper movement of XPs from A-bar to
A-positions (Chomsky 1986). Although the specifier of a final phase can act as an escape
hatch for A-bar movement (e.g. long distance wh-fronting), Li’s analysis implies that final
phase heads, such as Cº, are an absolute boundary for head movement (Nºs also cannot move
past Dº) while other phase heads, such as v*º, do not restrict head movement.
A third set of data showing the syntactic uniqueness of final phases comes from the
kinds of scrambling possible cross-linguistically. Fowlie (2010) discusses data from different
languages (e.g. Tagalog, Walpiri and Tohono O’odham), indicating that scrambling can occur
within DPs (also APs, PPs) and within CPs, but cannot occur past the edge of a DP or CP.
Again we find the same set of final phases creating a stronger boundary, now with respect to
scrambling, while non-final phases (xPs, v*P) do not show such strong restrictions.
Final phases (CP, DP, AP, PP) have syntactic status as the top level functional
projection in the extended projection of a lexical head, and non-final phases (xPs, v*P) are
found internally to extended projections of lexical heads. However, phases conceptually exist
so that the derivation is divided into packets to be sent to the phonological and semantic
interfaces of the grammar (Chomsky 2001). On the semantic side, final phases as whole
extended projections are semantically saturated and theta-marked. Next I will discuss some
effects of the different phase types beyond the syntax at the phonological interface.
Ojibwe phonology shows the effects of final phases (versus non-final) in several ways.
First, this polysynthetic language tends to define the edges of prosodic words by final phases
1

Final and non-final phase status
(potentially containing intermediate phases), such that independent words correspond to CP,
DP, AP, PP or are elements outside of these domains, such as quantifiers or discourse
particles in the specifiers of DP and CP respectively. The spell-out of a final phase places a
final prosodic word boundary as well as a syntactic boundary.
Second, stress assignment in Ojibwe is dependent on phase domain, where secondary
stress is computed at the spell-out of each phase, but primary stress is only computed at final
phases. Newell (2008) shows the sensitivity of secondary stress to word-internal (non-final)
phases where degenerate feet are only allowed at the right edge of a phase domain (1).
Conversely, primary stress marks the antepenultimate foot of the entire prosodic word, which
is the final phase CP in (1) (bolded).
(1) (bòo)(ní)|(minì)(kwèe) (*(bóo)(nimì)(nikwèe))
[CP[InflP[aP booni]-[vP minik-iwee]]]
quit-drinking-VAI ‘he quit drinking’ (Newell 2008:214)
Finally, final phases affect the distribution of T-Pal(atalization) (i.e. /t, /→[č,]/__/i/), which
can only occur between segments spelled-out in the same phase and is blocked across phase
edges (see Slavin 2007; Mathieu 2009). T-Pal interacts with vowel Apocope in Ojibwe,
which can delete the environment for T-Pal, namely /i/ (Piggott & Kaye 1973). (2a) indicates
a T-Pal>Apocope order (or a ranking in OT) since /t/ becomes [č] despite the deletion of /i/,
and (2b) is the opposite Apocope>T-Pal order where vowel deletion bleeds palatalization. I
account for this ordering paradox by appealing to final phases and indicating that certain
phonological processes can only occur at the spell-out of a specific type of phase. I propose
that the process of T-Pal applies at the spell-out of every phase but Apocope only applies at a
final phase spell-out (accounting for Apocope exclusively deleting actual word final
segments, and not intermediate final segments cross-linguistically, e.g. Hale 1973).
Therefore, in (2b) both T-Pal and Apocope are triggered at a final phase, and so Apocope can
bleed T-Pal, but in (2a) T-Pal is triggered in an earlier v*P phase and Apocope must wait
until the spell-out of the final CP phase, giving the apparent T-Pal>Apocope ordering.
(2) a. nimiškawač b. peemaatisit
[CP ni-[v*P miškaw-a-t-i]] [[peem-aat-isi]-t-i]
1-freeze/hard-VII-intrans-VAI along-live-VAI -3conj-PART
‘I am frozen.’ ‘he who lives’ (Kaye & Piggott 1973:356)
The idea that CP and DP (as well as AP and PP) constitute special domains is implicit in the
syntactic literature, a property I aim to make explicit with the notion of final phases defined
by extended projection of a lexical category. The effects of phases are seen in the syntax as
well as the phonology, and the distinction between final and non-final phases likewise affects
both parts of the grammar.
References: Baker, M. 1988. Incorporation. UChicago Press. | Chomsky, N. 1986. Barriers.
MIT Press. | Chomsky, N. 2004. Beyond explanatory adequacy. In Belletti et al (eds), The
cartography of syntactic structures. OUP. | Fowlie, M. 2010. More Multiple Multiple Spellout.
Ms. UCLA. | Grimshaw, J. 2000. Locality and Extended Projection. In Coopmans et al (eds),
Lexical Specification and Insertion. Benjamins. | Hale, K. 1973. Deep and surface canonical
disparities in relation to analysis and change. Current Trends in Linguistics 11: 408-458. | Kaye,
J. D., and Piggott, G. L. 1973. On the Cyclical Nature of Ojibwa T-Palatalization. LI 4:345-362. |
Li, Y. 1990. X 0 -binding and Verb Incorporation. LI 21:399-426. | Li, Y. 2005. Xº: A Theory of the
Morphology-Syntax Interface. MIT Press. | Marantz, Alec. 2001. Words. Ms. MIT. | Mathieu, E.
2009. Noun Incorporation and Word Formation via Phrasal Movement. Ms. UOttawa. | Newell,
H. 2008. Aspects of the morphology and phonology of phases. PhD Dissertation, McGill. |
Slavin, T. 2007. T-Palatalization in Oji-Cree as a window into the morphosyntactic structure of
the verbal complex. Generals Paper, UToronto.
2

Terje Lohndal (Maryland) & Bridget Samuels (CalTech)
On how null elements and unpronounced copies are different
Syntax creates sound-meaning pairs. Within Chomskyan generative grammar, this is
typically described in terms of transferring (portions of) syntactic structures to the
phonological/phonetic and semantic/conceptual interfaces through PF and LF, respectively.
However, to paraphrase Chomsky & Halle (1968), whether the output of the syntactic
component and the input of the phonological component are the same thing is an empirical
issue. Indeed, since the 1970’s, much work on the syntax-phonology interface has focused on
how to derive phonological domains from syntactic structures under the assumption that
these two representations are related but non-isomorphic. This issue of domains is, however,
but one piece of the much larger puzzle of how to characterize the transformations at PF
which turn hierarchical, phonology-free morphosyntactic structures into linear phonological
representations. The purpose of this talk is to shed light on the ordering of operations at PF,
and crucially argue that empty categories in the syntax can sometimes create a configuration
that is not linearizable. Our goal in this paper is to scrutinize the conditions under which such
configurations arise, and integrate these with more general observations about the effects of
and differences between unpronounced copies and null elements in morphophonology.
The specific case study that we will focus on relates to ‘empty edges’: phonologically
contentless edges of certain domains. Whether to characterize these domains in syntactic or
phonological terms will be one of our primary concerns. Towards this goal, we provide a new
analysis of facts traditionally attributed to the ECP (e.g., Stowell 1981; cf. Pesetsky &
Torrego 2001, Bošković & Lasnik 2003). An (2007a) suggests that these data are captured by
the Intonational Phrase Edge Generalization (IPEG), which states that “the edge of an
Intonational phrase cannot be empty (where the edge encompasses the specifier and the head
of the relevant syntactic constituent).” This explains why sentences which are unacceptable
with an empty CP edge can be ameliorated by overt content, be it in SpecCP or in C (1).
(1) a. *I saw the child yesterday [Øspec ØC Mary was waiting for]
b. I saw the child yesterday [who ØC Mary was waiting for]
c. I saw the child yesterday [Øspec that Mary was waiting for]
In order to allow for the omission of C in (2b), An (2007a) needs to assume that the
formation of a separate I-phrase for clausal complements of verbs (and restrictive relative
clauses) is optional. The IPEG also extends to other categories: vP (3a,b), DP (3c,d), and AP
(3e,f).
(2) a. I believe [CP that [IP John liked linguistics]].
b. I believe [CP ØC [IP John liked linguistics.]]
(3) a. Eat the cake John did and eat the cookie Mary did
b. *[vP Eat the cake] John did and [Øspec Øv the cookie] Mary did
c. John likes this book of linguistics and Mary, that book of physics.
d. *John likes this book of linguistics and Mary likes [Øspec ØD book of physics.
e. Eager to win the Pulitzer Prize, John is, and eager to win the Nobel Prize, Mary is.
f. *[AP Eager to win the Pulitzer Prize], John is, and [Øspec ØA to win the Nobel Prize,
Mary is].
However, the justification for the IPEG is unclear and does not follow from independent facts
about the architecture of grammar. Moreover, it requires syntactic analyses which violate
Bare Phrase Structure because An is forced to stipulate empty specifiers, which Bare Phrase
structure rejects (cf. Chomsky 1995, Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou 1998). We suggest a
new analysis which accounts for the above data by referring to independently needed
constructs, which we argue should be the null hypothesis given Minimalist concerns about
modular architecture (cf. Idsardi and Raimy in press).
We argue for a syntactic—or at least, ‘pre-phonological’—account of empty-edge
phenomena which hinges on exactly how we understand the PF interface. We will make a

specific proposal concerning this architecture, show how this new account can capture all the
data that have been discussed in the literature, and extend it to cover additional data which
have not previously been addressed in treatments of the ECP. We argue that (1a) and (3b,d,f)
are unacceptable because they cannot be linearized. Specifically, two consecutive syntactic
objects cannot be null at the stage when linearization applies, or else the algorithm will be
unable to return a linearization statement, cf. (4).
(4) Linearization algorithm: When encountering the merged {α, β}, α and β ccommanding
each other, upon Spell-Out, return an ordered set or .
We follow Epstein et al. (1998) and Richards (2004) in assuming that mutual ccommand
‘overdetermines’ linearization; the Precedence Resolution Principle demands that
in such a configuration, one object’s c-command relations over the other must be ignored
(which object being subject to parametric variation). The key component to our analysis of
(1)-(3) is that the algorithm (4) only succeeds in returning an ordered pair when the elements
to be linearized are featurally distinct. They have to be distinct because of the irreflexivity
condition on linearization, as Nunes (1995, 2004) points out. If the two elements are not
featurally distinct, this results in a crash when a merged pair of elements has only Edge
Features (EF; Chomsky 2008), as a result of non-insertion of phonological content (which is
crucially distinct from copy deletion, contra An 2007b.) Two elements with only EF are nondistinct,
which will result in a crash at linearization. EFs are visible to the linearization
algorithm since these features are never deleted, as Chomsky (2008) argues, but they are also
never phonologically realized. Furthermore, we provide evidence that copies are marked for
deletion prior to linearization but actually deleted after linearization, which exempts
unpronounced copies from causing empty-edge crashes and resolves a tension between the
empty-edge bans in An (2007a) and (2007b), one of which is asymmetrical (left edge only)
but includes copies, and the other which is symmetrical but excludes copies.
Assuming in accordance with Bare Phrase Structure that C does not project a specifier
in declarative sentences such as (5a) [or in (2b)] (cf. Starke 2004), our account
straightforwardly predicts the sentences in (5) to be grammatical, while such cases constitute
prima facie exceptions to the IPEG.
(5) a. [CP ØC [TP Mary was waiting for the child]]
b. [CP Who did Mary [vP see [VP tv tobj ]]]
The same holds for adjuncts to matrix clauses, where there is no null element intervening:
(6) a. [CP [AP True to herself], [TP she planned to remain there ]]. (Selkirk 2005)
b. [CP [PP On the fourth of July], [TP we’ll have a parade and fireworks]].
We further show that the above analysis extends to account for the unacceptable
sentences in (3) as well as those in (7), involving a sentential subject (7b) and a topicalized
CP (7d). In both the unacceptable cases, there will be two objects that only have EFs that are
adjacent, thus the linearization algorithm crashes.
(7) a. [CP ØC [CP That John is a genius] was believed by many people.
b. *[CP ØC [CP ØC John is a genius] was believed by many people.
c. [CP ØC [CP That John is a genius], Mary believed.
d. *[CP ØC [CP ØC John is a genius], Mary believed.
We will address further cases as well, and then turn to other data concerning how
morphophonology deals with null elements. We argue that morphophonology ‘knows about’
null elements since they trigger phonological cycles and produce cyclic blocking effects, but
that unpronounced copies are phonologically inert (Samuels 2011). This strengthens our
claim that unpronounced copies and null elements must be distinguished, and we argue that
the former are eliminated earlier than the latter – null elements actually persist until the
handoff to phonology proper.

Sophia Manika, Sergey Avrutin & Eric Reuland (Utrecht)
The bits of dependencies
Background
Consider a minimally different pair:
1. Maria blames, in most of the cases, herself for the bad grades
2. Maria blames, in most of the case, the teacher for the bad grades
Interpretation of the first sentence requires establishing a syntactic dependency between an
anaphoric element and its antecedent. Interpretation of the second sentence requires
integration of definite NP the teacher into discourse as part of the blaming event.
According to Reuland's model of the language - relevant architecture of working memory
(Reuland 2009, 2010), these two operations nicely reflect two distinct memory networks
involved in language processing. In Reuland's terminology one computes form/syntax (socalled
Declarative / Procedural Interface, or DPI) and one is responsible for the integration of
the content/discourse information.
The current study provides experimental evidence for the existence of these two distinct
systems and proposes a novel measure of processing complexity. Specifically, we
demonstrate that it is the entropy of the verbal paradigm (an information - theoretic
notion introduced by Shannon 1948) that influences the operation of the relevant
memory systems. In other words, we demonstrate that changes in the entropy value of
the verb family influence (crucially, in a different way!) the processing cost of the
reflexive object NP and a definite object NP.
Entropy calculation
Inflectional entropy of a verb’s paradigm indicates the level of similarity 1 among its items. It
is a function of the number of inflected forms of the verb, the frequency of each verb form
and the number of possible linguistic interpretations the form can be found in (i.e. the verb
form “work” in English can be used as 1 st sg, 2 nd sg, infinitive etc). In this sense, higher
entropy reflects a more “uniform” distribution of memory traces between forms (hence,
higher uncertainty in lexical retrieval), while a more “diverse” distribution is represented by a
lower entropy (and thus by a lower uncertainty in retrieval). Van Ewijk & Avrutin (2011,
among others) showed that inflectional entropy of a verb modulated retrieval of a target form
and suggest that entropy is an index of complexity.
Method
Thirty-four Dutch native students, aged 21-29 years old, were tested in a self-paced reading
task. Reading times in each word were measured.
Twenty-four Dutch verbs were chosen based on their entropy values (taken from van Ewijk &
Avrutin, 2011) and were classified in two groups: low and high entropy. Each verb was used
in two conditions; with a syntactic dependency (a reflexive pronoun) and without (proper
name), resulting to forty-eight experimental items. Although the critical regions are the point
after the verb (rg 2) and the point of object integration (rg 7), we included subsequent regions
(rg 8- 11) to account for spillover effects. All words in regions 3-11, (except for the proper
name), were identical ensuring weighed information load across items (see Table below).
1 Shannon’s notion of Entropy was proposed to apply to a random variable X to describe the degree of
uncertainty related to the distribution of probabilities of the variable. For simplicity reasons we refer to Entropy
as degree of similarity because we are studying inflectional families and when entropy is applied it mirrors how
different the verb-forms within the paradigms are.

He/She Verb, in the most cases, HIM(HER)SELF/ Loes and not the other (noun)
Reflexive
NP
HIJ/ZIJ verb in de meeste gevallen
ZICHZELF
Loes
en niet de andere
varying entropy constant entropy object spill over
region 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Results
At the point of verb retrieval (rg 3), high entropy verbs were read significantly faster than low
entropy ones (p< .05, r=.35).
At the point of the object (rg7), there was a significant interaction between type of object and
verb entropy (p< 0.5, r=.43). Importantly, contrasts revealed that the interaction was due to
the reflexives; higher entropy verbs delayed establishing the dependency between the
reflexive and its referent.
Moreover, there was a main effect of object type in rg8. Reflexives were read significantly
faster across conditions than referential NPs (p< .001, r=.56).
Discussion
These data show how entropy can influence memory processes. Furthermore, they show that
the establishment of a dependency between a reflexive and its antecedent is not only
grammatically constrained, but it is influenced by non-grammatical constraints such as verbal
entropy as well.
Activation of a verb form automatically activates its paradigm network. The more “uniform”
the probability distribution of the verb forms within the paradigm is, the higher is the
inflectional entropy. Verbs with high entropy lose less energy than low entropy verbs during
the spread of activation, and retrieval is faster (as in van Ewijk & Avrutin, replicated here in
rg3). The reflexive cases signal the need for an intra-sentential referent and the verb is readdressed.
High inflectional entropy induces competition between the target verb form and
the “yet-not-decayed” forms of the paradigm that have similar probability. This
“interference”, present only in inflectional paradigms with high entropy, delays the
establishing of the dependency between the reflexive and its antecedent (interaction in rg 7).
Additionally, the effect at region 8 indicates that grammatically-constrained dependencies
(reflexives) are established faster than non-grammatically constrained dependencies (noun).
That implies the existence of a distinct network that computes, very fast, syntactic
requirements, such as assignment of an intra-sentential referent. Delay of the nouns results
from the fact that information from discourse is needed for a referent to be found.
References:
Reuland, E. (2009). Language, Symbolization and beyond. In R. B. Knight. (Ed.), The
Prehistory of Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Reuland, E. (2010). Imagination, planning and working memory: the emergence of language.
Current Anthropology, 51, 99-110.
Shannon, C. E. (1948). A mathematical theory of communication. Bell System Technical
Journal , 27, 379–423.
van Ewijk, L., & Avrutin, S. (2011). Auditory lexical decision in healthy elderly and young
subjects.The effect of information load and inflectional entropy. Procedia- Social and
Behavioural Sciences, 23, 104-105.

