Locality constraints in nominal evaluation times

The temporal arguments of VPs and adverbs must be locally coindexed with the nearest time abstraction above them (Percus 2000). In contrast, nouns, which also have time arguments, have been noted to have multiple available evaluation times (Enç 1981), often coinciding with the topic time (e.g. Musan 1995, Tonhauser 2002, Keshet 2008) or utterance time (O’Leary 2017, O’Leary & Brasoveanu 2018). I argue that we can explain the possible temporal interpretations of nouns in a way that makes their behavior consistent with that of VPs and adverbs by positing an analogous locality constraint and making a simple appeal to quantifier raising. I additionally propose that the need for a locality constraint on the coindexing of temporal arguments extends to all predicates introducing novel referents.

Syntax of the Palestinian Arabic negation-associated exclusive construction

This paper presents an analysis of a Palestinian Arabic negation-associated exclusive construction featuring the contrastive focus marker illa ‘but’, with theoretical implications for the syntax of negation, negative polarity item licensing, and the categorical status of the root in sentential syntax. It analyzes illa-phrases as constituents licensed by a c-commanding sentential negation (Neg), and illa as a grammatical device encoding contrastiveness. A crucial source for the exclusive semantics of the construction comes from a silent bass ‘only’ immediately following illa that constitutes a syntactic ‘shield’ against Neg scope. Rather than taking an in-situ focus-interpretation approach (cf. Rooth 1985, 1992), we argue for two covert movements at the syntax-semantics interface: quantifier raising of illa-phrases to the designated specifier of polarity Phrase followed by Polarity-to-Focus-raising of Neg. This creates the right syntactic configuration for the truth conditional import of both operators and captures the ‘classical’ thought that focus-sensitive exclusive operators like only quantify over propositional alternatives.

Superlative QP “Hyper-Raising” in dialectal Spanish: the role of dormant Edge Features

In this paper I deal with a particular relative-clause superlative construction attested in Spanish dialects like Canariense (Bosque & Brucart 1991) and Puerto Rican (Rohena-Madrazo 2007), among others. In this construction the superlative quantifier raises to the left of the complementizer of the relative clause. However, as observed by Bosque & Brucart (1991), only object quantifiers can move in this way; subject quantifiers cannot. I account for this assymmetry by assuming Bianchi’s (2000) raising analysis for relative clauses, Kandybowicz’s (2009) theory on edge features and Pesetsky & Torrego’s (2001) proposal on Tense-to-Comp movement (among other assumptions). Object-quantifier movement correlates with Tense-to- Comp movement, which activates an edge feature for objects and allows them to escape the phasal minimal domain undergoing Transfer. This is not possible for subject-quantifier movement. I also propose that the determiner introducing a relative clause bears an uninterpretable [Superlative] feature with clitic-like properties. This feature forces the determiner to post-syntactically cliticize to the superlative quantifier degree word, a process which requires linear adjacency. This accounts for certain restrictions on this sort of superlative quantifier raising already pointed out by Bosque & Brucart (1991) The proposal (similar to the one in Rohena-Madrazo 2007) that [Superlative] may also be in Force in these dialects (if selected for Force by the determiner) explains a more restrictive (and widespread) variant of this construction.

A Remark on the Economics of Quantifier Raising

Quantifier Raising is often considered to be a relatively local operation, though it has been argued that nonlocal applications are licensed by generating new scope interpretations ( Fox 2000 , Reinhart 2006 ) or resolving antecedent-contained deletions ( Fox 2002 , Wilder 2003 , Cecchetto 2004 ). In this article, an account of the restricted distribution of sloppy pronouns in antecedent-contained deletions leads to the conclusion that exceptional applications of Quantifier Raising are in fact not licensed purely by virtue of QR’s escaping the antecedent for ellipsis.

Antecedent-Contained Deletion

This chapter introduces the linguistic phenomenon of Antecedent-Contained Deletion (ACD): a type of construction in which a site of Verb Phrase Ellipsis (VPE) is contained in the antecedent from which it derives its interpretation. The chapter reviews theoretical approaches to resolving interpretation in ACD structures (drawing primarily on the covert movement operation of Quantifier Raising (QR)), and the accessibility of one or more sentential interpretations when the site of ellipsis is embedded in non-finite and finite clauses. Behavioural responses from offline judgement studies with children and adults, as well as online studies with adults, provide data bearing directly on these theoretical accounts.

Focus Association by Movement: Evidence from Tanglewood

We argue for the existence of covert focus movement in English focus association with only. Our evidence comes from Tanglewood configurations of the form in Kratzer 1991 . We show that Tanglewood configurations are sensitive to syntactic islands, contrary to Kratzer’s claims and predictions. We propose that Tanglewood configurations always involve covert movement of the focused constituent—possibly with covert pied-piping—to bind a bound variable in the ellipsis site. This availability of covert pied-piping explains examples such as Kratzer’s where the Tanglewood construction appears to be island-insensitive. We show that covert focus movement is long-distance and not simply Quantifier Raising. Kratzer’s proposal that ellipsis enforces the identity of focus indices and several other previous approaches are shown to overgenerate Tanglewood readings.

Dissociating intervention effects from superiority in English wh-questions

In wh-questions, intervention effects are detected whenever certain elements – focus-sensitive operators, negative elements, and quantifiers – c-command an in-situ wh-word. Pesetsky (2000, Phrasal movement and its kin. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) presents a comprehensive study of intervention effects in English multiple wh-questions, arguing that intervention correlates with superiority: superiority-violating questions are subject to intervention effects, while superiority-obeying questions are immune from such effects. This description has been adopted as an explanandum in most recent work on intervention, such as Beck (2006, Intervention effects follow from focus interpretation. Natural Language Semantics 14. 1–56) and Cable (2010, The Grammar of Q: Q-particles, wh-movement, and pied-piping. Oxford University Press), a.o. In this paper, I show instead that intervention effects in English questions correlate with the available LF positions for wh-in-situ and the intervener, but not with superiority. The grammar allows for several different ways of repairing intervention configurations, including wh-movement, scrambling, Quantifier Raising, and reconstruction. Intervention effects are observed when none of these repair strategies are applicable, and there is no way of avoiding the intervention configuration – regardless of superiority. Nonetheless, I show that these results are consistent with the syntax proposed for English questions in Pesetsky (2000, Phrasal movement and its kin. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) and with the semantic theory of intervention effects in Beck (2006, Intervention effects follow from focus interpretation. Natural Language Semantics 14. 1–56).