#clausal complementation

[synsemuca]

Presentation: Monday, May 13 - Nikos Angelopoulos (UniCA) “On clausal complementation (again!)”

Abstract: Recent literature argues that elements such as English that introducing a declarative embedded clause should be treated as Ds (Manzini and Savoia 2007, Kayne 2010, Roussou 2010, 2019 i.a.) rather than Cs (Bresnan 1972, Chomsky 1986 i.a.). This is reinforced by the nominal use of these elements elsewhere, such as the use of that as a demonstrative. This literature has yet to show, however, why the embedded clauses introduced by these elements do not have the distribution of DPs, as has been observed since Emonds (1970). Building on this literature, this paper introduces a novel structure, treating such elements as Ds instead of Cs, with D-heads having more intricate selectional requirements than traditionally assigned to Cs. They not only select a clausal complement but also the root of the verb or noun with which they are combined. The foundation for this proposal is grounded in new generalizations derived from the distribution of finite declarative embedded clauses introduced by oti and pu in Greek. I demonstrate that these clauses exhibit DP-like behavior only in some contexts. I argue that this restriction does not undermine the treatment of these clauses as DPs. Instead, it is related to the root’s need for categorization, a process feasible in certain syntactic positions but not in others. Besides accounting for the distribution of oti- and pu-clauses, the proposed analysis also supports a number of theoretical insights, including that (a) internal arguments are introduced by higher event-related heads rather than the lexical verb (Borer 2005, Merchant 2019 i.a.), (b) nouns do not take clauses as complements (Arsenijevic 2009, Bondarenko 2022, Kayne 2009, Moulton 2009, 2014 i.a.) and (c) embedded´ clauses are interpreted either as sets of situations (Bondarenko 2022, Moltmann 2021b) or sets of individuals with propositional content (Elliott 2020, Kratzer 2006, Moltmann 1989, 2013a,b Moulton 2009, 2015 i.a.), (d) displacement in attitude and speech reports arises from projections of the embedded clause’s left periphery (Bogal-Allbritten 2016, Kratzer 2006 i.a.). Lastly, the proposed analysis offers insights into the internal structure of nominalized clauses, and provides remarks on how to capture the use of elements such as pu in different contexts.

The workshop will take place from 4pm to 6pm (CEST) over Zoom.

[ijosijen]

So, How many conlangs have you made and which one would you consider the weirdest?

in terms of actually finished conlangs: three. Olmic, which was bad, Orsyepok, which is still bad but less so, and most recently High Gavellian, which is also bad (affectionate).

i have seventy thousand languages in progress.

no not really. but all my languages are part of the utterly gargantuan set of families i have set on an entire continent that i decided to make every single major language for over the course of like 2500 years. 'biting off more than you can chew' is an understatement, i'll be chipping away at this until i die.

in terms of languages i've put notable work into:

proto-auray-gavellian is the highest grey box on the chart. it's fairly robust at this point, only because it sorta has to be. it's mainly a vocab generator at this point. i've also rather fleshed out its immediate descendants: proto-aurayin, ancient gavellian, and liesyu. the former two are robust enough that i regularly do translations with them.

ancient gavellian is the most robust of the three. i could probably document it, and its wordlist is gigantic. its most fleshed out descendant is the archaic high gavellian, but there's a billion low gavellians (the 'veniésate') hanging around in a massive romance-style dialect continuum.

old lakeshore gavellian, kaande, and sogoic, are the three most fleshed-out ones, with their own sound systems, grammatical rules, and vocab lists (though much of it is base imported from ancient gavellian). koine gavellian, proto-llevic, and demotic gavellian are less-fleshed out. the former is a shadow vernacular sitting right underneath high, while the latter two are future-sogoic and future-koine respectively.

finally, there's the eastern sprachbund i've started working on. a lot of the time, i call it the east "gavellian" sprachbund, but i should really stop doing that. i do it because the continent was named by and after the gavellian-speakers; none of the eastern sprachbund languages are in the gavellian family.