Rita Manzini (Firenze) & Anna Roussou (Patras)
Empty categories: empty operators and variables at the LF interface
We argue for a restricted inventory of interpretable non-pronounced elements of grammar,
including only empty operators and variables. Our model observes minimalist postulates
(Inclusiveness, one level of syntactic representation, etc.), but is representational, since we maintain
that operators and variables are introduced by interpretive principles at the LF interface.
1. Phrasal ‘trace’ and ‘PRO’ are (just) variables at the LF interface. In standard minimalism,
movement is Internal Merge (IM): a Probe α with an EPP feature targets a Goal β already merged in
the derivation, as in (1). IM is construed as a mechanism that introduces a second copy of β. If all
instances of ‘movement’ are overt (Chomsky 2000), then the EPP can be viewed as an instruction
for lexicalization.
(1) [αP β αEPP [… [ γP γ.. β]]]
Alternatively, in multi-dominance (MD) approaches (Starke 2001; Frampton 2004; Johnson 2009;
de Vries 2009; a.o.) β merges once (externally, EM), and ‘re-merge’ amounts to immediate
dominance by a higher node, so that β has more than one mother node, as in (2). (2) allows for
spell-out of β in the higher or the lower position, subject to some PF-algorithm.
(2) [αP α(EPP) [… [γP γ.. β]]]
(1) and (2) share the requirement that β merge in the lower position for argument structure
satisfaction, at least if β is an argument, i.e. EM expresses the core properties of D-structure.
A different logical possibility is that Merge is always external, with β directly merging in the
EPP position; there is a single copy/occurrence and no re-merge, as in (3). Since the position of
Merge in (3) is also that of spell-out, there is no need for a PF-deletion operation, as in (1), or
linearization algorithm as in (2). In terms of interpretation, though, β associates with some lower
part of the configuration, here indicated as e. Therefore we need to consider what e amounts to –
and what ensures chain formation between β and e.
(3) [αP β αEPP [… [ γP γ .. (e) ]]]
In standard generative theory, if β is an argument, then e corresponds to its theta-position – whether
e is a copy or its GB counterpart, i.e. the identity element e of the string. But suppose the theta-role
has no structural correlate. This means that the chain should be computed at the interface by some
interpretive algorithm.
For the sake of concreteness consider the wh-construction in (4). In the copy-theory of
movement, the second gap e2 in (4) is a copy of what which deletes at PF, while LF converts it to a
variable (cf. Fox 2002). The first gap e1 is a copy of you, which again deletes, while the PFrealization
coincides with that of the EPP argument (syntactic subject). If e, now understood as a
variable, is not structurally represented (as a copy or some other empty category), as we propose
here, it must be introduced directly at the LF interface.
(4) [C What did [I you [V (e1) see (e2) ]]]
Indeed see, being a two-place predicate, introduces two variables (x, y) which are bound by the
external and the internal arguments respectively (by the λ-binding mechanism of Heim & Kratzer
1997, cf. Adger & Ramchand’s (2005) Λ feature, etc.). This (operator, variable) relation is fully
equivalent to the movement operation – and it is redundant when added to it (Brody’s (2003)
argument for representationalism). In an A’-dependency, the wh-operator is in turn construed as a
λ-abstractor, and so can be construed the EPP in relation to the subject, following Butler (2004).
In short, a ‘movement’ relation is defined by a single argument satisfying two instances of
λs. Though control will not be considered here in any detail, we notice that the same also holds of
(obligatory) control, which minimally involves two theta-roles (λ-abstractors) bound by the same
argument. In ‘arbitrary’ control, one variable is simply bound by a generic closure operator. Hence
PRO, like trace, in present terms translates to a variable at the LF interface.
2. There are no head ‘trace’ and pro. The empirical relevance of our discussion becomes more
evident when we move from the dislocation of phrases (specifically DP’s) to that of heads
(specifically verbal heads). Chomsky (2001) excludes that IM applies to heads. If on the other hand,

head movement is a PF operation, as Chomsky proposes, then in syntax heads always sit in their
EM position, conceived of as their D-structure position. At the same time it is not clear what PF
movement amounts to. A possible construal for it is Morphological Merger (Marantz 1988, Embick
and Noyer 2001). However, to the extent that similar Merge operations occur in different
components, obvious notions of economy (e.g. non redundancy) appear to be violated.
The discussion in part 1 suggests another logical possibility, namely that in syntax heads
indeed occupy their EM position which is now identified with their surface position. Consider for
example V-to-C ‘movement’ (or V-in-C positioning) as in German (5). The Merge position of the
verb in (5) will be determined by the same kind of considerations as the Merge of the wh-phrase in
(4), i.e. the (‘EPP’) instruction to lexicalize certain properties (the wh-property or the syntactic
subject EPP in (4), the ‘finiteness’ property in (5)).
(5) [CP Gestern sahst [IP du den Peter ]] (lit: ‘yesterday saw you Peter’)
At the same time, there is no evidence that there are head variables in the putative Dstructure
position. The interpretive question then is: how can predicate-argument relations be
established? When the argument is in a position to bind the variable introduced by the predicate, the
discussion goes through as in (4). So the question is what happens when the reverse configuration
holds, as in (5) (or in any declarative sentence in languages with V in I, etc.). Given the availability
of overt agreement between predicates and their arguments, we have evidence that functional heads
must have ‘probes’ reaching into argument positions their ‘goals’), yielding standard minimalist
Agree – which we could use to this end. Yet Chomsky (2000) argues that theta-roles are not
features and therefore theta-relations cannot be established by feature-checking under Agree (contra
Hornstein 1999, Manzini & Roussou 2000).
We take Chomsky’s (2000) conclusion to be correct, but we also argue that agreement is not
a feature checking relation. Consider the classical example of subject-finite verb agreement, say
between du and –st in (5). It is a traditional idea (see the null subject parameter) that the finite verb
inflection is pronominal(-like), having all of the crucial properties of a pronoun, for instance
reference to ‘hearer’ in the case of –st ‘2 nd sg’. If so, agreement need not involve the deletion of
uninterpretable features. Rather, the ‘hearer’ specifications of du and –st must be attributed to the
same argument slot. The non-distinctness (i.e. agreement) of their referentially relevant properties
(features) will simply be a consequence of this. Therefore, feature checking is not what probe-goal
relations are about. Instead, what they are about is precisely the predicate-argument calculus, of
which agreement is but a reflex.
In other words, saturation of theta-roles corresponds to the binding of variables (the thetaroles
according to the discussion in section 1, i.e. the ‘probes’) by arguments (i.e. the ‘goals’). Phifeature
bundles, notably finite verb inflections, are interpretable as the most elementary possible
satisfaction of theta-roles. In turn, the agreement relation (for instance between a verb inflection and
a DP) is part of the predicate-argument calculus, and is essentially the reverse of the movement
relation. ‘Movement’ has a single argument and two λ abstractions, while ‘agreement’ has a single λ
abstraction (i.e. theta-role or argument slot) and two arguments (including now inflections).
A consequence of the construal of phi-feature bundles as pronominal elements is of course
the elimination of pro (both expletive and referential). Null subject languages (or person forms
within a language) are those where the word-level lexicalization provided by the verb inflection
suffices for the EPP; non-null subject languages (or forms) are those where it does not.
3. Empty operators. Our proposal so far admits only of variables at the LF interface, eliminating
purely syntactic (or ‘PF’) elements such as head trace and pro. In such a theory there will of course
be empty operators as well. As time allows, we will argue that some ‘functional’ categories are
better understood as operators (e.g. ‘number’, cf. the discussion within Distributed Morphology
from Noyer (1992) to Harbour (2011)). Therefore ‘silent’ categories, i.e. phonologically empty
lexical item in the sense of Kayne (2010) may prove unnecessary (the converse of the conclusion in
section 2 that there are no ‘uninterpretable’ lexical entries either), once the more restrictive category
of empty operator is adequately defined.

Tania Leal Méndez & Christine Shea (Iowa)
L1 and L2 Mexican Spanish and information structure: P-movement or in-situ
prosody?
The present experiments focus on P-movement, a Spanish structure that lies at the syntaxdiscourse
interface. According to Zubizarreta (1998), the syntactic reflex of P-movement
results in two word orders: VOS and [S]VPPO: (underlining represents new information)
Context: Who ate the apple? P-movement type 1
Comió la manzana Juan. (VOS)
Ate the apple Juan
#Juan comió la manzana. (#SVO)
Context: What did Juan put on top of the table? P-movement type 2
Juan puso sobre la mesa un libro. (SVPPO)
Juan put on top of the table a book.
#Juan puso un libro sobre la mesa (#SVOPP)
Juan put a book on top of the table
Given that p-movement is a result of phonological alignment requirements, it has been
argued to be prosodically motivated (Zubizarreta, 1998; but see López, 2009 for a
syntactically-motivated explanation).
Experiment 1 (Judgments)
To test whether native Spanish speakers and L2 learners would the pertinent word orders to
the informational structure (context), we used a used a bi-modal (text-audio) contextualized
acceptability task, containing these context-test sentence combinations (all in Spanish): 12
P-movement (VOS and [S]VPPO), 6—Rheme (VSO), plus 18 fillers. SVO was excluded as
an option because it is a „default‟ (biased) order in Spanish. Using a scale (1-4 or “I don‟t
know”), participants judged (in)felicity in context. Participants also completed a proficiency
test (two multiple-choice sections of a standardized test). Participants (N=137) included 49
native speakers, 25 advanced learners, 29 intermediate, and 46 low-intermediate. All learners
had English as their L1. Group and individual results indicate these properties can be
successfully acquired, although not all to the same extent (see Figures for results).
Additionally, the results of the native speakers indicate that in the case of P-movement 1, the
distinction between the two word orders in context is clear, while this was not the case for Pmovement
2.
Experiment 2 (Production)
To test whether native Mexican Spanish speakers (from central Mexico, Puebla State)
produced this orders in context and to analyze their prosodic encoding of information
structure, we used a contextualized forced choice production task. In a video, participants
were presented with a context (a question) (8 seconds). After each question, participants
viewed a short segment of a silent film (10-15 seconds). Then, participants were presented
with three options to answer the question. These options differed only in the word order.
Responses were audio-recorded (10 seconds). Participants included a monolingual Spanish
group (n=53) all born and residing in Mexico and a bilingual group (n=11) Bilingual NS of
Spanish who had completed a Master‟s degree in the States and had lived in an Englishspeaking
country at least 7 years (TOEFL min: 500). Group and individual results show that
the preferential manner for encoding information structure (focus) is not through syntactic
means (word order) but through prosody. Spanish ToBI analyses reveal that native Mexican
Spanish speakers do mark information focus, but not in the expected fashion. Instead, these

speakers prefer to mark narrow focus by means of pitch accents on the narrow-focus words
rather than the expected syntactic movement. While Zubizarreta (1998) does not necessarily
rule out this option, it is not hypothesized to be the overwhelmingly preferred one. While
dialect-specific differences in terms of how prosody and information structure interact have
been well-documented, the evidence presented here suggests that not only can prosody be
dialect specific (Prieto & Roseano, 2010), but the syntax-prosody interface may also manifest
dialect-specific effects in terms of production.
Experiment 3 (Perception)
To further test the hypothesis that Mexican Spanish speakers prefer the prosodic option in
terms of information structure realization (as pertaining to P-movement), we used a forced
choice listening identification task. Participants heard a sentence with either narrow focus
on the subject (p-movement 1, VOS, 6 sentences) or narrow focus on the object (p-movement
2, [S]VPPO, 6 sentences), plus 10 fillers and had to select which question best corresponded
to the sentence heard, whether a question focused on the subject (e.g., ¿Quién comió? Who
ate?, or ¿Qué pasó? What happened?). Based upon the data from the production study cited
above, we hypothesize that Mexican Spanish speakers will prefer sentences with SVO order,
accompanied by prosodically-realized narrow focus on the subject in response to „Who ate?‟
type questions over VOS word-order. The same preference is predicted for p-movement 2.
We are currently analyzing the data for this experiment.
Discussion
We present preliminary perception and production data suggesting that p-movement may be a
dialect-dependent manifestation of the syntax-prosody interface, given that Mexican Spanish
speakers do not seem to use it to express information-structure shifts. This implies that the
realization of the prosody-syntax interface in terms of information structure may need to be
re-conceptualized to incorporate optional, less categorical preferences into the grammar of
native speakers.
Figures
Experiment 1: Acceptability Judgment averages for P-movement 1, P-movement 2
Experiment 2:
P-movement 1, Bilinguals P-movement 1, Monolinguals
References
Zubizarreta, M. L. (1998). Prosody, focus, and word order. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Prieto, P., Roseano, P. (coords.) (2010). Transcription of Intonation of the Spanish Language.
Lincom Europa: München.

Luisa Meroni & Andrea Gualmini (Utrecht)
Do you know all SI? I know some
Context –dependence of children’s computation of SIs
Many experimental studies have shown that children don't compute scalar implicatures (SIs)
as much as adults, despite mastering the prerequisites to their computation (Chierchia et al.,
2000). In addition, different tasks (truth value judgment, picture‐selection or act‐out) have
been shown to affect children's SIs computation, leading to the claim that the complexity of
judgment‐tasks is beyond children's limited cognitive resources (Pouscoulous et al. 2007;
Katsos et el., in press). This paper presents experimental data showing that 1) children can in
fact compute SIs to the same extent as adults when this is the only contextually available
option (Gualmini et al., 2008) and 2) they do so in a typical Truth Value Judgment task (Crain
& Thornton, 1998).
The role of contextual information for SIs computation was discussed by Welker
(1994) and Carston (1998), through examples (1) and (2).
(1) A: I'm having a dinner party and I need six more chairs.
B: John has four chairs.
(2) A: I'm having a dinner party and I need four more chairs.
B: John has four chairs.
The contrast lies in the fact that the SI associated with the numeral four (exactly 4) is
computed in the first dialogue, but not in the second one (see Zondervan et al., 2009). In light
of theoretical and experimental evidence suggesting that implicatures are costly (Reinhart
1998, Chierchia et al. 2000, Noveck 2001 among others) a plausible view is that their cost
needs to be justified. Our proposal is that contextual relevance provides children with a reason
to comply with this cost. In particular, we draw upon the question that is raised in the context,
and that is usually referred to as the Question Under Discussion (QUD, Roberts 1996) that has
been already shown to exert an effect on resolving scope ambiguities for both children and
adults (see Gualmini et al. 2008).
To investigate whether children compute the SI associated with some (some but not
all), when presented with the appropriate QUD, we tested children with a Truth Value
Judgment task. In a typical Truth Value Judgment task experiment, children listen to stories
with a puppet and have to evaluate what the puppet says relatively to the story they just heard.
Since we wanted to study the effect of an explicit QUD on children's computation of SIs,
following the design by Zondervan et al. (2009), we elicited the target question from the
puppet by overtly asking the relevant QUD. The target question then had to be evaluated by
the subjects relatively to the story they had just heard.
To illustrate, children heard sentences like 3) I think some hotdogs were delivered as a
description of a story in which the relevant character delivered all the hot‐dogs. As in
Zondervan et al. (2009), the target sentence (3) was presented as an answer to two different
questions (4a or 4b), depending on which condition children had been assigned to:
4) a. Were some hot‐dogs delivered? Condition1
b. Were all the hot‐dogs delivered? Condition2
Thirty English-speaking children participated in this experiment, ranging in age from 3;8 to
6;5 (Mean = 4;10). We used a between-subject design where 15 children were presented with
the question under discussion in 4a (Mean = 5;1) and the other 15 children with the question
in 4b (Mean = 4;8). Each child saw four target trials interspersed with fillers to balance the
expected number of yes and no answers.

We predicted that the implicature calculation would be affected by the contextually
available question. Thus, subjects should calculate the SI ‐ and reject (3) ‐ when asked to
evaluate (3) as an answer to the QUD in (4b), but not when (3) was presented as an answer to
(4a). The reason is that both readings of (3), with or without SI, answer the QUD; thus a
different criterion needs to be invoked to select one reading (for instance, computational
complexity or the Principle of Charity, both leading to an affirmative answer). Differently,
without the relevant implicature, (3) is not a good answer to (4b) (Gualmini et al., 2008).
Subjects should thus be led to consider whether an alternative interpretation can be found that
answers the QUD, and the interpretation containing the relevant SI fits the bill. The results
confirmed our prediction. Children accepted the sentence in (3) 85 % of the time, when this
was preceded by question (4a), but their acceptance dropped to 13% when (3) followed (4b),
exactly like the English speaking adults tested by Zondervan et al. (2009). Children were also
asked to motivate their negative answers to ensure they were indeed computing the SI when
rejecting the puppets' statement.
To evaluate if children's computation of SI in Condition 2 was due to the mere
presence of the quantifier all in the QUD, a control experiment was conducted. To this end,
we slightly changed the QUD, as exemplified in Error! Reference source not found.:
(5) Control Condition
a. QUD: Were all the hot-dogs delivered?
b. Target Sentence: I think some pizza were delivered
As one can see, the QUD still contains the quantifier all but this time it revolves around hotdogs
rather than the pizzas. To make the question contextually felicitous, the story also
included some hot-dogs. A third group of 15 English-speaking children participated in this
experiment. Age was from 4;3 to 6;0 (Mean = 5;1). Each child was presented with 4 target
trials interspersed with fillers. Turning to the results, the fifteen children interviewed
computed the SI associated with (5b) only 10% of the time. Children did not compute the SI
associated with the quantifier some despite the occurrence of the stronger term all in the QUD
allowing us to maintain the view that the computation of the SI in Experiment 1 can be
attributed to the QUD rather than to some priming effect. In particular, children were not
concerned with the change of focus implied by the target sentence and accepted the target
sentence.
Our findings show that once the question under discussion is explicitly given neither
developmental nor methodological differences emerge. Taken together with the existing
literature, our results show that one contextual property, that of the QUD, can account for
participants’ preferences on two apparently distinct phenomena: scope ambiguities and scalar
implicatures. This result is an important step in the process of understanding how context
drives interpretation

