Anna Maria Di Sciullo

The Delay of Principle B Effect (DPBE) and its Absence in Some Languages

The Delay of Principle B Effect (DPBE) has been discussed in various studies that show that children around age 5 seem to violate Principle B of Binding Theory (Chomsky, 1981, and related works), when the antecedent of the pronoun is a name, but not when the antecedent is a quantifier. The analysis we propose can explain the DPBE in languages of the Dutch-English type, and its exemption in languages with (dis)placed pronouns (clitics). In both types of languages, the phenomenon arises when children have to compare two alternative representations for equivalence. The principle that induces the comparison is different in both cases, however. The comparision of children speaking languages with pronouns occurring within the VP is induced by Grodzinsky and Reinharts (1993) Rule I. However, the comparison of children in languages where the pronouns occur above the VP is induced by Scope Economy. In both cases the result is similar: the children take guesses in the process of interpreting the anaphoric dependency, thereby performing at chance level.

Theta-Role Saturation in Greek Compounds

This study deals with theta-role saturation in deverbal and verbal compounds in Greek. We claim that theta-role saturation inside compounds is related to the configurational properties of argument structure, as well as to the properties of rich morphology, particularly to strong inflection. This claim, combined with the fact that several semantic roles may be expressed in an adjunct position whereas a more restricted set of semantic roles is represented in a complement position, can account for theta-role saturation inside Greek compounds.

The role of configurational asymmetry in the lexical access of prefixed verbs: Evidence from French

In this paper we investigated the effects of configurational asymmetry in prefixed verbs in French. We used a simple lexical decision paradigm to compare prefixed verbs with external and internal prefixes as specified in linguistic theory (Di Sciullo, 1997) where external prefixes do not change the aktionsart and the verb argument structure of the verb, but internal prefixes do change the aktionsart and may change the verb argument structure of the verb. In Experiment 1 we tested the bi-valent prefix dé- where the configurational difference between external and internal properties of a prefix did not elicit differential response latencies. However, in Experiment 2, where unambiguous prefixes (internal en- and external ré-) were tested, the external prefix elicited longer latencies. These results are discussed with respect to the linguistic constraints the configurational properties of prefixes place upon psycholinguistic models of lexical access, as well as with respect to the effects of prefix bi-valence in the recognition of prefixed verbs.

MODULARITY AND THE MAPPING FROM THE LEXICON TO THE SYNTAX

One consequence of the SSH is that an argument is saturated in the syntax even if it is pari of a lexical item, regardless of the differences in opacity between words and phrases. Another consequence of the SSH is that an implicit argument is categorially present äs a pro in an A-position whether or not it is realized äs an adjunct, and whether or not it is subject to semantic restrictions. Specific constructions in Italian are considered here, including deverbal compounds, causatives and middles. It is shown that certain properties of these constructions escape the realm of the SSH. I propose an alternative hypothesis, based on the assumption that the grammar

Asymmetries: Consequences for morphological configurations and paradigms

In this paper we bring evidence to the effect that asymmetries arebasic in the interpretation of the different sorts of objects generated bythe grammar. We focus on the properties of morphological configurations, inparticular the restrictions imposed on their derivations in order to showthat they follow from our hypothesis. We discuss the properties of morphologicalparadigms, in particular the restrictions imposed on their actual membersand their combination with roots in order to show that their properties areaccounted for in terms of asymmetrical relations.In this paper we bring evidence to the effect that asymmetries arebasic in the interpretation of the different sorts of objects generated bythe grammar. We focus on the properties of morphological configurations, inparticular the restrictions imposed on their derivations in order to showthat they follow from our hypothesis. We discuss the properties of morphologicalparadigms, in particular the restrictions imposed on their actual membersand their combination with roots in order to show that their properties areaccounted for in terms of asymmetrical relations.

