Gillian Ramchand

Predication and Equation

In this article, we argue that a structural distinction between predicational and equative copular clauses is illusory. All semantic predicational relationships are constructed asymmetrically via a syntactic predicational head; differences reduce to whether this head bears an event variable or not. This allows us to maintain a restrictive view of the syntax-semantics interface in the face of apparently recalcitrant data from Scottish Gaelic.

Merge and Move: Wh -Dependencies Revisited

In this article, we argue that, under current conceptions of the architecture of the grammar, apparentwh-dependencies can, in principle, arise from either a movement or a base-generation strategy, where Agree establishes the syntactic connection in the latter case. The crucial diagnostics are not locality effects, but identity effects. We implement the base-generation analysis using a small set of semantically interpretable features, together with a simple universal syntax-semantics correspondence. We show that parametric variation arises because of the different ways the features are bundled on functional heads. We further argue that it is the bundling of two features on a single lexical item, together with the correspondence that requires them to be interpreted apart, that is responsible for the displacement property of human languages.

Prepositions and Results in Italian and English: an Analysis from Event Decomposition

In this paper, we analyse the formation of goal of motion interpretation in English and Italian. We argue that contrary to what has been argued, both languages do form goal of motion interpretations although in a manner constrained by the principles of event structure composition. Parametric variation among the two languages will be driven by: (i) the nature of lexical prepositions available; (ii) the methods of syntactically licensing resultative projections. We extend the account to explain the absence of AP resultatives in Italian.

Two subject positions in Scottish Gaelic: The syntax-semantics interface

This paper examines the stage-level/individual-level hypothesis (Kratzer 1989; Diesing 1988) from the point of view of modern Scottish Gaelic. This language exhibits two syntactically distinct predicational structures, and in particular, two distinct subject positions distinguishable on the basis of word order. While the distinction between the two positions can be shown to support the stage/individual-level hypothesis in one sense, the picture is muddied by the fact that many habitual or ‘characteristic’ sentences seem to be formed according to the stage-level subject construction type.The solution proposed relies on two novel elements. First, it distinguishes the classical Davisonian event variable from the Kratzerian one hypothesized to be the hallmark of the stage-level sentence type. And secondly, it makes a strict logical separation between two types of generics: generics proper, which involve quantifying over an individual variable; and habituals, which only involve quantification over an event variable. These are represented by two distinct logical types which may nevertheless give rise to similar truth conditions in context.I show that the analysis can be made to account for tense interpretation, the scope of genericity, and the facts of syntactic complementation in Scottish Gaelic. To the extent that the solution is successful, it is evidence for a quite direct mapping between syntactic and semantic representations and for the important intuitions behind the initial Kratzer/Diesing stage vs. individual-level hypothesis.

Lexical Items in Complex Predications: Selection as Underassociation

This paper examines the problem of selectional ‘matching’ effects in Bengali V-V complex predicates, and English denominal verbs within the context of a decompositional syntax/semantics for verbal meaning and a theory of lexical insertion under non-terminals. It argues that within the particular version of this kind of lexical insertion, as proposed by Ramchand 2008b , selection can be captured by the underassociation of category features constrained by Agree. In this way, I argue that we can achieve many of the effects of selection without any distinct lexical subcategorization frame, or sub-type of feature-checking, once we have a suitably articulated theory of lexical insertion.

Two Types of Negation in Bengali

Research on the syntax of negation has produced a lively debate in the literature. One of the central issues concerns the status of NegP functional projections exist in the phrase structure of natural language (see Pollock 1989, Laka 1994, Haegeman 1995, Zanuttini 1991, 1997), or whether negation elements should be more properly assimilated to adverbial (modificatory) phrases (cf. Holmberg and Platzack 1995 for Scandinavian). If NegP projections do exist, the question arises as to where they are situated within the clause (either as a universal fact, or a parametrizable fact about different languages) (see Zanuttini 1991, Rizzi 1998, Ouhalla 1990) for alternatives). Negative forms themselves have been analysed as forming the head of NegP, or sitting in its specifier (cf. Haegeman 1995 for West Flemish), again, possibly as a matter of parametric variation (Zanuttini 1991). One of the unstated assumptions of this debate has been that the various different syntactic options under hypothesis carry the same interpretative force. In other words, it is assumed that the logic of clause level negation is uniform and uncontroversial, and that the syntactic representation is what is in doubt, or maybe parametrizable in certain respects. On the other hand, there is some evidence in the literature of different classes of clausal negative elements, even within the same language. In particular, many languages have different negative forms for non-finite clauses (ref.), or for imperatives (Zhang 1990). In this paper, I will present some evidence from Bengali to argue that clausal negation can actually take two logically different forms. To this extent, I will not be directly contributing to the important syntactic debate that is already going on, but to an understanding of the semantics of clausal negation. On the other hand, the argument I make will have implications for syntactic analyses, a point which I will take up in the final section of the paper. Bengali possesses two distinct sentential negation markers which occur in different morphosyntactic contexts, and with different aspectual consequences. The existence of these two negation markers poses a number of puzzles for linguistic theory. One set of questions naturally involves the syntactic positioning and featural make up of the two morphemes involved. However, the puzzle I will be focusing on here is more semantic in nature: in what way, if any, do these two negation markers differ in the interpretations they give rise to? I will argue that there is good evidence to believe that the two forms we find in Bengali are not merely different inflectional forms of the same basic functional element, but in fact represent two clearly distinct negation strategies in the semantics.