The Linguistic Expression of Causation
Ad Neeleman & Hans van de Koot (UCL)
1. The mental representation of causal relations The most common definition of causation
has three components (Lewis 1973): (i) it is a relation between a causing and a caused event,
such that (ii) the causing event may not follow the caused event and (iii) if the causing event
had not occurred the causing event would not have occurred either. There is ample evidence
that causation is primarily a tool humans use for structuring their mental model of the world
(Johnson-Laird 1983, 2006). Causation cannot be linguistic in nature, as it can be present in
the absence of language (Call 2004, Varley & Siegel 2002, Leslie 1984). The central question
for linguists, then, is how the psychological notion of causation is expressed linguistically.
We propose that causative verbs do not encode a causing event. Rather, they encode a
macro-event, a resultant state, and the Crucial Contributing Factor (CCF) in the coming about
of the matrix event. The CCF is realized as the external argument (Reinhart 2002) and
identifies which factor, out of a range of potential factors contributing to an outcome, is
deemed by the speaker not to fall in the ceteris paribus category. As causal chains can be
quite complex, there are few inherent restrictions on what can function as a CCF, explaining
the variation of x in x eventually killed Leo (e.g. whisky, Bill, or the distance to the nearest
oasis). Our proposal does not imply that language cannot express causing events. But when
these are expressed, this is not done through the verb, but rather through an adjunct, as in
Little Orson grew into a big man [by eating Irish Oatmeal], where grow is an anticausative.
2. The paradox of direct causation The standard view is that the lexical semantics of a
causative verb contains a causing event. Whisky eventually killed Leo is then taken to mean
that there is an event involving whisky, such that it caused Leo’s death. The well-known
Restriction to Direct Causation in simplex causatives (RDC) can be construed as evidence for
this view, as formulating it requires reference to causing events. It follows that our proposal is
falsified if the RDC is correct. However, evidence for the RDC is surprisingly weak.
The main source of evidence for the RDC consists of what we will call Katz effects (Katz
1970): in the context of (1), (2a) is accepted by all speakers, but (2b) is not.
(1) A sheriff’s six-shooter is faultily repaired by the local gunsmith. As a result, his
weapon jams at a critical moment and the sheriff is gunned down.
(2) a. The gunsmith caused the sheriff to die.
b. The gunsmith killed the sheriff.
Although the effect in (1) is undoubtedly real, there are many examples in which the RDC is
violated. For instance, a 1943 Duke Ellington song entitled A slip of the lip can sink a ship
describes a situation in which loose talk by sailors may allow a spy to obtain and transmit
information that may in turn allow a foreign navy to instruct its submarines to torpedo and
sink ships in a convoy. We conclude from examples of this type that the RDC is incorrect and
must therefore be attributed to independent factors. We discuss these factors below.
Adverbial modification is sometimes claimed to provide further evidence for the RDC (see
Fodor 1970 for related discussion). We will show that this claim is incorrect.
3. Explaining Katz effects The basis for our analysis of Katz effects is the hypothesis that
language encodes accountability for outcome through the rule in (3), where [+m] is a feature
borrowed from Reinhart 2002 that expresses that the referent of an argument has a mind.
(3) Accountability: The referent of a DP specified as [+m] is held accountable for the
action expressed by the verb if and only if it is the CCF argument of that verb.
Accountability only plays a role when a causative verb takes a [+m] subject and is therefore
inapplicable to the slip of the lip example, explaining the absence of a Katz effect. The
awkwardness of (2b) in the context of (1) also follows, because (1) does not invite the reader
to hold the gunsmith responsible for the sheriff’s death. But tweaks of the scenario improve
examples like (2b). Suppose that following the demise of the sheriff, the gunsmith visits a

psychoanalyst because he is struggling with feelings of guilt. He might then say I killed the
sheriff, meaning that he holds himself responsible. Notice that the RDC makes the incorrect
prediction that the gunsmith would under such circumstances knowingly utter a falsity.
Katz effects also disappear if the gunsmith sabotages the sheriff’s gun because he has a
long-standing grudge against him. In such a scenario, (2b) is unobjectionable (Wolff 2003).
In fact it can be shown that accountability assignment is subject to a locality condition
stated over causal relations in the mental model. In particular, ascription of accountability
across participants of an intervening event in a causal chain is forbidden, unless their actions
fall in the ceteris paribus category. Thus, (2b) becomes unacceptable in the extended sabotage
scenario if we introduce an intervening agent whose decisions are presented as crucial to the
outcome. This locality effect confirms that accountability assignment is real.
Why is cause to die different from kill? In the case of kill, a [+m] CCF is accountable for
the entire macro-event encoded by the verb, which includes the resultant state. In the case of
cause to die, the accountability of a [+m] CCF is limited to the causation event (the
circumstances leading to the sheriff’s death) – it excludes the resultant state (the death itself)
because that state is introduced by a separate predicate.
The above is sufficient to explain the effects that initially motivated the RDC. However, we
discuss additional factors inducing Katz effects, including the lexical encoding of instruments
(The gunsmith shot the sheriff is infelicitous in all contexts mentioned above).
4. Testing for the presence of a causing event We close our presentation with a discussion
of proposals that assume that the lexical semantics of causative verbs contains a causing
event. Strikingly, even in generative semantics there was no syntactic position for such an
event. Instead, the standard assumption was (and is) that the causing event is encoded as part
of the semantics of the CAUSE predicate (compare Dowty 1979). Similar ideas can be found in
Hale & Keyser 1993, Ramchand 2008, and Pylkkänen 2008. What is the evidence for this
representation of the causing event?
Consider first the claim that eventive subjects of causative verbs denote the causing event.
This claim must be incorrect, in view of examples like (4), where the relevant event follows
the caused event. This is unproblematic if the eventive subject is a CCF, because the causing
event in the mental model can then be people acting on knowledge of a future event.
(4) Tomorrow’s strike by London Underground staff caused mayhem on the North
Circular Road during this evening’s rush hour.
A second potential argument could be based on semantic restrictions on the subject. These
could result from lexical specification of the putative causing event. However, although all
lexical causatives express restrictions on the caused event (kill means ‘cause to die’), it is
certainly not true in the general case that they impose restrictions on the causing event. At
least, there is no necessary restriction on the choice of subject. As already mentioned, a very
wide variety of elements that can replace x in x eventually killed Leo.
Two further arguments for causing events in lexical semantics are presented by Pylkkänen
(2008), who argues, on the basis Japanese and Finnish, that a causing event can be present,
even if no associated external argument is introduced. In the Japanese case, the claim is that
certain adjuncts are excluded in anticausative contexts but permitted in adversity
constructions, where they are licensed by a hidden causing event. We show that this argument
is based on an incorrect premise, as the relevant type of modifier does in fact show up with
anticausatives. In the Finnish case, sluicing is claimed to identify a hidden causing event in
desiderative constructions. This analysis makes the incorrect prediction that the same kind of
sluicing should also be possible in uncontroversially causative constructions, contrary to fact.
5. Conclusions Causative verbs do not encode a causing event. This is because subjects of
causative verbs express a CCF (which is associated with accountability when [+m]). If
expressed at all, causing events surface as adjuncts.

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Leticia Pablos, Bobby Ruijgrok, Jenny Doetjes & Lisa Cheng (Leiden)
Processing cataphoric pronouns in Dutch: an ERP study
The processing of cataphoric pronouns has been shown to follow the same mechanisms as
the processing of wh-dependencies in that the parser actively searches [1] for an antecedent to
interpret the pronoun within the sentence, except in those cases where the pronoun must obey
principle C of the binding theory and cannot be c-commanded by the antecedent [2]. This is the
case for the Gender Mismatch (GMM) effect, named after a slowdown effect that shows that the
parser tries to link an antecedent to a preceding pronoun only when a pronoun can be bound by it
[3,4]. Most of the studies that tested whether there is an active search triggered for an antecedent
after encountering cataphoric pronouns used behavioral techniques such as self-paced reading or
eye-tracking [5,6] and only a few used the electroencephalography (EEG) technique [7].
The current study on Dutch uses Event Related Potentials (ERP) to examine the
processing of sentences with cataphoric pronouns as the parser looks for an antecedent in the
upcoming input. If the parser attempts to bind the pronouns zijn and haar in (1a) and (1b) to the
masculine antecedent Lodewijk, we expect a GMM effect at the position of the potential
antecedent in (1b). On the other hand, if the parser respects Principle C of the binding theory in
(1c) and (1d), we do not expect to find any ERP difference at the position of the potential
antecedent Lodewijk showing that no link has tried to be made between the pronouns hij and zij
and the antecedent. Additional proper nouns such as Mirjam and Thomas in (1) were included to
guarantee that all pronouns had an antecedent in the sentence.
(1) No constraint match
a. Zijnj assistenten kwamen erachter dat Lodewijkj Boer geen prijswinnaar
His assistants realized that Lodewijkmasc Boer no prizewinner
Geselecteerd had, maar Mirjami had geen interesse in de roddel.
Selected had but Mirjamfem had no interestin the gossip.
No constraint mismatch
b. Haari assistenten kwamen erachter dat Lodewijkj Boer geen prijswinnaar
Her assistants realized that Lodewijkmasc Boer no prizewinner,
geselecteerd had, maar Mirjami had geen interesse in de roddel.
selected had, but Mirjamfem had no interest in the gossip.
Principle C match
c. Hiji kwam erachter dat Lodewijkj Boer geen prijswinnaar
He realized that Lodewijkmasc Boer no prize winner
geselecteerd had, maar Thomasi had geen interesse in de roddel.
selected had, but Thomasmasc had no interest in the gossip.
Principle C mismatch
d. Ziji kwam erachter dat Lodewijkj Boer geen prijswinnaar
She realized that Lodewijkmasc Boer no prize winner,
geselecteerd had, maar Mirjami had geen interesse in de roddel.
selected had, but Mirjamfem had no interest in the gossip.

We conducted an ERP experiment where EEG was continuously recorded while native
speakers (n=24) of Dutch read silently 36 sentences such as (1a-d) interspersed with 35 fillers
and subsequently answered a comprehension question for every sentence. As illustrated in the
accompanying leftmost figure, results show that there is a central anterior negativity in the 200-
600ms window in (1b) condition with respect to (1a) at the point of the potential antecedent
Lodewijk (significant 3-way interaction between factors Condition, Hemisphere (left, Right,
Central) and electrode position (Anterior, Middle, Posterior); F(12,276)=2,05, p=0.045)). On the
other hand, comparison between conditions (1c) and (1d) yielded no significant difference in the
ERP waveforms as shown in the rightmost figure.
Amplitude (μV)
-10
-5
0
GMM Exp - Condition A vs. B at "Lodewijk" - Electrode Fz
5
10
A
B
-100 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Time (ms)
Amplitude (μV)
-10
-5
0
Time (ms)
GMM Exp - Condition C vs. D at "Lodewijk" - Electrode Fz
5
10
C
D
-100 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Time (ms)
The long sustained negativity generated at the antecedent Lodewijk for (1b) condition
suggests that the parser attempts to link the antecedent to the preceding pronoun haar and fails to
interpret it at the antecedent due to the gender mismatch between the pronoun -marked for
feminine gender - and the antecedent Lodewijk – a name in masculine gender. The same effect is
absent in the other conditions, which shows that the parser does not try to link the antecedent
with the preceding pronoun in (1c) and (1d) so that principle C is respected. Overall results
confirm the active search mechanism for an antecedent started whenever there is a pronoun that
must be bound in the local context as in (1b). We discuss implications of these results in light of
the accumulated knowledge on long-distance dependency processing.
References:
[1] Clifton, C, & Frazier, L. (1989). Comprehending sentences with long distance dependencies.
In Carlson, G.N. & Tanenhaus, M. eds., Linguistic Structure in Language Processing, 273-317.
[2] Chomsky, N. 1981. Lectures on Government and Binding, Dordrecht: Foris Publications.
[3]Van Gompel, R.P.G., & Liversedge, S.P. (2003). The influence of morphological information
on cataphoric pronoun assignment. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory,
and Cognition, 29, 128-139.
[4] Kazanina, N., Lau, E., Lieberman, M., Yoshida, M., & Phillips, C. (2007). The Effect of
Syntactic Constraints on the Processing of Backwards Anaphora. Journal of Memory and
Language, 56, 384–409.
[5] Sturt, P. (2003). The time-course of the application of binding constraints in reference
resolution. Journal of Memory and Language, 48, 542-562.
[6] Aoshima, S. , Yoshida, M. & C.Phillips (2009). Incremental Processing of Coreference and
Binding in Japanese. Syntax, 12, 93-134.
[7] Kreiner, H. Mohr, S. Kessler, K. and S. Garrod. (2008) Can context affect gender processing?
ERP Evidence about differences between lexical and stereotypical gender. Poster presented at
Brain Talk, Lund.

Daniel Parker & Sol Lago (Maryland)
Retrieval Interference in the Resolution of Anaphoric PRO
Recent research on the memory operations used in real-time language comprehension
has revealed a selective profile for retrieval interference effects. Dependencies such as
subject-verb agreement show strong facilitatory interference effects, as predicted by misretrieval
due to partial cue-matching in a content-addressable memory architecture [1,2]. On
the other hand, previous studies of reflexive anaphors have not found facilitation effects.
They have either found no effects of structurally inaccessible antecedents [3,4,5,6], or they
have found inhibition effects [3,7,8], which are not directly predicted by the cue-based
retrieval model. This profile has been taken to suggest the use of different retrieval
mechanisms in the two cases, despite superficially similar structural and morphological
requirements [5]. The reasons for this contrast remain unresolved. The contrast may reflect
the fact that anaphoric dependencies are interpreted whereas agreement is not. Or it may
reflect differential use of non-structural features as retrieval cues. The licensing of anaphoric
PRO provides a good test of the candidate retrieval mechanisms because it shares properties
with both agreement and reflexive binding. Results from three studies using off-line
judgments, computational modeling and self-paced reading confirm the structural constraints
on licensing PRO, but show an on-line interference profile similar to agreement, suggesting
the use of non-structural cues for retrieving the antecedent of PRO. These results provide the
first case of facilitatory interference effects in the resolution of anaphoric dependencies.
The licensing of PRO in adjunct clauses is subject to structural constraints. The
controller must be the subject of the next higher clause (1).
1a. Johni read the report after PROi drinking his coffee.
1b. *The report confused Johni after PROi drinking his coffee.
This constraint and the anaphoric nature of the dependency both suggest that retrieval might
proceed in a structure-sensitive fashion, similar to reflexive licensing. Conversely, the search
for a controller shares at least two properties with subject-verb agreement. First, online
detection of PRO and subsequent retrieval of the controller is triggered by a verb rather than
by an independent anaphoric element. Second, selectional restrictions from the gerundive
verb in the control clause (e.g. it may show a bias for a [+animate] subject) may provide
additional retrieval cues. Previous studies of agreement have shown strong facilitatory
interference effects, attributed to fallible cue-based retrieval mechanisms (e.g. [2]). If PRO
behaves similarly to agreement, then we should find evidence of facilitatory interference
from structurally inaccessible antecedents, due to partial cue-matching.
We compared the profiles of subject-verb agreement and adjunct control in a design
with 8 conditions, using 48 sets of sentences like those in (2). Conditions (2a-d) provided a
basic profile for agreement interference. The main clause subject NP either agreed (2a/b) or
disagreed (2c/d) with the highlighted verb, and we manipulated the number of an intervening
relative clause subject (‘attractor’) to either match or mismatch the critical verb. This allowed
us to test for the ‘illusions of grammaticality’ observed in previous studies. Conditions (2e-h)
were designed to test the processing of anaphoric PRO using maximally similar
configurations to (2a-d). We independently manipulated the animacy of the main clause
subject (correct controller) and the animacy of the relative clause subject (incorrect
controller). The inanimate NPs were chosen such that they could be the subject of the critical
verb in the control clause, although they might be dispreferred due to an animacy bias. An
emphatic reflexive requiring an animate, gender matching NP antecedent as the local subject
(PRO) served as a probe to determine whether an animate NP was retrieved as the subject of
the adjunct clause.
1

2a/b: The doctor that the {researcher/reports} evaluated extensively was commended [after
PRO disproving the controversial theory at the research institute in Europe].
2c/d: The experiment that the {researchers/report} evaluated extensively were commended
[after PRO disproving the controversial theory at the research institute in Europe].
2e/f: The doctor that the {researcher/report} evaluated extensively was commended [after
PRO disproving the controversial theory himself at the research institute in Europe].
2g/h: The experiment that the {researcher/report} evaluated extensively was commended
[after PRO disproving the controversial theory himself at the research institute in
Europe].
Experiment 1 (off-line acceptability judgment, n=24) confirmed that PRO in an
adjunct clause must be controlled by the next higher subject. Experiment 2 (computational
modeling) used the ACT-R parser to establish predictions from a cue-based retrieval theory.
The simulations predict facilitatory interference effects for both the agreement conditions
(2a-d) and the adjunct control conditions (2e-h). Interference in the agreement conditions is
predicted in terms of processing time at the verbal region and error rate in the retrieval of
attractors. In the adjunct control conditions, simulations predict access to both the licit and
illicit subject NPs at the adjunct verb. Facilitatory interference effects similar to those shown
for agreement are predicted in terms of processing time at the reflexive, and error rate in the
retrieval of a structurally inaccessible animate NP subject.
Experiment 3 (self-paced reading, n=32) tested the predictions of the model. In the
agreement conditions (2a-d), linear mixed-effects modeling revealed effects of both
grammaticality and attractor number (grammaticality: t=-2.043; attractor number: t=2.434;
ps

Umesh Patil (Potsdam), Shravan Vasishth (Potsdam) & Richard Lewis (Michigan)
Early effect of retrieval interference on reflexive binding
The online application of Principle A of the binding theory is claimed to be infallible
to memory phenomena like retrieval interference from antecedents that are inaccessible in
terms of the binding theory (Phillips, Wagers, & Lau, 2009; Dillon, 2011). Sturt (2003)
and Xiang, Dillon, and Phillips (2009) report a set of studies with English reflexives and
conclude that if there is any effect of retrieval interference from grammatically inaccessible
antecedents, it appears only during later stages of processing. Based on these results,
Phillips et al. (2009) and Dillon (2011) propose that reflexive binding is immune to
interference during early stages of processing, because the antecedent of a reflexive is
retrieved from memory using strictly syntactic information, and that agreement features
like gender and number are completely ignored in the antecedent search process.
On the other hand, a large body of work in the domain of dependency resolution in
sentence processing has shown that the memory retrieval process utilizes non-syntactic
information as well. Van Dyke and colleagues (Van Dyke & Lewis, 2003; Van Dyke
& McElree, 2006) have shown that semantic properties of nouns (e.g. animacy feature)
and selectional requirements of verbs are utilized in retrievals. Moreover, the process of
binding English reflexives inside picture noun phrases (Runner, Sussman, & Tanenhaus,
2006) and Chinese reflexives (Chen, Jäger, & Vasishth, 2011) is shown to be influenced
by the agreement features of the grammatically inaccessible antecedent. In fact, recently
Cunnings and Felser (2011) have shown that high memory span readers occasionally
consider inaccessible antecedents during binding argument reflexives. In the light of these
results, the strictly syntactic retrieval account seems to be an exception, which calls for
a specialized retrieval mechanism to explain only a limited set of results.
We formulated the question—what type of retrieval cues are used in the reflexive binding
process—in terms the cue-based retrieval (CBR) theory (Lewis & Vasishth, 2005). The
CBR theory provides a computational architecture for modeling sentence processing phenomena.
The theory is based on the memory and processing principles of ACT-R, a cognitive
architecture developed for modeling general cognitive processes. We implemented
two CBR models of reflexive binding in English—model-1 that uses strictly syntactic cues
and, model-2 that uses syntactic cues as well as gender marking on the reflexive to identify
its antecedent. We also ran an eye tracking study to evaluate the predictions of the two
models.
The models’ predictions were generated for the four conditions (2x2 design; factors:
accessible NP match/mismatch for gender x inaccessible NP match/mismatch for gender)
listed in (1). The predictions of the models are in terms of: (i) antecedent retrieval
time and (ii) accuracy in retrieving the grammatical antecedent. Model-1 predicts no
interference effect, whereas, model-2 predicts an interference effect in terms of retrieval
times and retrieval accuracies.
(1) a. Accessible-match/inaccessible-match: The tough soldier that Fred treated in
the military hospital introduced himself to all the nurses.
b. Accessible-match/inaccessible-mismatch: The tough soldier that Katie treated
in the military hospital introduced himself to all the nurses.
c. Accessible-mismatch/inaccessible-match: The tough soldier that Katie treated
in the military hospital introduced herself to all the nurses.
d. Accessible-mismatch/inaccessible-mismatch: The tough soldier that Fred
treated in the military hospital introduced herself to all the nurses.

