Theresa Biberauer

Parametric Variation: Introduction: parameters in minimalist theory

This book represents some of the work carried out in the period 2002–2007 by the group working on the project ‘Null Subjects and the Structure of Parametric Theory’, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Great Britain (Grant No. APN14458). The group consisted of Theresa Biberauer, Anders Holmberg, Chris Johns, Ian Roberts, Michelle Sheehan and David Willis. The central goal of that project was to investigate and, if possible, refine the notion of parameter of Universal Grammar (UG), as it has been understood in generative theory since roughly 1980, by looking carefully at the phenomena associated with one of the best-known and most widely discussed examples of a parameter: the Null Subject Parameter (NSP). This volume brings together a number of articles focusing on the nature of null subjects in a range of languages; Biberauer (2008b) is a sister volume arising from the same project, which focuses more on parameter theory than on null subjects, while Holmberg (2009) focuses on partial null-subject languages. In this Introduction, we would like to set the chapters in context. Accordingly, we first discuss the phenomena from English and various Romance languages which originally motivated the postulation of the NSP. Next, we summarise the main kinds of null-subject system that have been identified in the comparative-syntax literature. We complete Section 1 by summarising the two principal approaches to the analysis of null subjects, whose classical exponents are Rizzi (1986a) and Borer (1986).

Changing EPP parameters in the history of English: accounting for variation and change

CHANGING EPP-PARAMETERS IN THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH: ACCOUNTING FOR VARIATION AND CHANGE Theresa Biberauer and Ian Roberts University of Cambridge ABSTRACT This paper presents a novel “Kaynian” analysis of Old and Middle English (OE and ME) word-order patterns in terms of which the patterns attested at the various stages of OE and ME are analysed as the output of a single grammar which, however, permits restricted types of variation. We propose that the West Germanic-like OE word orders were derived via the application of two types of “large XP” movement – VP-raising to SpecvP and vP-raising to SpecTP – which are in fact pied-piping operations: in both cases, a DP contained within VP and vP – the object and the subject respectively – constitutes the actual Goal of movement, with the larger structure simply being pied-piped along. Non-West-Germanic orders in both OE and ME and synchronic variation more generally are shown to be derived from the sideby-side availability in the OE and ME grammar of pied-piping and “stranding”, and the wordorder changes that occurred in ME are analysed as the consequence of a reanalysis of the ever more liberal “stranding”-permitting pied-piping grammar as one which specifically targets DPs.

Negative Concord in Afrikaans: filling a typological gap

Many languages exhibit Negative Concord (NC), with multiple morphosyntactic instances of negation corresponding to one semantic negation. Traditionally, NC languages are distinguished as Strict and Non-strict (cf. Giannakidou 2000). In the former (e.g. Czech), multiple negative elements may or even must precede the finite verb, whereas in Non-strict NC languages, like Italian, only one negative element may precede the finite verb. In a recent analysis of NC (Zeijlstra 2004, 2008b), NC is analysed as an instance of syntactic agreement between one or more negative elements that are formally, but not semantically, negative and a single, potentially unrealized semantically negative operator. On this analysis, the difference between Strict and Non-strict NC languages reduces to the semantic value of the negative marker: in Strict NC languages, both negative indefinites and negative markers are semantically non-negative; in Non-strict NC languages, by contrast, only negative indefinites are semantically non-negative, negative markers being semantically negative. This analysis predicts the existence of a third type of NC language, namely one where negative indefinites are semantically negative, but negative markers are not. This paper demonstrates that a particular variety of Afrikaans (the standard) instantiates a language of exactly this type: while pairs of negative indefinites always yield a Double Negation reading in this variety, negative markers can be stacked incrementally without giving rise to a new negation.

Verb second in Afrikaans : is this a unitary phenomenon?

The Verb Second (V2) phenomenon is a syntactic characteristic which features, to a greater or lesser extent, in all the Germanic languages. What it entails is the obligatory occurrence of finite verbs (Vfs) in clause-second position, following some initial (usually phrasal) constituent. The nature of the initial phrasal constituent is not restricted in any way, with subjects, objects, adverbials, negative phrases, and wh-phrases all qualifying as potential first position elements.

A closer look at Negative Concord in Afrikaans

As (1) shows, the two nies do not cancel each other out the way one would expect them to in a non-NC language like English – cf. He did not not know that man, which means that he did know him (i.e., negative + negative = positive) in the corresponding Afrikaans case, the two nies result in a single negation. A further notable, but not often noted, fact about Afrikaans NC is that it is not always the case that both of the nies are actually realised in negative structures lacking specially designated n-words: there are cases where two nies systematically fail to occur despite the fact that a single negation reading of the sort illustrated in (1) is intended. Consider (2) and (3) by way of example.

