Title: English possessive determiner phrases and coordination
Source document: Linguistica Brunensia. 2020, vol. 68, iss. 2, pp. 45-64
Extent
45-64
-
ISSN1803-7410 (print)2336-4440 (online)
Persistent identifier (DOI): https://doi.org/10.5817/LB2020-2-4
Stable URL (handle): https://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/143288
Type: Article
Language
License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International
Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.
Abstract(s)
This paper suggests an analysis of English possessives and coordination that is compatible with the treatment of Germanic pronominal case developed by Parrott within the Distributed Morphology framework. On Parrott's approach, the non-possessive pronoun case forms of English and Danish result from morphosyntactic contextual allomorphy and do not expone syntactic Case features. A wellknown phenomenon motivating the proposal is case-form variation in coordinate DPs (CoDPs); however, beyond footnotes, Parrott has provided no account of possessive forms, in CoDPs or otherwise. Citing Zwicky, Parrott succinctly describes the distribution of possessives in coordination, observing that "Possessive morphology [only] seems possible either on both conjuncts of a CoDP or on the entire CoDP", while non-possessive pronouns in possessive CoDPs behave as they do in non-possessive CoDPs. To explain these facts, this paper takes English possessives to be exponents of the functional category D with a syntactic feature [Poss] that is interpretable at both interfaces. The first-merged internal argument of D[Poss] is the possessum; the second-merged external argument of D[Poss] is the possessor. The exponence of D[Poss] depends on whether its internal argument is a full Root-containing NP or a featureless category head n, and whether its external argument is a phi-containing category head n or a full DP. Non-possessive pronouns receive exponence as usual when they are inside a CoDP external argument of D[Poss]. When both DPs inside a CoDP are possessive, Right Node Raising (RNR) is implicated. No position is taken here on the correct analysis of RNR, but it offers a plausible explanation for the facts, since the "shared" NP object of both PossDPs must be symmetrically "raised" from coordination, just as with canonical RNR.
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[42] Ulfsbjorninn, Shanti. 2019. A typology of morphological segment-zero alternations. Course materials for EGG in Wroclaw, Poland.
[43] Weisser, Philipp. 2020. On the symmetry of case in conjunction. Syntax 23, pp. 42–77. | DOI 10.1111/synt.12188
[44] Zeijlstra, Hedde. 2012. There is only one way to agree. The Linguistic Review 29, pp. 491–539.
[45] Zwicky, Anrnold. 2008. Coordinate possessives. Language Log. Avaliable at: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=706
[2] Baker, Mark. 2015. Case: Its Principles and Parameters, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[3] Bobaljik, Jonathan David. 2008. Where's Phi? Agreement as a post-syntactic operation. In: Harbour, Daniel – Adger, David – Bejar, Susana, eds. Phi Theory: Phi-features across Modules and Interfaces. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 295–328.
[4] Bonet, Eulàlia – Harbour, Daniel. 2012. Contextual allomorphy. In: Trommer, Jochen, ed. The Morphology and Phonology of Exponence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 195–235.
[5] Chomsky, Noam. 1995. The Minimalist Program, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
[6] Citko, Barbara. 2017. Right Node Raising. In: Everaert, Martin – van Riemsdijk, Henk C., eds. The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Syntax, Second Edition. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons Inc, pp. 3839–3871.
[7] Comrie, Bernard – Corbett, Greville G., eds. 2002. The Slavonic Languages, London: Routledge.
[8] Embick, David. 2015. The Morpheme: A Theoretical Introduction, Boston/Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
[9] Embick, David. 2017. On the targets of phonological realization. In: Gribanova, Vera – Shih, Stephanie S., eds. The Morphosyntax-Phonology Connection. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 255–283.
[10] Embick, David – Noyer, Rolf. 2001. Movement operations after syntax. Linguistic Inquiry 32, pp. 555–595. | DOI 10.1162/002438901753373005
[11] Embick, David – Noyer, Rolf. 2007. Distributed Morphology and the Syntax/Morphology Interface. In: Ramchand, Gillian – Reiss, Charles, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Interfaces. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 289–324.
[12] Emonds, Joseph. 1986. Grammatically deviant prestige constructions. In: Brame, Michael – Contreras, Heles – Newmeyer, Fredrick J., eds. A Festschrift for Sol Saporta. Seattle: Noit Amrofer, pp. 93–129.
[13] Halle, Morris – Marantz, Alec. 1993. Distributed morphology and the pieces of inflection. In: Hale, Ken – Keyser, Samuel Jay, eds. The View from Building 20: Essays in Linguistics in Honor of Sylvain Bromberger. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 111–176.
[14] Hudson, Richard. 1995. Does English really have case? Journal of Linguistics 31, pp. 375–392. | DOI 10.1017/S0022226700015644
[15] Johannessen, Janne Bondi. 1998. Coordination. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[16] Johannessen, Janne Bondi. 2014. Case in coordinated conjuncts. Nordic Atlas of Language Structures (NALS) Journal 1, pp. 18–27.