We ran an eye tracking study (n=40) with the four conditions listed above, to evaluate
the predictions of the two models, assuming that early and late effects are distinguishable
in the eye tracking measures. As predicted by model-2, the study showed an early effect of
interference from the inaccessible antecedent in terms of first-pass regression probability;
i.e. a gender match between the reflexive and the inaccessible NP (1a and 1c) induced
a significantly higher (p=0.038) proportion of first-pass regressions from the reflexive in
the sentence. Although other early eye movements measures did not show any significant
effect, a regression contingent analysis of first-fixation durations showed a pattern of
fixations that was consistent with the interference predictions of model-2.
In sum, the eye tracking results are consistent with the predictions of the model that
utilizes both syntactic and gender information to identify the antecedent of a reflexive.
Moreover, the early interference effect found in the current study is not consistent with the
claim that inaccessible antecedents are not considered during earlier stages of processing
(Sturt, 2003; Phillips et al., 2009; Dillon, 2011). We conclude that a strictly syntactic
search mechanism is overly selective and, hence, unable to account for the data reported
here and in other studies like Cunnings and Felser (2011) and Badecker and Straub (2002).
References
Badecker, W., & Straub, K.(2002). The processing role of structural constraints on the interpretation
of pronouns and anaphors. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory,
and Cognition, 28 (4), 748–769.
Chen, Z., Jäger, L., & Vasishth, S. (2011). How structure sensitive is the parser? Evidence
from Mandarin Chinese. In B. Stolterfoht & S. Featherston (Eds.), Empirical approaches
to linguistic theory: Studies of meaning and structure. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. (in
press)
Cunnings, I., & Felser, C. (2011). The role of working memory in the processing of reflexives.
Language and Cognitive Processes. (in press)
Dillon, B. (2011). Structured access in sentence comprehension. Unpublished doctoral dissertation,
Maryland.
Lewis, R. L., & Vasishth, S.(2005). An activation-based model of sentence processing as skilled
memory retrieval. Cognitive Science: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 29 (3), 375–419.
Phillips, C., Wagers, M. W., & Lau, E. F.(2009). Grammatical illusions and selective fallibility
in real time language comprehension. Language and Linguistics Compass.
Runner, J. T., Sussman, R. S., & Tanenhaus, M. K.(2006). Processing reflexives and pronouns
in picture noun phrase. Cognitive Science, 30 (2), 193–241.
Sturt, P.(2003). The time-course of the application of binding constraints in reference resolution.
Journal of Memory and Language, 48 (3), 542–562.
Van Dyke, J. A., & Lewis, R. L.(2003). Distinguishing effects of structure and decay on attachment
and repair: A cue-based parsing account of recovery from misanalyzed ambiguities.
Journal of Memory and Language, 49, 285–316.
Van Dyke, J. A., & McElree, B.(2006). Retrieval interference in sentence comprehension. Journal
of Memory and Language, 55, 157–166.
Xiang, M., Dillon, B., & Phillips, C. (2009). Illusory licensing effects across dependency types:
Erp evidence. Brain and Language, 108 (1), 40–55.

Syntactic constraints on the processing of pronouns
Syntactic constraints affecting the interpretation of pronouns include, among others, the linear
distance between a pronoun and a potential antecedent (e.g. Cunnings et al., 2011) and
condition B of the binding theory (Chomsky, 1981). Little is known, however, about how
these potentially competing constraints interact during real-time sentence comprehension. We
will report the results from an eye-movement monitoring study investigating when during
processing local and/or non-local antecedents for pronouns are considered in different types
of syntactic environment.
Binding condition B demands that (non-reflexive) pronouns must not be bound within
their local binding domain, which should exclude David from the set of candidate antecedents
for him in sentences like (1) below.
(1) Nicki thinks that Davidk likes himi/*k.
Clare Patterson & Claudia Felser (Potsdam)
Pronouns in certain syntactic environments appear to be exempt from condition B, however.
These include so-called ‘short distance pronouns’ (henceforth, SDPs) in sentences such as (2)
below, where either Nick or David can be interpreted as coreferential with the pronoun him.
(2) Nicki saw Davidk put the cat beside himi/k.
Possible reasons as to why SDPs might be exempt from condition B include proposals to the
effect that prepositional phrases such as beside him in (2), or certain kinds of (VP-internal)
aspectual phrases, can be binding domains (Hestvik, 1991; Tenny, 2004). Experimental
evidence for the referential ambiguity of SDPs has been reported by Sekerina et al. (2004).
Previous research on the role of condition B in online pronoun resolution has yielded a
number of different hypotheses. Based on results from cross-modal priming, Nicol and
Swinney (1989) argued that binding principles act as an initial filter on the processing of
pronouns, such that only antecedents that are licensed by condition B are considered during
processing. An alternative view was put forward by Badecker and Straub (2002), who
suggested that syntactically ‘inaccessible’ antecedents for pronouns are also included in the
initial candidate set. Finally, if Sturt’s (2003) findings on the processing of reflexives (which
are subject to binding condition A) carry over to pronouns, then condition B should act as an
early but defeasible filter, with inaccessible antecedents potentially being considered at later
processing stages only.
34 native speakers of English were presented with sentences which contained an
object pronoun (him or her) and two potential sentence-internal antecedents. Gender
congruence between the pronoun and the proper names was manipulated (match vs.
mismatch) to serve as a diagnostic for referential dependency formation. In Experiment 1,
‘condition B’ type sentences were used (see examples 3a-c):
(3) a. DOUBLE MATCH
John remembered that Mark had taught him a new song on the guitar.
b. LOCAL MISMATCH
John remembered that Jane had taught him a new song on the guitar.
c. NON-LOCAL MISMATCH
Jane remembered that John had taught him a new song on the guitar.
In Experiment 2, sentences containing SDPs were used (examples 4a-c):

(4) a. DOUBLE MATCH
Barry saw Gavin place a gun near him on the ground with great care.
b. LOCAL MISMATCH
Barry saw Megan place a gun near him on the ground with great care.
c. NON-LOCAL MISMATCH
Megan saw Barry place a gun near him on the ground with great care.
While a general preference for linearly closer antecedents favours the local antecedent in both
(3) and (4), binding condition B rules the local antecedent out in sentences of type (3). All
experimental and filler sentences were embedded within short neutral discourse contexts, and
comprehension questions followed two thirds of the trials. Participants’ eye movements were
recorded while they were reading the stimulus materials on a computer screen.
In the condition B type sentences (Experiment 1), the ‘non-local mismatch’ condition
(3c) yielded significantly longer rereading and total viewing times in the pronoun and
spillover region compared to the ‘local mismatch’ condition (3b). The ‘non-local mismatch’
condition (3c) also yielded significantly increased regression-path times in the final region
compared to the ‘local mismatch’ condition (3b). This indicates that participants experienced
late but significant difficulty when the non-local antecedent mismatched the pronoun in
gender. Additionally, there was a trend for the ‘double match’ condition (3a) to have
increased rereading and total viewing times compared to the ‘local mismatch’ condition (3b),
indicating potential interference from a gender-matching local antecedent. For SDP sentences
(Experiment 2) a different pattern was observed. Here the ‘local mismatch’ condition (4b)
elicited the longest rereading times in the prefinal and final regions, indicating that
participants experienced processing difficulty later during the sentence when the local
antecedent mismatched in gender.
Taken together, these results suggest that when a pronoun is first encountered there is
not an immediate default to either the local (Cunnings et al., 2011) or the first-mentioned
(Arnold et al., 2000) antecedent. Nor is there an automatic application of condition B at an
early ‘bonding’ stage. Instead, candidate antecedents are evaluated fully at a later ‘resolution’
stage, which includes consideration of the syntactic configuration and the application of
condition B. For pronouns which are exempt from condition B (Experiment 2), a preference
for the local antecedent is observed.
References
Arnold, J. E., Eisenband, J. G., Brown-Schmidt, S, and Trueswell, J. C. (2000). The
immediate use of gender information: Eyetracking evidence of the time-course of pronoun
resolution. Cognition 76, B13-B26.
Badecker, W., & Straub, K. (2002). The processing role of structural constraints on the
interpretation of pronouns and anaphors. J Exp Psychol Learn 28, 748-769.
Chomsky, N. (1981). Lectures in Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris.
Cunnings, I., Patterson, C., & Felser, C. (2011). “Variable binding and coreference in
sentence comprehension: Evidence from eye movements”. AMLaP 17, Paris.
Hestvik, A. (1991). Subjectless binding domains. Nat Lang Linguist Th 9, 455-496.
Nicol, J., & Swinney, D. (1989). The role of structure in coreference assignment during
sentence comprehension. J Psycholinguist Res 18, 5-20.
Sekerina, I., Stromswold, K., & Hestvik, A. (2004). How do adults and children process
referentially ambiguous pronouns? J Child Lang 31, 123-152.
Tenny, C. (2004). “Pronoun binding and the grammar of sentience”. Workshop on Semantic
Approaches to Binding Theory, ESSLLI 16, Université Henri Poincaré, Nancy.

Uli Sauerland (ZAS) & Jonathan Bobaljik (UConn)
Syncretism Distribution Modeling and Person Paradigms
Generative analyses of paradigm morphology relate two layers: the morpheme layer and the underlying
feature layer. Generative rules relate the two layers – for instance, insertion rules in the case
of distributed morphology, which we adopt for concreteness in the following. Such a generative
analysis is restricted by two factors: a) the set of features, and b) the type of rule-ordering it allows.
We distinguish between extrinsic, weak intrinsic and strong intrinsic rule ordering. Consider the
following illustration: If there are two independent features F1 and F2, there are the following
three possible rules:
A: [F1 & F2] ↦→ /a/, B: [F1] ↦→ /b/, C: [F2] ↦→ /c/
Rules can be ordered intrinsically by their specificity: e.g. rule A must be ordered first in any
language that uses it because if it was ordered after any of the other rules, it wouldn’t have any
effect. Rule B and C, however, don’t stand in any intrinsic order. The three order principles are
distinguished in their treatment of these two. Extrinsic order allows languages to specify the order
of B and C, a weak intrinsic order allows languages to use rule B and C, but only if the language
also uses rule A – in that context, the order of rules B and C is actually irrelevant. A strong intrinsic
order never allows languages to make use of more than one of B and C.
The feature set and constraints on rule order predict which paradigms can be generated. However,
paradigm morphology differs from other domains of generative linguistics in that paradigms that
cannot be generated in a systematic fashion, can still be generated via accidental homophony. For
example, consider the paradigm [+F1, +F2] ↔ /b/, [+F1, -F2] ↔ /b/, [-F1, +F2] ↔ /c/. If extrinsic
rule order is possible, the rules B followed by C generate the paradigm. But, if only weak intrinsic
orders are possible, the paradigm can still be generated: Namely, it requires all three rules A, B,
and C and the assumption that morphemes /a/ and /b/ are accidentally homophonous.
How do we find out which feature set and which rule ordering type are correct? Traditionally
morphologist follow are rule of thumb, that Halle & Marantz (2008) state as follows: avoid accidental
homophony and maximize generalizations. Despite its usefulness, the rule of thumb has
no principled justification. In this talk, we instead focus on the accidental, i.e. random, nature of
accidental homophony: We view accidental homophony like random noise and it must therefore
be randomly distributed. For a concrete generative analysis, we compute for a large amount of
morphological data from several languages which syncretisms can be systematic and which must
be accidental. We then test how ‘random’ the distribution of the accidental syncretism is using an
exact, non-parametric statistical test. The method is an instance of maximum likelihood modeling:
The best morphological analysis is one where the actual distribution of accidental is highly likely
to have arisen from random noise.
In the talk, we present two results: 1) A general statistical framework for the analysis of typological
paradigm frequencies. 2) An application of the framework to Cysouw’s (2003, OUP) data on
person marking to argue that extrinsic rule order is necessary. In this abstract, we focus on a
exemplary subcase – the case of first person morphology. For this case, we tested all possible
generative analyses, and find that surprisingly two can account for the data.
The First Person Case: Now consider real data: the four cells of first person (first exclusive
minimal = 1, first inclusive minimal = 1+2, first exclusive augmented = 1+3, and first inclusive

0 5 10 15
augmented = 1+2+3). In this case, there are 15 possible paradigms and also 15 possible features.
The minimal number of universal features sufficient to allow an analysis of all 15 paradigm is 3.
Our computational analysis shows that there are 47 distinct generative analyses with 3 universal
features (out of over 16000 total possible analyses).
We then tested whether any of the generative analyses predicts the actual distribution of languages
across the 15 possible paradigms. To limit the effect of large language families, we counted maximally
15 languages per paradigm following Cysouw (Post hoc, we confirmed our results to be
independent of this assumption.) Contra Cysouw’s claim, we found that there are generative analyses
that predict the actual distribution to be highly likely. Contra generative expectations, there
are actually two generative models yield likelihood greater 80% for the actual distribution (all other
models yield in likelihood smaller 0.1%): Model A and Model B illustrated below. On the x-axis,
the two graphs show the 15 possible paradigms, and on the y-axis the number of language (grey =
actual, white = most likely expected). The top right corner shows the 3 basic features (bold frame)
and possible derived features, the rate of accidental homophony, and the likelihood predicted for
the actual distribution. Model A uses three semantically definable, features 1, -2 and minimal, and
assumes a rate of accidental homophony of 5.8%. Model B uses also uses the features 1 and -2,
but in addition the semantically unexpected feature [[1,-2,minimal] or [1,2,augmented]], while the
accidental homophony rate is 10.3%. For the paradigms, a bold frame indicates that the paradigm
can be generated without accidental homophony and the tiny numbers below indicate the optimal
underlying distribution of languages.
21.6 16.4 14.5 14.4 13 2.2 0.8
aHomph rate: 5.8 %
p > 9.9 * 10^ -1
actual # of languages
predicted # of languages
0 5 10 15
aHomph rate: 10.3 %
p > 8.5 * 10^ -1
actual # of languages
predicted # of languages
27.6 16.3 13.8 13.7 11.6 0 0
Model A Model B
Conclusion: In sum, we argue that generative morphology must use statistical models to get
around the problem of accidental homophony and propose such a model, syncretism distribution
modeling. Using this approach, we show that the morphological data from person paradigms
support generative models, but require extrinsic rule order.
References: Cysouw, M., 2003. The Paradigmatic Structure of Person Marking. Oxford University
Press.

Patrick Sturt (University of Edinburgh)
The timing of dependency formation: State of the art and future challenges
In the last two decades, on-line experimental techniques have yielded a wealth of evidence about
the timing of dependency formation. But what does this evidence tell us about the processing
strategies and overall architecture of the language comprehension system? In this talk, I will attempt
to build up a picture of the sentence comprehension system from the available evidence, focusing
on recent work conducted at Edinburgh and elsewhere, covering a range of dependency types
including control dependencies, reflexive binding (in picture noun and co-argument contexts),
subject-verb agreement. I will review the evidence with the following questions in mind: Is there a
systematic explanation for the variability in the timing and violability of grammatical constraints
under different conditions? What is the relation between on-line structure-building and final
interpretation? What kind of memory access might be involved in dependency formation? What is
the relation between the use of top-down and bottom-up structural information in parsing? The talk
will end with an outline of challenges for future research, and some suggestions on how we might
tackle them.

Yanyan Sui (NYU)
Metrical Structural Prominence Versus Perceived Prominence in Standard Chinese
Proposal: This study distinguishes stress as metrical structural prominence from perceived
prominence in the metrical stress analysis of Standard Chinese, a tone language whose
syllables have fixed underlying tones. It claims that perceived prominence may diverge from
metrical structural prominence under the influence of duration and tones. The intrinsic
prominence of particular tones in the second syllable of a disyllabic word, as well as longer
duration as a boundary lengthening effect may lead to iambic prominence judgment, whereas
consistent F0 and durational patterns in addition to the distribution of neutral tones and
segmental reduction suggest the basic foot structure is trochaic.
Background: The stress pattern of disyllabic words whose second syllables are toneless,
either underlyingly or as a result of tone deletion, is agreed to be Strong-Weak. What remains
controversial, both in native speakers‟ judgment and in previous phonological analyses, is the
stress pattern of words that do not contain toneless syllables, which is claimed to be (1)
iambic (Chao 1968, Xu 1982), (2) either iambic or trochaic depending on lexical specification
(Hoa 1983), or (3) trochaic (Duanmu 2000), but (4) becomes iambic in the surface by stress
shift (Chang 1992) or by employment of a special type of foot (Duanmu 2007), or rather, (5)
the stress pattern is determined by tonal prominence (Meredith 1990). This paper argues that
it is incorrect to treat perceived prominence directly as metrical structural prominence.
Prominence judgment is subject to the influence of duration and tones, among many other
factors involved in prominence perception.
Perceived prominence ≠ metrical structural prominence: Perceived prominence may not
be the faithful reflection of metrical structural prominence due to durational and tonal effects
in prominence judgment. First, durational difference between syllables in a word induces
judgment of syllables with longer duration as more salient. In a corpus study of 2239
disyllabic words in connected speech by Deng (2010), it is found that before no pause, the
first syllable is longer than the second syllable, but before little pause, the second syllable is
longer, and the durational difference grows substantially before an obvious pause and in
utterance final position. Patterns in prominence judgment closely correlate with the durational
differences. Before no pause and little pause, 64% and 52% of words respectively are judged
stronger in the first syllable, but before an obvious pause, including utterance finally, only
about 26% of words are judged stronger in the first syllable. And when grouped by tones,
words that are judged stronger in the second syllable invariably have longer second syllables.
Second, the intrinsic prominence of tones interferes with prominence judgment. Previous
studies have noted that syllables with High Falling tone tend to be judged as the most
prominent, whereas syllables with Low tone are the least likely to be perceived prominent
(Hoa 1983). This observation is confirmed by the perception experiment by Deng (2010) and
by the present study on embedded made-up disyllabic words, which vary in tonal
combinations, but are devoid of morphosyntactic and semantic information. The results show
that in a disyllabic word if the second syllable bears High Falling tone, or if the first syllable
bears Low tone, the word tends to be judged more salient in the second syllable (at about 65%
and 59% chances respectively), and the likelihood reaches 89% if the first syllable bears Low
tone and the second syllable bears High Falling tone. In contrast, a second syllable with Low
tone is judged prominent only 21% of the time. The correlation of tones and prominence
judgment is salient and consistent across various speech registers including read isolated

