SFB 732 “Incremental Specification in Context” - Area C

Area C: Noun Phrases and Context Research Results - Ongoing Research

C1 The Syntax of Nominal Modification and its Interaction with Nominal Structure C2 Case and referential context Area C: Noun phrases and context 1

SFB 732 “Incremental Specification in Context” - Area C

Area C: Noun Phrases and Context Goals:

1. Focus on dependencies between properties of noun phrases 2. Clarify the structure of noun phrases 3. Identify different contextual parameter that constitute noun phrase properties / investigate the interaction between the parameters 4. Compare theses parameters in different languages (cross linguistic approach / variation) Area C: Noun phrases and context 2

SFB 732 “Incremental Specification in Context” - Area C

Project C 1 “The Syntax of Nominal Modification and its Interaction”

Area C: Noun phrases and context 3

SFB 732 “Incremental Specification in Context” - Area C

Central Question:

What can modification tell us about the structure of the DP?

Main Areas of Investigation:

Ambiguous adjectives in Romance and Greek Ellipsis constructions in Romance Adjectives in the Scandinavian Languages Participles in Romance and Greek Area C: Noun phrases and context 4

1.

2.

3.

4.

SFB 732 “Incremental Specification in Context” - Area C Results: Romance and Scandinavian DPs provide evidence that there are three different domains inside the DP:

(i) the Determiner Level (ii) the Classifier Level (iii) the Quantity Level (cf. Borer 2005)

Languages differ as to how these different domains are realised.

While the features in the DP are the same crosslinguistically, their realization differs from language to language .

Modifiers:

In the area of modification, we were able to substantiate our hypothesis that ambiguity arises as a result of the availability of two distinct structures, e.g. Relative clause vs. Adjunction.

Participles

: the structure of participles in Greek and Romance contains layers similar to those of the verbal passive, most notably Aspect, and Voice.

Area C: Noun phrases and context 5

SFB 732 “Incremental Specification in Context” - Area C

The Romance Languages

1.

The distribution of modifiers in the Romance languages

 Structural differences and ambiguity in the placement of e.g. French adjectives provide arguments for assuming different structural configurations for predicative vs. attributive modifiers (the “mixed approach”, cf. Alexiadou & Wilder 1998)  Adjectives occurring in pre- and postnominal position (without meaning change) can undergo Local Dislocation (a movement operation in the PF component) (Gengel 2007, 2008) 

The Romanian (the cel-construction)

provides arguments for a relative clause source of predicative adjectives (cf. Kayne 1994; Marchis & Alexiadou 2008) patterns with adjectives occurring in Greek Determiner Spread (only predicative adjectives are licensed in these constructions) Area C: Noun phrases and context 6

SFB 732 “Incremental Specification in Context” - Area C

The Romance Languages

2. NP Ellipsis in the Romance Languages

provides evidence for the assumption of a Classifier Phrase (CLP in Borer’s (2005) system), which licenses the NP Ellipsis construction (Alexiadou & Gengel 2008) Example: a.

un problema grave

- ‘a serious problem’ b.

uno

[e]

grave -

‘a serious one’ (NP Ellipsis) Structure: [DP D un-o [NumP Num [FP Adj grave [ClassP

–o/–a

[NP NP]]]]] Area C: Noun phrases and context 7

SFB 732 “Incremental Specification in Context” - Area C A Unified Structure for Scandinavian DPs 1.

2.

Variation

• Definiteness: Scandinavian languages and dialects vary with respect to the realization of modified definite DPs: Swedish, Norwegian, and Faroese display

double definiteness

(1a), whereas Danish (1b) and Icelandic (1b,c) make use of only one determiner.

(1) a. DEF Adj W N DEF b. DEF Adj W N c. Adj W N DEF • Adjectival inflection: depending on the choice of adjectival inflection, weak or strong, different readings can arise, i.e. inflection interacts with interpretation.

(2) Legg hvert unmoden-t/e eple i denne kass-en.

put every/each unripe S/W apple in this box DEF

Unified Structure

The semantics of the articles and the adjectival inflection can be captured as follows (Lohrmann 2008): (3) [ DP2 [disc] [ #P [ FP AP [ F‘ [ident] [ DP1 [sref] [ ClassP [ind] [NP]]]]]]] Area C: Noun phrases and context 8

SFB 732 “Incremental Specification in Context” - Area C

(3) [DP2 [disc] [#P [FP AP [F‘ [ident] [DP1 [sref] [ClassP [ind] [NP]]]]]]] • Following Borer (2005), NP contains ClassP,

individuation

, and #P,

quantity

• In the spirit of Rizzi (1997), DP is split into two layers, DP1,

specific reference

, and DP2,

discourse reference

(cf. Alexiadou, Haegeman & Stavrou 2007) • Languages differ as to whether they make use of distinct realizations of the two layers or not: (3) - Swedish, Norwegian, Faroese, Icelandic (1c) have access to the full structure in - Danish and Icelandic (1b) lack the lower DP (1) a. DEF Adj-W N-DEF b. DEF Adj-W N c. Adj-W N-DEF Area C: Noun phrases and context 9

SFB 732 “Incremental Specification in Context” - Area C

Ongoing and Further Research:

   Germanic/Romance parallels in partitive and appositive constructions (Germanic vs. Romance parameter?).  Investigation of semantic features in the licensing of NP Ellipsis (partitivity, specificity, reference) Nominalized Adjectives Structure of mass nouns vs. count nouns also in relationship to nominalization.

