Guest speaker: Ur Shlonsky (University of Geneva)

In conjunction with the Syntax of Nominal Linkers and the Agreement in Copular Clauses projects, we are very pleased to welcome Ur Shlonsky, a syntactician from the University of Geneva who has worked extensively on the structure of Semitic and Romance languages as well as typological issues; he is a leader in the Cartography framework. He will be spending Thursday the 19th at our Mississauga campus and the 20th downtown, and will be giving talks at each one. The first, "Cartography and selection", is taking place from 1-3 PM in Maanjiwe nendamowinan 4107. It is meant to be conducive to a lively discussion.

On the assumption that a head syntactically selects the head of its sister phrase, the following question arises: How is selection satisfied in a left periphery with a rich functional sequence (Rizzi 1997, etc.)? In many languages, left-dislocated topics can precede wh-words in indirect questions: "You asked me this book to whom I should give" (okay in Hebrew, Italian, Spanish and some people's English). If the Topic sits in Spec/Top, how can the interrogative-selecting V 'ask' "see" the wh-word?

Then, his second talk will be at 3 PM in SS 560A, incorporating collaborative work with Luigi Rizzi (University of Geneva) and Isabelle Roy (Centre national de la recherche scientifique): "Copular sentences and their subjects."

Hebrew copular sentences in the present tense look like small clauses, leading one to think that the structure of (i) is equivalent to the reduced structure attributed to the bracketed part of (ii). 

(i) Daniela balʃanit mecuyenet.
Daniel linguist excellent
'Daniela is an excellent linguist.'
(ii) Bill considers [Daniela an excellent linguist].

I believe this is a false analogy. I try to demonstrate that the copula-less sentences in (i) contain a (perhaps surprisingly) rich functional structure and incorporate (at least) two distinct subject positions. The presentation starts out with a discussion of copular sentences in French, where the evidence for two subject positions is overt, and proceeds to a presentation and analysis of Hebrew.