words, broadcast news, and conversational speech. Therefore, perceived prominence cannot
be simply equated with metrical structural prominence. Representations of metrical structure
may only be built on evidence independent of the intrinsic tonal prominence and durational
effects due to boundary lengthening.
Phonetic evidence for disyllabic trochee: (1) Strong-Weak F0 alternation: in a corpus study
of prosody in broadcast news by Lai et al. (2010) which includes 56378 disyllabic tokens,
4540 trisyllabic tokens and 727 quadrisyllabic tokens, a robust strong-weak F0 pattern is
found in disyllabic words, and the strong-weak pattern repeats in quadrisyllabic words
between the third and fourth syllables; Furthermore, when grouped by tones, a tone is realized
more closely to its tonal template in the first syllable than in the second syllable in disyllabic
words; Strong-Weak alternation in metrical strength is also found in an independent study of
intonation modeling by Kochanski et al. (2003); (2) Durational patterns: duration is not an
immediate acoustic cue to metrical strength, it also indicates prosodic constituent boundaries.
However, consistent durational patterns emerge in sentential medial position before no pause,
in which the first syllable is longer than the second syllable, and the third syllable longer than
the second syllable in polysyllabic words (Wang & Wang 1993, Lai et al. 2010, Deng 2010).
Phonological evidence for disyllabic trochee: (1) Distribution of neutral tone: underlying
toneless syllables may only occur in the second syllable of a disyllabic word, never in the first
syllable, e.g., zhǔn tou „accuracy‟, jì de „remember‟; (2) Position of tone deletion: only the
tone of the second syllable may be deleted in disyllabic words, e.g., gōng jiā/ jia „the state‟, yì
wù/ wu „obligation‟; (3) Position of segmental reduction: i) vowel reduction only occurs in the
second syllable, e.g., mián huā, /x w ɑ/ → [x w ə] „cotton‟, chuāng hù, /xu/ → [x w ə] „window‟; ii)
vowel devoicing only in the second syllable, e.g., kuò qì /tɕ h i/ → [tɕ h i ] „lavish‟, sòng qǜ /tɕ h y/
→ [tɕ h y ] „send‟. These phenomena are manifestations of weaker metrical strength in the
second syllable of disyllabic words, which support the hypothesis of disyllabic trochee.
Foot construction: Following the Generalized Trochee Hypothesis (Hayes 1991) this study
proposes that the metrical foot inventory of Standard Chinese is Construct (σ σ), else (σµµ).
When a disyllabic trochee cannot be formed, a bimoraic trochee is constructed, e.g., Ft(yǐ zi)
„chair‟, Ft(xīn zàng) „heart‟, [Ft(qì chē) Ft(kù)] „garage‟. Stress interacts with tone in terms
that stressed positions must bear tone, while unstressed position is subject to tone deletion.
Conclusion: This study has shown that perceived prominence may diverge from metrical
structural prominence under the influence of tone and duration. It is incorrect to identify
metrical structural prominence with perceived prominence. Close examination of F0 and
durational patterns as well as the distribution of tone and segmental reduction suggests the
metrical structure is trochaic. The study contributes to the general discussion of how acoustic
and perceptual evidence may shed light to phonological representations, and the discussion of
tone and stress furnishes another example of how tone interacts with stress in a tone language.
Selected References: Chang, Mei-Chih Laura. 1992. A prosodic account of tone, stress, and
tone sandhi in Chinese languages. Doctoral dissertation. University of Hawaii. Deng, Dan.
2010. Hanyu Yunluci Yanjiu. [The study of prosodic words in Chinese] Beijing: Beijing
University. Duanmu, San. 2000. 2007. The Phonology of Standard Chinese. Oxford: Oxford
University Press. Lai, C., Sui, Y. and Yuan, J. 2010. “A corpus study of the prosody of
polysyllabic words in Mandarin Chinese,” Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2010, 100457:1-4.
Meredith, Scott. 1990. Issues in the phonology of prominence. Doctoral dissertation. MIT.

Megan Sutton, Michael Fetters & Jeffrey Lidz (Maryland)
Parsing for Principle C at 30-months
In studying the acquisition of any constraint, it is important to recognize the contribution of
both children’s grammatical representations and the processing mechanisms required to deploy
these representations. In order to correctly understand sentences like (1), exhibiting Principle C,
children must minimally (a) access lexical information, (b) build the phrase structure and (c)
integrate these with Principle C to constrain the meaning.
(1) She’s patting Katie!
Importantly, even adult-like behavior in Principle C contexts does not directly reflect adultlike
knowledge: there are a number of non-adultlike strategies children could rely on to yield the
same behavior. However, these non-adultlike strategies are independent of structure; only adultlike,
structure-dependent grammatical knowledge of Principle C predicts that performance on a
Principle C task would be dependent on variation in speed of structure-building. Building on
previous research showing that early understanding of sentences like (1) is affected by
vocabulary size but not efficiency of lexical access ([1]), we explored the effects of Vocabulary,
Lexical Access Speed (LAS), and Phrase Structure Integration Speed (PSIS) on 30-month-olds’
comprehension of Principle C. We show that all 30-month-olds appropriately represent Principle
C, as efficiency of parsing in Principle C contexts is dependent on speed of structure-building.
We tested 32 30-month-olds (28;3-31;25,M=30;1) on three preferential looking tasks. In
experiment 1 (Figure 1), testing Principle C, children saw 8 trials which simultaneously
presented a reflexive and non-reflexive event with a non-reflexive sentence (1). We measured the
proportion looking to the non-reflexive video. Experiments 2 and 3 tested the same children to
obtain measures LAS and PSIS, respectively. In experiment 2 children saw 8 trials featuring 2
familiar objects with an audio prompt to find one of the objects (2). In experiment 3, children
saw 3 objects of the same kind, the largest of which differed in color. In 12 control trials,
children were prompted to find the biggest object (3), and in 12 test trials they were prompted to
find the biggest of the two same-color objects (4). Children were divided into ‘fast’ and ‘slow’
groups for LAS and each condition of PSIS by the median response latency on distractor-initial
trials [2]. We found no significant correlation between any of these four measures (Vocabulary,
LAS, PSIS:superlative, and PSIS:superlative+adjective; all p>.1), allowing us to use these
measures and their median-split groups as independent covariates in analyzing Experiment 1.
(2) Where’s the fish?
(3) Where’s the biggest train?
(4) Where’s the biggest red train?
We analyzed distractor-initial trials (where the child was looking at the reflexive event at
the onset of the word Katie in (1)) across the 300-3000ms post-onset window. Both median split
groups for all four covariate measures reach significantly above chance (all p

[1] Sutton, M., Lukyanenko, C. &
Lidz, J. (2011). The Onset of
Principle C at 30 Months: the role
of vocabulary, syntactic
development, and processing
efficiency. Proceedings of BUCLD
35. Cascadilla Press: Cambridge.
[2] Swingley, D., Pinto, J., & Fernald,
A. (1999). Continuous processing
in word recognition at 24 months.
Cognition, 71, 73-108.!
!

North Sámi Pronouns
Peter Svenonius (Tromsø/CASTL)
This paper uses a detailed analysis of North Sámi data to clarify some important
issues in the analysis of pronouns crosslinguistically. A central phenomenon analyzed
is shifted indexicals, which are different in North Sámi from other languages previously
described. The account provides support to those analyses which posit an operator in the
left periphery supplying personal pronouns with their referents (e.g. Bianchi 2003 inter
alia), but at the same time it provides evidence for locating certain semantic features in
the pronouns themselves (as in Schlenker 2003). Thus it reconciles what have been cast
as alternatives in the literature. In addition, the analysis of the pronouns themselves
supports a more fine-grained approach to pronominal semantics than is usually assumed.
The kind of shifted indexicals which are central to the analysis are illustrated in (1),
where the embedded clauses contain shifted (i.e. nonindexical) second-person pronouns
(and agreement, in (1b)), as well as unshifted third person (‘logophoric’) bound pronouns.
(1) a. INgá lohkai: Ii son váldde
du.
Inga said not.3sg s/helog have.pres.conneg you.sg.acc
‘Ingai said shei wouldn’t have “you” [in marriage]’
b. De bohtet cizáˇzat ja lohket: Ehpet
then came.past.3pl sparrow.pl.nom and said.past.3pl not.2pl
dii nagot
váldit dan, muhto sii
you.pl.nom manage.pres.conneg take.inf it but theylog
nagodit, sii leat nu ollugat.
manage.pres.3pl they are.pres.3pl so many
‘Then sparrowsi came and said “you” can’t carry it, but theyi can, theyi are
so numerous’
Splitting and Lumping. Semantic analyses of pronouns posit various kinds of distinctions
in the ways that they pick up their reference. For example, it is often assumed that
bound anaphoric and freely referring pronouns are underlyingly distinct, even when they
are the same on the surface (e.g. Chomsky’s 1955:525 he and he*).
At the same time, there is a trend in many semantic analyses toward unification of
different kinds of pronouns, e.g. different bound elements such as bound pronouns, fake
reflexives, anaphors, PRO, etc. (Kratzer 2008, where the real semantic action takes place
in the verbal heads, and the spell-out of pronouns is mostly just morphology, or Elbourne
2008 inter alia, where various kinds of binding are unified with donkey anaphora under
a D-type analysis).
Fake indexicals (as in Heim’s Only I did my homework) appear to show both that
one morphological form can pick up reference in different ways, and that bound pronouns
can surface with more than one morphological form.
This state of affairs might be taken to suggest that semantics is autonomous from
morphosyntax, and that the distinctions made in one system simply fail to match the
distinctions made in the other. However, such a conclusion would be premature. Rather,
I suggest, pronominal elements are complex underlyingly. Bound pronominal elements
share some feature patterns with one another, which is why they can behave similarly.
The surface exponents which spell out pronominal syntactic structures are underspecified,
which allows them to match a range of different underlying structures, which is why one
surface pronoun can behave in several different ways.
Crosslinguistic evidence and Shifted indexicals. In order to see this, it is necessary
1

to consider cross-linguistic evidence. There are many languages in which there are multiple
series of pronouns, overtly reflecting distinctions which other languages syncretize
systematically at the surface. The logophors of Ewe (Clements 1975) or the obviative
markers in Algonquian languages (Goddard 1984) are examples. However, detailed
descriptions of these understudied languages are usually not semantically current, and
cutting-edge semantics does not have access to the details of these languages necessary
for choosing among hypotheses.
An exception is Anand & Nevins’ (2004) investigation of shifted indexicals in Zazaki.
Observing that indexicals shift together, they argue against Schlenker’s (2003) and von
Stechow’s (2002) lexical approaches. Instead, they posit an operator at the periphery
of the embedded clause which shifts the context for the entire clause. In support of
this, observe that in the North Sámi examples presented above, there is no overt binder
referring to the addressee for the shifted pronouns. Instead, the only bound pronouns
are third person. I argue that the operator in the left periphery can bind as well as shift
context (making it more like the operators posited by Baker, Biachi, or SigurDsson).
However, there is also evidence from North Sámi that some critical features are located
in the pronoun itself. North Sámi makes a four-way distinction in ‘definite’ pronominal
elements (setting aside deictics, indefinites, interrogatives, and others). First, it distinguishes
locally bound anaphoric arguments and adjuncts (ieˇs, with various case forms)
both from lexical reflexives (with -d-) and from other pronominal elements. Second,
it uses pro-drop to distinguish two levels of what Gundel (1999, 2003) calls referential
givenness. Finally, it has two series of overt pronouns (dat, with various case forms, and
son, with various case forms) to distinguish two levels of relational givenness. These are
illustrated in (2).
(2) a. Máhtte muitalii, ahte das lea goahti.
Matte.nom told that pn.loc is hut.nom
‘Matte explained that he (some else) had a hut’
b. Máhtte muitalii, ahte sus lea goahti.
Matte.nom told that log.loc is hut.nom
‘Matte explained that he (Matte) had a hut’
For convenience, these can be referred to as the deictic and logophoric pronouns, respectively,
though I will show how the first is not strictly deictic and the second is different
from the logophoric pronouns described in the previous literature. Rather, these two
pronoun series distinguish binding from non-binding in something like the way discussed
above. The distinction, I suggest, is made in other languages but systematically syncretized
there.
I show that second person (but not first person) pronouns in examples like (1) can
pattern with the ‘logophoric’ son-series. This requires a four-way distinction in features,
where most analyses posit at most a two-way distinction: There are strictly indexical
elements (first person), underspecified elements which can be indexical or shifted/bound
(second person), obligatory bound elements (third person ‘logophoric’ series), and obligatorily
unbound nonindexicals (the ‘deictic’ third person series).
2

Kriszta Szendrői (UCL)
Quantifier Raising is blocked by passives
1. Quantifier Raising (QR) is a covert syntactic movement operation, involved in sentences with
an indefinite subject and a universal object:
(1) A dog chased every cat. distributive reading LF: [[every cat] i [a dog chased t i]]
In psycholinguistic experiments, inverse scope is often found to be hard for native speakers to
access (Ioup 1975, Van Lehn 1978, Catlin & Micham 1975; especially Kurtzmann & MacDonald
1993, Tunstall 1998 and Anderson 2004). In this paper, I show that one of the reasons why the
distributive reading is hard to access is the existence of an alternative derivation with (sufficiently)
identical interpretation,― the passive variant of (1):
(2) Every cat was chased by a dog. distributive reading LF: [[every cat] i [was chased e i by a dog]]
2. Theoretical background: If this turns out to be correct, it has important theoretical
implications. Most theoreticians agree that QR is restricted by interface considerations: Fox (1995,
2000), Reinhart (2006) and Bobaljik & Wurmbrand (2011), henceforth B&W. But they disagree
about the nature of the interface mechanisms at play. Fox (2000:26) argued that the restriction
applies locally in the syntactic derivation, preventing scope-shifting operations unless they have an
effect. So, in the case of QR, the movement step is disallowed if it does not lead to a change in
interpretation. Reinhart (2006:28) claimed that a global comparison of competing derivations is
necessary, her ‘reference set’ computation: ‘the reference set consists of pairs of derivation
and interpretation, where the interpretation i is identical in all pairs.’ 1 So, QR is allowed if there is no
alternative derivation without QR within the reference set that has the same (i.e. distributive)
interpretation. The crucial question, which Reinhart remained implicit about, is what determines
membership in the reference set. As B&W:31, citing Fox (2000), correctly note, if membership is
restricted to derivations with a shared numeration, the global computation can be easily reduced to a
local one. With respect to the relevance of examples like (1)-(2) for QR, B&W take an explicit stand:
‘[…] we assume that economy conditions only evaluate competing derivations from the same
numeration (input), and thus that corresponding active and passive sentences will simply not
compete with one another.’ (B&W:7)
3. Proposal: So, in the spirit of Reinhart’s approach and in contrast to B&W’s position, I propose
that membership in a particular reference set is restricted by semantic identity in the sense of truthconditional
equivalence. In the specific case of active-passive pairs, like (1) and (2), truth-conditional
equivalence is trivially true, except for marginal cases such as utterances involving NPs that fail to
refer (such as the king of France), as these may lead to truth-value gaps, while their passive variant may
not. (We also need to put generic sentences of the type Beavers build dams to one side.) My hypothesis
makes the following testable prediction. If passive variants of active sentences indeed block the
distributive interpretation of the active variant by QR, then inverse scope (by QR) should be more
easily accessible in sentences that involve verbs that resist passivisation. This is because in such
cases, no passive competitor can be present in the reference set, as such a passive competitor does
not exist, and thus, the derivation with QR could not be blocked by it. In contrast, if, as Fox
suggested, decisions are taken locally, at the point in the syntactic derivation when QR applies, then
the passive variant would simply not be considered as a viable alternative. The same applies to
B&W’s proposal, who chose to base membership on shared numeration. Thus, both for Fox and
B&W, it should be irrelevant for the availability of inverse scope whether a particular (active) sentence
1 B&W’s (p33 l6-8) interpretation of Reinhart’s proposal is the direct opposite: ‘Reinhart holds that the
calculation involves the competition among the members of a ‘reference set’ consisting of derivations (LF,PF
pairs) with a common PF but different LFs.’ I have not managed to ascertain the source of this interpretation.

involves a passivising or non-passivising verb.
It is important to clarify that, I do not necessarily expect that passive variants always block active
variants with QR. (That would mean that the distributive reading is never accessed if the verb has a
passive alternant.) They only do so if they are actually listed in the reference set at the point when
the hearer considers inverse scope. This is a performance issue, and should be determined by an
appropriate theory of language use. While I cannot offer a specific proposal at this point, it seems
clear to me that general discourse considerations such as topic-focus articulation (see Sæbø 1997),
individual differences between speakers (for instance an aptitude to consider richer meanings e.g.
metaphors, irony), and attention in the psychological sense would be relevant factors. What matters
here is that if any evidence is found that inverse scope is obtained more easily in sentences involving
verbs that are not passivisable, that would favour Reinhart’s global theory over its competitors.
4. Experiment: I determined a set of 7 passivising-nonpassivising verb pairs by a grammaticality
judgment pre-test. Then, 50 native speakers were presented with a forced-choice questionnaire
(adapted from Anderson 2004) with sentences like (3)-(4). Their task was to circle the reading that is
closest to their meaning of the sentence. The ‘same’-paraphrase corresponds to the overt scope
reading and the ‘different’-paraphrase corresponds to the inverse scope reading.
(3) Passivising condition: A road connects every village on the peninsula.
The same road connects the villages. Different roads connect the villages.
(4) Non-passivising condition: A road leads to every village on the peninsula.
The same road leads to the villages. Different roads leads to the villages.
All participants saw all items, but in different orders. The items were interspersed with an equal
number of fillers and controls, and pseudo-randomised. The paraphrases were presented in different
orders, balanced across conditions. Crucially, each test item pair was identical except for the verbs.
5. Results and discussion: Speakers obtained the inverse scope reading 25.4% of the time in the
non-passivising condition compared with 14.3% in the passivizing verb condition: a statistically
significant difference (participants t=3.963, df=40, two-tailed p

