The effect of filler complexity and context on the acceptability of wh-island violations in Dutch

Acceptability judgements of syntactic island violations are often claimed to improve by either increasing the complexity of the wh-filler phrase or integrating the violating sentence into a discourse. In two acceptability judgement tasks, we looked at wh-island violations in Dutch by varying the complexity of the filler phrase and by presenting the sentences either in isolation or with a preceding discourse. We found that neither variable had a significant effect in isolation, but that only in their combination a significant effect was observed. The same effect showed up in non-island conditions, however. This is in contrast to findings in the literature on English and French and suggests that the complexity effect in Dutch is not syntactic. We therefore conclude that wh-islands are strong islands in Dutch (Broekhuis & Corver 2015) and show that the contrast with English and French can be made to follow from featural Relativized Minimality (Rizzi 2017), taking into account the verb second property of Dutch.

(a-)Topics and animacy

The aim of this paper is twofold: first, we intend to contribute to the debate on the identification of the features to which syntactic locality expressed in terms of the featural Relativized Minimality/fRM principle appears to be sensitive (Rizzi 2004; Friedmann, Belletti & Rizzi 2009); second, we aim at providing a better characterization of the distributional and interpretive properties of the process of a-marking in the Topic position of the Italian left periphery identified by syntactic cartography, in relation to (in)animacy (Belletti & Manetti 2018). To these aims, we examined the role of animacy in a production experiment eliciting left dislocated topics with 5-year-old children. To the extent that a-marking is related to a kind of affectedness of object topics (Belletti 2018a), we examined whether an inanimate left dislocated object could constitute a felicitous a-Topic. Furthermore, the question whether complexity effects are modulated in the computation of fRM in an animacy mismatch condition (between an inanimate left dislocated object and an intervening (animate) lexical subject) is also addressed within the context of ClLDs. Our results show that, in the tested animacy mismatch condition, children seldom a-marked the pre-posed object. Instead, they appeared to creatively explore other solutions to overcome the production of the hard intervention structure, mainly using null subjects. As children are not ready to compute the intervention configuration with a lexical preverbal subject, but could not naturally adjust it through a-marking of the inanimate topic, they ended up opting for different types of productions in which intervention was eliminated. If the animacy feature seems to be implicated in the process of a-marking to some extent, it is not a feature to which the fRM principle is sensitive in building the object A’-dependency in ClLD: we conclude, in line with previous work, that animacy is not among the features implicated in triggering syntactic movement (in Italian).

The Scrambling Paradox

It has been commonly observed that scrambling and wh-movement share sensitivity to strong movement constraints ( Webelhuth 1989 , Saito 1992 , Bailyn 1995 ). At the same time, the two processes clearly differ in certain other respects, such as wh-island sensitivity, a finding that has inspired a range of analyses of scrambling as entirely distinct from better-understood movement processes ( Müller and Sternefeld 1993 , Bošković and Takahashi 1998 , among many others). Careful comparison of Ā-scrambling and overt wh-movement in a language that shows both (Russian) reveals that this seemingly paradoxical behavior can be captured effectively in a probe-goal theory of scrambling that obeys a form of Relativized Minimality defined across feature classes, following Rizzi 2004 . The resulting analysis exposes the distinct nature of strong and weak islands, with consequences for our understanding of the core architecture of syntactic movement.

Intervention in relative clauses: Effects of relativized minimality on L2 representation and processing

This article reports on an experiment investigating the effects of featural Relativized Minimality (Friedmann et al., 2009) on the representation and processing of relative clauses in the second language (L2) English of Mandarin speakers. Object relatives (ORCs) are known to cause greater problems in first language (L1) acquisition and in adult processing than subject relatives (SRCs). Featural Relativized Minimality explains this in terms of intervention effects, caused by a DP (the subject of the ORC) located between the relative head and its source. Intervention effects are claimed to be reduced if the relative head and the intervenor differ in features, such as number (e.g. I know the king who the boys pushed). We hypothesize that L2 learners will show intervention effects when processing ORCs and that such effects will be reduced if the intervenor differs in number from the relative head. There were two tasks: picture identification and self-paced reading. Both manipulated relative clause type (SRC/ORC) and intervenor type (±plural). Accuracy was high in interpreting relative clauses, suggesting no representational problem. Regarding reading times, ORCs were processed slower than SRCs, supporting an intervention effect. However, faster reading times were found in ORCs when intervenor and head noun matched in number, contrary to hypothesis. We suggest that our more stringent stimuli may have resulted in the lack of an effect for mismatched ORCs, in contrast to some earlier findings for L1 acquirers.

