Keir Moulton

CPs: Copies and Compositionality

Finite clausal arguments differ from other arguments—and other CPs—in two fundamental ways: (a) they do not move leftward (Koster 1978, Alrenga 2005, Takahashi 2010, Moulton 2013) and (b) they may combine with nouns that do not accept arguments (Stowell 1981, Grimshaw 1990). I argue that finite clausal arguments are predicates of propositional content (type 〈e,〈s,t〉〉), following proposals in Kratzer 2006, Moulton 2009. They combine with nouns by Predicate Modification, explaining (b). In order to complement verbs, CPs trigger two type-driven leftward movements (CP-movement and remnant AspPfronting). I argue that the resulting configuration prevents further leftward movement of clausal arguments, explaining (a). Also derived are the right-peripheral position of CPs relative to arguments and the verbal complex in Germanic, freezing effects in the VP, extraction from and binding into CPs, and the similarities and differences among CP argument extraposition, heavy NP shift, and relative clause extraposition. More broadly, the proposal demonstrates that copies can denote restricted variables, but need not be DPs (cf. Fox 2002, Takahashi 2010, Johnson 2012).

Raising from the Dead

Keir Moulton UCLA Gribanova, Vera. To appear. Verb-stranding verb phrase ellipsis and the structure of the Russian verbal complex. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 31(1). Hoji, Hajime. 1998. Null object and sloppy identity in Japanese. Linguistic Inquiry 29:127–152. Kazenin, Konstantin. 2006. Polarity in Russian and typology of predicate ellipsis. Ms., Moscow State University. Kim, Soowon. 1999. Sloppy/Strict identity, empty objects, and NP ellipsis. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 8:255–284. McCloskey, James. 2011. The shape of Irish clauses. In Formal approaches to Celtic linguistics, ed. by Andrew Carnie, 143–178. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. McShane, Marjorie. 2005. A theory of ellipsis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Otani, Kazuyo, and John Whitman. 1991. V-raising and VP-ellipsis. Linguistic Inquiry 22:345–358. Payne, John R. 1985. Complex phrases and complex sentences. In Language typology and syntactic description. Vol. 2, Complex constructions, ed. by Tim Shopen, 3–41. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Saito, Mamoru. 1985. Some asymmetries in Japanese and their theoretical implications. Doctoral dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, MA. Winter, Yoad. 1995. Syncategorematic conjunction and structured meanings. In Proceedings of SALT 5, ed. by Mandy Simons and Teresa Galloway. Available at http://elanguage.net/journals /salt/issue/view/288.

Focus on Cataphora: Experiments in Context

Since Chomsky 1976, it has been claimed that focus on a referring expression blocks coreference in a cataphoric dependency (*Hisi mother loves JOHNi vs. Hisi mother LOVES Johni ). In three auditory experiments and a written questionnaire, we show that this fact does not hold when a referent is unambiguously established in the discourse (cf. Williams 1997, Bianchi 2009) but does hold otherwise, validating suggestions in Rochemont 1978, Horvath 1981, and Rooth 1985. The perceived effect of prosody, we argue, building on Williams’s original insight and deliberate experimental manipulation of Rochemont’s and Horvath’s examples, is due to the fact that deaccenting the R-expression allows hearers to accommodate a salient referent via a “question under discussion” (Roberts 1996/2012, Rooth 1996), to which the pronoun can refer in ambiguous or impoverished contexts. This heuristic is not available in the focus cases, and we show that participants’ interpretation of the pronoun is ambivalent here.

Derived Nominals and Concealed Propositions

Vendler [19] described derived nominals (DNs) like the collapse/ing of the Germans as ambiguous between event denoting expressions and proposition denoting expressions. DNs can combine with event-selecting predicates (1a), like gradual, which bona fide propositional that-clauses or fact-denoting expressions cannot (1c), and have event-readings. ((1a) can be paraphrased as ‘the event of the Germans collapsing was gradual’.) DNs can also combine with proposition-selecting predicates like aware of (2a) which always also allow finite complements (2b) and, in such cases, have propositional readings—(2a) and (2b) are synonymous. We call DNs in the latter cases Concealed Propositions (ConPs), and we defend the idea that they are analogous in important respects to concealed questions (CQs). Here we argue against Vendler’s Ambiguity Hypothesis (3) and defend an analysis of DNs in which they uniformly denote (or quantify over) events. In doing so, we overcome a challenge, discovered by Zucchi [20], to the unambiguous event approach, and provide an analysis to both definite and quantified DNs. We show that a copy-theoretic account overcomes the problem and aligns ConPs with concealed questions (CQs) in the analysis of Frana [4, 5].