Barbara Tomaszewicz (USC)
A family of exclusives in Polish
Polish has four different focus associating adverbs that can be identified as exclusives, all of
them scalar, yet not always interparaphrasable. Tylko, ledwie, dopiero and aż all evoke
alternative propositions ordered on a scale and imply an exclusion of those alternatives that
are higher or lower on the scale than the prejacent. What varies is (i) the nature of the
exclusive implication (truth-conditional or pragmatic), (ii) the nature of the scale (likelihood
vs. time vs. highly context-dependent pragmatic scales), (iii) the place of the prejacent on the
scale. Their common meaning components, scalarity and exclusivity, interact with (i-iii)
thus creating a range of interpretations that cannot be subsumed under the notions of
unexpectedness and/or likelihood. The Polish inventory raises a theoretically important
question whether scalarity and exclusivity are generally linked to unexpectedness/likelihood
or whether the dimension of the (default) scale should rather be lexically specified for each
adverb, e.g. even as always interpreted wrt. a scale of likelihood (Karttunen & Peters 1979)
or its dual, noteworthiness (Herburger 2000, Rullman 2007).
(i) The exclusive component can be targeted by explicit denial, thus for all four exclusives
it is an at-issue entailment (part of the assertion). Tylko/ledwie, like English only, can have
quantificational (1b) or scalar (1c) readings and, and their prejacents project. The prejacent of
dopiero and aż is at-issue (2-3), and aż cannot have a quantificational reading (3b).
(1) a. Maria widziała tylko/ledwie menadżera.
Maria saw manager
b. No, that’s false. – #She didn’t see the manager./She saw somebody else too.
c. No, that’s false. – #She didn’t see the manager./She saw somebody more special.
(2) a. Maria widziała dopiero menadżera.
Maria saw manager
b. No, that’s false. – She didn’t see the manager (yet)./She saw somebody else too.
c. No, that’s false. – She didn’t see the manager (yet)./She saw somebody more special.
(3) a. Maria widziała aż menadżera.
Maria saw manager
b. No, that’s false. – She didn’t see the manager./#She saw somebody else too.
c. No, that’s false. – She didn’t see the manager./She saw somebody less special.
The family of sentences tests (Chierchia & McConnell-Ginet 1990) yield the same results.
(ii) The quantificational readings of exclusives can be seen as a subtype of scalar readings:
the relevant scale is a entailment scale (Kleindienst 2005, Riester 2006); the ranking of
answers to the Question Under Discussion (Roberts 1996) is a boolean lattice (Beaver and
Clark’s 2008). A scale not organized according to logical entailment will have its dimension
set by the context, e.g. importance in (1c, 2c, 3c), or temporal ordering in (2b,c) (c.f. German
erst, König 1979, von Stechov 2006). Thus, scalarity does not automatically lead to a sense
of unexpectedness/surprise. For (4) there is no sense in which the speaker or the hearer would
expect the team to do any better; each adverb contributes the reading that the 30 th place is
very low (i.e. lower than a contextually set degree, but not necessarily unexpected).
(4) Zespół był słaby i zajął tylko/ledwie/dopiero/aż 30 miejsce.
team was poor and achieved 30 th place
‘The team performed poorly and earned only 30 th place.’
Scalarity with evaluativity but without likelihood is commonly found with gradable
predicates that license the use of very (e.g. The baby's relatives are all more than 6ft tall. The
baby is going to be very tall.). Evaluativity does not always relate to expectations.
(iii) The place of the prejacent is low on the scale with tylko/ledwie/dopiero (cf. English
only, Klinedienst 2005, König 1991, von Rooy & Schultz 2005) and high with aż, which is
shown by the contrast between (1c, 2c) and (3c). The alternatives excluded with aż are higher
on the scale than the prejacent, thus aż is a scalar opposite of the others (cf. beyond-operators
in Gast & van der Auwera 2011). The continuation in (5a) and (b) sounds like a

contradiction, while in (5c) the quantity implicature is more easily cancelled (with even
placing the prejacent high on the scale of noteworthiness.)
(5) a. Marek potrafił zjeść aż 5 bananów, #a właściwie 6.
Marek was.able to.eat 5 bananas and actually 6
‘Marek was able to eat as many as 5 bananas, #in fact, he could eat 6’.
b. Marek potrafił zjeść tylko/ledwie/dopiero 5 bananów. #a właściwie 6.
Marek was.able to.eat 5 bananas and actually 6
‘Marek was able to eat only 5 bananas, #in fact, he could eat 6’.
c. Marek potrafił zjeść nawet 5 bananów, ?a właściwie 6.
Marek was.able to.eat even 5 bananas and actually 6
‘Marek was able to eat even 5 bananas, ?in fact, he could eat 6’.
The reason (4) works is that the 30 th place is low on the “scale of success”, and at the same
time high on the scale evoked by the numeral. (6) shows that the scale aż refers to is not
coercible into a scale of success.
(6) Susan Boyle nie wygrała. Zajęła dopiero/#aż drugie miejsce.
‘Susan Boyle did not win. She only took second place.’
If the dimension of the scale is underspecified in the semantics of each adverb, we expect it
to be easily manipulated by the context (the semantics of focused constituent the adverb
associates with and the pragmatics). The four Polish exclusives, however, appear to be more
contextually restricted. Tylko cannot always get a scalar reading, e.g. in (7) it can only mean
the Marek woke up once. Exclusively ledwie can receive approximate (8) and counterfactual
(9) readings.
(7) Martwi mnie, że Marek obudził się #tylko/ledwie/dopiero/aż o godzinie 13.
worries me that Marek woke self at hour 13
‘I am disappointed that Marek woke up as late as at 13h.’
(8) #Tylko/ledwie/#Dopiero/#Aż Marek otworzył drzwi, a zadzwonił telefon.
Marek opened door and rang telephone
‘Marek barely opened the door, when the telephone rang.’
(9) Marek #tylko/ledwie/#dopiero/#aż otworzył drzwi.
Marek opened door
‘Marek barely opened the door. (He thought he was not going to make it.)’
The four Polish exclusives raise the question how much underspecified can the lexical
meaning be. While all of them share the scalar meaning component (10a), the scale as
defined in (10c) cannot be entirely context dependent, so perhaps more fine grained
descriptions (as in (10a-d) for dopiero and ledwie) should be specified for individual
exclusives cross-linguistically? How much can mirativity be detached from evaluativity
which is a general property of degree related expressions (Rett 2010)?
(10) “tylkoC ϕ” “dopieroC ϕ” “ledwieC ϕ” “aż/čakC ϕ”
a. λw.¬∃p [p ∈S & p(w) = 1 & ⟦ϕ⟧

Satoshi Tomioka (Delaware)
Focus Matters in Neo-Hamblin Semantics
The recent re-emergence of Hamblin semantics of interrogatives (e.g., Lin 1996, Shimoyama
1999, Kratzer and Shimoyama 2005) has proved fruitful in many areas, including the analysis
of wh-indefinites. In Beck’s (2006) rendition of Hamblin semantics, two additional advantages
are gained. (i) A formal relation between a wh-phrase and a Q-morpheme is established:
Wh-phrases only have focus values (= their Hamblin denotations), lacking ordinary values.
Any constituent that contains a wh-phrase also has no ordinary value until it meets a Q-
Operator in the derivation. The role of the Q-Operator is to elevate the focus value of a
wh-containing constituent to the ordinary value. (ii) The prosodic similarities between a
wh-phrase and focus is explained: Sabel (2006) and Haida (2007) enlist many languages in
which wh-phrases act as though they are focused morphosyntactically. Beck’s analysis bodes
well with this wh-(semantic) focus correspondence (cf. Truckenbrodt, to appear).
In this paper, I will further examine the wh-focus correlation with special attention
to ‘double-focus’ cases (Krifka 1991, Wold 1996). Both wh-phrases and focus-associates
with operators like only are required to have non-singleton focus values by their semantics,
independently of their information structural statuses. Hence, they can be backgrounded
(a.k.a second occurrence focus) or they can be additionally focused, as shown in (1).
(1) a.‘Ann asked what Sue likes, right?’ ‘No, she asked WHO she likes.’
b. ‘Ann only greeted BELLA.’ ‘No, she only greeted CASEY.’
The first question that arises is; how can one get the meaning of a contrasted wh-phrase
when a wh-phrase itself has no ordinary semantic value? Beck’s semantics can actually deal
with a case like (1a) with a minimal modification: All wh-phrases, even morphologically
simplex ones (e.g., who, what) are decomposed with an NP restriction and a wh-determiner.
Then, (i) The Hamblin denotation is derived by the choice function meaning of a Detwh.
(ii) A contrastive focus on a wh-phrase is associated with the NP restriction. (iii) Both
the Detwh and the restriction get focus-indices. The first is required by the semantics of a
wh, and the second comes from the constrastiveness. (iv) The index on the Detwh is bound
by the closest Q-morpheme, and the one on the NP ‘passes up’ to a higher focus binder
(i.e., ∼). [Note: A focus index corresponds to a designated variable that is interpreted by a
distinguished assignment (Kratzer 1991). And importantly; (a) � αFi� g,h = h(i) if i is in the
domain of h. Otherwise, � αFi� g,h = � α � g . (b) h begins with the empty domain (= { }).
(c) An F-index binder introduces its index into the domain of h.] (2) is the computation of
the second sentence in (1a).
(2) a. [who] contrastive focus ⇒ [ whF1 [person]F2]
b. � Q1 [CP [ whF1 [ person]F2] Sue likes ] � g = {p: p = � CP � g,h{f/1}
= {p: p = Sue likes f(person) | f∈D, e >}
c. �∼C2 [IP Anna asked Q1 [ whF1 [ person]F2] Sue likes]] � g,h = {p: p = � IP � g,h{P/2} }
= {p: p =Anna asked which P Sue likes | P∈D< e, t >}
If a focus binder ∼ is also selective, the story for (1b) is the same except that two indices
are assigned to the same constituent (cf. Wold 1996).
(3) a. ∼C2 [ Anna onlyD [∼D1 greeted [[CASEY]2]1]
b. � ∼D1 greeted [[CASEY]2]1� g,h{x/1} = {λy. y greeted x | x ∈ De}
c. � ∼C2 [Anna only greeted [[CASEY]]1]2� g,h{x/2} = {Anna only greeted x | x ∈ De}
1

However, this strategy cannot be extended to (1b) in Beck (2006). A focus operator ∼ is
argued to be unselective, and the closer operator (∼D above) closes off the focus meaning
of Casey, after which no F-index is left for the higher operator (= ∼C) to bind. In order to
make the parallelism between (1a) and (1b) intact, I propose that, while a novel ∼ operator
is unselective, a second occurrence ∼ is selective. The intuition behind this amendment to
Beck’s theory is as follows. Focus sensitive adverbs like only are considered ‘familiar’ not
only because they themselves had appeared in the previous discourse but also because their
associations with the designated foci are familiar. A familiar ∼ operator therefore does not
freely extend its wings and bind novel focus variables.
The proposed amendment not only provides a unified analysis of contrasted wh-phrases
and contrasted focus-associated phrases but also makes correct predictions in other areas.
First, in a multiple foci structure where there are two ∼ operators, one novel and the other
familiar, it is expected that the novel one must have scope over the familiar one. In the other
scope configuration, the novel ∼ operator accidentally binds both foci, leaving nothing for
the old operator to bind. This prediction is in accordance with von Fintel’s (1994, p 49, fn.
44) observation on the ordering asymmetry of two focus operators. The other phenomenon
that the amended analysis works well is what is called an intervention effect, which Beck
(2006) defines as a focus intervention shown in (4). In this configuration, the intervening ∼
C (an unselective binder) accidentally binds the wh-phrase.
(4) * [Qi ..... [∼ C [ ...... whi ] ]
There have been several facts reported, however, that suggest that, even in the structure (4),
discourse-familiar ∼ operators do not induce intervention effects (or their effects significantly
weakened). In Beck and Kim (2006, p.167), the lack of the alternative question meaning in
(5) is attributed to the focus intervention effect.
(5) Does only John like Mary or Susan? a. #Mary. [*AltQ] b. Yes. [Yes/NoQ]
Eilam (2011) reports, however, that native speakers more readily accept the alternative question
interpretation when only John is backgrounded. Second, in many wh-in-situ languages
that exhibit intervention effects (e.g., Korean, Japanese, Hindi), the effects are noticeably
weak (or non-existent) in why-questions (cf. Miyagawa 1998, Ko 2005 among others).
(6) Amwuto/?John-pakkey way ku chayk-ul ilk-ci-anh-ass-ni?
Anyone/John-only why that book-Acc read-CI-Neg-Past-Q
‘Why did nobody/only John read that book?’ (Korean, from Ko 2005, (8a))
Tomioka (2009) attributes this effect to the presupposition of why-questions. In ‘why p?’, p is
presupposed, and the materials in p, including an intervener, belong to the background. In
other constituent questions, comparable presuppositions are not guaranteed (Groenendijk
and Stokhof 1984). Third, while many languages prefer placing phonologically reduced
materials after focus, Amharic can put reduced focus expressions (e.g., only NP) before
wh-phrases. Eilam (2011) points out that Amharic shows no intervention effects with those
reduced focus expressions, as expected by the current proposal.
Selected References: Beck, S. 2006: ‘Intervention effects follow from focus interpretations,’ in NLS, 14:1-
56. Eilam, A. 2011: Explorations in the Informational Component, Ph.D. thesis, UPenn. Ko, H.-J. 2005:
Syntax of why-in-situ: Merge into [Spec CP] in the overt yyntax, NLLT, 23, 867-916. Tomioka, S. 2009:
‘Why-questions, presuppositions, and intervention effects,’ JEAL 18: 253-271. Wold, D. 1996: Long distance
selective binding: The case of focus, in The Proceedings of SALT 6, 311-328.
2

Jacopo Torregrossa (Verona)
Encoding contrast at PF
Introduction. This contribution is based on the assumption that contrast is an autonomous
informational notion with its own semantic content (Vallduvì/Vilkuna 1998). Its main aim is
to investigate how contrast is coded. On the one hand, some scholars working within the
cartographic framework propose that contrast is licensed in an A-bar position (ContrP) within
the C-domain of the sentence (see Frascarelli/Hinterhölz 2007). On the other hand, several
works on lab speech show that the intervention of contrast activates specific prosodic effects,
whenever it appears in association with either focus (Breen et al. 2010) or topic (Braun/Laid
2003). The aim of the work is threefold: i) to verify the hypothesis that contrast is encoded
syntactically, by investigating if it triggers phrasing effects at the syntax/phonology interface;
ii) to understand which acoustic parameters play a role in expressing contrastive
interpretations (in both cases, the informational notion of contrast will be studied in isolation
from either focus or topic, in whole compliance with the assumption about its autonomy); iii)
to speculate on which model of the interaction between the different components of language
best fits with the outcome of the analysis.
Theoretical framework. The investigation of i) is couched within Zubizarreta’s (2010)
theory on the syntax/phonology interface. Instead of assuming a hierarchy of prosodic
constituents which is independent of syntax (see Selkirk 1986), the author proposes that the
inventory of prosodic categories could be reduced to boundaries which are distinguished in
terms of strength. Crucially, the insertion of these boundaries is sensitive to the difference
among syntactic projections. Therefore, I propose that weak prosodic boundaries are inserted
to the right of constituents related to lexical projections (being their specifiers, complements
or adjuncts), while strong prosodic boundaries are inserted to the right of constituents related
to discourse projections (e.g., TopP, FocP). (1) shows how that weak prosodic boundaries are
represented as single brackets, while strong prosodic boundaries as sequences of right and left
brackets.
(1) (DELLA PASTA)(mangerò) stasera) per cena). [FocP DELLA PASTAi[IP pro mangerò stasera ti]]
(SOME MEAT I will eat tonight for dinner).
ContrP might trigger the insertion of a strong p-boundary, since it is a discourse projection.
Methods of the analysis. I set up a production experiment in which three Italian speakers
were asked to read aloud some dialogues which were designed so that the same sentence
appeared in five different discourse contexts. For example, the interpretation of the
constituent Michelangelo in (2) varied so that it ended up to be: i) an information focus
(+FOC); ii) a contrastive focus (+FOC,+CONTR); iii) an exhaustive focus
(+FOC,+EXHAUST) – in line with Horvath (2010), I assume that FocP encodes exhaustivity;
iv) a ‘barely’ contrastive constituent (+CONTR) followed by an information focus; v) neither
focused nor contrastive (-FOC,-CONTR).
(2) Ho ripassato Michelangelo con la mia amica. (I reviewed Michelangelo with my friend).
Up to now, the analysis has been carried out over 70 sentences and it will be extended in future.
In order to verify if contrast is encoded syntactically, I measured the duration of the poststressed
string of the target words. The rationale behind this choice is that syllables preceding
strong prosodic boundaries are traditionally taken to undergo lengthening processes.
Accordingly, the duration of post-stressed material within contrastive constituents might be
greater than that within non-contrastive ones, if contrast is actually encoded in a dedicated
functional projection (ContrP). In order to verify if contrast triggers specific prosodic effects,
I labeled the intonation pattern of each target constituent (TOBI annotation system) and I
measured both the duration and the range of its stressed syllable.
Results. As for the duration of the prosodic boundaries, I found that there is a statistically
significant difference between the values relative to exhaustive foci and those relative to each
of the other semantic interpretations (see Figure1 as an example). This suggests that only

exhaustive foci trigger the insertion of strong prosodic boundaries (as predicted by the
syntax/phonology model within which my analysis is couched). The phonological analysis
reveals that there is no systematic correlation between the intervention of contrast and the use
of a particular type of accent (Figure2). On the contrary, the acoustical analysis shows that
contrast always correlates with a greater duration and a higher pitch range of the stressed
syllable within the target constituent (Figure3).
Conclusions and implications. My analysis suggests that contrast is not encoded in a
dedicated functional projection (vs. Frascarelli/Hinterhölz). The hypothesis about the
existence of ContrP seems to be challenged by other relevant data, like the fact that
contrastive constituents can appear both in-situ and in the left-periphery and that they can be
freely recursive across the CP (3) and the IP, which challenges the hypothesis of a one-to-one
correspondence between syntactic projections and semantic interpretations.
(3) A: Il nonno ha lasciato l’orologio a suo fratello? B: Non lo so, ma la scacchiera a suo nipote l’ha
lasciata. (A: Did the grandpa bequeath the clock to his brother? B: I don’t know, but it is to his
grandson that he bequeathed the chessboard).
More in general, the analysis suggests that on the one hand there is no phonological correlate
of contrast and on the other hand there are several acoustic parameters that express contrastive
interpretations. If this line of analysis is correct, the investigation on the linguistic encoding of
contrast provides empirical and conceptual evidence for the necessity to distinguish
phonology and phonetics as two different modules of grammar. According to the
syntax/phonology model assumed in this paper, phonology has a more direct connection with
syntax than it is traditionally assumed in prosodic phonology. Assuming Cinque’s (1993)
Stress Rule, both stress assignment and prosodic boundaries insertion turn out to apply
directly to the syntactic tree. On the contrary, phonetics has been shown to be syntax-blind
and sensitive to interpretive distinctions. This last claim has significant implications for the
general model of the architecture of grammar.
Figure1: Duration (ms.) of post-stressed
material in contrastive foci and exhaustive
foci.
200
150
100
50
40
30
20
10
50
0
(+CONTR,+F
OC)
(+FOC,+EXH
AUST)
(+CONTR)
(-CONTR,-
FOC)
0
Figure3: Values of the range (Hz) of the
accented syllables in contrastive and noncontrastive
contexts.
Figure2: Frequency of informational functions
expressed by each type of accent.
25
20
15
10
5
0
(+CONTR)
(-FOC) (-CONTR)
(+FOC)
(+EXHAUST.)
(+FOC)
Essential bibliography: Breen M./E. Federenko/M.
Wagner/E. Gibson, 2010, Acoustic correlates of information
structure, Language and Cognitive Processes 25(7/9), 1044-
1098; Cinque G., 1993, A null theory of phrase and compound
stress, LI 24(2), 239-282; Frascarelli, M./R. Hinterhölzl, 2007,
Types of topics in German and Italian, in S. Winkler/K.
Schwabe (eds.), On Information Structure Meaning and Form,
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 87-116. Horvath J.,
2010, "Discourse-Features", Syntactic Displacement and the
Status of Contrast, Lingua 120, 1346-1369; Selkirk E., 1986,
On derived domains in sentence phonology, Phonology
Yearbook3, 371-405; Zubizarreta M.L., 2010, The Syntax and
Prosody of Focus: The Bantu-Italian Connection, Iberia 2(1),
131-168.

