Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T06:19:04.311Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Hierarchy effects in copula constructions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2019

Stefan Keine ,
Michael Wagner  and
Jessica Coon
Stefan Keine*
Affiliation:
University of Southern California
Michael Wagner*
Affiliation:
McGill University
Jessica Coon*
Affiliation:
McGill University
*
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper develops a generalization about agreement in German copula constructions described in Coon et al. (2017), and proposes an analysis that ties it to other well-established hierarchy phenomena. Specifically, we show that “assumed-identity” copula constructions in German exibit both person and number hierarchy effects, and that these extend beyond the “non-canonical” or “inverse” agreement patterns described in previous work on copula constructions (e.g., Béjar and Kahnemuyipour 2017 and works cited there). We present experimental evidence to support this generalization, and then develop an account that unifies it with hierarchy phenomena in other languages, with a focus on PCC effects. Specifically, we propose that what German copula constructions have in common with PCC environments is that there are multiple accessible DPs in the domain of a single agreement probe, the lower of which is more featurally specified than the higher (see, e.g., Béjar and Rezac 2003, 2009; Anagnostopoulou 2005; Nevins 2007). We also offer an explanation as to why number effects are present in German copula constructions but notably absent in PCC effects. We then place our account within the broader context of constraints on predication structures.

Résumé

Cet article développe une généralisation sur l'accord dans les phrases copulaires en allemand, décrites par Coon et al. (2017), et propose une analyse reliée à d'autres phénomènes hiérarchiques connus. Plus précisément, nous montrons que les phrases avec copule « d'identité assumée » en allemand affichent des effets hiérarchiques de personne et de nombre et que ceux-ci s’étendent au-delà des configurations « noncanoniques » et « inverses » décrites dans des travaux précédents sur les phrases avec copule (voir par ex. Béjar et Kahnemuyipour 2017 et les travaux qui y sont cités). Nous avançons des preuves expérimentales pour appuyer notre généralisation et présentons ensuite une analyse qui l'unifie avec les phénomènes hiérarchiques d'autres langues, en nous concentrant sur les effets PCC. Plus particulièrement, nous proposons que les constructions avec copule en allemand et les environnements PCC partagent la propriété suivante: ils disposent de multiples syntagmes déterminatifs (DPs) accessibles dans le champ de la sonde d'accord (agreement probe), la sonde inférieure contenant davantage de traits grammaticaux que la sonde supérieure. Nous offrons aussi une raison qui explique pourquoi les effets de nombre se manifestent dans les constructions avec copule en allemand tandis qu'ils sont absents des effets PCCs (voir par ex. Béjar et Rezac 2003, 2009; Anagnostopoulou 2005; Nevins 2007). Nous situons ensuite notre analyse dans le contexte plus général des contraintes sur les structures prédicatives.

Keywords

copula constructionspredicationhierarchy effectsagreementPCC effectsnumber effectsGermanphrases copulairesprédicationphénomènes hiérarchiquesaccordeffets PCCseffets de nombreallemand
Type
Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 64 , Issue 4 , December 2019 , pp. 617 - 648
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association/Association canadienne de linguistique 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Many thanks to Megan Jezewski for programming the experiments. For helpful feedback, comments, and discussion, we would like to thank two reviewers, our editors Jila Ghomeshi and Will Oxford, David Adger, Susana Béjar, Boris Harizanov, Jutta Hartmann, Caroline Heycock, Laura Kalin, Ora Matushansky, Omer Preminger, Carson Schütze, Adrian Stegovec, and audiences at NELS 47 (UMass Amherst), MIT, and the Manitoba Workshop on Person (Winnipeg). For help with the French version of the abstract, we thank Justin Royer. Coon and Wagner gratefully acknowledge funding from the Canada Research Chair program. Errors and misunderstandings are our own.