A reason to optimize information processing with a core property of natural language

We focus on a property of natural language enabling the processing of information conveyed by linguistic expressions: structural asymmetry. We provide evidence that structural asymmetry is a property of argument structure. We focus on Information Retrieval and Question Answering systems and we provide evidence that these systems fail to recover natural language argument structure asymmetrical relations and thus they may fail to retrieve relevant documents from large databases and to provide relevant answers to questions. The processing of the underlying asymmetric relations will contribute to the optimization of Information Retrieval and Question Answering systems.

Affixes at the Edge

The language faculty — understood as the genetic endowment e nabling language growth — can be accessed through the properties of the object s g nerated by the grammar. Morphological and syntactic objects are telling i n this respect, as they are both similar to and different from each other. Several qu estions arise when the architecture of the language faculty is considered in th is perspective. Are the primitives of morphology the same as the primitives of synta x? Are morphological relations identical to, or (partially) different from, syntactic relations? Do the same operations apply in the derivation of morphological an d syntactic objects? The full spectrum of views is found in the literature: while s ome scholars have argued that morphology and syntax are different subsystems of the grammar (Anderson 1992; Aronoff 1994; Bach 1996; Di Sciullo and William s 1987), others have proposed that morphology and syntax coincide (Halle an d Marantz 1993; Julien 1996; Lieber 1992; Marantz 1997, 2003). With this as a backdrop, this paper explores the theoretical implications of affix-root ordering. The data to be discussed come from three morphologically divergent languages: English, Yekhee, and Turkish. The des criptive generalizations concerning affix-root ordering in each of these langua ges is as follows. In English, one observes a mixture of prefixation and suffixatio n, which crosscuts the traditional division between derivational and inflecti onal morphology. Thus, while some English derivational affixes are suffixal, as in (1 a), others are prefixal, as in (1b); these correspond to “predicate-affixes” and “mod ifier-affixes” respectively. Similarly, while some English inflectional affixes a re suffixal, as in (1c),

Classification of the Indo-European Languages Using a Phylogenetic Network Approach

Discovering the origin of the Indo-European (IE) language family is one of the most intensively studied problems in historical linguistics. Gray and Atkinson (2003) inferred a phylogenetic tree (i.e., additive tree or X-tree, Barthelemy and Guenoche 1991) of the IE family, using bayesian inference and rate-smoothing algorithms, based on the 87 Indo-European language data set collected by Dyen et al. (1997). When conducting their classification study, Gray and Atkinson assumed that the evolution of languages was strictly divergent and the frequency of word borrowing (i.e., horizontal transmission of individual words) was very low. As consequence, their results suggested a predominantly tree-like pattern of the IE language evolution. In our opinion, only a network model can adequately represent the evolution of the IE languages. We propose to apply a method of horizontal gene transfer (HGT) detection (Makarenkov et al. 2006) to reconstruct a phylogenetic network depicting the evolution of the IE language family.

Formal Context and Morphological Analysis

This paper presents a definition of context for the interpretation of word-structure that is based on the formal relation of asymmetry. We provide evidence that morpho-conceptual complexity is optimally tractable in terms of local asymmetrical relations in formal context. We present the main features of a morpho-conceptual parser implementing our proposal. We show, on the basis of the comparison with existing morphological parsers, that the accuracy of the analysis increases when the operations of the parser are oriented by the recognition of local asymmetries in formal contexts. We predict that the inclusion of modules scanning local asymmetries in information processing systems will increase their precision.

The Definite Determiner in Romanian: A Biolinguistic Perspective

We present a new biolinguistic explanation for the evolution of the Nom/Acc and Gen/Dat forms of the Romanian definite determiner, thus providing further evidence to the hypothesis that the Directional Asymmetry Principle provides an explanation for the variation and evolution of the order of head-dependent constituents. As predicted, the choice between a valued and an unvalued variant of a functional feature, which was available in Old Romanian, is gradually reduced through the development of Modern Romanian. We provide an explanation for this evolution in terms of a more general natural complexity-reduction phenomenon.