Area C: Noun phrases and context 10

SFB 732 “Incremental Specification in Context” - Area C

Project C 2 “Case and referential context”

Area C: Noun phrases and context 11

SFB 732 “Incremental Specification in Context” - Area C Research Results of C2 Differential Object Marking (DOM) 1.

Parameters (context) 2.

3.

4.

Interaction between the parameters Crosslinguist variation Diachronic development

Area C: Noun phrases and context 12

SFB 732 “Incremental Specification in Context” - Area C Research Results of C2 1. Parameters of DOM (Differential Object Marking) DP parameters: animacy, definiteness

(1) Sen 2Sg bitta a muschuk*(-ni) cat-ACC ‘Have you run over a cat?’ urvor-ding-mi?

run.over-Prf.2SG-Q

Uzbek

(2) Biz bu hikoya*(-ni) uqi-gan-miz. 1PL DEM stories-ACC ‘We read these stories.’ read-Pres-1Pl (von Heusinger/Klein/Niyazmetowa 2008)

Uzbek

Area C: Noun phrases and context 13

SFB 732 “Incremental Specification in Context” - Area C Research Results of C2 1.

Parameters of DOM DP parameters: animacy, definieteness sentence-parameters: affectedness, information structure

Ya conoc í a

(a)

already knew-1Sg (DOM) many students ‘I already knew many students.’

*(A) muchos estudiantes

,

muchos estudiantes.

ya los conoc í a (DOM) many students, already them knew.1Sg

‘Many students I already knew.’ Area C: Noun phrases and context 14

SFB 732 “Incremental Specification in Context” - Area C Research Results of C2 1.

Parameters of DOM DP parameters: animacy, definieteness sentence parameters: affectedness, information structure discource parameters: saliency, discourse persistence

Area C: Noun phrases and context 15

SFB 732 “Incremental Specification in Context” - Area C Research Results of C2

Area C: Noun phrases and context 16

SFB 732 “Incremental Specification in Context” - Area C

• • •

Research Results of C2 1.

2.

Parameters of DOM Interaction of Parameters

Bold [Tuya (g) Bold.Nom Tuya (Acc) yav-sn]-i daraa] yav-na go-Pst-Gen after go-Fut Bold will go after Tuya went (cf. Klein, Udo & Dolgor Guntsetseg, Klaus von Heusinger 2008) Area C: Noun phrases and context 17

SFB 732 “Incremental Specification in Context” - Area C Research Results of C2 1.

2.

Parameters of DOM Interaction of Parameters

Area C: Noun phrases and context 18

SFB 732 “Incremental Specification in Context” - Area C Research Results of C2 1. 2.

3.

4.

Parameters of DOM Interaction of Parameters Crosslinguistic variation Diachronic Development

1 Reyes 19, 1: A (14 th ) B (16 th ) C (20th E) D (20th A) English � e como de como

mat hab í ó

todos los profetas

a muerto

� cuchillo a espada.

� todos los profetas

.

... y de como ... y como

hab í a matado hab í a

�

matado

a espada a espada

a todos los profetas.

a todos los profetas.

... how he had

killed all the prophets

with the sword.

Area C: Noun phrases and context 19

SFB 732 “Incremental Specification in Context” - Area C Research Results of C2

120%

1. 3.

80%

3.

60%

Parameters of DOM Interaction of Parameters Crosslinguisti variation Diachronic Development

40% 20% 0% A: 14th cent.

B: 16th/17th cent. C: 20th cent.(Euro) D: 20th cent. (Am) poner/tomar + def DO poner/tomar + indef DO ver/hallar + def DO ver/hallar + indef DO matar/herir + def DO matar/herir + indef DO Area C: Noun phrases and context 20

SFB 732 “Incremental Specification in Context” - Area C Ongoing Research of C2 1.

2.

3.

4.

• • • •

Parameters of DOM Transitivity lexical semantics of verbs Interaction of Parameters Partitive construction in Turkish “bare definite nouns” in Romanian

• • • • •

Diachronic Development Spanish verb classes Development of two indefinite articles in Uzbek Semantic Model “referential context model” Comparison with OT Syntactic approaches

Area C: Noun phrases and context 21

SFB 732 “Incremental Specification in Context” - Area C

Area C: Noun Phrases and Context Goals:

1. Focus on dependencies between properties of noun phrases

√

2. Clarify the structure of noun phrases

√

3. Identify different contextual parameter that constitute noun phrase properties / investigate the interaction between the parameters

√

4. Compare theses parameters in different languages (cross linguistic approach / variation)

√

Area C: Noun phrases and context 22

SFB 732 “Incremental Specification in Context” - Area C

Area C: Noun Phrases and Context Goals of the next phase

1. Arguments of nominalizations vs. verbs 2. Case alternation of arguments 3. Syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and ontological conditions for case marking 4. Discourse relation and realization of arguments 5. Crosslinguistic variation Area C: Noun phrases and context 23

SFB 732 “Incremental Specification in Context” - Area C

Area C: Noun Phrases and Context Projects of the next phase

C1 Argument realization and encoding in noun phrase C2 Argument realization and referential context C3 Interpretation and Discourse Structure Area C: Noun phrases and context 24

SFB 732 “Incremental Specification in Context” - Area C

Area C Discussion ?

Questions ?

Suggestions ?

Area C: Noun phrases and context 25