References

Adger, David, and Harbour, Daniel. 2007. Syntax and syncretisms of the Person Case Constraint. Syntax 10(1): 2–37. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9612.2007.00095.x.Google Scholar
Anagnostopoulou, Elena. 2003. The syntax of ditransitives: Evidence from clitics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Anagnostopoulou, Elena. 2005. Strong and weak person restrictions: A feature checking analysis. In Clitic and affix combinations: Theoretical perspectives, ed. Heggie, Lorie and Ordoñez, Francisco, 199–235. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Anagnostopoulou, Elena. 2017. The Person Case Constraint. In The Wiley Blackwell companion to syntax, 2nd edition, ed. Everaert, Martin and van Riemsdijk, Henk, 3001–3047. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Arregi, Karlos, Francez, Itamar, and Martinović, Martina. 2018. Specificational subjects are individual concepts. Ms. University of Chicago and University of Florida.Google Scholar
Arregi, Karlos, and Nevins, Andrew. 2012. Morphotactics: Basque auxiliaries and the structure of Spellout. Dordrecht: Springer.Google Scholar
Baker, Mark. 2008. The syntax of agreement and concord. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Baker, Mark. 2011. When agreement is for number and gender but not person. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 29(4): 875–915. doi: 10.1007/s11049-011-9147-z.Google Scholar
Barrie, Michael. 2005. Φ-features in the Onondaga agreement paradigm. In Proceedings of the 2005 annual conference of the Canadian Linguistic Association, ed. Claire Gurski. Toronto: Canadian Linguistic Association. Available at 〈http://cla-acl.ca/actes-2005-proceedings/〉.Google Scholar
Béjar, Susana. 2003. Phi-syntax: A theory of agreement. Doctoral dissertation, University of Toronto.Google Scholar
Béjar, Susana. 2011. Remarks on omnivory and complementarity: A commentary on the paper by Andrew Nevins. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 29(4): 973–997. doi: 10.1007/sl 1049-01 1-9160-2.Google Scholar
Béjar, Susana. 2012. Pronoun restrictions in copular contexts. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Canadian Linguistics Association, Hamilton.Google Scholar
Béjar, Susana. 2017. Ineffable person in copular complements. Talk presented at Resolving Conflicts Across Borders, Dubrovnik.Google Scholar
Béjar, Susana, and Kahnemuyipour, Arsalan. 2017. Non-canonical agreement in copular clauses. Journal of Linguistics 53(3): 463–499. doi: 10.1017/S002222671700010X.Google Scholar
Béjar, Susana, and Rezac, Milan. 2003. Person licensing and the derivation of PCC effects. In Romance linguistics: Theory and acquisition, ed. Perez-Leroux, Ana Teresa and Roberge, Yves, 49–62. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Béjar, Susana, and Rezac, Milan. 2009. Cyclic Agree. Linguistic Inquiry 40(1): 35–73. doi: 10.1162/ling.2009.40.1.35.Google Scholar
Bhatia, Sakshi, and Bhatt, Rajesh. 2019. Implications of feature realization in Hindi-Urdu: Copular sentences and fake indexicals. Paper presented at the Workshop on Dependency in Syntactic Covariance (DISCO), Leipzig.Google Scholar
Bianchi, Valentina. 2006. On the syntax of personal arguments. Lingua 116(12): 2023–2067. doi: 10.1016/j.lingua.2005.05.002.Google Scholar
Bonet, Eulàlia. 1991. Morphology after syntax: Pronominal clitics in Romance. Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
Bonet, Eulàlia. 1994. The Person-Case Constraint: A morphological approach. In The morphology–syntax connection, ed. Harley, Heidi and Phillips, Collin, MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 22, 33–52. Cambridge, MA: MITWPL.Google Scholar
Christensen, Rune Haubo B. 2015. Ordinal – Regression models for ordinal data. R package version 2015.6-28. (accessible at 〈http://www.cran.r-project.org/package=ordinal〉).Google Scholar
Collins, Chris, and Postal, Paul Martin. 2012. Imposters: A study of pronominal agreement. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Coon, Jessica, and Keine, Stefan. 2018. Feature gluttony. Ms., McGill University and University of Southern California.Google Scholar
Coon, Jessica, Keine, Stefan, and Wagner, Michael. 2017. Hierarchy effects in copular constructions: The PCC corner of German. In NELS 47: Proceedings of the 47th annual meeting of the North East Linguistics Society, ed. Lamont, Andrew and Tetzloff, Katerina, 205–214. Amherst, MA: GLSA.Google Scholar