i'm feeding into that sprachbund three languages: a yet-unnamed dwarvish language in its own family as a central lingua franca pillar, as well as a dialect of aurayin & a language isolate i'm calling vindalic for historic wynnlangs reasons. it's still very young, i haven't started properly sprachbunding it yet.

with the exception of Orsyepok, i've really been neglecting the aurayin branches, which are pretty much the entire left quarter of the chart. this is because they're all very ergative and ergativity is scary (real).

as for weirdest...

idk. at this point i've been barraged with enough natlangs to accept that any "weird" feature i try and come up with already exists in a language with 10m+ speakers.

the (older) Gavellian clausal system (merger of complementizers, prepositions, pronouns articles, and tense verbs into a macroclass) is the closest i feel like i've gotten to a "genuinely weird' feature. but again, idk.

what have you been working on?

[linguistlist-blog]

Jobs: Semantics, Syntax: Post Doc in syntax/semantics, IMMAGES project, France, Université de Tours

Description: The ANR-DFG Project IMMAGES (“Hosting a clause: Implications for the matrix and its guests” https://immages.hypotheses.org/, 2023-2027) invites applications for a 12-month post-doc position in semantics and/or syntax, starting in late Summer or early Fall 2025. The goal of the project is to contribute to our understanding of clausal complementation by focusing on the way clausal complements (e.g., “(I think) that it is raining”) are inserted in the matrix clause. This matter has http://dlvr.it/THqGD8

[sentence-arborist]

How do you create syntax trees with the word 'why'? I have yet to find any examples online or in textbooks that contain the word 'why'. I'm trying to create a tree for a sentence like "Why won't this ___ love ___?". Sorry if this is a dumb question.

Not a dumb question at all - and, in fact, a rather interesting one!

As an initial caveat, my answer - like everything I do on this blog - will adopt a Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG) framework, so the answer you get here may look quite different to what you're used to if you come from a G&B / Minimalist background. In particular, I'm going to pretty closely follow the treatment by Dalrymple, Lowe & Mycock (2019, see esp. ch. 3), so if you want more references and discussion, that's the place to go.

The short answer is that, in English, wh-question phrases typically occupy the specifier position of a CP projected above the main clausal IP.

So for example, a sentence of the form "Why is David eating a burrito at the funeral?" would look something like:

[ID: A syntax tree for the sentence "Why is David eating a burrito at the funeral?" "Why" heads an AdvP in the specifier of a CP, of which the fronted auxiliary "is" is the head C. The remainder of the sentence falls under the clausal IP.]

As you can see in the example above, the fronted auxiliary occupies C, projects the CP of which the wh-phrase is the specifier, and takes the clausal IP as its complement.

Hope this helps!

[thinking-ji]

A Detailed Linguistic Analysis of ‘Singularity’

Over the past week, I’ve listened to this song an unhealthy amount. While the melody itself is haunting, looking up the lyrics made me realise that the words that accompany the music are even more poetic. The lyrical metaphors always send shivers down my spine, so here I am trying to find out why.

I found two different versions of translated lyrics - one from the official video released on ibighit (which I assume is the official translation), and another from pop!gasa, a source trusted by both fans and the artists whose lyrics they translate. Unfortunately, since I’m not fluent in Korean, I can’t analyse the original lyrics; the best I can do is analyse the English translations and compare the nuances I find in both.

I’ll look at the official translation first; if I feel like it in the future, I’ll continue with an analysis of the pop!gasa translation and then compare both to stitch together a coherent English translation that captures the nuance of this song.

1 A sound of something breaking / I awake from sleep 2 A sound full of unfamiliarity / Try to cover my ears but can’t go to sleep 3 The pain in my throat gets worse / Try to cover it 4 I don’t have a voice 5 Today I hear that sound again 6 It’s ringing again, that sound 7 A crack again on this frozen lake 8 I dumped myself into the lake 9 I buried my voice for you 10 Over the winter lake I was thrown [into] / A thick ice has formed 11 In the dream I shortly went into / My agonising phantom pain is still the same 12 Have I lost myself? / Or have I gained you? 13 I suddenly run to the lake / There’s my face in it 14 Please don’t say anything / Reach my hand out to cover the mouth 15 But in the end, spring will come someday / The ice will melt and flow away 16 Tell me if my voice isn’t real / If I shouldn’t have thrown myself away 17 Tell me if even this pain isn’t real / What I was supposed to do back then

