Dutch scrambling and the nature of discourse templates

Neeleman, Ad; Koot, Hans van de

doi:10.1007/s10828-008-9018-0

Cited by 146 publications

(111 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…This indicates that the subject must realize old information: the more topical the subject, the more grammatical the sentence. As is fairly well-established, information-structurally, a topic needs to precede a focus (see Prince 1981, Reinhart 1981, Vallduví 1992, Lambrecht 1994, Haji?ová, Partee, and Sgall 1998, Tomioka 2007, Neeleman and Van de Koot 2008. Thus, in order to be topical, the subject must move across the focused adverb, by adjoining to IP again or by moving to the specifier of a higher functional projection, presumably some TopP.…”

Section: (19) Icelandicmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Rich Agreement Hypothesis Rehabilitated

Koeneman

Zeijlstra

2014

Linguistic Inquiry

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The generalization that V-to-I movement is conditioned by rich subject agreement on the finite verb (the Rich Agreement Hypothesis) has long been taken to indicate a tight connection between syntax and morphology. Recently, the hypothesis has been questioned on both empirical and theoretical grounds. Here, we demonstrate that the empirical arguments against this hypothesis are incorrect and that it therefore must be rehabilitated in its strongest form. Theoretically, we argue that the correlation between syntax and morphology is not direct (morphology does not drive syntax) but follows from principles of language acquisition: only if language learners are confronted with particular morphological contrasts do they postulate the presence of corresponding formal features that in turn drive syntactic operations.

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Section: (19) Icelandicmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Rich Agreement Hypothesis Rehabilitated

Koeneman

Zeijlstra

2014

Linguistic Inquiry

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“…In (51) The answer in (52) is possible only if a contextually given set of Fritz and Irina (and Karl) may be accommodated, i.e., the subject Irina may be interpreted as given. Otherwise, Irina is newly introduced (see also Neeleman and van de Koot 2008), and as such it obligatorily receives a structural accent, which leads to an intervention effect with the fronted focused object. 34 Recall that multiple wh-contexts where both elements are not contextually given do not allow inversion.…”

Section: Multiple Foci/contrastive Topicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Left peripheral focus: mismatches between syntax and information structure

Fanselow

Lenertová

2010

Nat Lang Linguist Theory

115

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In Czech, German, and many other languages, part of the semantic focus of the utterance can be moved to the left periphery of the clause. The main generalization is that only the leftmost accented part of the semantic focus can be moved. We propose that movement to the left periphery is generally triggered by an unspecific edge feature of C (Chomsky 2008) and its restrictions can be attributed to requirements of cyclic linearization, modifying the theory of cyclic linearization developed by Fox and Pesetsky (2005). The crucial assumption is that structural accent is a direct consequence of being linearized at merge, thus it is indirectly relevant for (locality restrictions on) movement. The absence of structural accent correlates with givenness. Given elements may later receive (topic or contrastive) accents, which accounts for fronting in multiple focus/contrastive topic constructions. Without any additional assumptions, the model can account for movement of pragmatically unmarked elements to the left periphery ('formal fronting', Frey 2005). Crucially, the analysis makes no reference at all to concepts of information structure in the syntax, in line with the claim of Chomsky (2008) that UG specifies no direct link between syntax and information structure.

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“…Later research has further suggested that A-movement is also required for semantic reasons for negation (e.g. Haegeman 1995 andChristensen 2005), quantified expressions (Jónsson 1996 andSvenonius 2000), and focus and topic constructions (Neeleman & Van de Koot 2008). A language where we can readily detect all these movements is Hungarian; see the first six chapters in É.…”

Section: Full Interpretationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Feature inheritance versus extended projections

Broekhuis¹

2016

Optimality-Theoretic Syntax, Semantics, and Pragmatics

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This article shows that the empirical data that Chomsky (2008) provides in favor of feature inheritance and parallel movement are rather suspect, and that there are both empirical and conceptual reasons to reject this implementation of the idea that the formal features in C and T originate in a single head position. This does not imply, however, that the latter idea should be completely rejected. This paper argues that there are also reasons to assume that the relevant features all originate in the T-head, and that the C-position comes (or rather: may come) into existence as a result of the remerge of T as a specific instantiation of the formation of extended projections in the sense of Grimshaw (1997). We will conclude by showing that the extended projection approach is preferred to the feature inheritance approach in terms of optimization/economy given that for subject-initial sentences, CP-structures are normally harmonically bounded by TP-structures due to the fact that they invoke additional violations of *MOVE and *MERGE.

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Dutch scrambling and the nature of discourse templates

Cited by 146 publications

References 35 publications

The Rich Agreement Hypothesis Rehabilitated

The Rich Agreement Hypothesis Rehabilitated

Left peripheral focus: mismatches between syntax and information structure

Feature inheritance versus extended projections

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