This paper provides an analysis of an alternative strategy to A’-movement in both German and Dutch where the extracted constituent is preceded by a preposition and a coreferential pronoun appears in the extraction site. The construction has properties of both binding and movement: Whereas reconstruction effects suggest movement out of the embedded clause, there is strong evidence that the opera...

This paper proposes an approach to control extraction in the framework of Abstract Categorial Grammar (ACG). As examples, we consider embedded wh-extraction, multiple wh-extraction and tensed-clauses as scope islands. The approach relies on an extended type system for ACG that introduces dependent types and advocates for a treatment at a rather abstract (tectogrammatical) level. Then we discuss...

This paper aims to clarify and resolve issues surrounding the so-called formal linking problem in interpreting the Internally Headed Relative Clause construction in Korean and Japanese, a problem that has been identified in recent E-type pronominal treatments of the construction (e.g., Hoshi 1995, Shimoyama 1999). In the literature, this problem refers to the difficulty of capturing the delimit...

In Danish relative clauses and embedded interrogative clauses are not extraction islands. However, there is an asymmetry between the two clauses. In Danish it is possible to extract the subject out of an embedded interrogative clause. Extraction of the subject out of a relative clause, on the other hand, is not allowed. In this paper we present a formal HPSG analysis of extraction in Danish whi...

In this paper I consider both the acquisition and loss of V2 (verb-second) word order, discussing some historical evidence from English and present-day data from Norwegian dialects. In both cases, there is a certain word order optionality, in that there are some clause types which require V2, while others require or allow non-V2. Furthermore, within the same clause type there are certain elemen...

In sluiced clauses, English allows a wh-expression to be inverted around its preposition in a process called swiping, as in (1a) (Merchant 2002). I show, contrary to previous work, that swiping is not limited to ellipsis contexts: it is also permitted when the inverted (swiped) whPP is coordinated with another wh-phrase, as shown for both matrix and embedded contexts in (1b-c), both from the in...

One of the most pervasive properties of human language is the existence of dependencies: necessary relationships that hold between two elements in a sentence. The primary objects of study in this volume are long-distance “fillergap” dependencies – a special subset of dependencies that are not constrained by standard measures of length such as number of words or number of clauses. For example, w...

Wh-exclamatives are usually considered degree constructions (e.g., Zanuttini & Portner 2003, Castroviejo 2008, Rett 2008). However, Japanese possesses what I call negative wh-expressives, which unrelated to degree. argue that unlike typical wh-exclamatives, wh-expressive sentences express a speaker’s attitude, and their compositional system is similar of an interrogative sentence except for...

In relative clauses, the wh relative pronoun can be embedded in a larger phrase, as in a boy [whose brother] Mary hit. In such examples, we say that the larger phrase has pied-piped along with the whword. In this paper, using a similar syntactic analysis for wh pied-piping as in Han (2002) and further developed in Kallmeyer and Scheffler (2004), I propose a compositional semantics for relative ...

Abstract. In relative clauses, the wh relative pronoun can be embedded in a larger phrase, as in “a boy [whose brother] Mary hit” and “a boy [whose brother’s friend] Mary hit”. In such examples, we say that the larger phrase containing the wh-word has pied-piped along with the wh-word. In this paper, using a similar syntactic analysis for wh pied-piping as in Han (2002) and further developed in...