Peter Svenonius

On the Edge

Despite the great complexity and abstractness of the data, there is rich evidence that long-distance relations have a successive-cyclic character. This often gives rise to what appear to be edge effects, and can be taken as a strong argument for the importance of a special area at the edge of each cycle. The phase-based model gives the underpinnings of an explanatory account for these phenomena, rooted in a conceptually appealing model of syntactic structure. What I have tried to do here is to explore the extension of the phase-based theory to the nominal domain, and to explore the interaction of the nominal structure with the clausal structure. The interactions mainly express themselves not in edge effects, but in the successive opacity of different nominal domains, blocking relations from the clausal heads into spelled out projection of the extended DP. I have suggested a few points of parametric variation, relying mainly on the presence or absence of attractors of different types in different heads.

Slavic prefixes inside and outside VP

Most Slavic prefixes can be assigned to one of two large cate- gories, lexical and superlexical. The lexical prefixes are like Germanic particles, in having resultative meanings, often spatial, but often id- iosyncratic. The superlexical prefixes are like adverbs or auxiliary verbs, having aspectual and quantificational meanings. I present a syntactic account of the two types of prefix, arguing that the lexical ones are to be analyzed essentially like the Germanic particles, and that their VP-internal position accounts for many of their properties, while the superlexical ones originate outside VP.

Icelandic case and the structure of events

I argue in this paper for a novel analysis of case in Icelandic, with implications for case theory in general. I argue that structural case is the manifestation on the noun phrase of features which are semantically interpretable on verbal projections. Thus, Icelandic case does not encode features of noun phrase interpretation, but it is not uninterpretable either; case is properly seen as reflecting (interpretable) tense, aspect, or Aktionsart features. Accusative case in Icelandic is available when the two subevents introduced in a transitive verb phrase are temporally identified with each other, and dative case is available when the two parts are distinct. This analysis bears directly on the theory of feature checking in the Minimalist Program. Specifically, it is consistent with a restrictive theory of feature checking in which no features are strictly uninterpretable: all formal features come in interpretable-uninterpretable pairs, and feature checking is the matching of such pairs, driven by legibility conditions at Spell-Out.

The Emergence of Axial Parts

Many languages have specialized locative words or morphemes translating roughly into words like ‘front,’ ‘back,’ ‘top,’ ‘bottom,’ ‘side,’ and so on. Often, these words are used instead of more specialized adpositions to express spatial meanings corresponding to ‘behind,’ ‘above,’ and so on. I argue, on the basis of a cross-linguistic survey of such expressions, that in many cases they motivate a syntactic category which is distinct from both N and P, which I call AxPart for ‘Axial Part’; I show how the category relates to the words which instantiate it, and how the meaning of the construction is derived from the combination of P[lace] elements, AxParts, and the lexical material which expresses them.

Slavic Prefixes and Morphology : An Introduction to the Nordlyd volume

This is an introduction to a special volume of Nordlyd available at http://www.ub.uit.no/munin/nordlyd/. It outlines those aspects of Slavic verbal morphology which are of relevance to the papers in the volume, explaining various background assumptions, analytic motivations, and glossing conventions along the way, with reference to the papers in the volume. A full list of abbreviations for all the papers is provided in the last section.

How phonological is object shift

Abstract The papers here represent very different analyses of Object Shift (OS), and take very different positions on the interaction of phonology and syntax, an area in which there are many unsettled questions. Mainstream work tends to hold that syntax is blind to phonological content, with certain exceptions, for example sometimes phonetically null elements require special syntactic licensing (Chomsky 1981), or certain syntactic rules only apply to nodes with phonetically visible features (Holmberg 2001). Basically falling within the mainstream are proposals that syntactic movement can be blocked by or driven by requirements that have phonological effect at the output, such as adjacency (Bobaljik 1995, Kidwai 1999) or rules matching prosodic structure with focus structure (Zubizarreta 1998). Such accounts generally describe movements in the syntactic terms of specifiers and feature checking and so on, and do not rely on the visibility to syntax of strictly phonological features. We can call these all Syntactic accounts. Most accounts of OS are Syntactic in these terms, for example those of Holmberg (1986), Holmberg and Platzack (1995), and Bobaljik (1995, 2002).

Complex Predicates and the Functional Sequence

In this paper I argue that a fine-grained functional hierarchy of semantically contentful categories such as Tense, Aspect, Initiation, and Process has explanatory power in understanding the crosslinguistic distribution of complex predicates. Complex predicates may involve adjunction, control, or raising, and show other variables as well. In a Minimalist framework, specific parameters cannot be invoked to allow or disallow different kinds of serial verbs, light verbs, resultatives, and so on. Instead, what variation is observed must come from the specifications of lexical items. This places a great burden on the learner, a burden which, I argue, is partly alleviated by the functional sequence.

Complex Predicates as Complementation Structures

In this paper it is proposed that a basic difference in structural dependency, the difference between selected complements of a head on the one hand and unselected adjuncts to a projection of a head on the other, correlates with a basic interpretive difference which is central to understanding the range of complex predicate constructions. Adjuncts, such as depictive predicates, are interpreted as conjuncts, as is commonly assumed. The standard assumption about complements is that their interpretation is by function application, where the specifics are then determined by the semantics of the selecting head. Here it is proposed that there is a common interpretive core to complementation, one which is monotonic and in some abstract sense mereological. This applies both to extended projections and to complements which are embedded in another extended projection, and is exemplified by resultatives as well as other secondary predicate types. The interpretation is monotonic in the sense that the selecting head preserves the interpretation of the complement, elaborating on it. It is mereological in the related sense that the complement is interpreted as an integral part of the interpretation of the whole.

Generalized Applicatives: Reassessing the lexical-functional divide

On this view, roots and functional material are as different as they can be. However, closer examination reveals that some of the differences are not absolute. Harley (2014) makes this point, and effectively refines the DM version of the dichotomy, maintaining it in a weakened form. In this short note, I raise the question of whether the dichotomy has been so weakened that a more radical move can be contemplated, that of eliminating the distinction altogether.

Linguistic explanation and domain specialization: a case study in bound variable anaphora

The core question behind this Frontiers research topic is whether explaining linguistic phenomena requires appeal to properties of human cognition that are specialized to language. We argue here that investigating this issue requires taking linguistic research results seriously, and evaluating these for domain-specificity. We present a particular empirical phenomenon, bound variable interpretations of pronouns dependent on a quantifier phrase, and argue for a particular theory of this empirical domain that is couched at a level of theoretical depth which allows its principles to be evaluated for domain-specialization. We argue that the relevant principles are specialized when they apply in the domain of language, even if analogs of them are plausibly at work elsewhere in cognition or the natural world more generally. So certain principles may be specialized to language, though not, ultimately, unique to it. Such specialization is underpinned by ultimately biological factors, hence part of UG.