Right off the bat, there are multiple instances of repetition and parallelism on the word and sentence levels. The latter doesn’t particularly surprise me, since music relies on structure and repetition to create a sense of wholeness. Notably, there doesn’t seem to be much lexical variation in this text. This highlights its three key semantic fields. First, the semantic field of sound includes nouns like ‘sound’ and instances of onomatopoeia such as ‘ringing’ and ‘crack’. (Note: It can be argued that ‘crack’ in line 7 refers to one that can be seen, rather than the sound of a crack.) Second, the semantic field of physiology includes nouns that describe human anatomy (‘ear’, ‘throat’, ‘face’, ‘hand’, ‘mouth’), words that describe human physiological processes (‘awake’, ‘sleep’) and words that describe human sensations (‘dream’, ‘pain’, and the phrase ‘phantom pain’. Last and most distinct is the semantic field of nature, which includes nouns like ‘lake’, ‘winter’, ‘ice’ and ‘spring’ that lend the text its more obvious metaphors. Overall, the repetition of key content words like ‘sound’, ‘lake’ and ‘pain’ highlight the relatively dispassionate production of this text and imply that this text was a product of deep reflection.

This text also contains significant parallelism on the clausal level. Lines 1 to 11 include declarative clauses that emphasise the free-flowing, uninhibited nature of the text producer’s narration. These declarative clauses that emphasise the truth of the text producer’s observations seem to increase the impersonality of this text; the elision of personal pronouns that would typically be present also contributes to this impersonality. For example, the first person personal pronoun ‘I’ is omitted from the sentence “[I] try to cover my ears, but [I] can’t go to sleep” to give the second clause of line 2. Similarly, ‘I’ is omitted from the clause “I try to cover it”, to give the second clause of line 3. While these instances of elision could be due to constraints in the song’s syllabic structure, they are significant should they be a deliberate lyrical choice.

The declaratives in lines 1 to 11 are sharply contrasted with the interrogatives in line 12. This invokes an image of the text producer lazily musing about his pain, then suddenly asking the listener the questions in line 12, perhaps wondering if the listener had been attentive to the text producer’s thoughts and emotions. The interrogative clausal mood of line 12 is again contrasted with the declarative clauses in line 13, adding to the feeling of urgency that the text producer emphasises with the adverb ‘suddenly’. It is possible that the text producer came to a realisation after asking the questions in line 12, perhaps as to where his ‘face’ (a metaphor for his sense of self) had gone. Alternatively, this sudden change in clausal mood could be representative of the text producer’s unstable state of mind.

(Before I continue, I’ll point out the obvious, but not especially important, presence of both first and second person personal pronouns in this text. I’m not sure if the instances of the 2ppp ‘you’ are cases of synthetic personalisation. I’d say that the text producer is confiding in/speaking directly to someone — hence, making these ‘you’s instances of direct address — but my evidence is more literary than linguistic, so I won’t include my reasons for believing that here! Either way, I firmly believe that at least two characters are involved in the story that ‘Singularity’ tells.)

While declarative clauses also appear in lines 14 and 15, the imperatives in lines 14, 16 and 17 are much more noteworthy. In line 14, the text producer implores, “Please don’t say anything.” The inclusion of the politeness marker ‘please’ seems to highlight the desperation felt by the text producer in this situation. This desperation is echoed by the parallel structure of the sentences in lines 16 and 17, particularly with the repetition of the following structure: “…if (conjunction) my voice (subject) is not (verb+adverb) real (complement)”; “if (conjunction) I (subject) shouldn’t have thrown (verb+adverb) myself (object) away (adverb)”. This repetition gives the clauses a sense of rhythm and urgency; they seem to follow one another in quick succession. In addition, the incongruent mood of these clauses very effectively emphasise the desperation felt by the text producer. Instead of simply asking if “[his] voice isn’t real”, the text producer passionately implores the listener to “tell [him]” the answers to his questions, specifying the action the listener must take to adequately participate in this otherwise one-sided interaction.