Licensing of Instrumental Case in Hindi/Urdu Causatives

In this paper, I revisit the licensing and interpretation of instrumental case-marked nominals in Hindi/Urdu causative constructions to argue against the hypothesis that the se-marked phrase corresponds to a demoted agent. Rather, I will argue that a more unified analysis of se-phrases can be achieved through an event-structural analysis, in line with the standard interpretation of other adverbials in the syntax. Since the ‘intermediate agent’ interpretation is only possible with indirect causatives in Hindi/Urdu, the event structural analysis proposed here also has implications for the direct vs. indirect causation distinction in the syntax.

Events in Syntax: Modification and Predication

What are the motivations for including event variables in our representations of natural language semantics? The article focuses narrowly on the issues that provided the basis for the original discussion in Davidson (1967), and seeks to explore its consequences for the advances in syntax and the interface that have taken place since then. The existence of an event variable in semantic representations is argued to be as necessary as it ever was, but a more articulated version of the traditional view is proposed to account for the full range of phenomena such as scope of adverbials, aspectual modification, and aktionsart. A range of important architectural issues arise concerning the relationships between syntax, semantics, and the lexicon once the Davidsonian position is taken seriously, an area that has proved fruitful for investigation and debate. In Section 3, the article gives an example of one kind of answer to the architectural question by proposing a radically decomposed syntax that is tightly correlated with the semantics of event structure, a theoretical position that could be called ‘post-Davidsonianism’.

Aspect and Verbal Prepositions

In this paper, we explore some previously unanalysed interactions between verbal aktionsart and prepositional complementation in Norwegian, namely the alternations between a DP object and PP complements with pa ‘on/at’ and til ‘to/at’. We argue that a simple account based on [±telic] or [±quantized] features cannot be correct. Instead, we generalize the notion of path and homomorphism, and integrate it in a syntactic theory of how complex events are built up compositionally. The path structure introduced by the PP interacts with the path structure of the VP to produce complex events based on ‘homomorphic unity’ in much the same way as has been argued for in the Verb + Nominal domain (Krifka 1992). Specifically, an extended location (a pa -PP) in the complement of and activity verb (in our terms, a process subevental projection) gives rise to a non-directed path for the event; a point location ( a til -PP) in the complement of an accomplishment verb (one which in our terms will contain a result subevental projection) gives rise to the specification of an endpoint.

Grammatical vs. Lexical Formatives

For a generative linguist, (re)reading Syntactic Structures is to be presented with a disorienting combination of ideas so clear and completely obvious as to be scarcely worth expending rhetorical energy on, together with others that seem bizarre, unintuitive or unwieldy to those who are not old enough to have read it in its time. The dissonance is unsurprising. Syntactic Structures inaugurated a field of inquiry that has progressed through many changes in its formal devices and theoretical constructs since 1957. But at the same time, it is impressive how much the enterprise has remained true to its origins in terms of methodological principles and the very nature of the questions being asked. The modern stage-level generative linguist inhabiting her own moment in space and time, with her own articles of faith, and collections of open questions, might be surprised at how many of the most commonly accepted results of generative grammar were not at all obvious or conceived of in the same way at the very start of the enterprise. As a case in point, the issue of the difference between lexical and grammatical formatives is a pervasive feature of much modern theorizing about syntax and its relation to the lexicon, and syntax in its relation to semantics. The distinction between the functional and the lexical is ingrained in the modern syntactic theoretical assumptions, and is almost never questioned, even across different architectures within the generative tradition. It is therefore surprising to (re)discover that these ideas are entirely absent from Syntactic Structures. Chomsky’s position on the inexistence of a distinguished class of ‘grammatical formatives’ is expressed directly and clearly in only one passage of the book, which I repeat here in full.