11. Experimenting with Highest Conjunct Agreement under Left Branch ExtractionBoban Arsenijević, Franc Marušič, Jana Willer-Gold, 2020, published scientific conference contribution Abstract: A debate has developed in the recent theoretical and experimental linguistic literature on the status and the locus of conjunct agreement in South Slavic (SS; Marušič et al. 2007, Bošković 2009, Franks & Willer Gold 2014, Murphy & Puškar 2015; Marušič et al. 2015 and Willer Gold et al. 2016). One of the pertinent issues of the debate is the status of Highest Conjunct Agreement – agreement with the hierarchically highest conjunct (NP1) – in sentences with a preverbal subject. The question around which the debate revolves is a basic one: Is there Highest Conjunct Agreement (HCA) in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (BCS), and how is it blocked, or derived, respectively? Keywords: syntax, agreement, conjunct agrement, left branch extraction, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian Published in RUNG: 18.05.2020; Views: 2823; Downloads: 0 This document has many files! More... |
12. Distributed agreement in participial sandwiched configurationsFranc Marušič, Andrew Nevins, 2020, independent scientific component part or a chapter in a monograph Abstract: In recent years, several proposals have appeared that try to model the patterns
of agreement with coordinate noun phrases found in South Slavic Languages. We
investigate agreement in so-called sandwiched configurations, whereby a coordinated noun phrase sits between two agreeing participles. In such cases, the two
participles do not necessarily agree with each other, given a scenario in which the
first and the second conjunct have different phi-features. This means the two participles choose their target of agreement independently. We argue the results of our
experimental study favor an approach to agreement that places it partially in PF. Keywords: Syntax, Agreement, Coordination, sandwiched agreement Published in RUNG: 26.02.2020; Views: 2703; Downloads: 107 Full text (427,78 KB) |
13. Looking for Cognitive Foundations of Functional SequencesFranc Marušič, Petra Mišmaš, Rok Žaucer, 2019, published scientific conference contribution Abstract: With the multiplication of various functional projections, syntactic structures became very complex entities. Approaches like Cartography (e.g. Cinque and Rizzi 2008) went one step further than most other approaches, proposing that each sentence comprises of a number of universal, strictly ordered functional projections. In the noun phrase, the strictly ordered functional projections are said to be responsible not only for the relative order of numerals, demonstratives and nouns (cf. Cinque 2005), but also for the universal order of various types of adjectives (cf. Hetzron 1978; Sproat and Shih 1991; Cinque 1994; Scott 2002, etc.). Cinque and Rizzi (2008) discuss possible origins of the many hierarchies of functional projections and suggest that they might derive from general cognition. If cognition and its restrictions are behind the hierarchy of functional projections, then the order of projections hosting adjectives should be reflected in various non-linguistic cognitive processes. We designed several experiments to test this hypothesis. Our experiments did not confirm our hypothesis; but as we have also identified problems in the design of our experiments, our results do not warrant a clear rejection
of the hypothesis either. Keywords: noun phrase, adjective ordering restrictions, functional hierarchy, experimental syntax, cognitive foundations of syntax Published in RUNG: 22.11.2019; Views: 2871; Downloads: 0 This document has many files! More... |
14. On the nature of prenumeral adjectivesFranc Marušič, Rok Žaucer, 2019, published scientific conference contribution (invited lecture) Abstract: Following Greenberg’s generalization 20 prenominal adjectives follow numerals. In
this paper we discuss a group of adjectives that appear in unexpected positions: adjectives
preceding numerals prenominally. We argue that these adjectives violate cross-linguistic
generalizations only apparently, as the noun phrases with such adjectives actually contain
additional covert structure – structure that is not realized phonologically/phonetically. Keywords: Greenberg’s generalization 20, adjectives, numerals, noun phrase, Slovenian syntax Published in RUNG: 05.11.2019; Views: 2632; Downloads: 0 This document has many files! More... |
