Spurious Ambiguities and the Parentheticals Debate

Pankau, Andreas; Thiersch, Craig; Würzner, Kay-Michael

doi:10.1524/9783050062365.129

Cited by 3 publications

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“…Rather, a different, but ultimately comparable scenario can play out at the interface between the grammatical subcomponents and the semantic interface. In a phenomenon called spurious ambiguity (Karttunen 1989;Steedman 1991;Pankau et al 2010), the syntax supplies two structures, but the semantic component will not reflect this syntactic difference. Consider the two analyses of the following sentences: = extraction…”

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confidence: 99%

Indeterminacies and mismatches in grammatical systems

Struckmeier

Pankau

2020

Zeitschrift Für Sprachwissenschaft

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This introduction proposes to investigate mismatches and indeterminacies in languages much more than has hitherto been done. Such seemingly unruly aspects of language(s), it is argued, are interesting since they may help shed light on the internal make-up of grammatical systems. The question of the internal make-up of grammar(s), it is argued, cannot be addressed by the normal modus operandi of linguistic research, which is to find matches (rather than mismatches) between the observable (sound and meaning) interface systems, and to find how the interface representations map unto each other deterministically: It is only in the “lo-fi” aspects of mappings that the internal mechanisms of the overall grammatical architecture may reveal themselves.The introduction also points out that our concern is independent of the various theoretical orientations linguists may choose for their work, since the problem presents itself in all approaches to language research currently available, it seems – if in slightly different ways.We propose, in sum, that mismatches and indeterminacies are an extremely worthwhile field for future linguistic research, and one that should be on the agenda (or minimally, within the field of view) for linguists of all theoretical convictions.

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Section: Previous Work On Similar Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Indeterminacies and mismatches in grammatical systems

Struckmeier

Pankau

2020

Zeitschrift Für Sprachwissenschaft

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“…For more recent discussion of VIPs, seeBayer and Salzmann 2013, Pankau, Thiersch, and Würzner 2010, and Viesel 2011, and for experimental explorations, seeKiziak 2010. …”

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A New Diagnostic for Cyclic Wh-Movement: Discourse Particles in German Questions

2016

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This article presents novel evidence for cyclic wh-movement. Two experiments show that the question-sensitive particle denn in German is more readily accepted when occurring in an independent interrogative clause than in a dependent clause embedded in a wh-question. Importantly, however, acceptance of denn in a dependent clause increases significantly when a wh-phrase has been moved out of that clause. We argue that denn is locally licensed by an interrogative Force head. In dependent clauses, this licensing can be mediated by long wh-movement leaving a transient representation of interrogative force in Spec,CP. Without such a mediating trace in Spec,CP, the licensing of the particle fails. In conclusion, denn in a dependent clause indicates cyclic wh-movement.

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Remnant Movement

Thiersch

2017

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Syntax, Second Edition

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This chapter deals with incomplete category fronting, that is, with the appearance in a topic position of what seems to be a constituent lacking some of its parts, which appear elsewhere in the clause. There have been several approaches to these constructions: (1) extraction of the subpart to a position elsewhere in the clause and subsequent topicalization of the full constituent, which now contains a trace of the subpart (remnant movement); (2) base‐generating the subpart elsewhere and topicalizing the rest (without a trace of the subpart); (3) copying the full constituent to the “topic” position and deleting (different) parts of the two copies (distributed deletion). While I discuss (2) and (3) briefly, I concentrate on (1), hence the title of the chapter.

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Spurious Ambiguities and the Parentheticals Debate

Cited by 3 publications

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Indeterminacies and mismatches in grammatical systems

Indeterminacies and mismatches in grammatical systems

A New Diagnostic for Cyclic Wh-Movement: Discourse Particles in German Questions

Remnant Movement

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