Again, the contrast between the moods of both clauses in line 17 is jarring and further highlights the desperation and dejection felt by the text producer. The text ends with an interrogative clause in line 17 that conjures up a visual of the text producer finally resigning to his emotions, straying from the impersonality of the rest of this text, and pitifully asking his final, most burning question — to which he receives no reply.

One thing I initially found peculiar in this text was the syntax of its penultimate clause. The position of the adverb ‘even’ was strange to me, and I’d read line 17 as “Tell me, if this pain isn’t even real, what was I supposed to do back then?” However, it soon became clear to me that the first three clauses of lines 16 to 17 form one coherent sentence (“Tell me if my voice isn’t real, if I shouldn’t have thrown myself away, [and] if even this pain isn’t real.”). The position of the adverb ‘even’ is as such due to the elision of a pronoun —  in this case, the most suitable one would be ’everything’ — from the penultimate clause. The sentence would typically read, “Tell me if everything, even this pain, isn’t real.” It seems that this elision of ‘everything’ could have arisen from the text producer’s denial of the severity of his situation. Either way, the inclusion of the adverb ‘even’ before the noun ‘pain’ suggests that the text producer finds his pain to be the worst part of his regrettable situation.

(What follows strays into the realm of literary, rather than linguistic, analysis, so… tread with caution?)

Another pattern I find interesting is the presence of what seems to be two distinct parts to this song. One part (lines 1-6, 9, 11ˆ-12, 14, 16-17) tells of reality through metaphor; the other part (lines 7-8, 10, 13, 15) compares this metaphorical reality to nature. ˆI will be discussing my conflicting thoughts on line 11 later in this post.

In the former part, the text producer repeatedly draws contrasts between sound and silence. The text also suggests two parallel dichotomies. The first is between the text producer’s own voice and silence. Apart from the clear mentions of his own ‘voice’ in lines 4, 9 and 16, he also sings of the ‘pain in [his] throat’ getting worse and that he “[tries] to cover it”, suggesting that he has little choice but to remain silent. This suggests that the text producer’s own silence is discomforting.

The second dichotomy is between the foreign sound that the text producer repeatedly hears, and silence. This foreign sound is referred to as “a sound of something breaking” (line 1), “a sound full of unfamiliarity” (line 2) and “that sound” (lines 5-6). The text producer also characterises the foreign sound as a “ringing” (line 6), though this could be due to the sound getting progressively louder and more persistent. The text producer’s contrasting preference for silence in this case is expressed through the clauses “try to cover my ears” and “reach my hand out to cover the mouth”. This suggests the eerie presence of a character who seems to be repeatedly preaching a gospel that the text producer finds discomforting.

In the latter part, the text producer uses a metaphor to describe his situation. In short, the text producer threw himself (or rather, his sense of self) into a lake, over which a thick layer of ice has formed. However, there is a crack in this lake. The text producer then muses about how spring will come and the ice will melt away again, but doesn’t seem to entertain the idea of widening the already-present crack. After a sudden realisation (line 12), the text producer runs to the lake and sees his face (another comparison to his sense of self) inside. This reference to Narcissus adds a layer of meaning to this metaphor; in all variants in the Myth of Narcissus, he dies as he fails to acquire the object of his desires. This is similar to what the text producer is experiencing. In line 12, he wonders if he has lost himself after he “dumped [himself] into the lake”, or if he gained someone new (who he refers to using the 2ppp ‘you’) — a manifestation of the free man he once was.