Coppe van Urk (MIT)
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Kai von Fintel (MIT), Danny Fox (Hebrew U./MIT) & Sabine Iatridou (MIT)
Definiteness as Maximal Informativeness
The unified Link-style semantics for the definite article relies on an inherent ordering of
objects, a part-whole ordering in the case of individuals.
(1) �the�(φ〈α,t〉) is defined only if there is a maximal object x (based on the inherent
ordering of elements in Dα), such that φ(x). When defined, �the�(φ) refers to
that maximal object.
The φ refers to the maximal φ-object: the unique φ in the singular case, the maximal
plurality containing all φ-individuals in the plural case, and the maximal collection of
φ-stuff in the mass case.
We propose an alternative account: maximality is defined with respect to a different
ordering, that of “relative informativity” i.e. asymmetrical entailment. Strength relates
propositions, but, when given a property, can be defined derivatively for individuals.
(2) �the�(φ〈α,st〉) is defined only if there is an object x such that φ(x) is the maximally
informative proposition among the true propositions of the form φ(. . .)
(henceforth the most informative object in φ). When defined, �the�(φ) refers to
that most informative φ-object.
The most informative individual with respect to property φ is that individual from
whose being φ we can deduce the φ-ness of all other φ-individual.
For the basic cases discussed in the literature, Link’s definition and our alternative
coincide. Assume that John, Bill, and Sam are the only boys. Then the boys will denote
the maximal plurality made up of those three individuals, both on Link’s account (since
that is the maximal boy-plurality) and on ours: the plurality made up of those three
individuals is exactly that plurality from whose being all boys we can deduce the boyness
of any of its components. Any smaller plurality would be less informative (from
John and Bill being boys we can’t deduce that Sam is a boy).
In fact, both Link’s proposal and ours make the same prediction for any property
that is upward monotone in a technical sense. Properties of degrees such as λd. John
is d tall or λd. John has n many children are upward monotone (saying that John has
4 children is more informative than saying that he has 3). Hence under both accounts
definite descriptions such as John’s height or the number of children that John has will
refer (in any world w) to the maximal object in the extension of the property in w.
Once we look at properties that are not upward monotone wrt informativity, Link’s
proposal and ours make different predictions. First consider properties that are downward
monotone. These are cases where the smallest amount/object is more informative
— unlike the earlier examples, which characterized cases where the largest object/amount
is the most informative. Here is such a case:
(3) I have the amount of flour sufficient to bake a cake.
Propositions of the form d-much flour is sufficient to bake a cake become more informative
the smaller d is. We thus correctly predict that the definite description in (3) should
refer to the minimum amount of flour that would yield a true proposition, i.e. to the
minimum amount that would suffice for cake baking. On the other hand, according to
1

Link’s account, the definite description in this sentence should be undefined, since there
can be no maximal amount of flour that is sufficient to bake a cake; as noted by Beck
and Rullmann (1999), in a slightly different context, if an amount of flour, f , suffices to
bake a cake, so does any amount larger than f .
So we see that a definite description of the form the φ alternates between referring to
the minimal or the maximal individual in the extension depending on the monotonicity
of the property φ. We get a maximality effect when φ is upward monotone and a
minimality effect when φ is downward monotone as in (3).
Once the principle is clear, it is easy to construct further cases showing a minimality
effect: consider, for example, the number of Greek soldiers who together can destroy
the Trojan army. For Link, this would result in a presupposition failure, since there is
no maximal number of Greek soldiers that together can destroy the Trojan army (the
more the merrier). For us, on the other hand, the description will pick out the minimal
number of soldiers that together can destroy the Trojan army, because that is the most
informative such number (once we know that number we can deduce that all larger
numbers would also do).
We conclude that Link’s theory got the right results only because the focus was
limited to upward monotone properties.
Finally, there are properties that are non-monotone. For these, we predict a presupposition
failure when there is no unique individual in the extension of the property.
Consider the following. You are trying to fit books (x, y, z, w, v . . . ) on shelves of various
size (a, b, c . . . ). Suppose that book x together with book y fit perfectly on shelf a, and
book x, y, and z together fit perfectly on shelf b. Suppose also that no other combination
of books fits perfectly on a shelf. Under Link’s proposal, the definite description in
#Pass me the books that together fit perfectly on a shelf should be acceptable: it should
refer to the larger collection of books that fit perfectly on a shelf, namely, x + y + z. Our
analysis, in contrast, correctly predicts that the description suffers from presupposition
failure.
An alternation similar to the one between minimality and maximality shows up in
the domain of times as well. In (4) the definite description refers to the latest time, t,
such that Bill lived in Boston until t, while in (5) the definite refers to the earliest time, t,
such that Bill has lived in Boston since t.
(4) January 5th 1999 is the date until which Bill had lived in Boston.
(5) January 5th 1999 is the date since which Bill has lived in Paris.
We expect this alternation and do not need to stipulate it in the semantics of the
temporal operators until or since. In both cases, the definite description refers to the
most informative time that satisfies the relevant property (λt. Bill had lived in Boston
until t, in (6) and λt. Bill has lived in Paris since t, in (7)). The difference, once again, has
to do with the monotonicity of the property.
2

Matthew Wagers (UC Santa Cruz), Manuel Borja (Inetnon Amot yan Kutturan Natibu) & Sandra Chung (UC Santa Cruz)
WH Agreement and the Timing of Unbounded Dependency Formation:
a Chamorro perspective on incrementality and accuracy in language comprehension
SUMMARY. The comprehension of unbounded 1iller-­‐gap dependencies proceeds actively
and predictively: comprehenders posit gaps in particular syntactic positions before direct
evidence that a constituent does not already occupy that position [1]. Evidence for active
comprehension comes from a number of psycholinguistic paradigms and varied (majority)
languages [2]. An important question concerns the sources and timecourse availability of
information that shapes a comprehender’s expectations about the unbounded dependency.
Island constraints are known to immediately restrict comprehenders’ hypotheses: gaps are
not predicted in domains where they could not be licensed [3]. Lexically-­‐projected
information, like subcategorization and argument structure, can also provide clues to the
likely role of the extracted phrase. There is less empirical clarity about how those clues
affect the comprehender’s predictions [4-­‐6], and, in particular, what happens when
expectations are formed before lexical access of the verb [7].
Here we investigate real-­‐time sentence comprehension in Chamorro, whose
grammar provides a morphological cue to the extraction site via its system of WH
Agreement [8]. We report two major 1indings: 1irst, displaced objects are only actively
interpreted semantically when the verb is (optionally) in1lected for WH Agreement.
Secondly, when the verb occurs in its unin1lected form, comprehenders nonetheless have
dif1iculty re-­‐analyzing an extraction which terminates in a non-­‐object position -­‐ in our case,
as a possessor. We argue this dif1iculty is a Chamorro analogue of the 1illed gap effect [9]. It
suggests that comprehenders do actively posit a syntactic gap in the unin1lected forms even
if they don’t synchronously interpret it, a conjecture recently made for English data [10].
DESIGN. Chamorro is a verb-­‐initial Austronesian language with some 40-­‐50,000 speakers,
mainly in the Mariana Islands [8]. Of particular interest is its system of WH Agreement: a
transitive verb whose argument has been A-­‐bar extracted can be specially in1lected to
re1lect the grammatical role of the extractee (as well as verbs along the extraction path) [8].
As in example (1a), a subject extraction from a realis, transitive verb obligatorily triggers
in1ixation of -­‐um-­‐ to the verb (cf. (1b), the unextracted version). Likewise, extractions of
obliques obligatorily trigger a special verb form.
(1)! (a)!Håyi na såstri l umåksi ! i magågu-mu?
! ! who !L seamstress WH[nom].sew D clothes-AGR?
! ! “Which seamstress sewed your clothes?”
! (b)! Ha-låksi i såstri i magågu-mu
! ! AGR-sew D seamstress D clothes-AGR
“The seamstress sewed your clothes”
Crucially, however, WH in1lection for object extractions is optional. Thus in (2a), the verb
penta (‘paint’) is realized with the in1ix -­‐in-­‐ and a 2nd Person agreement suf1ix -mu. But in
(2b), the agreement, un-, is the same as found in clauses with no extractions.
(2)! (a)!Håfa na tråk p inentåm-mu! ta’lu un biåhi?
! ! what!L truck WH[obj].paint-AGR again a time
! (b)! Håfa na tråk un penta ta’lu un biåhi?
! ! what!L truck AGR-paint again a time
! ! BOTH: “Which truck did you paint over again?

The optionality of WH in1lection for object extractions forms the basis for two real-­‐
time sentence comprehension studies that might elucidate how predictions with different
sources interact with the time-­‐courses of active comprehension. The WH in1lection
morpheme provides a clear cue in the input for a particular analysis of the extractee,
whereas an unin1lected form supplies a more indirect cue: the absence of obligatory subject
or oblique extraction morphology is compatible with an object extraction. Moreover a non-­‐
WH-­‐in1lected form is also used when the possessor of the object phrase is extracted (3).
(3)! ! Håfa na tråk un penta ta’lu sanme’nåñ-ña?
! ! what L truck! AGR paint again truck-AGR
! ! “Which truck did you paint its front again?”
Previous research suggests that comprehenders can immediately discard an object analysis
if an extractee’s semantic features are incompatible with the verb and the verb’s argument
structure signals other gap sites (e.g. object control verbs like persuade)[4]. Thus a non-­‐
WH-­‐in1lected verb could forestall active comprehension either by (a) signalling the object
analysis more slowly; or (b) clueing the possibility of possessor extraction.
To test whether active comprehension was diminished for unin1lected forms, we
crossed the semantic plausibility of an extractee as verb’s object [±PLAUS.OBJ] with the
presence of WH in1lection [±WH.INFLECT]: (4)-­‐(5). We probed for an effect of semantic
anomaly on the verb in two paradigms: in Self-paced Listening, 40 native Chamorro
speakers listened in an auditory moving window paradigm and judged whether sentence
made sense. In Passive Listening+Eye tracking, 72 native speakers listened to the
sentences passively and made the same judgement. Large ‘yes’/’no’ buttons were depicted
on screen; participants’ gaze was recorded via a laptop webcam and later coded blind by a
team of RAs unaware of the experimental manipulation. In both experiments there were 12
target items and 28 items counterbalancing for other factors. Experiments took place on
Saipan, Tinian & Luta and all instructions, audio and text were in Chamorro.
(4) (a)! [+PLAUS.OBJ, +WH.INFLECT]:! ! ⇢(2a)
! (b)! [-PLAUS.OBJ, +WH.INFLECT]:
! ! Håyi na ma’estru pinentåm-mu! ta’lu un biåhi?
! ! who! L teacher WH[obj].paint-AGR again a time
! ! “Which teacher did you paint over again?”
(5)! (a)! [+PLAUS.OBJ, -WH.INFLECT]:! ⇢(3)
! (b)! [-PLAUS.OBJ, -WH.INFLECT]:
! ! Håyi na ma’estru un penta ta’lu tråk-ña?
! ! what L teacher AGR paint again truck-AGR
! ! “Which teacher did you paint his truck again?”
For WH in1lected forms, we 1ind clear evidence of active interpretation of the
extractee, as indicated by increased listening times on the verb or increased likelihood of
looking to the ‘no’ response button when -PLAUS.OBJ. For unin1lected forms, neither
those effects are observed. However participants did systematically disprefer the possessor
extractions if the extractee were -PLAUS.OBJ. We interpret this as evidence that they
do begin syntactic construction of the object analysis but have dif1iculty reanalyzing
[1] Frazier, L., & Flores D’Arcais, G. B. (1989). [2] Aoshima, S., Phillips, C., and Weinberg, A. S. (2004).
[3] Phillips, C. (2006). [4] Boland, J.E., et al. (1995) [5] Pickering, M. & Traxler, M. (2003). [6] Staub
2007. [7] Omaki et al. (2011) [8] Chung (1998) [9] Stowe (1986). [10] Wagers & Phillips (2009) [11]
Ferreira et al. (1996).

Conjunct
Morphology
Marks
Property
Self­Ascription
Conjunct/Disjunct
(CJ/DJ)
languages
lack
person
marking
on
verbs,
employing
instead
a
special
 CJ
 verb
 form
 when
 (i)
 the
 subject
 of
 a
 declarative
 is
 1st
 person
 (1),
 (ii)
 the
subject
of
a
question
is
2nd
person
(5),
or
(iii)
the
verb
appears
in
a
de
se
attitude
report
(7).

The
DJ
form
appears
elsewhere.

Exs.
from
Kathmandu
Newar
(Hargreaves
2005):
1. jī:
 a:pwa
 twan‐ā.
1.ERG
 much
 drink‐PST.CJ
‘I
drank
a
lot/too
much.’
2. chā
 a:pwa
 twan‐a.
2.ERG
 much
 drink‐PST.DJ
‘You
drank
a
lot/too
much.’
3. wā:
 a:pwa
 twan‐a.
3.ERG
 much
 drink‐PST.DJ
‘S/he
drank
a
lot/too
much.’
Stephen Wechsler (Texas)
4. jī:
 a:pwa
 twan‐a
 lā?
1.ERG
 much
 drink‐PST.DJ
Q
‘Did
I
drink
a
lot/too
much?’
5. chā
 a:pwa
 twan‐ā
 lā?
2.ERG
 much
 drink‐PST.CJ
Q
‘Did
you
drink
a
lot/too
much?’
6. wā:
 a:pwa
 twan‐a
 lā?
3.ERG
 much
 drink‐PST.DJ
Q
‘Did
s/he
drink
a
lot/too
much?’
7. Syām‐ā
 a:pwa
 twan‐ā
 hā.
Syam‐ERG
 much
 drink‐PST.CJ
 EVD
‘Syami
said
that
hei
drank
too
much.’
CJ/DJ
systems
have
been
observed
in
Sino‐Tibetan,
e.g.
Newar
(Hale
1980;
Hargreaves
2005);
 Nakh‐Daghestanian,
 e.g.
Akhvakh
 (Creissels
 2008)
 and
Mehwb
 Dargwa
(Bickel
2008);
 Tsafiki
 (Barbacoan;
 Dickinson
 2000);
 Trans
 New
 Guinea,
 e.g.
 Oksapmin
(Loughnane
 2009),
 Duna
 and
 Kaluli
 (San
 Roque
 2011);
 Guambiano
 (Norcliffe
 2011);
Cha’palaa
(Floyd
2011).
Conjunct
marking
forces
a
hard
look
at
a
key
question
of
the
GLOW
colloquium:
the
pragmatics‐grammar
interface.

We
put
forth
the
hypothesis
that
conjunct
(CJ)
verb
morphology
 marks
 a
 verb
 phrase
 as
 denoting
 a
 doxastic
 self­ascribed
 property.
Following
recent
work
by
Hans
Kamp,
reference
de
se
is
modeled
under
the
assumption
that
‘self‐attributing
thoughts
take
the
form
of
predications
of
a
special
singular
term
that
‘represents
the
self’
to
the
agent
as
her
self.

We
use
the
symbol
i
to
play
this
part.’
(Kamp
2011,
7).

Crucially,
we
posit
a
special
type
for
i.

A
conjunct‐VP
is
a
function
from
i‐type
 terms
 to
 beliefs.
 We
 distinguish
 individual
 interlocutors’
 discourse
representations,
as
well
as
participant‐neutral
ones.
This
hypothesis
applies
to
uses
of
CJ
as
follows:

(i)
A
declarative
utterance
is
a
declaration
of
speaker
belief.

In
1st
person
subject
CJ
declaratives
the
speaker
declares
the
belief
that
results
from
self­ascribing
the
VP­denoted
property:
e.g.
in
1
that
belief
is
BEL(drank­too­much(i)).

(ii)
A
question
is
an
inducement
to
the
addressee
to
declare
a
belief
iff
she
holds
it.

In
2nd
person
subject
CJ
questions
the
addressee
is
induced
to
declare
the
belief
that
results
from
self‐ascribing
the
VP‐denoted
property
iff
she
holds
that
belief.

(iii)
Reported
speech
using
CJ
reports
someone’s
self‐ascription.
Illustrating
 with
 1,4,
 7,
 [a:pwa
 twanā]VP
 translates
 roughly
 as
 BEL(λi.drank­toomuch(i)).
(More
 precisely,
 an
 attitude
 is
 modeled
 as
 a
 set
 with
 two
 elements,
 in
 this
case:
 an
 anchored
 entity
 representation
 designating
 i
 as
 speaker;
 and
 a
 pairing
 of
 an
attitudinal
 mode,
 here
 BEL(ief),
 with
 a
 DRS
 whose
 universe
 contains
 a
 propositional
discourse
referent
s
and
a
condition
s:
drank­too­much’(i).)

In
1
the
speaker
declares

the
 belief
 resulting
 from
 self‐ascribing
 that
 property,
 namely
 β
 =
 BEL(drank­toomuch(i)).
In
 4
 the
 addressee
 is
 induced
 to
 declare
 β
 iff
 she
 hold
 it.
 
 In
 7
 Syam’s
declaration
of
β
is
reported.
This
 hypothesis
 leads
 to
 the
 following
 explanation
 for
 why
 CJ/DJ
 languages
generally
lack
normal
person
marking
on
the
verb.

By
hypothesis
CJ
is
for
property
self‐
ascription.
 
In
 person‐marking,
 a
 subject
 pronoun
 is
 incorporated
 into
 the
 verb.
 
 But
then
it
saturates
the
subject
role,
producing
a
proposition,
so
the
property
is
no
longer
available
 and
 the
 form
 of
 the
 verb
 cannot
 specify
 the
 mode
 of
 ascription
 as
 self‐
ascription.
This
 also
 offers
 an
 approach
 to
 two
 cross‐linguistic
 tendencies
 that
 have
 been
observed.
 