[17] Kandybowicz, Jason. 2007. Fusion and PF architecture. In: Scheffler, Tatjana – Tauberer, Joshua – Eilam, Aviad – Mayol, Laia, eds. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 13(1): Proceedings of the 30th Annual Penn Linguistics Colloquium, pp. 85–98.
[18] Kramer, Ruth. 2015. The Morphosyntax of Gender. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[19] Lasnik, Howard. 2008. On the development of Case theory: Triumphs and challenges. In: Freidin, Robert – Otero, Carlos P. – Zubizarreta, Maria Luisa, eds. Foundational Issues in Linguistic Theory: Essays in Honor of Jean-Roger Vergnaud. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 17–41.
[20] Malchukov, Andrej – Spencer, Andrew, eds. 2009. The Oxford Handbook of Case. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[21] Marantz, Alec. 2000. Case and licensing. In: Reuland, Eric, ed. Arguments and Case: Explaining Burzio's Generalization. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 11–30.
[22] Munn, Alan. 1994. Topics in the Syntax and Semantics of Coordinate Structures. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Maryland.
[23] O'Conner, Patricia T. 1996. Woe is I: The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English. New York: Berkley Publishing Group.
[24] Parrott, Jeffrey K. 2006. Distributed Morphological mechanisms of pronoun‑case variation. In: Friesner, Michael L. – Ravindranath, Maya, eds. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 12(2): Papers from NWAV 34, pp. 173–187.
[25] Parrott, Jeffrey K. 2007. Distributed Morphological Mechanisms of Labovian Variation in Morphosyntax. Doctoral dissertation, Georgetown University.
[26] Parrott, Jeffrey K. 2009a. Case variation in coordination: Danish vs. Faroese. Nordlyd 36(2): NORMS Papers on Faroese, pp. 165–185.
[27] Parrott, Jeffrey K. 2009b. Danish vestigial case and the acquisition of Vocabulary in Distributed Morphology. Biolinguistics 3, pp. 270–304.
[28] Parrott, Jeffrey Keith. 2015. Gender Impoverishment in Czech, Slavic, and beyond. In: Ziková, Markéta – Caha, Pavel – Dočekal, Mojmír, eds. Slavic Languages in the Perspective of Formal Grammar: Proceedings of FDSL 10.5, Brno 2014. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, pp. 215–232.
[29] Parrott, Jeffrey Keith. To appear. Post-syntactic mechanisms of pronominal case in (North) Germanic. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia.
[30] Pesetsky, David. 2013. Russian Case Morphology and the Syntactic Categories. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
[31] Postal, Paul M. 1966. On so-called 'pronouns' in English. In: Dinneen, Francis P., ed. Report of the Seventeenth Annual Round Table Meeting on Linguistics and Language Studies. Washington: Georgetown University Press, pp. 177–206.
[32] Quinn, Heidi. 2005. The Distribution of Pronoun Case Forms in English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
[33] Schütze, Carson T. 2001. On the nature of default case. Syntax 4, pp. 205–238. | DOI 10.1111/1467-9612.00044
[34] Sigurðsson, Halldór Ármann. 2006. The Nom/Acc alternation in Germanic. In: Hartmann,
[35] Jutta M. – Molnárfi, László, eds. Comparative Studies in Germanic Syntax. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp. 13–50.
[36] Sigurðsson, Halldór Ármann – van De Weijer, Joost. To appear. Swedish predicative case: default or not? Acta Linguistica Hafniensia.
[37] Sobin, Nicholas. 1997. Agreement, default rules, and grammatical viruses. Linguistic Inquiry 28, pp. 318–343.
[38] Sobin, Nicholas. 2009. Prestige Case forms and the Comp-trace effect. Syntax 12, pp. 32–59. | DOI 10.1111/j.1467-9612.2008.01113.x
[39] Starke, Michael. 2009. Nanosyntax: a short primer to a new approach to language. Nordlyd 36, pp. 1–6.
[40] Thráinsson, Höskuldur. 2007. The Syntax of Icelandic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[41] Thráinsson, Höskuldur – Petersen, Hjalmar P. – Jacobsen, Jógvan í Lon – Hansen, Zakaris Svabo. 2004. Faroese: An Overview and Reference Grammar. Tórshavn: Føroya Fróðskaparfelag, The Faroese Academy of Sciences.
[42] Ulfsbjorninn, Shanti. 2019. A typology of morphological segment-zero alternations. Course materials for EGG in Wroclaw, Poland.
[43] Weisser, Philipp. 2020. On the symmetry of case in conjunction. Syntax 23, pp. 42–77. | DOI 10.1111/synt.12188
[44] Zeijlstra, Hedde. 2012. There is only one way to agree. The Linguistic Review 29, pp. 491–539.
[45] Zwicky, Anrnold. 2008. Coordinate possessives. Language Log. Avaliable at: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=706