ˆI am still conflicted as to the meaning of line 11. On one hand, I’m inclined to believe it somehow links both the lake metaphor and the sound-silence dichotomies. The first clause suggests that the lake constitutes part of the text producer’s ‘dream’; the mention of ‘phantom pain’ in the second clause is reminiscent of the other instances where the text producer speaks of the pain he feels in his throat (and perhaps also his ears, since pain is commonly associated with tinnitus). On the other hand, line 11 could be the link between the two sound-silence dichotomies I discussed earlier. In this case, the ‘dream’ could refer to the the foreign sound that prevents him from sleeping — perhaps he feels so involved in this nightmarish dream that he feels like he is awake. This ‘dream’ could also be an extended metaphor: the foreign sound could be something that distracts the text producer while he is awake. The ‘phantom pain’ in the second clause would then refer to the pain he feels all the time, when he hears the foreign sound, and when he doesn’t.

(Back to your scheduled linguistics-related programming!)

The final thing I want to discuss is the consistent theme of hiding, or covering up, or elusiveness. Fundamentally, we are not made aware of what is making the sound that the text producer finds so discomforting, or whose mouth he is covering in line 14, or even what is ‘breaking’ in line 1. In the first place, we’re not even sure about who threw the text producer into the lake — do we trust his words in line 8 or 10? The text producer also repeatedly uses the verb ‘cover’ (lines 2, 3, 14). He ‘buried’ (line 9) his own voice and “reach[ed] out to cover the mouth’ (line 15). He seems to have lost his sense of self and is struggling with his identity (as is clear in lines 12-13 and 16-17). All these instances of imagery highlight this theme of hiding that is clearly expressed throughout the text.

‘Singularity’ has a few senses — it could refer to the state of multiple things being one singular whole, or it could refer to a peculiarity. A more poetic take on the title of this song comes from its physical manifestation as a black hole, where matter is infinitely dense and appears to be, well, one singular whole. The text producer’s struggle with his identity and questioning his separateness from his elusive listener is representative of the former sense of ‘singularity’. Conversely, ‘singularity’ could refer to the uniqueness of his struggle, or his quest to find what truly defines him.

I could go on and on about the imagery in this song (as if I haven’t!), but I think I’m going to end this here. I’ve been typing this up for almost 4 hours now. There’s truly so much to unpack here, and I haven’t even linked this analysis to what RM and V have said about this song. (By the way, props to them for this clearly deeply-considered work of art.) As I said at the beginning of this post, I’ll look into pop!gasa’s translation of this song if I’m up for it later on. If you’ve made it this far, thank you! And do make sure to share what you think about this song and what it could mean.

[moinsbienquekaworu]

Who wants to learn about morphosyntax? Nobody, that's who, but unfortunately I have an exam on this tomorrow, so I'm going to explain it in painful detail to you because I don't want to get a bad grade. (morphosyntax is grammar and it's boring)

This is an exercise where I try to explain it off the top of my head to see what sticks and what I need to check again, unless you're interested in the content of my shitty grammar classes you're free to skip honestly I don't want to inflict useless grammar on poor bystanders

First chapter, time, tense, and aspect. What are those? Good question.

Time is when a sentence would be put on a timeline, either in the past, the present, the future, or the irrealis use, which is for events that haven't actually happened (if I were rich, I wish you hadn't eaten my cookies, you get the idea.) Tense is the tense of the verb, ie past or present really, because there's no future in your language, it's just a modal. Generally, they're the same, unless it's future/irrealis.

Aspect is - well I had to go looking through my notes for that one and I don't see what the point of that one is tbh. It's if the action is finished or not? Like, is it going to start (prospective), still happening (progressive), finished (perfective), or it keeps happening (iterative). I think the way we're evaluated on that is making little timelines so I'm good. I can also see - oh yeah. For the present you can have four aspects, continuative, resultative, existential and hot news, and for the past it's either continuative, resultative, or irrealis. Don't know what that is lol I'll just ignore it.

Second chapter is much worse, it's all about clause structure.

Definitions first: a sentence is what you call a sentence, capital letter + end-of-sentence punctuation at the end. A clause is a group of word with a verb, a sentence can have one (clausal sentence) or multiple (compound sentence). A phrase is a group of word around a head verb, you can have multiple types (noun phrase around a head noun, verb phrase around a phrase, preposition phrase around a preposition...) "You are such a bitch why do you eat my cereals?" is a sentence, "you are such a bitch" and "why do you eat my cereals" are clauses, and "eat my cereals" is a verb phrase around eat.

