September 30, 2013

Syntax-Semantics Project meets twice this week

(Courtesy of Julie Doner)

There will be two meetings of syntax-semantics project this week, as follows. Please take note of the special time for the first meeting.

"Kaqchikel Agent Focus as anti-locality"
Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine, MIT
Thursday, October 3rd 4:30-6:30 pm in BL 114

Abstract: Many Mayan languages show a syntactically ergative extraction asymmetry whereby the A-bar extraction of subjects of transitives requires special verbal morphology, known as Agent Focus. In this talk I discuss the syntax of Agent Focus in Kaqchikel, a Mayan language spoken in Guatemala. I argue that Agent Focus does not simply occur whenever an ergative subject is A-bar extracted---as predicted by previous approaches---but is instead a strategy to avoid a movement step which is *too short*. Support for this claim comes from new data on the distribution of Agent Focus in Kaqchikel which shows this locality-sensitivity. Time permitting, I will discuss the notion of "last-resort" and motivate the use of a system of ranked, violable constraints to model the full pattern of Agent Focus and verbal agreement observed in the language.


"Deducing clause structure from the right periphery in T??ch? Yat?ì"
Nick Welch, U of T
Friday, October 4th 12-2 pm in SS 560A.

Abstract: T??ch? Yat?ì, a Dene language of the Northwest Territories, Canada, has a number of post-verbal auxiliaries and particles indicating categories such as futurity, mode, negation, information structure and evidentiality. The interaction of these elements reveals that they occur in a strict order, which in turn illuminates the structure of the clause in this language, with positions for future, mode, negation, and focus as functional categories at the right edge.

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