Control without a subject

Janke, Vikki

doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2007.05.002

Cited by 10 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…The results for complement control, where neither cue could affect participants’ interpretations, corroborate the long-established obligatory-control classification of this construction. Controlled complements are selected by a control verb and the interpretation of the understood subject in that complement is constrained structurally (see Williams 1980; Manzini 1983; Landau 2000, 2013; Hornstein 2001; Janke 2007, 2008). Note also that there is no ambiguity with respect to the structure of object-controlled complements: the complement, selected by the head, is sister to that head.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of discourse on control

Janke

Bailey

2016

J. Ling.

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This study examined discourse effects on obligatory and non-obligatory control interpretations. Seventy participants undertook three online forced-choice surveys, which monitored preferred interpretations in complement control, verbal gerund subject control, long-distance control and sentence-final temporal adjunct control. Survey 1 ascertained their baseline interpretations of the empty category in these constructions. Survey 2 primed the critical sentences used in survey 1 with a weakly established topic of discourse and survey 3 primed them with a strongly established one. Reference assignment in complement control remained consistent across all three conditions, illustrating that pragmatics does not infiltrate this structurally regulated and syntactically unambiguous construction. Changes in interpretation were found in the remaining three constructions. An accessibility-motivated scale of influence, combining three independent discourse factors (topichood, competition and linear distance) was created to model reference determination in verbal gerund subject control and long-distance control. The results for temporal adjunct control are novel. They revealed a much stronger susceptibility to pragmatic interference than that reported in the literature yet the construction behaved differently from non-obligatory control under discourse pressure. We propose a structural account for sentence-final temporal adjunct control, which permits the evident interpretation shift while still excluding arbitrary and sentence-external interpretations.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of discourse on control

Janke

Bailey

2016

J. Ling.

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“… Not all generative analyses of control posit a syntactic element in the controlled position (e.g., Brame , Evers , Janke ; functional control in Lexical Functional Grammar, Bresnan , Asudeh , Falk ; Categorial Grammar, Dowty ; Conceptual Structure approaches, Jackendoff & Culicover ). Trivially, theories without (a counterpart of) PRO do not face any questions about the status of PRO's features.…”

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confidence: 99%

Agreement at PF: An Argument from Partial Control

Landau

2016

Syntax

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Controlled null subjects (PRO) are semantically bound variables that bear morphological features. In certain environments of partial control, the morphological φ-features (specifically, [person]) and the semantic value of PRO diverge. A natural explanation of the fact that the [person] feature of PRO is uninterpreted is that it is assigned at PF. Given that this feature participates in agreement relations, we conclude that agreement must be (optionally or exclusively) a PF phenomenon.

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“…Perovic et al (2013a,b), for example, reported that reflexive binding caused no problems to HFA children classified as ALN (autism with normal language). Reflexive binding is a relation that does not incorporate movement and shares many other syntactic properties with obligatory control (see Manzini, 1983; Koster, 1987; Janke, 2008). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contrasting Complement Control, Temporal Adjunct Control and Controlled Verbal Gerund Subjects in ASD: The Role of Contextual Cues in Reference Assignment

Janke

Perovic

2017

Front. Psychol.

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This study examines two complex syntactic dependencies (complement control and sentence-final temporal adjunct control) and one pragmatic dependency (controlled verbal gerund subjects) in children with ASD. Sixteen high-functioning (HFA) children (aged 6–16) with a diagnosis of autism and no language impairment, matched on age, gender and non-verbal MA to one TD control group, and on age, gender and verbal MA to another TD control group, undertook three picture-selection tasks. Task 1 measured their base-line interpretations of the empty categories (ec). Task 2 preceded these sentence sets with a weakly established topic cueing an alternative referent and Task 3 with a strongly established topic cueing an alternative referent. In complement control (Ron persuaded Hermione ec to kick the ball) and sentence-final temporal adjunct control (Harry tapped Luna while ec feeding the owl), the reference of the ec is argued to be related obligatorily to the object and subject respectively. In controlled verbal-gerund subjects (VGS) (ec Rowing the boat clumsily made Luna seasick), the ec's reference is resolved pragmatically. Referent choices across the three tasks were compared. TD children chose the object uniformly in complement control across all tasks but in adjunct control, preferences shifted toward the object in Task 3. In controlled VGSs, they exhibited a strong preference for an internal-referent interpretation in Task 1, which shifted in the direction of the cues in Tasks 2 and 3. HFA children gave a mixed performance. They patterned with their TD counterparts on complement control and controlled VGSs but performed marginally differently on adjunct control: no TD groups were influenced by the weakly established topic in Task 2 but all groups were influenced by the strongly established topic in Task 3. HFA children were less influenced than the TD children, resulting in their making fewer object choices overall but revealing parallel patterns of performance. In this first study of three sub-types of control in ASD, we demonstrate that HFA children consult the same pragmatic cues to the same degree as TD children, in spite of the diverse pragmatic deficits reported for this population.

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Control without a subject

Cited by 10 publications

References 23 publications

Effects of discourse on control

Effects of discourse on control

Agreement at PF: An Argument from Partial Control

Contrasting Complement Control, Temporal Adjunct Control and Controlled Verbal Gerund Subjects in ASD: The Role of Contextual Cues in Reference Assignment

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