Parameterizing subject–verb inversion across Verb Second languages

By discussing novel data from two Dolomitic Ladin languages spoken in Northern Italy, Badiotto and Gardenese, it is shown that in these Verb Second languages subject-finite verb inversion is constrained by the syntactic (adverb or object) and discourse (focus or topic) nature of the sentence-initial constituent, and by the discourse status of the DP subject. The chapter demonstrates that in both varieties subjects in inversion either appear in a FocusP of the vP periphery or in an A position in the IP layer, and that the observed distribution of inversion follows from two universal constraints of movement affecting extraction through the vP edge: (a) cyclicity (extraction through the edge of the vP phase) and (b) locality/ Relativized Minimality (RM). By comparing the distribution of DP subjects in Ladin with that observed in other V2 languages, such as Mòcheno and Mainland Scandinavian, the chapter proposes a novel typology of V2 languages and of subject-finite verb inversion to be captured in terms of parametric variation.

Aspects of the syntax of ce in French copular sentences

This chapter offers a syntactic analysis of French ce in copular constructions. It is argued that the distribution of ce is best understood in terms of the conditions on the agree operation inside the copular sentence. The proform ce, an expletive, is inserted whenever an agreement relationship cannot be established between an element in the subject position and an element from the PredP (Bowers 1993). Two sources of agreement failure are considered. In one case, agreement failure results from syntactic constraints on movement (Relativized Minimality, criterial freezing) together with focalization. In the other case, agreement failure results from the absence of accessible phi-features on the subject, possibly as the result of a grammatical shift taking place at the interface. This chapter further highlights the relevance of two subject positions (Subj1 and Subj2) each with their own interpretational properties.

Intervention effects in grammar and language acquisition

Intervention effects have been thoroughly studied in formal syntax in the domain of weak islands. They also have recently been appealed to in the study of language acquisition, to capture certain difficulties that young children manifest in the mastery of some object A’-bar dependencies (relatives, questions, topicalizations). Can one unify such distinct utilizations of the concept of intervention under a single formal locality principle? This paper explores the possibility of a unitary approach by proposing solutions for observed discrepancies between the effects in adults and children, and more generally between the different utilizations of the concept of intervention in recent work on adult grammar and language acquisition. Relativized Minimality (RM) is seen as a formal principle penalizing configurations as a function of the distinctness between target and intervener in local relations, where distinctness is precisely expressed as a grammar-based notion. A unitary system consisting of RM and an explicit distinctness hierarchy is argued to be operative in intervention effects in grammar and language acquisition.

Decomposing Complementizers

This chapter discusses the morphosyntax of French, Modern Greek, Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian complementizers equivalent to English that. From long-distance wh-extractions across complementizers in these languages, it is shown that (i) the morpheme complementizer is composed of features that are hierarchically ordered according to a functional sequence (fseq) (see Baunaz 2015, 2016a; Baunaz and Lander to appear); (ii) the complementizer morpheme lexicalizes structures of different sizes; (iii) the distribution of complementizers is governed by veridicality (see Baunaz 2015, 2016a); (iv) the complementizer morpheme is syntactically active. The basic template for complementizers that I argue for is F4 > F3 > F2 > F1. Evidence in favor of this template comes from crosslinguistic patterns of syncretism and featural Relativized Minimality (Starke 2001; Rizzi 2004; Haegeman 2010, among others). Evidence in favor of different realizations of the complementizer is provided by means of long-distance extractions across declarative embedded clauses.

Aboutness Topics in Old and Middle French: A corpus-based study on the fate of V2

This article investigates the loss of aboutness topics in preverbal position in the history of French, using a corpus-based research on preverbal accusative objects. A comparison of Old and Middle French with Modern French reveals that new-information focalization had disappeared by the 14thcentury, whereas aboutness topicalization had in turn vanished by the end of the 16thcentury, along with other marked constructions. Combined with the generative premise that independent pragmatic factors should not trigger syntactic change, the results of this study suggest the reanalysis of the grammar as V-to-I in Renaissance French is responsible for blocking the derivation of aboutness topicalization. An alternative proposal based on phase extension and on Relativized Minimality, in a version affecting some types of A′-movement, relates those two diachronic shifts. The article concludes with the idea that the study of marked constructions may be recast as offering diagnostics on broader syntactic changes.