UMWPiL Volume 16 (2007)
Welcome to the homepage of the sixteenth volume of the University of Maryland Working Papers in Linguistics. This is the third internet-based publication of UMWPiL. By publishing online and offering free access, it presents our authors with a greater audience and provides our readers with easier access. Each of the nine papers included in this volume can be found below, with an abstract provided. The papers are all downloadable in Portable Document Format (PDF). You can download Adobe Acrobat Reader for free from Adobe.com.
The editors would like to thank the numerous authors and reviewers who helped to make this volume possible.
Citations: Please cite the papers as they are listed at bottom of the first page of each submission.
Atakan Ince "Non-Wh Phrases in Sluicing in Turkish" (pp. 1-22)
Johannes Jurka "Deriving Labels" (pp. 23-45)
Shiti Malhotra and Pritha Chandra "A Short Note on Wh-scope-marking" (pp. 46-62)
Anastasia M. Conroy "The Personal Dative in Appalachian English as a Reflexive Pronoun" (pp. 63-88)
Akira Omaki "Revisiting Revived Syntactic Structures: The Extended Hybrid Approach to Verbal Morphology" (pp. 89-110)
Hee-don Ahn and Sungeun Cho "Non-Case-Marked Wh-Phrases and Left-Dislocation" (pp. 111-141)
Hee-don Ahn and Sungeun Cho "Edges in Syntax and Scope/Binding in Fragments in Korean" (pp. 142-162)
Ellen F. Lau, Katya Rozanova and Colin Phillips "Syntactic Prediction and Lexical Surface Frequency Effects in Sentence Processing" (pp. 163-200)
Joshua A. Riley and Gregory B. Cogan "A Two Mechanism Model of Pure Word Deafness" (pp. 201-221)
Abstract: The aim of this study is to look at sluicing structures in Turkish where one wh-phrase and one non-wh-phrase are pronounced. The basic properties of these sluicing structures is that they consist of only one wh-phrase and one non-wh-phrase; and, the non-wh-phrase has to precede the wh-phrase, unlike Hungarian, Polish and Russian, where the wh-phrase precedes the non-wh-phrase(s). Interestingly, in these sluicing structures, the non- wh-phrase does not reconstruct, in contrast to the non-elliptical version. Looking at this phenomenon and other related phenomenon, it is shown that a focused phrase -- whether binder or not -- blocks reconstruction of a phrase that precedes it. It is concluded that reconstruction is lowering, and Defective Intervention Constraint (DIC) effects are also observed in LF -- where lowering occurs.
Abstract: This paper builds on Hornstein's (2005) proposal that Merge (Chomsky, 1995) can be split up into the more basic operations Concatenate and Label. This opens up the possibility that Concatenate applies without Label to generate flat structures, an option which Hornstein & Nunes (2005) explore for encoding adjuncts. The central claim is that Label is not needed as a syntactic primitive if a long distance dependency formation operation is added, which is shown to be necessary on independent grounds. Concretely, the only means of communication between lexical items is the Unambiguous Paths Strategy (UPS), defined in terms of Unambiguous Paths configurations (Kayne, 1981). Labelling is no axiomatic operation of the system but is triggered by the need to check uninterpretable features. The taxonomy between arguments and adjuncts is thus reduced to the presence or absence of uninterpretable features. Binary branching for arguments follows, while no such requirement holds for adjuncts.
Abstract: The Wh-scope marking strategy in natural language has been a lively issue in the syntactic and semantic literature for the last two decades, starting with the seminal work by McDaniel (1989) and followed by a number of equally influential analyses. Most accounts of Wh-scope marking constructions can be classified under three broad camps: (a) the direct dependency approach (McDaniel, 1989; Riemsdijk, 1982); (b) the indirect dependency approach (Dayal, 1996; Srivastava, 1991) and (c) the mixed dependency approach (Hovarth, 1997; Mahajan, 1990, 1996; Mahajan and Fanselow, 2000). This paper highlights the limitations of some of these studies and proposes yet another approach to Wh-scope marking - the overt movement approach. Our analysis centers on Hindi/Urdu Wh-scope marking constructions. In the course of our discussion, some interesting dialectal variations on the phenomenon are also brought into light.
