Se out of control

Within the framework of a uniform theory of the so-called se constructions in Spanish, I propose to explain a control ban that has received almost no attention in the previous bibliography. Specifically, as long as a subject control sentence has an impersonal SE as controller, the subordinate infinitive clause cannot contain any other instance of the clitic SE, other than the so-called spurious SE. The source of this restriction follows, as I will argue, from a legibility problem at LF produced, specifically, by a failed attempt to apply Agree between PRO and the embedded SE, which, as we shall see, acts as a probe for A-movement. If the explanation that I offer is correct, it also follows a series of theoretical conclusions that directly affect the way in which we must conceive of the design of Agree in the syntax and its effect at the LF interface. In particular, the system tolerates certain Agree failures (Preminger 2014) as long as it does not affect legibility in the semantics. Indeed, the theory of SE constructions that I assume here derives the distinction between paradigmatic and non-paradigmatic SE as the result of successful or unsuccessful Agree applications, respectively. The limit of this tolerance to failed applications of Agree must be found in the type of semantic object that can be deduced at LF. This limit is illustrated with the aforementioned restriction in control and impersonal SE contexts that motivates the present study.

Can you reach for the planets or grasp at the stars? – Modified noun, verb, or preposition constituents in idiom processing

Idioms are a special case of multi-word expressions in that their meaning cannot be compositionally constructed from the meaning of the single constituents. The question of how the idiomatic meaning is assembled remains an unsettled issue in psycholinguistic research. The present study examines whether the figurative meaning of an idiom is recognized if critical idiomatic constituents, such as the noun, verb, or preposition, are modified. In three paraphrase experiments, participants saw (a) the canonical idiomatic phrase (e.g., She reached for the stars), (b) the idiomatic phrase with a modified constituent (e.g., She reached/grasped for/at the stars/planets), or (c) a matched literal control sentence (e.g., She reached for the sweets) and rated on a scale from 1 (not at all) - 7 (completely) how strongly the sentence reflected the meaning of a paraphrase of the idiom (e.g., She has always aspired to unattainable goals). Sentence type and constituent type strongly affected paraphrase ratings with highest ratings for canonical idiomatic phrases, lowest ratings for control sentences, and ratings in between for idioms with modified constituents. Further, idioms with modified verbs were rated higher in matching the figurative meaning than idioms with modified prepositions or nouns. Overall these findings indicate that the figurative meaning was assembled in spite of the modifications. We conclude that idioms are not fully ‘semantically fixed’ but allow for some flexibility in the processing of idioms. Modified constituents that activate meanings similar to those of the canonical constituents will co-activate the figurative meaning of the idiom together with the other idiomatic constituents. We discuss psycholinguistic models on idiom comprehension.

Obligatory control and event structure in Kavalan

The embedded verb of so-called object-control verbs in Kavalan must be affixed with the causative marker pa-. It is argued that such control predicates in Kavalan like pawRat ‘force’ feature an internal Logophoric Center in its complement clause and this property of logophoricity is absent in other control predicates. Moreover, control predicates that do not take a causativized verb complement like paska ‘try’ and tud ‘teach’ are restructuring predicates and are thus devoid of a Fin head in their complement that can be linked to an internal Logophoric Center. In contrast, the TP and CP of the complement of pawRat ‘force’-type predicates are still projected and active. The causativization of the embedded verb in a control sentence cannot be explained by a purely syntactic or semantic account of obligatory control. Instead, a comprehensive and satisfactory explanation for Kavalan obligatory control must take into account how event structure and Logophoric Center are encoded in Syntax.