Now, say hi to the thing that traumatised me in latin & greek and is the reason I hate grammar, functions. Clauses/words have functions in sentences, which sounds easy when your sentence is "I hate grammar." (I is subject, hate is the verb and grammar is a direct object) But like, it's just such a pain for my brain, it simply Does Not work like that in my head and I hate it. I mean, object, subject, sure, but a predicative complement? complement of preposition? all those adjuncts? Fuck right off.

Speaking of adjuncts <3 adjuncts add meaning to the sentence but can be safely deleted and the sentence still means something. There's adjuncts of time, manner, place, duration, frequency, degree, condition, purpose, result, concession, and cause/reason. Useless bullshit but apparently I have to learn that.

Arguments are - things the sentence needs to work? "The cat sleeps." has one arguments, the cat, but "He invited his mom." has two, he and his mom. That's a verb's valency btw, the minimum number of arguments for the verb to work in a textbook example sentence. Usually you need to arguments for listen (I listen to music) and even if "he never listens" has a single arguments and is a proper sentence that's an exception not a rule.

Backtracking, there's also this thing called constituency tests, to see if the thing is a constituent (what are those, good question), which are replacing that part with it and asking what, and if you can then it's a constituent (in "how you behave is important", how you behave can be replaced by it and you can ask "what is important?" so it is a constituent) What is it if it fails the test? Fuck if I know.

Lastly I will say that syntax trees exist but 1) I'm not getting the graphics tablet out for that and 2) they just use what I explained here so I'm good.

Okay now that was (not) great but it could have been worse, see you next time I need to study for a test!

[cloudtales]

The Layered Syntactic Structure of the Complementizer System: Functional Heads and Multiple Movements in the Early Left-Periphery. A Corpus Study on Italian

The Layered Syntactic Structure of the Complementizer System: Functional Heads and Multiple Movements in the Early Left-Periphery. A Corpus Study on Italian

In this paper we document the developmental trajectory of the complementizer system (CP-system) in Italian by looking at the earliest spontaneous production of eleven young children, whose transcriptions are available on CHILDES. We conducted a novel corpus analysis, tracking down a number of constructions in which the clausal left-periphery is activated. First, we considered the appearance of…

[nylanguageworkshop]

Workshop Monday Nov. 5th: Justin Bledin on As Ifs

Our speaker next week will be our own Justin Bledin, who is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Johns Hopkins. Justin will give a talk called ‘As Ifs’:

In this talk, I continue my investigations into quirky, understudied "if" constructions by taking up the case of English "as if". Part of the challenge here is that "as if" is extremely productive, appearing in a range of syntactic environments, and each of its different uses raises its own interpretive puzzles. Four core uses are illustrated in (1)-(4):

(1) Manner use: Pedro danced as if he were possessed by demons.

(2) Perceptual resemblance report: It tastes as if there were an angel peeing on my tongue. (Dutch compliment to the chef)

(3) Root sarcastic use: (Opening inbox) As if I have time to answer all these emails!

(4) Clueless use: (Gross guy makes an advance) Cher: Ugh, as if!

Starting with manner and related modification uses, I analyze "as if"-adjuncts as denoting hypothetical comparative properties of eventualities (building on Davidson 1967, Parsons 1990, Landman 2000, and most directly on the event semantic LF architecture of Beck & von Stechow 2015). The manner report (1), for instance, conveys that there is an event of Pedro dancing that resembles in respect of its manner his dancing in the most stereotypical counterfactual scenarios in which he was possessed by demons. I then argue that this analysis can be carried over to the "as if"-complements of perceptual resemblance reports (PRRs), offering a welcome alternative to philosophically suspect analyses of PRRs in the copy raising literature (Landau 2011; Asudeh & Toivonen 2012) while fitting nicely with contemporary event-semantic analyses of psychological reports in general (Hacquard 2006, 2010; Kratzer 2006; Moulton 2009; Rawlins 2013; Moltmann 2017).