15. Elided Clausal Conjunction Is Not the Only Source of Closest‐Conjunct Agreement: A Picture‐Matching StudyBoban Arsenijević, Jana Willer-Gold, Nadira Aljović, Nermina Čordalija, Marijana Kresić, Nedžad Leko, Frane Malenica, Franc Marušič, Tanja Milićev, Nataša Milićević, Petra Mišmaš, Ivana Mitić, Anita Peti-Stantić, Branimir Stanković, Jelena Tušek, Andrew Nevins, 2019, original scientific article Abstract: A recurring hypothesis about the agreement phenomena generalized as closest‐conjunct agreement takes this pattern to result from reduced clausal conjunction, simply displaying the agreement of the verb with the nonconjoined subject of the clause whose content survives ellipsis (Aoun, Benmamoun & Sportiche 1994, 1999; see also Wilder 1997). Closest‐conjunct agreement is the dominant agreement pattern in the South Slavic languages Slovenian and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian. A natural question is whether closest‐conjunct agreement in these varieties may indeed be analyzed as entirely derived from conjunction reduction. In this article, we report on two experiments conducted to test this. The results reject the hypothesis as far as these languages are concerned, thereby upholding the relevance of models developed to account for closest‐conjunct agreement within theories of agreement. Keywords: Conjunct agreement, Clausal conjunction, Experimental syntax Published in RUNG: 08.04.2019; Views: 11938; Downloads: 136 Full text (653,34 KB) |
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17. Two (non-)islands in Slovenian : A study in experimental syntaxArthur Stepanov, Manca Mušič, Penka Stateva, 2018, original scientific article Abstract: There exists a controversy in the literature and among the speakers of Slovenian concerning the grammaticality of wh-island and subject island constructions in this language. We conducted an acceptability rating study of wh-islands and subject islands in Slovenian, using the factorial definition of island. This definition provides for a possibility to isolate a true island effect while controlling for two complexity factors that potentially interfere in speakers’ evaluation of the relevant sentences: the length of the respective movement dependency and the presence of an island structure itself. We found that (i) Slovenian speakers do judge the wh-island sentences worse than the respective controls, but the observed degradation cannot be attributed to a true island effect; (ii) subject extraction out of a wh-island leads to a so called reverse island effect whereby the acceptability is higher than expected even if the above two complexity factors are taken into consideration; and (iii) speakers are sensitive to the subject island effect, as predicted by the mainstream theories of syntactic locality. The results of our study contribute to establishing a solid empirical base for further theoretical investigations of the island effects and raise new questions about the role of processing factors in speakers’ evaluations of island constructions. Keywords: syntactic island, experimental syntax, Subjacency, Empty Category Principle, Slovenian Published in RUNG: 11.06.2018; Views: 4144; Downloads: 0 This document has many files! More... |
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19. The emergence of post-cyclic prosody in loanword integration - Toneless Latinate adjectives in Serbo-CroatianMarko Simonović, 2012, published scientific conference contribution Abstract: A case of exceptional assignment of prosody to loanwords is considered. In SerboCroatian,
where in loanwords the original position of stress is generally preserved in some
way, a small class of Latinate adjectives (e.g., element ‚ arna ¯ ‘elementary’ and person ‚ alna ¯ ‘personal’)
become toneless and they display the postcyclic initial falling accent. An account of
these data is proposed which combines a new approach to postcyclic prosody, which is shown
to go hand in hand with syntactically opaque structures, and a new model of loanword integration,
which views the loanword trajectory as lexicalisation. As a result, an enriched theory of
both domains and their interaction arises to account for the data and shed some additional
light on the position of loanwords in the architecture of the grammar/lexicon. Keywords: loanword integration, postcyclic prosody, prosody/syntax interface, morphology, lexicon Published in RUNG: 07.02.2018; Views: 4225; Downloads: 0 This document has many files! More... |
20. The role of syntax in stress assignment in Serbo-CroatianBoban Arsenijević, Marko Simonović, 2013, independent scientific component part or a chapter in a monograph Abstract: This chapter analyses a set of interface phenomena showing important correlations between certain phonological regularities on the one hand, and a set of syntactic and semantic properties of the respective expressions on the other. Serbo-Croatian deadjectival nominalizations typically exhibit one of two different prosodic patterns: (1) prosody faithful to the base i.e., surface prosody of the lexical adjective (e.g., Ispraavnoost ‘correctness’, derived from Ispraavan ‘correct’); and (2) a rising span over a long closed penultimate syllable and the syllable following it (e.g., isprAAvnOOst ‘correctness’). The chapter formulates a generalization where, all things being equal, nominalized predicational structures correspond to (1), while nominalized stems correspond to (2). It provides a formal model of the syntactic and semantic as well as the phonological reality of these nominalizations, and an attempt at explaining these facts. Keywords: deadjectival nominalizations, lexical conservatism, syntax-phonology interface, compositionality, Serbo-Croatian Published in RUNG: 07.02.2018; Views: 3579; Downloads: 0 This document has many files! More... |