Gabriella Hermon

The Typology of Wh-Movement, Wh-Questions in Malay

This article investigates the complex facts of Malay wh-questions, and suggests a theory of how Malay wh-questions fit into the typology of wh-questions permitted by a Minimalist conception of Universal Grammar. The paper examines the principles that account for overt wh-movement, wh-in-situ and partial wh-movement in Malay. We argue that the apparent optionality seen in Malay reduces to whether, in the lexicon, a question word consists of an operator and variable combined in a single word, or of a variable bound by a separate, phonologically null operator. We then apply the analysis based on Malay to other languages (primarily, to Chinese and English), and show that the principles employed for Malay are sufficient to explain the variation in wh-question formation among these languages.

Long distance reflexives in Singapore Malay: An apparent typological anomaly

There are a variety of properties which are believed ίο be associated wilh long distance reflexives. These include the requirement that the reflexive form be monomorphemic, subject orientation, and blocking by subjects intervening between the reflexive and its antecedent (in appropriate languages). Malay long distance reflexives have been claimed to contradict the expected typological correlations. We argue that Malay does not constitute a genuine counter example because, on closer examination, what appear to be long distance reflexives are infact instances ofaform which is indeterminate between a local reflexive and a pronoun.

Is There Pasif Semu in Jakarta Indonesian

This paper examines whether pasif semu (P2), one of two passives in Standard Indonesian, exists in Jakarta Indonesian. In P2 in Standard Indonesian the verb appears in bare stem form, the theme has been promoted to surface subject, but—unlike European-style passives—the actor has not been demoted to adjunct. This is to be contrasted with the di-passive (P1), in which di- is prefixed to the verb, the theme is promoted to surface subject, and the agent is demoted to adjunct. Standard Indonesian is to a large extent an artificial language, the creation of language planners rather than of its speakers. In contrast, Jakarta Indonesian is the native language of the natives of Jakarta, and, through the influence of TV, movies, and radio, is heard with ever greater frequency throughout Indonesia. In our study (drawn from a variety of corpora), a clear contrast is seen between child and child directed speech, on the one hand, and adult to adult speech, on the other. P2 is essentially nonexistent in the former but exists robustly in the latter. We argue that child speech and child directed adult speech represent basilectal Jakarta Indonesian, in which P2 has been lost, and that the adult to adult corpora represent a mesolectal variety of Jakarta Indonesian that shows a number of influences from Standard Indonesian not found in the child and child directed corpora.

From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Jangkat Malay

Jangkat is a Malayic variety spoken in the Bukit Barisan Mountains, in the Malay homeland of Sumatra. It provides insight into the role of the phonology-syntax interface in the development of morphosyntactic agreement in Malay. To provide context, roots in nearly all Malayic languages exhibit a single form in all morpho-syntactic environments. However, in certain regions of Sumatra, especially in Kerinci, there exist ‘root-alternating varieties’, varieties wherein roots exhibit two (or more) forms with distinct morphosyntactic distributions. Kerinci exhibits agreement-like morphological object registration: most words in the language exhibit a special form marking the presence of a nominal syntactic complement. The phonological realization of object registration is highly complex due to layer-upon-layer of historical changes in Kerinci phonology. These changes have obscured the grammatical development of Kerinci historically, leaving linguists to puzzle over how a Malayic language could develop such an extensive system of morphosyntactic marking. Jangkat exhibits morphophonological root-shape alternations reminiscent of those described in Kerinci, but, unlike Kerinci, the phonology of the Jangkat alternation is relatively straightforward. We argue that Jangkat not only reveals the origins of Kerinci’s morphosyntactic marking in phrase-level phonology, but it also illustrates the important role that the syntax-phonology interface plays in syntactic change.

The grammar of binding in the languages of the world: A response to Reuland

Cole, Hermon, and Yanti (2015) argue that the empirical facts related to anaphoric binding in two dialects of Jambi Malay undermine the Classical Binding Theory. Reuland (2017) agrees with this conclusion but argues that the data are easily accounted for by his alternative Universal Grammar-based approach to Binding. In this response, we demonstrate that the alternative proposal for Jambi Malay rests on claims about the language that are incorrect. While we do not, indeed cannot, demonstrate that it is impossible for a Universal Grammar based proposal to account for the facts as outlined in CHY (2015), we conclude that those facts remain an outstanding challenge.