Time permitting, I'll then turn to the root sarcastic and Clueless uses, where the main puzzle is to explain their function as denials of the clause embedded under "as if". Drawing on historical corpus-based work by Brinton (2014) and others, I propose that this denying function is the result of a process of conventionalization whereby scalar implicatures present in multi-clausal uses of "as if" (manner uses, PRRs, etc.) have been lexicalized over time.

The workshop will take place on Monday, November 5th at 6:30 in room 302 of NYU's philosophy building (5 Washington Place).

[linguistlist-blog]

Calls: Clausal Complementation Across Categories

Call for Papers: The Leibniz-Centre for General Linguistics (ZAS) in Berlin is pleased to announce a workshop to be held June 19th-20th, 2025, generously supported in part by the van Riemsdijk Foundation (VRF), with the title Clausal Complementation Across Categories.​ Invited Speakers: Nikos Angelopoulos (CNRS) Johanna Benz (UPenn) Kajsa Djärv (Edinburgh) Kalle Müller (CNRS) This workshop focuses on the relationship between clause-embedding attitude predicates and the clauses with http://dlvr.it/THVcp6

[linguistlist-blog]

Confs: Clausal Complementation Across Categories

Invited Speakers: Nikos Angelopoulos (CNRS) Johanna Benz (UPenn) Kajsa Djärv (Edinburgh) Kalle Müller (CNRS) This workshop focuses on the relationship between clause-embedding attitude predicates and the clauses with which they combine, with special attention paid to how the syntax and semantics of clausal embedding interacts with either the category of the predicate (i.e. as a verb, noun, or adjective) or of the clause (i.e. as nominalized, nonfinite, etc.). Discussion of these topics wi http://dlvr.it/THQwH7

[linguistlist-blog]

Calls: The Syntax and Semantics of Perception: Workshop at 58th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea

Call for Papers: For the full call for papers and submission information see: https://sites.google.com/view/caurpe/events?authuser=0 We welcome papers describing and/or analyzing the syntax of perception verbs in any language(s), especially those focusing on clausal complementation, potentially in comparison with other verb classes addressing the following or related questions: 1) Does the sense-modality hierarchy regulate morphosyntactic complexity cross-linguistically? 2) What are the attes http://dlvr.it/TFkzc3

[synsemuca]

Presentation: Monday, March 11 - Tanya Bondarenko & Patrick D. Elliott “On the monotonicity of attitudes: NPIs and clausal embedding”

Our speaker will be Tanya Bondarenko from Harvard University and Patrick D. Elliott from the University of Düsseldorf

Abstract: This goal of this presentation is to provide an account of an observation made by Sharvit (2023, henceforth Sharvit’s puzzle): NPIs can be licensed in complement clauses that occur inside of definite descriptions, but not relative clauses. We show that all existing accounts of clausal embedding fail to account for this fact, including Kratzer’s content-based semantics (Kratzer 2006, 2016) which is based on Hintikka’s (1969) treatment of attitude verbs as universal modals, and recent refinements which equate the content of an attitudinal eventuality with the proposition denoted by the embedded clause (Moulton 2009, Elliott 2017, Bondarenko 2022). Independently, the latter equality-based approaches are thought to be problematic since they render attitude reports non-monotonic, thus failing to capture a class of entailments which are straightforward from a Hintikkan perspective. In this talk, we propose that monotonicity of attitude reports is best modelled with the notion of incrementality (Krifka 1998). We show that once equality semantics is supplemented with the idea that monotonic attitudes have incremental propositional content, we not only fix the bad predictions of this approach about entailment, but also solve a puzzle about NPI licensing (Sharvit 2023) that other approaches cannot account for.

The workshop will take place from 4pm to 6pm (CET) over Zoom.

[synsemuca]

Presentation: Monday, November 13 - Yael Sharvit “Assessing two theories of clausal complementation”

Our speaker will be Yael Sharvit, Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Abstract: Some clause-taking verbs can also take DPs (e.g., ‘believe’), some cannot (e.g., ‘think’), and some can appear without a complement (e.g., ‘groan’). The standard theory of complementation has to resort to lexical ambiguity to explain this. An alternative (due to Kratzer and others) says that “complements" of clause-taking predicates are not arguments, thereby offering a way to explain this variation without resorting to lexical ambiguity. I argue that this alternative fails to deliver the right truth conditions of certain attitude reports.

