Caroline Heycock

First language attrition and syntactic subjects: a study of Greek and Italian near-native speakers of English

In this paper we present some results from an experimental study that we have been conducting into the effects of syntactic attrition on the L1 of Greek and Italian speakers who have achieved near-native proficiency in their L2 (English) but still use their L1 on a regular basis. In particular, we test the hypothesis, developed on the basis of assumptions regarding syntactic modularity, that the changes in L1 syntax will be restricted to the interface with the conceptual /intentional cognitive systems. The area of investigation is the domain of grammatical subjects in Greek and Italian. More specifically, we tested the participants on the production and interpretation of null and overt subjects, and of preverbal and postverbal subjects. We also elicited grammaticality judgments on subject extraction and subject position in various syntactic contexts. In this paper we report on the results of one of the production tasks (of preverbal and postverbal subjects) and two interpretation tasks. Attrition effects are found in the production of preverbal subjects in the Greek group whereas Italian speakers show attrition effects in the interpretation of overt pronominal subjects. We argue that these results are in the right direction, that is, that semantic features are vulnerable in language attrition whereas syntactic options remain intact.

Pseudocleft Connectedness: Implications for the LF Interface Level

Pseudoclefts constitute a difficult challenge for linguistic theory, displaying effects of core syntactic conditions in a noncanonical configuration that cannot be normalized with standard syntactic operations. We argue that these connectedness effects follow from the nature of pseudoclefts as equatives. This treatment yields an integrated account of the syntactic and semanticopragmatic properties of the construction, but leads to the conclusion that certain syntactic constraints apply to a level of representation more abstract than LF under most current conceptions. This representation is built up in the process of discourse interpretation and may constitute the interface with the conceptual-intentional system of mind.

Coordinated Bare Definites

Recent work on the syntax and semantics of functional projections within the noun phrase has had as one goal an explanation for the crosslinguistic distribution of bare (determinerless) noun phrases. This article provides an account for an apparent anomaly: the relatively free occurrence of bare noun phrases under coordination. We argue that this construction involves coordination of projections below the DP level, with the coordinated structure subsequently raising to Spec, DP.Our analysis accounts for the fact that these nominals are endowed with uniqueness conditions, but only in some cases, and for a number of other hitherto undocumented facts, including complex constraints on modification.

Syntactic predication in Japanese

This paper argues that Japanese provides evidence for an independent syntactic relation of predication. Predication is shown to be an independent syntactic relation in two respects. First, evidence from the multiple nominative construction in Japanese and two constructions in English demonstrates that predication is independent of the thematic structure of heads: a phrase may be the subject of a syntactic predicate in the absence of θ-role assignment.Second, it is argued that the subject—predicate relation is defined in configurational terms: a syntactic predicate is a maximal projection, and must have a subject in an external position. Consequently, complements of the verb cannot be syntactic subjects. This prediction is borne out by theDat-Nom constructions in Japanese, where the nominative argument is not a syntactic subject. These constructions are contrasted with apparently parallel constructions in German, the different behavior of which is argued to follow from the existence of a null expletive in this language.Finally, on the basis of the data presented in the paper, a revision to the θ-Criterion is proposed.

Broad Subjects and Clitic Left Dislocation

In this paper we have further defended the claim, set out in Doron and Heycock (1999), that a language in which nominative case can be checked by more than one element can allow merging of “Broad Subjects“ in [Spec,TP]. In this earlier work, we argued that such languages included Modern Hebrew and Modern Standard Arabic. Here we have further argued that Broad Subjects are found also in Levantine Arabic. The recognition of this possibility then allows an analysis of a residue of left-peripheral XPs associated with a clitic as instances of Clitic Left Dislocation, with properties near-identical to this construction as identified in Italian and Greek. While a number of questions about the nature of the configurations involved remain to be answered, we consider that some progress at least has been made in reducing the apparent proliferation of language-specific properties of elements occupying the left periphery.

