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Displacement is a fundamental property of human language, and the restrictions on displacement have been a central concern in generative grammar ever since Ross' (1967) ground-breaking observations of island constraints. While island phenomena have been investigated in detail from various perspectives, a different domain, the domain of Freezing, originally defined in terms of non-base structures, has received far less attention. This volume brings together papers that address the questions of: What are the different concepts of Freezing? Which empirical domains can they explain? Is Freezing a core-syntactic restriction or does information structure, or processing play a role? The collection of papers provides insights into the empirical basis of the Freezing Principle in relation to other restrictions on extraction in order to contribute to a broader understanding of the nature of restrictions on displacement in language. The overall goal of the volume is a reconsideration of Freezing and other (sub-)extraction phenomena, both from a theoretical and empirical perspective, by bringing together contributions from experts in the field to discuss and broaden our knowledge of the empirical range of Freezing phenomena as well as their explanation.
Sprachliche Variation
(2018)
Der Beitrag diskutiert anhand von Kongruenzschwankungen im Zusammenhang mit Subjektreihungen verschiedene Aspekte sprachlicher Variation. Es wird gezeigt, wie mithilfe einer Korpusstudie grammatische Faktoren ermittelt werden können, die die Verteilung der Varianten steuern. Im Anschluss wird eine Analyse vorgestellt, die Variation darauf zurückführt, dass syntaktische Strukturen, die an der Schnittstelle zur Morphologie/Phonologie nicht vollständig interpretierbar sind, auf verschiedene Arten repariert werden können.
Our corpus study is concerned with subject-verb agreement in contemporary German, more precisely the variation in verb number. We focus on subjects consisting of noun phrases coordinated by the conjunction und (‘and’). In our samples, both nouns are in singular. Number resolution – i.e., plural verb despite of the singular nouns – can be regarded as the default choice in contemporary German. However, our data show that eliding the second determiner in the subject enhances the probability of using the singular verb. This ellipsis effect is highly significant in German and Austrian texts. It seems to be weaker in Swiss texts. Regression analyses reveal that the ellipsis effect is stronger than both the highly significant influence of subject individuation and the significant effect of subject agentivity.
This paper explores the syntax of agreement in Insular Scandinavian in copular clauses with two potential goals for agreement. Data from three production experiments - one in Faroese and two in Icelandic - establish several new facts. First, in both languages agreement with the second nominal (DP2) is possible/preferred. Second, there is considerable variation (both within and between languages, and indeed speakers) in the patterns observed. Third, Icelandic shows a surprising pattern of “partial” agreement with DP2 - agreement in number but not person. We discuss the implications for current theorising about agreement, proposing that in these languages, at least, agreement is downwards, and that the available agreement options depend in part on the syntactic position of DPI when agreement is established.
Arguments and Agreement
(2006)
This book brings together new work by leading syntactic theorists from the USA and Europe on a central aspect of syntactic and morphological theory: it explores the role of agreement morphology in the morphosyntactic realization of a verb's arguments. The authors examine the differences and parallels between nonconfigurational, pronominal- agreement languages; configurational languages which allow pronoun drop (for example, "Is coming" for "He is coming"); languages that allow pronoun drop in particular constructions only; and languages which always require overt syntactic determiner phrases as arguments. The book considers whether the morphological properties of agreement play a role in determining which of these types a language belongs to and how far languages differ with respect to the argumental status of their agreement and syntactic determiner phrases. The authors explore these and related issues and problems in the context of a wide range of languages. Their book will interest linguists at graduate level and above concerned with morphosyntactic theory, linguistic typology, and the interactions of syntax and morphology in different languages.