Elena Anagnostopoulou

The Subject-in-Situ Generalization and the Role of Case in Driving Computations

The article establishes a novel generalization concerning the placement of arguments by Spell-Out. It centers on the principles that force arguments to leave the VP across languages. The empirical domain consists of constructions where subject movement is not required for reasons that have to do with the Extended Projection Principle. In these environments and whenever a sentence contains both a subject and a direct object, one of the arguments must vacate the VP. We argue that argument externalization is related to Case. It is forced because movement of both arguments to a single head T0 that contains two active Case features in the covert component is banned.

External arguments in transitivity alternations : a layering approach

1. Introduction 2. Event Decomposition and the causative alternation 3. Voice Morphology and the causative alternation 4. A typology of Voice 5. Adjectival passives and Voice 6. Conclusions

Toward a More Complete Typology of Anaphoric Expressions

Reinhart and Reuland (1993) propose the following typology of anaphoric expressions: SELF anaphors (+SELF, R), SE anaphors (SELF, R), and pronouns (SELF, +R). We argue that the Greek anaphor o eaftos tu the self his exemplifies a fourth type, predicted by Reinhart and Reulands typology but not instantiated in their system: an inalienable possession anaphor (+SELF, +R). Within Reinhart and Reulands framework such anaphors are allowed provided that (a) they do not enter into chain formation and (b) they satisfy the (reflexivity) binding conditions through abstract incorporation of the nominal head into the predicate they reflexivize. The proposed analysis makes valid predictions concerning the distribution of Greek anaphors as opposed to English/Dutch anaphors.

Holmberg’s Generalization and Cyclic Linearization. Remarks on Fox and Pesetsky

Abstract Fox and Pesetsky (henceforth F&P) propose an architecture for the mapping between syntax and phonology which relates a number of different constraints on movement to the way in which phrase structure is linearized. They investigate Object Shift (henceforth OS) and Quantifier Movement (henceforth QM) in Scandinavian and argue that the restrictions on these processes, namely Holmberg’s Generalization (HG) effects on OS and what they call ‘‘the inverse Holmberg effect’’ on QM, reflect a requirement for preservation of the order established in the VP due to the fact that the VP is a Spell-out domain. F&P’s proposal relies on Holmberg’s (1999) formulation of HG which has been challenged by Anagnostopoulou (2002) on the basis of data discussed in Anagnostopoulou (2003) that directly contradict Holmberg (1999). It is my goal here to investigate how these data can be accommodated in F&P’s system. I will argue that even though F&P can, in principle, account for the data in question, the attempt to unify the restrictions on OS, QM with comparable restrictions on passivization under F&P’s architecture fails to express certain crosslinguistic generalizations which are straightforwardly captured in traditional locality accounts.

Verbs with alternating transitivity in Parkinson’s disease: Evidence from production and comprehension tasks

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is characterized by several cognitive deficits (Dubois & Pillon, 1997) but it is not clear whether specific language disturbances form part of the PD cognitive profile. Studies on PD present contradictory results, showing deficits in grammatical rules (Ullman et al., 1997) and studies showing no grammatical deficits (Caplan & Waters, 1999). Two different hypotheses on the grammatical abilities of PD patients have been developed. Hypothesis one claims that grammatical abilities are predicted to be impaired due to the general impairment of the procedural memory system in PD (Ullman et al., 1997). Hypothesis two claims that grammatical abilities are not predicted to be impaired (Caplan & Waters, 1999), as the general impairment of the procedural memory system in PD is assumed not to affect grammatical abilities. The present study aims to investigate the grammatical abilities of Greek speaking patients with PD by studying their performance on the production and comprehension of unaccusative verbs entering transitivity alternations. In Greek, such verbs show evidence for A-movement. However, they do not all show the same morphology. There are unaccusatives with active morphology; unaccusatives with passive morphology and finally verbs both active and passive morphology. It has been argued that the structure of unaccusatives with passive morphology is more complex than the structure of unaccusatives with active morphology (Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou, in press). In this paper we explore whether (i) patients with Parkinson’s disease show difficulty in A-Chain formation in Greek unaccusatives and (ii) their performance is in any way influenced by structural complexity.

Roots and domains

As summarized in the concluding section 5, Harley investigates three issues: (i) the nature and properties of roots, (ii) the syntactic behavior of roots, i.e. whether they undergo Merge with phrasal constituents or not and whether they project or not, and (iii) the demarcating head for special interpretation of roots, whether this is the first categorizing head or the higher head Voice. In this commentary, I will concentrate on the third question, addressing it from the point of view of previous work on Greek participles which discusses this very same question (Anagnostopoulou & Samioti 2013, to appear).