Verb movement and coordination in a dynamic theory of licensing

Over the last decade generative grammar has moved away from using phrase structure rules s the basic specifiers of syntactic structure; instead, the theory has come to see phrase structure s the instantiation of a number of licensing relations, chiefly θ-role assignment, case, agreement, and predication. The licensing of phrase structure has, however, been conceived in a static way: although the elements being licensed may move in the course of a derivation in order to reach the positions in which licensing takes place, the positions themselves are fixed for each relation. In this article we explore the consequences of abandoning this static view, and taking instead a dynamic approach in which the licensing positions themselves may change in the course of a derivation. In essence, we will argue that a licensing relation holding between two elements α and β is satisfied whenever α arid β are in the relevant configuration (for example head-complement, head-specifier); there is no motivation for restricting the satisfaction of the relation to the underlying positions of α and/or . Instead, we will show that something close to the converse is true: given economy assumptions along the lines of Chomsky (1991, 1992), a licensing relation will necessarily be satisfied by the highest position in a chain at which the relevant licensing configuration occurs. Consequently, a given trace can appear only if at least one of the licensing relations in which it participates is not also satisfied by some position higher in its chain. In what follows we will show that this new view of how structure is licensed straightforwardly accounts for a wide r nge of otherwise problematic data. We focus initially on a well-known problem concerning coordination in the

On variation in Faroese verb placement

In this paper, we present and discuss results from an investigation of verb placement in modern Faroese in which we collected data from speakers from a number of different dialect areas in the Faroe Islands. Altogether we interviewed 54 informants, aged 15–67, 29 women and 25 men. Therefore, our study not only investigates the geographical variation claimed to be present in Faroese with respect to verb placement, but also gender and age variation. O ur results indicate that verb movement in non-V2 contexts is no longer commonly available to the speakers of Faroese. However, our results also suggest that verb movement across adverbs like often and already tends to be more acceptable than movement across negation and other adverbs like never and undoubtedly . Furthermore, movement of finite auxiliaries generally receives a slightly higher score than movement of finite main verbs. Our results do not show any differences in the judgements of speakers below and above the age of 25. Contrary to Jonas (1996), we find that speakers in the North are, if anything, more likely to accept verb movement than speakers in the South.

Acquisition in Variation (and Vice Versa): V-to-T in Faroese Children

Faroese is at the tail end of a change from an Icelandic-type syntax in which V-to-T is obligatory to a Danish-type system in which this movement is impossible. While the older word order is very rarely produced by adult Faroese speakers, there is evidence that this order is still marginally present in the adult grammar and thus only dispreferred, rather than completely ungrammatical. Here the results are presented of an experimental study of older Faroese children: 5-year-old children both accept and produce the older word order, 6-year-olds do so significantly less, and 10-year-olds behave like adult speakers. We discuss a number of possible interpretations of the childrens variability in the context of residual effects of diachronic change in Faroese.

Agreement in specificational sentences in Faroese

This paper examines the patterns of agreement found in Faroese in sentences where there are two noun phrases with which the verb could potentially agree, a situation that arises in “specificational” or “inverse” copular sentences of the type The problem is/are your parents . It is well-known that in some languages (for example English) agreement is obligatorily with the first noun phrase, while in others (for example Italian) it is obligatorily with the second. Here we show that Faroese robustly exhibits both patterns, and that their distribution is strongly affected by other aspects of the syntax of the sentences in which they occur.

Don't Rush to Rehabilitate: A Remark on Koeneman and Zeijlstra 2014

Koeneman and Zeijlstra (2014) aim to rehabilitate the strong version of the Rich Agreement Hypothesis (RAH), according to which there is a bidirectional implication between “rich” agreement morphology in the verbal system and movement of the finite verb to a functional head above vP but below the C system (V-to-I movement). We show that one of the clearest empirical arguments raised in the literature against the strong RAH—the persistence of V-to-I movement in Early Modern Danish—is not addressed by any of the counterarguments raised by Koeneman and Zeijlstra and therefore still stands as evidence against the rehabilitated generalization and theory.