 (i)
 CJ
 is
 favored
 for
 properties
 for
 which
 self‐ascription
 is
 the
 most
 likely.
(Example:
Newar
CJ
is
restricted
to
verbs
of
intentional
action
(Hargreaves
2005).)
(ii)
CJ
 is
 favored
 where
 non‐self‐ascription
 would
 violate
 social
 proscriptions
 against
presuming
 to
 know
 other
 people’s
 thoughts
 better
 than
 they
 know
 themselves.
 
 The
particular
 restrictions
 vary
 cross‐linguistically
 and
 can
 be
 grammaticalized.
 
 E.g.
 the
Newar
 restriction
 just
 noted
 applies
 even
 in
 a
 third
 person
 de
 se
 report
 (Hargreaves
2005,
ex.
64).
As
far
as
we
know
this
is
the
first
formal
semantic
analysis
of
conjunct/disjunct
systems
to
be
proposed.

It
will
be
compared
to
previous
informal
analyses
that
treat
CJ
marking
 as
 specifying
 that
 the
 subject
 of
 the
 clause
 is
 the
 epistemic
 authority
 or
informant:
 speaker
 of
 a
 declarative,
 addressee
 of
 a
 question.
 
 Bickel
 2008
 treats
 such
marking
 as
 indicating
 epistemic
 scope
 on
 an
 individual
 argument
 and
 reasons
 that
‘definite
 knowledge
 is
 possible
 only
 if
 the
 informant
 is
 in
 fact
 identical
 with
 the
argument.’
(Bickel
2008,
6).

But
this
assumption
of
‘privileged
access’
is
controversial.
We
take
a
slightly
different
tack,
taking
de
se
attribution
as
the
basic
significance
of
CJ
and
other
effects
as
derivative.
The
account
is
fairly
elegant,
but
requires
agent‐relative
DRS’s.


These
have
been
independently
 motivated
 by
 speaker‐addressee
 knowledge
 asymmetries
 in
 epistemic
specificity
(H.
Kamp
and
Bende‐Farkas
2006)
and
person‐number
paradigm
universals
(Wechsler
2010).
Bickel,
 Balthasar.
 2008.
 VerbAgreement
 and
 EpistemicMarking:
 a
 Typological
 Journey
from
 the
 Himalayas
 to
 the
 Caucasus.
 In
 Festschrift
 für
 Roland
 Bielmeier,
 ed.
Chomolangma,
 Demawend,
 and
 Kasbek,
 1–14.
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Masaya Yoshida (Northwestern), Chizuru Nakao (Daito Bunka) & Iván Ortega-Santos (Memphis)
On ellipsis structures involving a wh-remnant and a non-wh-remnant simultaneously
Introduction: While both Sluicing and Stripping have received detailed attention in the field
of generative grammar, this is not the case for ellipsis structures that involve both a whremnant
and a non-wh-remnant simultaneously. Typical examples are found in (1)-(2).
(1) A: He oído que Juan ama a María. Spanish
I heard that Juan loves to María.
B: Por qué [XP a María] (y no a Susana)?
Why [XP to Mary] (but not to Susana)?
B: Why [XP Mary] (but not Susan)?
(2) A: Alguno de estos tíos estaba comiendo chorizo.
One of these guys was eating chorizo.
B: ¿Y cuál de ellos PAELLA?
and which of them paella?
In spite of the fact that these constructions look superficially similar, one the main goals of
this paper is to show that they are two distinct construction types, namely, Why-Stripping,
where the wh-element is restricted to why, and another phrase, a remnant, which is identical
to an element in the antecedent clause, (e.g. María), show up fragmentally, (1), as opposed to
Wh-Stripping, that is to say, which involves a wh-element other than why, and a remnant
which contrasts with a phrase in the antecedent clause, (2). We show that remnants in these
two constructions go through different operations and are located in the different positions in
the syntactic structure. More specifically, we establish the following claims: (a) Why-
Stripping involves a a base-generated why and leftward movement of a focused non-wh
phrase followed by clausal ellipsis; (b) Wh-Stripping involves movement of wh-remnant
followed by rightward movement of a focused phrase and clausal ellipsis (Nevins 2008). To
the best of our knowledge it is the first time those two construction types are thoroughly
compared.
Analysis: Why-Stripping, in clear opposition to Wh-Stripping, allows for preposition
stranding (cf. (3) & (4)), shows effects of repair by ellipsis (cf. (5) & (6)), the antecedent
clause may precede elided clause (cf. (7) & (8)), and is not clause-bound (cf. (5) & (9):
(3) A: Juan habló con María en la fiesta. Why-Stripping
Juan talked with María in the party
B: Por qué (con) María?
Why (with) María
(4) A: Alguno de estos tíos habló con María. Wh-Stripping
B: ¿(Y) cuál de ellos *(CON) SUSANA?
(and) which of them with Susana?
“(and) Which of these guys with Susana?”
(5) A: Juan jura que va a conocer [a una chica que habla francés]. Why-Stripping
Juan swears that he will meet to a girl who speaks French
B: Por qué francés (y no alemán)?
Why French (and not German)
(6) A: Juan jura que va a conocer al hombre al que algunos de estos tíos le sirvió la
Juan swears that he-will to meet the man to whom some of these guys served the
paella. Wh-Stripping
paella
B: *Y cuál de ellos el chorizo?
And which of them the chorizo
(7) No sé por qué a ti, pero María quiere verte. Why-Stripping
Not know why to you, but María want to see-you
(8) ?*No sé cuáles de ellos el chorizo, pero algunos de estos tíos se comieron la paella.

Not know which of them the chorizo, but some of these guys ate the paella Wh-Str.
(9) A: Alguno de estos tíos negó que Juan hubiera hablado con María. Wh-Stripping
Some of these guys denied that Juan had talked with María
B: *Y cuál de ellos con Susana?
And which of them with Susana
Thus, Why-Stripping shows signature properties of leftward movement (e.g., Sluicing; see
Merchant 1999), whereas Wh-Stripping shows signature properties of rightwards movement.
As is well-known, rightward movement such as Heavy NP Shift (HNPS) does neither allow
for long-distance movement, e.g. (10), nor for P-stranding (Jayaseelan 1990, a.o.); see the
unacceptability of (11)b, as opposed to (11)c. Needless to say, if we are dealing with
movement to the right, this would explain (8).
(10) *Mary said [that John broke tx] to her mother [the statue that he had spent the
whole summer carving]x.
(11) a. John counted on a total stranger for support.
b. *John counted on for support a total stranger.
c. John counted for support on a total stranger. (Jayaseelan 1990: 66)
Crucially, both Why and Wh-Stripping involve a full-fledged syntactic structure at the
ellipsis site as shown by connectivity effects such as selectional restrictions and binding
connectivity. Furthermore, w.r.t. analysis of Why-Stripping, given the standard assumption
that wh-phrases other than Why land in [Spec,FocP], we expect those other wh-phrases to be
unable to co-occur with the (repeated) focused XP. The prediction is fulfilled, (12).
(12) A: Juan besó a María.
Juan kissed to María
B: Por qué a María?/ *Dónde a María?/*Cuándo a María?/*Quién a María?
B: Why to María?/*Where to María?/*When to María?/*Who to María?
In turn, we assume that the remnants must escape the ellipsis in order to be pronounced, and
otherwise-covert focus movement is manifested overtly only under ellipsis (see Nakao 2008
for a similar approach to Stripping). Under current theoretical assumption where there is no
overt/covert movement distinction, but rather a choice on which copy of the movement chain
to pronounce, this means that PF constraints force the pronunciation of the upper copy. We
claim that the situation is parallel to Multiple Sluicing. Although the second wh-phrase
usually undergoes covert wh-movement, (13), it can escape the TP only when there is
ellipsis, (14) (see Lasnik 2006 and references therein, for discussions on Multiple Sluicing):
(13) a. Qué compré yo para quién?
What bought I for who?
b. *Qué para quién compré yo?
What for who bought I
(14) (?)Yo compré algo para alguien, pero no recuerdo [CP qué1 para quién2 [IP
I bought something for somebody, but not remember.I what for who
yo compré t1 t2]].
I bought t1 t2
References
Jayaseelan, Karattuparambil. A. 1990. Incomplete Vp Deletion and Gapping. Linguistic
Analysis 20:64-81.
Lasnik, Howard. 2006. Multiple Sluicing in English. Ms. University of Maryland, College
Park.
Nevins, Andrew. 2008. “Sluicing ≠ Stripping: Evidence from P-Stranding”. Paper presented
at The 3rd Annual Moscow Student Conference on Linguistics, Moscow, April 2008.
Merchant, J. 1999. The syntax of silence: Sluicing, islands and identity in ellipsis. Ph.D. Diss,
UCSC.

Association with traces and the copy theory of movement
In this talk I give a principled account for the observation that exclusive only must associate with a focus
within its complement (Tancredi’s (1990) Principle of Lexical Association; PLA), utilizing the copy theory
of movement and associated work on the interpretation of traces. Previous explanations for this fact come
from the idea that traces cannot be F-marked. I argue contra Beaver and Clark (2008) that traces (lower
copies of movement chains) can in fact be F-marked and that this is exemplified in F-marking contained in
quantifiers which undergo QR. Instead, PLA effects arise through the interpretation of focus alternatives of
the predicate in both the higher and lower copies of of the moved constituent. When the higher copy and
lower copy are not both under the scope of the exclusive operator, we yield incompatible requirements on
the variables being quantified over, causing either presupposition failure or contradiction.
PLA and the state of the art
Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine (MIT)
Tancredi (1990) described the ungrammaticality of (1) as due to the PLA: a requirement that only associate
with a constituent in its c-command domain at S-structure. Beaver and Clark (2008) argue that this is an
expected result if traces cannot be F-marked: without F-marked material in the complement of only the
focus alternatives computed will be a singleton set and we cannot make a meaningful assertion. In support
of this view, Beaver and Clark note that “by definition, extraction gaps cannot be prosodically prominent”
(Beaver and Clark, 2008, 172).
(1) * [Which boy]i does John only like ti? (Tancredi, 1990)
Intended: ‘Which boy x is such that John only likes [x]F ?’
(2) ✓ Which boy is such thati John only likes [himi]F ?
Example (2) shows that a bound variable, however, can indeed carry F-marking and give us the intended
reading. This contrast between unpronounced traces and bound variables lends credence to this hypothesis.
F-marking in the lower position: evidence from QR
Aoun and Li (1993) noted that the PLA seems to also affect the possible scopes of QR: (3) does not have an
inverse-scope reading due to the only and the F-marking on (part of) the QP. That the scope of focus-sensitive
only indeed interferes with QR can also be verified in Antecedent Contained Deletion examples which must
invoke QR in order to satisfy the identity requirements on ellipsis (Larson and May, 1990, a.o.). The two
ellipsis resolutions in (4a) correspond to a choice of how high the quantifier is raised to—either to the edge
of vP1 or vP2. However, in (4b) the larger ellipsis resolution is unavailable, indicating an inability of the QP
to move across only to the edge of vP1.
(3) Someone only loves [QP every [boy]F in the room]. (Aoun and Li, 1993)
✓ someone > every boy, *every boy > someone
(4) a. John [vP1 wanted to [vP2 read [QP every book that Mary did . ✓ “want to read,” ✓ “read”
b. John [vP1 wanted to only [vP2 read [QP every book that [M]F did . *“want to read,” ✓ “read”
As a covert movement operation, QR has been analyzed as movement with pronunciation of the foot of the
chain. Examples such as (3) and (4b) then arguably realize F-marking on the lower position, corresponding
to a trace position of an overt movement chain. When the full paradigm of the PLA including its effect on
QR is considered, its explanation as an inability to realize F-marking on traces becomes untenable.
Solution: F-marking in both higher and lower copies via the copy theory of movement
Under the copy theory of movement, movement does not leave “traces” but instead leaves full, lower copies.
The lower copy is then converted into a definite description (with the restriction that it be equal to the variable
in question) through a process of Trace Conversion (TC) (Fox, 2002; Rullmann and Beck, 1998).
(5) “John read many books.” QR: [many books] λxi John read [many books]i
TC: [many books] λx John read [the book x]
F-marking itself is simply a syntactic feature on constituents (Jackendoff, 1972), and thus when a constituent

containing F-marking moves, the F-marking is retained on both copies. This triggers the generation of
focus alternatives in both positions. If this movement happens within the scope of only (Case I), we yield a
meaningful assertion by elimination of self-contradictory alternatives when evaluating only. However, this
elimination of contradictory alternatives does not occur when the movement is out of the scope of only and
we yield fatal presupposition failure (Case II).
Case I (XP containing F-marking moves within the scope of only):
“Every boy” QRs to the edge of vP, within the scope of only, and the lower copy undergoes TC (a). There are
now two F-marked boys in the structure, and they each introduce the alternatives {boy, girl}. Compute �vP�f pointwise, resulting in four alternatives (b). (Box indicates prejacent.) Eliminate alternatives which produce
logical contradictions (strikeouts in b). Compute only as normal: asserting the conjunction of negations of
alternatives which are not entailed by the prejacent. The resulting assertion (c) is well-formed.
(3a) a. TC: Someone λy . only [vP [every [boy]F ] λx . y loves [the [boy]F x] ]
b. �vP�f { }
=
[every boy] λx . y loves [the boy x] , [every boy] λx . y loves [the girl x],
[every girl] λx . y loves [the boy x], [every girl] λx . y loves [the girl x]
c. Assert: there exists a person y for which it is not the case that y loves every girl. �
Case II (XP containing F-marking moves out of the scope of only):
“Every boy” QRs out above only, and the lower copy undergoes TC (a). Only the lower copy is within
the vP, so there are two alternatives computed at vP (b). The exclusive assertion then makes reference to
the definite description “the girl x” (c). The higher boy will trigger alternatives, but the assertion simply
asserts the ordinary semantic value of the root, meaning we will quantify over “every boy x.” The complete
computation (d) attempts to compute the definite description “the girl x” for “every boy x,” necessarily
resulting in presupposition failure for every individual in the quantification!
(3b) a. TC: [every [boy]F ] λx . someone λy . only [vP y loves [the [boy]F x] ]
b. �vP� f = { y loves [the boy x] , y loves [the girl x] }
c. �only vP� = ¬ y loves [the girl x]
d. Assert: for every boy x, there exists y, such that it is not the case that y loves [the girl x] �
The contrast between traces and bound variables
If the PLA is not due to a simple lack of F-marking within the complement of only, we lose the trivial
explanation for the contrast in (1–2). However, the contrast above (Case I–II) crucially arises due to the
presuppositions introduced by the definite description interpretation of lower copies via TC. Bound variables,
however, are simple variables and thus can host F-marking without introducing conflicting presuppositions.
(6) No boy is such thati John only likes [himi]F = [no boy](λx.only John likes [x]F ) �
Prediction: the PLA does not affect F-marked quantificational determiners
As TC retains all of the predicative restriction of a quantifier but replaces the determiner with ι, F-marking
on the determiners themselves are predicted to be immune to the PLA. As alternatives are not introduced in
the two copies of the predicate, we avoid the issues in Case II above. This prediction is borne out.
(3 ′ ) Someone only loves [ [most]F boys]. ✓ someone > most boys, ✓ most boys > someone
Summary and implications
The novel proposal presented here gives a unified explanation for PLA effects on both overt and covert
movement, in a manner compatible with our recent, independently-motivated understanding of the copy theory
of movement. The distinction drawn here between bound variables and traces highlights the importance
of our semantic denotations for “variables,” particularly as the lack of focus-islands has been used as an
argument for non-movement analyses of wh-in-situ (Aoun and Li, 1993).

Peng Zhou, Stephen Crain & Likan Zhan (Macquarie)
Children’s pragmatic use of prosody in sentence processing
This study examined 4-year-old Mandarin-speaking children’s sensitivity to prosodic cues in
resolving speech act ambiguities, using eye-movement recordings. Most previous on-line
studies have focused on children’s use of prosody in resolving structural ambiguities and
have found that, although children are able to use prosodic information in on-line sentence
processing, they use such information less effectively than adults. The present study takes
advantage of special properties of Mandarin Chinese to investigate the role of prosody in
children’s on-line processing of ambiguities in which prosody serves to signal the
illocutionary meaning of an utterance (i.e., whether the speaker is asking a question or
making a statement). Negative sentences with a wh-word like (1) are ambiguous in Mandarin
Chinse. This sentence can either be used to pose a question, as in (1a), or to make a statement,
as in (1b). Prosodic cues are used to distinguish between these two speech acts. Rising
intonation on the wh-phrase shenme shuiguo ‘what fruit’ indicates the question reading,
whereas level intonation on the same wh-phrase signals the statement reading.
(1) Yuehan meiyou zhai shenme shuiguo
John not pick what fruit
a. What fruit did John not pick? (rising intonation on the wh-phrase)
b. John didn’t pick any fruit. (level intonation on the wh-phrase)
Thirty-four monolingual Mandarin-speaking children (mean age 4;8, range 4;1 to 5; 5) and 30
Mandarin-speaking adults (mean age 25, range 23 to 26) were tested using the visual world
paradigm. Participants were presented with a spoken sentence (e.g., (1)) while viewing a
picture (e.g., Fig.1.). Two prosodic versions of each target sentence were presented, one with
rising intonation on the wh-phrase (Question Prosody condition) and one with level
intonation on the same wh-phrase (Statement Prosody condition). Eye-movements were
recorded using an EyeLink 1000 eye tracker (remote function). Participants’ fixations were
coded in three categories (see Fig.1.): the statement-compatible area (objects corresponding
to the statement interpretation), the question-compatible area (objects corresponding to the
question interpretation) and the irrelevant area (objects corresponding to neither
interpretation). The proportion of fixations following the onset of the subject NP (e.g.,
Yuehan ‘John’) was computed in a time window of 6000 ms for the two critical categories:
the statement-compatible area and the question-compatible area. This 6000 ms time window
was broken down into 20 segments, each with a duration of 300 ms.
Figure 2 shows the proportion of fixations of adults and children in the question-compatible
area (III) across the two prosodic conditions. Figure 3 summarizes the fixation proportions in
the statement-compatible area (I). The two figures indicate that adults and children exhibited
similar eye gaze patterns in the two critical areas in the two prosodic conditions. Hearing the
wh-word with rising intonation triggered increased looks to the question-compatible area
(Fig.2.) and hearing the wh-word with level intonation triggered increased looks to the
statement-compatible area (Fig.3.). This prosodic effect found in children was as robust as it
was in adults. The patterns were supported by further statistical modelling (mixed-effects
logistic regression models). This finding suggests that children are as sensitive as adults in
using prosody in on-line sentence processing, when prosody is used to resolve a pragmatic
ambiguity. Children are as good as adults in the pragmatic use of prosody in on-line sentence
processing.

Fig.1. Example of interest areas
Fig.2. Average fixation proportions over time in the question-compatible area (III) in
the two prosodic conditions, adults (left) and children (right)
Fig.3. Average fixation proportions over time in the statement-compatible area (I) in
the two prosodic conditions, adults (left) and children (right)