[lingtalks] Sandra Chung Colloquium: Monday, April 27 at USC

[Karma Dolma]

The Department of Linguistics at USC proudly presents: 
 
Imperfect Alignment? The Syntax and Semantics of Chamorro Possessors

Sandy Chung
University of California, Santa Cruz
http://people.ucsc.edu/~schung/

Monday, April 27, 2009 3:00 pm - 4:30 pm 
Grace Ford Salvatori 118 
 
Following the talk, dinner will be served in the Linguistics Conference Room
GFS 330  
 
Abstract: 


Generative syntax famously assumes a tight fit between surface word order 
and hierarchical relations in syntactic structure.  It also assumes
that at some point in the derivation--if not in overt syntax, then in 
Logical Form,--hierarchical syntactic structure is transparently aligned
with certain semantic notions, such as scope and information structure.
This talk explores how far these assumptions can take us in understanding 
the syntax and semantics of possessors in Chamorro, an Austronesian 
language of the Mariana Islands.  Possessive DP's in Chamorro have both a 
head determiner and a possessor, which can co-vary.  In what I call _bare 
possessives_, the head determiner is the null indefinite article and the 
possessor is strong in Milsark's (1977) sense.  I first establish that 
bare possessives are morphosyntactically indefinite; in other words,
there is no `definiteness spread' in possessive DP's in this language.   
I then show that unsurprisingly, Chamorro observes Milsark's Generalization 
(subjects of individual-level predicates must be strong).  But surprisingly,

the strong possessor of a bare possessive appears to be able to satisfy 
this restriction.  I explore two syntactic accounts of this pattern, 
according to which the possessor counts as the "subject" for 
the purposes of Milsark's Generalization because it has raised to a 
"subject" position, e.g. the specifier of Tense or Topic.  One
of these accounts is empirically unsatisfactory; the other is less 
so, but has the consequence that the alignment between surface word 
order and hierarchical relations is either empirically undiscoverable 
or else accidental.  The overall result is to raise doubts about
the alignment hypotheses we are accustomed to working with
in generative syntax:  as far as Chamorro is concerned, not all
these hypotheses can be maintained in their current form.


Reference

Milsark, Gary. 1977. Toward an explanation of certain peculiarities of
the existential construction in English. _Linguistic Analysis_ 3: 1-29.



 
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http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/ling/newsevents/colloquia.shtml  
 

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