Abstract: In this paper, we investigate the Personal Dative construction found in Appalachian English and Southern American English. In this construction, a pronoun is permitted to be coreferential with a local antecedent. We argue that the pronouns in the Personal Dative construction are a type of anaphor, despite their phonological similarity to full pronouns. We analyze the Personal Dative in light of the approach to SE anaphors taken by Reuland (2001), suggesting these are bound pronouns that do not take a theta role. This work suggests that the Personal Dative construction is not unique, but is another instance of a phenomenon found cross-linguistically.
Abstract: Lasnik's (1995b) hybrid account for English verbal morphology has been shown to be superior to the alternative lexicalist account (Chomsky, 1993), though it has suffered from some conceptual and empirical problems. This paper proposes to extend the hybrid-ness of Lasnik's analysis by revising one aspect of his proposal: lexical items can be affixal and featural simultaneously, thereby ensuring that the same category has the same set of formal features. This revision and its extension to modals brings about desirable conceptual and empirical consequences. First, it eliminates the Stranded Affix Filter (SAF) by attributing SAF effects to the timing of feature checking. Second, this solves two empirical problems observed for Lasnik's system, namely, a) in VP ellipses, stranded 'ing' is disallowed due to the SAF but stranded 'en' is not, and b) it overgenerates a sentence like "It does not be raining".
Abstract: Absence of Case markers on nominals in Korean shows subject-object asymmetries: (i) Case markers can be absent in complement positions unlike those in canonical subject positions. (ii) Unlike object wh-phrases without Case markers, subject wh-phrases without them have only D-linked interpretation. In this paper, we propose: (i) Bare NPs can occur in the complement position of V since it can be a part of a syntactic complex predicate. (ii) Bare wh-phases in derived positions are left dislocated nominals that undergo SubMove leaving unpronounced resumptive pro. Hence, only D-linked reading arises in these constructions parallel to wh-resumption or wh-clitic doubling constructions found in other languages. Some implications of our proposal correlate with the new typology of dislocation in Korean: namely, HTLD vs. CLLD in connection to presence/absence of resumption. Our analysis further sheds light on semantic-pragmatic nature of non-Case-marked NPs in Korean, which previous discourse studies have attempted to capture.
Abstract: Scoping/binding asymmetries in Korean fragments seem to be problematic in Merchant's (2004) ellipsis analysis of fragments. However, understanding the typology of edges in syntax along with reinterpretation of interface conditions at PF provides an elegant account for the apparent puzzles. We propose that two types of edges have different interface properties and semantic consequences: edge-C is an interface to discourse-scope domain, while edge-v is not. We assume that movement to edge-C doesnt allow reconstruction for scope purposes unlike movement to edge-v that exhibits typical reconstruction effects. We also note that unmotivated movement to edge-v can only occur in ellipsis contexts since it can be repaired by PF-deletion, and hence scope/binding asymmetries follow. We further observe that scrambling in Korean is a non-unitary operation, and propose that the seemingly scrambling phenomena can be reanalyzed either as focus-movement or adjunction operation, and only the latter operation exhibits obligatory (radical) reconstruction.
Abstract: This paper presents three experiments which examine the effect of lexical surface frequency on sentence processing and the interaction between surface frequency and syntactic prediction. The first two experiments make use of the self-paced reading paradigm to show that processing time differences due to surface frequency (e.g., the frequency of 'cats' not including occurrences of 'cat'), which have previously been demonstrated in isolated word tasks like lexical decision, also give rise to reaction time differences in sentence processing tasks, in this case for singular and plural English nouns. The second experiment investigates whether a prediction for the number morpheme triggered by the number-marked determiners this and these might counter the surface frequency effect; however, the small size of the surface frequency effect and baseline differences in reaction times to this and these made the results unclear. Results from a third experiment using lexical decision suggest that the difference in the size of the surface frequency effects between the lexical decision experiments and the self-paced-reading experiments are likely due to differences in task demands. Our results have methodological implications for psycholinguistic experiments that manipulate morphology as a means of examining other questions of interest.
Abstract: This paper reviews cases of pure word-deafness (PWD) and examines the light they shed on the nature of the mechanisms underlying speech perception. The auditory deficits in each case are examined, including not only speech, but music and significant environmental sounds as well. Audio-visual integration is also considered given the demonstrated utility of visual cues, including lip-reading, for PWD patients. Single-mechanism accounts prove to be insufficient, and a model is proposed which describes the interaction of two mechanisms: a spectro-temporal integrator and a distinct feature extractor. This model helps explain a typology of symptoms in PWD and can be applied to auditory agnosia as well.