The workshop will take place from 4pm to 6pm (CET) in room 005 of the Bâtiment de l'Horloge, campus Saint-Jean d'Angély, or over Zoom.

[synsemuca]

Presentation: Monday, October 30 - Travis Major "On English 'say' complementation"

Our speaker will be Travis Major, who is Associate Professor at the University of Southern California. He will be giving a talk entitled "On English 'say' complementation"

Abstract In recent years,  the status of clausal complementation structures involving some form of the verb "say" have received considerable attention with respect to indexical interpretation, direct quotation,  case assignment, modality,  and beyond.  In Major (2021) I argue that these are clausal adjunction structures that literally contain some form of the verb "say" (i.e. they are not complements).  In Uyghur, for instance, I argue that dep, the converbial form of "say", can adjoin at two different heights: in the VP region and in the TP region. In the present talk, I suggest that dep can also merge at the DP level. The bulk of the talk focuses on English, where I  further suggest that say + -ing clauses in English are almost equivalent to dep clauses in Uyghur, arguing that they can merge at (at least) three distinct heights, giving rise to three different sets of interpretations. Consider (1-3) below: 1)  Taylor [VP [VP told me a rumor] [ingP saying that the president is actually 90 years old]].  2) I heard [DP [DP the rumor] [ingP saying that the president is actually 90 years old]].  3)  [TP [TP Saying that the president was 90 years old],  [TP Taylor moved to Canada]].  Following the literature in assuming that -ing clauses are control constructions, I argue that (1) involves the -ing clause modifying the matrix VP, where the controller of PRO (i.e. the subject of "say") is the matrix subject, Taylor. In (2), I argue that the "say"+ing clause attaches at the DP level and is controlled by the content noun "the rumor". In (3), I suggest that the "say"+ing clause merges in the TP region.  I suggest that the height at which the adjunct merges determines its interpretation.  In the case of (1) and (2), the "telling" and "saying" events combine beneath the matrix T and Asp, where manner/causation are the most natural relations between events. In (2), the "saying" clause combines with a DP "the rumor", which is only compatible with a stative interpretation of "say".  In (3), "saying" merges above matrix T, allowing for looser spatio-temporal relations, and receives (most naturally) a purpose/reason interpretation. I suggest that the versatility and abstractness of "say" in general lead to its presence in clausal complementation structures across languages. Furthermore, I suggest that the conclusions of this talk offer a rebuttal to arguments suggesting that "say" is not a verb on the basis of "not seeming to mean say" or the fact that it can combine with inanimate objects.

The workshop will take place from 4pm to 6pm (CET) over Zoom exclusively.

[linguistlist-blog]

TOC, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory Vol. 40, No. 4 (2023)

ICYMI: DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-021-09532-z Title: Clausal embedding in Washo: Complementation vs. modification (OA) Author(s): Bochnak, M.R., Hanink, E.A. pages: 979-1022 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-021-09527-w Title: Adverbial -s as last resort (OA) Author(s): Corver, N. pages: 1023-1073 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-021-09530-1 Title: The lexical core of a complex functional affix: Russian baby diminutive -onok Author(s): Gouskova, M., Bobaljik, J.D. pages: 1075-1115 DOI: http://dlvr.it/Sr1SmV

[linguistlist-blog]

TOC, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory Vol. 40, No. 4 (2023)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-021-09532-z Title: Clausal embedding in Washo: Complementation vs. modification (OA) Author(s): Bochnak, M.R., Hanink, E.A. pages: 979-1022 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-021-09527-w Title: Adverbial -s as last resort (OA) Author(s): Corver, N. pages: 1023-1073 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-021-09530-1 Title: The lexical core of a complex functional affix: Russian baby diminutive -onok Author(s): Gouskova, M., Bobaljik, J.D. pages: 1075-1115 DOI: http://dlvr.it/SqyXky