Hankamer, Jorge, and Sag, Ivan. 1976. Deep and surface anaphora. Linguistic Inquiry 7(3): 291–428.Google Scholar
Harris, Alice. 1981. Georgian syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Heggie, Lorie A. 1988. The syntax of copular structures. Doctoral dissertation, University of Southern California.Google Scholar
Heycock, Caroline. 2010. Variability and variation in agreement in copular clauses: Evidence from Faroese. Presented at the 25th Comparative Germanic Syntax Workshop, Tromsø.Google Scholar
Heycock, Caroline. 2012. Specification, equation, and agreement in copular sentences. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 57(2): 209–240. doi: 10.1353/cjl.2012.0033.Google Scholar
Hiraiwa, Ken. 2001. Multiple Agree and the defective intervention constraint in Japanese. In The proceedings of the MIT-Harvard joint conference (HUMIT 2000), ed. Matushansky, Ora, MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 40, 67–80. Cambidge, MA: MITWPL.Google Scholar
Hiraiwa, Ken. 2005. Dimensions of symmetry in syntax: Agreement and clausal architecture. Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
Hirsch, Aron. 2017. An inflexible semantics for cross-categorial operators. Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
Kramer, Ruth. 2014. Clitic doubling or object agreement: The view from Amharic. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 32: 593–634. doi: 10.1 007/s11049-014-9233-0.Google Scholar
Laka, Itziar. 1993. The structure of inflection: A case study in X0 syntax. In Generative studies in Basque linguistics, ed. Hualde, José Ignacio and de Urbina, Jon Ortiz, 21–70. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Levin, Theodore. 2015. Licensing without Case. Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
Liddell, Torrin M., and Kruschke, John K.. 2018. Analyzing ordinal data with metric models: What could possibly go wrong? Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 79: 328–348. doi: 10.1016/j.jesp.2018.08.009.Google Scholar
Mikkelsen, Line. 2005. Copular clauses: Specification, predication and equation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Moro, Andrea. 1997. The raising of predicates: Predicative noun phrases and the theory of clause structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Nevins, Andrew. 2007. The representation of third person and its consequences for Person-Case effects. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 25(2): 273–313. doi: 10.1007/s11049-006-9017-2.Google Scholar
Nevins, Andrew. 2011. Multiple Agree with clitics: Person complementarity vs. omnivorous number. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 29(4): 939–971. doi: 10.1007/s11049-011-9150-4.Google Scholar
Pancheva, Roumyana, and Zubizarreta, Maria Luisa. 2018. The Person Case Constraint: The syntactic encoding of perspective. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 36(4): 1291–1337. doi: 10.1007/s11049-017-9395-7.Google Scholar
Preminger, Omer. 2009. Breaking agreements: Distinguishing agreement and clitic doubling by their failures. Linguistic Inquiry 40(4): 619–666.Google Scholar
Preminger, Omer. 2011. Asymmetries between person and number in syntax: A commentary on Baker's SCOPA. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 29(4): 917–937. doi: 10.1007/s11049-011-9155-z.Google Scholar
Preminger, Omer. 2014. Agreement and its failures. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Preminger, Omer. 2019. What the PCC tells us about “abstract” agreement, head movement, and locality. Glossa 4(1): 13. doi: 10.5334/gjgl.315.Google Scholar
Rezac, Milan. 2008. The syntax of eccentric agreement: The PCC and absolutive displacement in Basque. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 26(1): 61–106. doi: 10.1007/s11049-008-9032-6.Google Scholar
Romero, Maribel. 2005. Concealed questions and specificational subjects. Linguistics and Philosophy 28(6): 687–737. doi: 10.1007/s10988-005-2654-9.Google Scholar
Schein, Barry. 2017. ‘And’ – Conjunction reduction redux. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
van Urk, Coppe. 2019. Object licensing in Fijian and the role of adjacency. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory. doi: 10.1007/s11049-019-09442-1.Google Scholar
Woolford, Ellen. 2008. Active-stative agreement in Lakota: Person and number alignment and portmanteau formation. Ms., University of Massachusetts Amherst.Google Scholar