Linguistics Graduate Students Association

I revisit the interpretation of the so-called definite determiner, nò in Akan. I contend that contrary to previous analyses, nò is not a definite determiner of type <<e,t>e>. Rather, I claim it is as a partial identity function which triggers an anaphoric presupposition. The main advantage of the present theory is that it presents a uniform semantics of the … Read More

Meg Gotowski. “What Quoi-sluices reveal about ellipsis and wh-clitics in French.” Shiori Ikawa. “Long-distance binding of the reflexive anaphor zibun in Japanese”

Putting our heads together: Icelandic deverbal event nouns and allosemy Grimshaw (1990) showed that when an event noun is derived from a verb, it is systematically ambiguous. In the “Complex Event Nominal” (CEN), eyðilegging 'destruction' refers to an event and inherits argument structure from the verb (as in eyðilegging borgarinnar var hræðilegur atburður 'the destruction of the town was … Read More

Ungrammaticality from triviality: deriving selectional restrictions of attitude verbs It's commonly assumed that ungrammaticality is a syntactic notion and should receive a purely syntactic explanation. Yet there are many proposals appealing to squarely semantic considerations in order to account for certain cases of ungrammaticality. In this seminar meeting, we will first discuss one particular strategy … Read More

Witness protection: A unified semantics for additive particles in assertions and questions The English additive particle also can appear in assertions and polar questions, but not in canonical wh-questions: (1)  Mary danced all night. a. John also danced. b. Did John also dance? c. #Who also danced? It has been suggested that when also appears … Read More