Elizabeth Ritter

On the syntactic category of pronouns and agreement

This paper provides support for the claim that there are two functional projections in full noun phrases, Determiner Phrase (DP) and Number Phrase (NumP), based on an analysis of the dual marker in Modern Hebrew. The assumption of two nominal functional categories permits a structural account of differences in the distribution of elements that function as first/second person pronouns and those that function as third person pronouns. It is hypothesized that 1st/2nd person pronouns are DPs which contain only the head D and that this head is specified for person, number and gender. In contrast, 3rd person pronouns have a more complex structure, where D is specified for person and Num is specified for number and gender. Similarities between past tense agreement and 1st/2nd person pronouns on the one hand and between present tense agreement and 3rd person pronouns on the other suggest that the same nominal functional categories that act as pronouns also act as agreement. In other words, the difference between pronouns and agreement lies not in their category, but in their role in the syntax. Finally, this view of pronouns and agreement is applied to complex null subject phenomena in Modern Hebrew. In order to account for the fact that the distribution of null subjects varies across persons and across tenses, we propose a matching condition on both the category and content of the null pronoun and agreement.

The function of have

Abstract This paper proposes a unified analysis of all uses of main verb have , including causative and experiencer readings, alienable and inalienable possession, the locational reading, and is extended to account for properties of auxiliary have . Our analysis is based on the assumption that the lexical representation of have has no independent semantic content. By this we mean that it lacks the lexical semantic content generally associated with main verbs that mean ‘cause’, ‘experience’, ‘possess’, or ‘contain’. Rather, the various interpretations of have are derived from the syntactic structure. We argue that there is only one verb have , that have is a functional item with no thematic roles to assign, and that have provides the additional syntactic structure necessary for the insertion of an extra argument. As a consequence, have is unable to provide an interpretation for its subject, and the subject must be related to some other constituent in order to get an interpretation. Finally, the specific meaning of have is determined post-lexically by the nature of the syntactic relation it sets up. We show that while have lacks lexically specified semantic content, it does acquire an interpretation as a consequence of the relation it sets up between the subject and the predicate. The subject of have receives an interpretation by one of two means: For eventive predicates, we assume that all arguments receive a syntactically determined event role, so the subject of have is interpreted by virtue of the role it plays in the event; for non-eventive predicates, the subject receives an interpretation via coreference with a constituent in the predicate.

The interpretive value of object splits

The goal of this paper is to account for the observation that in a broad range of genetically unrelated languages we find two classes of direct objects based on their syntactic and semantic properties. Specifically, we find splits in object case marking, object position, or the ability of the object to trigger verb agreement. This split always correlates with specificity or definiteness of the object, and in a subset of languages it also correlates with delimitation or boundedness of the event. We propose that this split in object properties is determined by the presence or absence of a feature [Quantization] on the object DP. This feature, which formalizes Krifkas characterization of the countability of nominals and events, may also be present on either the verb or object agreement (Agr-O). The observed cross-linguistic variation is attributed to the language specific choice between these two heads as follows: When [Quant] is a feature of the verb, it is interpretable and independently encodes delimitation/boundedness of the event. However, when [Quant] is a feature of the functional head Agr, it is an uninterpretable feature which only enters into a checking relation with a definite/specific direct object.

Animating the narrow syntax

Abstract In this paper we demonstrate that there are two related, but distinct types of animacy in the Plains Algonquian language, Blackfoot – morphological animacy (m-animacy) and high animacy (H-animacy). We argue that the two types of animacy are constructed in different ways: M-animacy is a head feature that determines noun class and plays a role in syntactic agreement operations, whereas H-animacy is a selectable feature of arguments. The two kinds of animacy also have different distributions: Only languages that have animacy-based form classes have m-animate nominals, but H-animate nominals are universal because all languages have predicates that select for high animates. We discuss empirical differences between m-animate and H-animate nominals that are intended to serve as diagnostics for the exploration of animacy in other languages.