Judy B. Bernstein

Demonstratives and reinforcers in Romance and Germanic languages

Abstract Recent work on the internal structure of noun phrases has argued that several word order differences between Romance and Germanic languages may be explained by the presence of syntactic movement of the noun in Romance, and by the relative absence of this movement in Germanic. This paper examines constructions consisting of demonstrative and reinforcer elements. It is argued that prenominal deictic demonstratives in Romance and Germanic languages, generated in a specifier position below DP (Giusti, 1993a,b), raise to D overtly. In several languages the demonstrative may be ambiguous between a deictic interpretation and what is labelled an indefinite specific interpretation. A deictic demonstrative must raise up into the DP projection overtly; with an indefinite specific, only covert feature movement to D takes place. With respect to the demonstrative reinforcement construction, both the demonstrative and its reinforcer precede the noun in Germanic languages, while the demonstrative precedes, and the reinforcer follows, the noun (plus modifiers) in Romance. Under the assumption that the demonstrative and its reinforcer are base-generated as the specifier and head, respectively, of a functional projection FP, the pattern in Romance is argued to involve syntactic movement of a phrasal category to the left of FP, deriving the postnominal position of the reinforcer. The Germanic pattern is explained by the absence of this movement. The behavior of demonstratives and reinforcers in relative clause constructions is also examined.

DP’S IN FRENCH AND WALLOON: EVIDENCE FOR PARAMETRIC VARIATION IN NOMINAL HEAD MOVEMENT

Two subcases of nominal head movement have recently been proposed for Romance. The first subcase involves noun movement to the determiner head. In Romanian, for example, Dobrovie-Sorin (1987) argues that syntactically adjoining the noun to the left of the determiner will derive the fact that the definite article is enclitic on the noun. More recently, Longobardi (1990) has proposed syntactic and LF N-to-D movement in order for the noun to assume its referential function. In Bernstein (1991), I have argued for syntactic N to D movement of an enclitic nominal element in Spanish and Italian. TTie second subcase of noun movement in Romance concerns word order relationships among adjectives, internal/external arguments, and nouns. Arguing for head movement of the noun in these cases requires a landing site between N and D, since raising the noun all the way to D in the syntax would exclude potentially grammatical constructions. In this context, Cinque (1990) argues for Agreement Phrase (AGRP), Picallo (1990) for Number Phrase (NUMP) and Gender Phrase, and Valois (1991) for NUMP and Casc Phrase. This paper will concern itself with the second subcase of noun movement, specifically focusing on word order relations between adjectives and nouns. In the first part of the paper, it is argued that assuming noun movement in French yields several correct predictions about surface word order distribution. This is followed by a discussion of the special Status of Walloon, a Romance language that is unusual in characteristically exhibiting prenominal adjectives. The Walloon facts are contrasted with French equivalents. If French is accurately depicted äs a language exhibiting noun

The syntactic role of word markers in null nominal constructions

One type of Romance elliptical nominal constmcüon consists of an element resembling the indefinite article plus an adjective. It is argued that the terminal vowels (word markers,) characterisüc of Spanish and Italian nouns may be generated independent ofa lexical N-stem, and that the word marker licenses the empty projection corresponding to the elided noun, and subsequently undergoes syntactic head-raising and incorporates with the indefinite article. The analysis extends quite naturally to French. There is evidence that the Catalan strategy, although superficially distinct, is actually parallel to the Spanish/Italian one, except that an abstract word marker in this consiruction must be spelled out äs de.

Focusing the “right” way in Romance determiner phrases

Abstract This article examines constructions involving DP-final demonstratives, possessive adjectives, indefinite quantifiers, and demonstrative reinforcers in several Romance languages. Across these languages the DP-final position of these elements yields a focus interpretation, whereas the prenominal position yields a neutral interpretation. Other approaches to these sorts of facts have (tacitly) treated the two available word orders as equivalent constructions. They have not considered, and so cannot easily account for, the distinct interpretation that each of the word orders yields. Under the assumption that the prenominal position of these elements is basic, the current approach develops the idea that the DP-final element is “stranded” DP finally as a result of the leftward movement of a syntactic phrase consisting of an extended NP. The facts examined here recall those characterizing the expression of focus in the Romance clause, recently analyzed as a case of scrambling (Ordóñez 1997, Zubizarreta 1998). If on the right track, the current analysis therefore provides further evidence for the parallelism between noun phrases and clauses. In certain Romance languages, an intermediate (postnominal) position is also available for these DP elements , although the interpretation associated with this position does not exactly match that of either the prenominal or DP-final position. It is proposed that the intermediate position is derived by crossing the noun over the demonstrative (reinforcer), possessive, or indefinite quantifier, whose base positions within DP are relatively high. The prediction then is that only those languages with robust noun movement (that is, movement to a relatively high functional head) will exhibit this word order.

Reformulating the Determiner Phrase Analysis

Developed in the 1980s, the Determiner Phrase (DP) analysis stimulated a lot of interest in the internal structure of nominal phrases and in the study of correspondences between nominal and clausal structure. Research across a range of languages has uncovered correspondences in areas such as agreement morphology, syntactic movement, and argument structure, some of which are reviewed here. Nominal phrases and clauses also match up in terms of their semantic function: both can serve as predicates or arguments. The issue of exactly what distinguishes a nominal argument from a nominal predicate has received a lot of attention, leading in particular to proposals about the underlying role of the definite article (and determiner elements in general). This article reviews some of these issues and proposals and suggests a reformulation that appeals to the feature ‘person’, a feature found in both the nominal and clausal domains.

The Expression of Third Person in Older and Contemporary Varieties of English

Contemporary varieties of English display word-initial thacross grammatical forms: definite articles (the), demonstratives (that, this), pronouns (them, they), existential subjects (there), relative pronouns (that), possessive pronouns (their), and others. Are these instances of thmerely unrelated coincidences or do they suggest an underlying systematicity? I argue that these forms share syntactic properties and an initial third-person morpheme (th-) corresponding to D(P) (see Longobardi 2004). Although many of the relevant forms are associated with definiteness, no form is absolutely barred from appearing in non-definite contexts, and some (e.g. existential there) are typically associated with indefiniteness. Nevertheless, several authors have identified English thas a definiteness morpheme (Dechaine and Wiltschko 2002, Leu 2005, Campbell 1996) or a morpheme involved in deixis (Klinge 2004), which would be associated with D(P). The question for this talk is, is there any diachronic evidence to support the claim about English thas a marker of third person? Preliminary examination of the relevant Old English (OE) patterns offers no obvious direct support for the claim and might in fact be consistent with an analysis of OE þas a definiteness or deixis morpheme, or with one of OE þas simultaneously a marker of definiteness and of third person. Deeper examination, however, suggests that subsequent changes in the English nominal system made way for the shift of þ(from a marker of definiteness or deixis) to a general marker of third person. Evidence of this shift may even be found in contemporary varieties of English. Broadly speaking, OE third person pronouns and demonstratives pattern with their contemporary counterparts in the following ways: third person pronouns overwhelmingly display word-initial hand demonstratives word-initial þ-. OE nominative and dative forms for third person pronouns are illustrated in (1) and for demonstratives in (2) and (3) The nonparadigmatic forms underlined in (2) are interesting, especially since m.sg. se is identified as an early definite article (OE se wulf ‘the wolf’, Lass 1994).