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Copular clauses : specification, predication and equation

1. Acknowledgements 2. 1. Introduction 3. I. Structure 4. 2. Predicate topicalization 5. 3. Alternative structures for specificational clauses 6. II. Meaning 7. 4. Decomposing copular clauses 8. 5. Determining the subject type 9. 6. The type of the predicate complement 10. 7. Consequences and extensions 11. III. Use 12. 8. Aspects of use 13. 9. An intergrated analysis 14. 10.Conclusion 15. References 16. Index

When Movement Must Be Blocked: A Reply to Embick and Noyer

Embick and Noyer (2001) develop an analysis of definiteness marking in Danish and Swedish employing the central assumptions of Distributed Morphology (DM) together with the syntactic operation of head movement of N to D. We expose some theoretical and empirical shortcomings of the analysis and conclude that the assumption of N-to-D movement is incompatible with the central assumptions of DM. We further show how these shortcomings are avoided by the lexicalist analysis proposed by Hankamer and Mikkelsen (2002) and compare it with an alternative DM analysis that does not rely on head movement in the syntax. We conclude that while a lexicalist or a DM analysis is viable, with interesting trade-offs, neither of the viable analyses involves any movement.

A MORPHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF DEFINITE NOUNS IN DANISH

In the Scandinavian languages, including Danish, Faroese, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish, there are two ways definiteness can be expressed in a noun phrase: by a suffix on the noun or by a prenominal lexical determiner. The distribution of the two definiteness markers differs among the languages and among dialects. In this paper we focus on definiteness marking in standard Danish. The two ways of marking definiteness are illustrated in (1): (1a) contains the definite suffix, and (1b) a prenominal definite article. We refer to forms like hesten in (1a) as definite nouns.

A defective auxiliary in Danish

category. In root clauses, all verbal elements can raise to T (and then onto C), while in embedded clauses they always stay in situ. This makes telling where a given element sits in the extended verbal projection a challenging task. We examine a verbal element in Danish, gre , that shows up when the verb phrase has been topicalized, elided, or pronominalized. Even though, from surface appearance, gre might appear to be of category T or v, it is located, we argue, right in the middle. It is an auxiliary. But, unlike other auxiliaries, gre is defective because it only subcategorizes for vPs that are pronominal.

Definiteness marking and the structure of Danish pseudopartitives

The Danish pseudopartitive constructions differ in their possibilities of definiteness marking: the Indirect Partitive Construction (IPC) (D N1 P N2) permits N1 to bear the definite suffix, while the Direct Partitive Construction (DPC) (D N1 N2) does not; in addition, neither construction permits the prenominal definite article in the absence of a prenominal modifier. Drawing on previous work regarding the morphosyntax of definiteness marking in Danish, we use the distribution of definiteness marking as a probe to illuminate the structure of the pseudopartitive constructions. Our conclusion is that despite superficial similarities the two constructions are quite different in structure, the IPC having a lexical N head and a PP complement, and the DPC a functional n head with an NP complement, forming a single extended projection of N2. These assumptions allow us to account for a number of differences in the behavior of these constructions, shedding light on the nature of pseudopartitives as well as on the theory of extended projections.

VP anaphora and verb-second order in Danish

This paper argues that Danish verb-second clauses have two structural instantiations and that each structure is associated with distinct information-structural properties. Information-structurally undifferentiated V2 clauses are realized as TPs, whereas information-structurally differentiated V2 clauses are CPs. The evidence for this correlation comes from the behavior of the overt VP anaphor det, which exhibits a complex, but principled, positioning pattern in V2 clauses. I develop a feature-driven analysis of V2 clauses that accounts for previously unnoticed restrictions on the initial position in declarative V2 clauses.

Sameness, ellipsis and anaphora

We compare explicit assertions of sameness with analogous elliptical and anaphoric expressions, and find striking differences in their interpretation. We account for those differences with a two part proposal: first, we propose that same is additive, similar to too. Second, same must take scope over a containing event-denoting expression. We give evidence that the scope-taking of same is subject to standard island constraints, and we also show that same always compares two event-denoting clauses that differ in a relevant property.

Specificational subjects: A formal characterization and some consequences

Abstract This paper provides a formal semantic characterization of specificational copular clauses using the theory of noun phrase interpretation developed by Partee (1987). It is argued that specificational clauses involve an unusual alignment of a predicative noun phrase with the subject position. This leads to the prediction that only noun phrases capable of denoting predicates can occur in this position. The prediction is tested against three groups of NPs. While the first two groups behave as predicated, the behavior of the last group is puzzling in terms of their formal semantics. Based on the results of the corpus study reported in Birner (1996), I argue that this puzzle can be resolved by taking into account the information structure of specificational clauses, in particular the requirement that their subject be relatively familiar in the discourse.

Structure, Architecture, and Blocking

Embick and Marantz (2008) present an analysis of the Danish definiteness alternation involving a postsyntactic rule of Local Dislocation (an operation sensitive to linear adjacency but not hierarchical structure). Examination of a fuller range of data reveals that the alternation cannot be determined strictly in terms of adjacency; rather, it depends on the structural relation between the D and the N. We propose to treat the alternation as an instance of conditioned allomorphy, the suffixal form appearing when D is sister to a minimal N, and the free article elsewhere. This alternation is, then, a case of “blocking” in the sense accepted by Embick and Marantz: the result of competition between Vocabulary items for the expression of a morpheme. Assuming that the condition for wordhood is being a complex head, we argue that the distinction between free and bound morphemes, and whether bound morphemes are prefixes or suffixes, must be encoded in the Vocabulary items spelling out the morphemes.