Challenges to linearization

The still largely mysterious question of how hierarchical linguistic structures are converted into sequentially ordered linear strings is the challenging problem at the heart of this volume. The ten contributions approach it from a range of angles, considering both specific empirical challenges in spoken and signed languages, and broader architectural and typological questions. This volume will be of interest to advanced students and researchers with interests in the externalisation of linguistic structure, the architecture of the language faculty and linguistic typology.

Introduction: Particles through a modern syntactic lens

The focus of this special edition is the syntactic nature of the poorly understood group of elements designated particles in the descriptive, typological and generative literature. To date, particles have generally been treated in one of two mutually contradictory ways: on the one hand, they have been excluded from consideration alongside functionally or semantically similar non-particle elements; on the other, they have, largely uncritically, been classified as categories no different from non-particles. Thus, for example, Greenberg (1963) famously excluded “uninflected auxiliaries” from his discussion of auxiliary placement relative to the verb and object, basing his Universal 16, regarding the tendency for V, O and Aux placement to be “harmonic” – i.e. either AuxVO or OVAux, or, in generative terms, either consistently head-initial or consistently head-final – exclusively on the behaviour of inflected auxiliaries. By contrast, it is very common in the modern generative literature to find particles being described as heads of various more or less articulated types. Consider, for example, the various C-(related) particles in Celtic and Sinitic languages as these are discussed by i.a. Duffield (1995), Roberts (2005), Li (2006) and Paul (forthcoming): for these researchers, as for many others, including three of the authors contributing to the present volume (Aldridge, Bayer and Obenauer, and Reintges), C-particles instantiate heads (e.g. Force, Focus, Topic, Int, Fin) which may also be realised by elements not generally viewed as particles e.g. fully-fledged finite or non-finite complementisers (cf. i.a. Rizzi 1997, 2001). Against this background, the articles in this special edition consider a range of

Negative exclamatives in Afrikaans: some initial thoughts

We consider the to date minimally discussed phenomenon of negative exclamatives in Afrikaans. Negative exclamatives superficially seem to be negative, when they are in fact positive exclamations. These structures therefore feature so-called expletive negation. Our goal is to illustrate some aspects of the phenomenon as it manifests in Afrikaans, and to demonstrate that Afrikaans’s negative exclamatives seem well behaved when considered against a broader crosslinguistic backdrop.

‘Ja-nee. No, I'm fine’ : a note on YES and NO in South Africa

This paper considers some unusual uses of NO and YES observed in South African English (SAE) and other languages spoken in South Africa. Our objective is to highlight the fundamentally speaker-hearer-oriented nature of many of these elements, and to offer a formal perspective on their use. We also aim to highlight the value of pursuing more detailed investigations of these and other perspectival elements employed in SAE and other languages spoken in South Africa.

Nie sommer nie : sociohistorical and formal comparative considerations in the rise and maintenance of the modern Afrikaans negation system

This article has three major objectives. Firstly, it aims to describe and account for the peculiarity of the modern Afrikaans negative concord marker nie 2 in the familiar Western European context. I appeal to Roberge’s (2000) diachronic proposals as the initial starting point for this oddness, showing how nie 2 ’s putative origins as a discourse-oriented particle are synchronically reflected in the modern language, producing, among other things, what appears to be inertness in the context of Jespersen’s Cycle. This inertness leads to the interface-driven hypothesis that systems in which a structurally very high element becomes grammaticalised as a sentential Negative Concord element will not progress to the next stage of Jespersen’s Cycle, i.e. a structurally very high Negative Concord element will never take over as the “real” negation element. The article’s second objective is to demonstrate, on the basis of data from Brazilian Portuguese, Santome, and a subset of Bantu languages, that the predictions of this hypothesis appear to be correct. At the same time, I show how crucial it is to distinguish the cyclic negation-reinforcing developments associated with Jespersen’s Cycle from non-cyclic reinforcement developments; as they may draw on the same lexical resources, this can be a challenging task, particularly where less well-studied languages are the object of investigation. The final part of the article broadens the focus, considering Afrikaans’s overall negation profile in the context of negation typology and learnability. The conclusion drawn here is that this system, which owes some of its properties to prescriptive stipulations, is a highly unusual and possibly not even naturally acquirable one.