NP-Interpretation and the Structure of Predicates

Hallman, Peter

doi:10.1353/lan.2004.0195

Cited by 17 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Here I use v trans from Kratzer 1996 to introduce the external argument, v obj from Jelinek 1998 to introduce the direct object (what Jelinek calls v [trans] ; cf. Bowers 1993, Basilico 1998, and Hallman 2004, and v P to introduce arguments that are marked with various prepositions, following the line of work that introduces oblique arguments as selected by ''applicative'' v's of various sorts (see Anagnostopoulou 2003 andPylkkänen 2008 for recent approaches). The latter sort of v will be coded as selecting the appropriate preposition; for example, v with selects a PP headed by with, and so on.…”

Section: Internal Argument Alternations Under Ellipsismentioning

confidence: 99%

Voice and Ellipsis

2013

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Elided VPs and their antecedent VPs can mismatch in voice, with passive VPs being elided under apparent identity with active antecedent VPs, and vice versa. Such voice mismatches are not allowed in any other kind of ellipsis, such as sluicing and other clausal ellipses. These latter facts appear to indicate that the identity relation in ellipsis is sensitive to syntactic form, not merely to semantic form. The VPellipsis facts fall into place if the head that determines voice is external to the phrase being elided, here argued to be vP; such an account can only be framed in approaches that allow syntactic features to be separated from the heads on which they are morphologically realized. Alternatives to this syntactic, articulated view of ellipsis and voice either undergenerate or overgenerate.The conditions that regulate the distribution of ellipsis have long held a central place in linguistic theory because of the possibility they raise for shedding light on fundamental questions about the form-meaning mapping. Various theories in the last four decades have used elliptical constructions as testing grounds for exploring the nature of the various posited components of the grammar, both syntax-phonology interactions and syntax-semantic ones. Elliptical phenomena were, and continue to be, a central point in the debate over the nature of linguistic representations as well. Broadly speaking, two strands are distinguishable: those that take ellipsis to be entirely a semantic phenomenon, and those that posit that ellipsis is sensitive to syntactic form (either in lieu of semantic form or as a supplement to it). The question is important because how it is answered has straightforward implications for the fundamentals of linguistic theory. If syntactic form is implicated, grammar formalisms that eschew unpronounced syntactic structures must be amended for judgments on the German.The paper published here was originally completed in 2007. It did not seem wise to try to update it to take into account all the more recent developments in the literature on these matters (though see Chung 2013 for a recent approach and references); and because the facts it presents and the basic structural analysis it gives have been cited in the interim, it seems better in the interests of scholarship to present it essentially as originally written, with minimal changes.

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Section: Internal Argument Alternations Under Ellipsismentioning

confidence: 99%

Voice and Ellipsis

2013

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“…There are many different theories of the nature of this widening and how it arises in the literature (see also Chierchia, 2004Chierchia, , 2013Dayal, 1998Dayal, , 2005Giannakidou, 1998;Krifka, 1995; among many others); however, what is relevant to our analysis is that any can have a particular pragmatic function (domain widening) that is much less available with regular indefinites (i.e., a potato, potatoes). It is well known that particular semantic and/or pragmatic interpretations assigned to a DP can have an effect on its syntactic distribution (Beghelli & Stowell, 1997;Diesing, 1992;Hallman, 2004;Ioup, 1977; among others), thus it is important to determine whether pragmatic widening plays a role in creating the quantitative patterns of Neg-Q/NPI alternation that we observe in synchronic and diachronic corpora.…”

Section: Codingmentioning

confidence: 98%

Structural explanations in syntactic variation: The evolution of English negative and polarity indefinites

2018

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It is well documented that the study of differences in grammaticality contrasts across the world's languages has implications for the synchronic study of preferential/frequency contrasts within a single language. Our paper extends this observation, arguing that the cross-linguistic study of both grammaticality and frequency contrasts can be crucial to the proper characterization of patterns of diachronic change. As an illustration of this proposal, we investigate patterns of synchronic and diachronic variation in the use of postverbal negative quantifiers (e.g., nothing, nobody, no book, etc., as in, I know nothing) versus negative polarity items under negation (e.g., not … anything, not … anybody, not … any book, etc., as in, I don't know anything) in English. We show how a detailed comparison with similar patterns found elsewhere in closely related languages can give us a better understanding of which linguistic factors condition the use of these different kinds of indefinites in Modern Spoken English and a new perspective on a well-studied proposed change in progress in the English quantificational system.

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“…A closer inspection reveals that English is not as different from Arabic as it seems at first glance. The expression most + bare plural is most natural in contexts that also license generic bare plurals (Cooper 1996;Matthewson 2001;Crnič 2010), such as object of a subject experiencer verb (37a) (Erteschik-Shir 1997;Hallman 2004) or subject of an individual level predicate (37b) (Milsark 1974;Carlson 1977a;Diesing 1992). (37) a. John admires most linguists.…”

Section: Quantity Superlative + Indefinite Dependentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Universal quantification as degree modification in Arabic

Hallman

2016

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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This paper demonstrates similarities between the universal quantifier kull 'every/all' and superlatives of quality and quantity in Standard Arabic. These similarities point to an analysis of kull as a kind of superlative. An analysis is developed that characterizes the meaning of kull as a minor variation on the meaning of the superlative morpheme that occurs in quality and quantity superlatives. The difference between kull's strongly distributive meaning analogous to every and its weakly distributive meaning analogous to all is argued to be the result of a type-shifting mechanism. This analysis teases apart the syntactic and semantic components of the three construction types examined here and identifies the uniformity that runs through them.

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NP-Interpretation and the Structure of Predicates

Cited by 17 publications

References 41 publications

Voice and Ellipsis

Voice and Ellipsis

Structural explanations in syntactic variation: The evolution of English negative and polarity indefinites

Universal quantification as degree modification in Arabic

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