Presentation Materials

Phase by Phase Givenness and Focus Marking in Multiple Remnant Sluicing involving P-omission and Island Alleviation , at MIT, Thursday, October 29, 2015:
linglunch_2105_blurb.pdf
linglunch_2015.pdf
linglunch_mit_2015_2.pdf

Adopting a presuppositional account of Givenness (Sauerland 2005) that has a reflex in syntax (Kučerová 2012), I will propose a new way of licensing ellipsis based on phase-by-phase computation of Information Structure. Remnant movement licensing ellipsis can be local within its phase, but still subject to AvoidFocus! (Schwarzschild 1999). This will provide insight into not only P-omission but also new facts about Island alleviation.

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Phase-by-phase computation of prominence in ellipsis and PP stranding island alleviations , at New York Univeristy, Saturday, May 9, 2015:
fasl_nyu_2015.pdf

This paper proposes that an account of PP-stranding in ellipsis in non-PP-stranding languages needs to take into account how prominence via Focus/Contrast is computed. The proposal here is that prominence is computed on a phase-by-phase basis (Selkirk and Kratzer 2007). Cases of PP-stranding in Polish will be argued to be instances of non-constituent ellipsis (Bruening 2015), but with one remnant. PP-stranding is possible when there is a smaller phase than the PP where prominence can be established. This is the case when the remnant of sluicing is a D-linked wh-phrase (but not a simple wh-...

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The syntax of the semantics of ellipsis, at LingLunch, MIT Linguistics , Thursday, March 20, 2014:
the_syntax_of_the_semantics_of_ellipsis.pdf

The talk argues for an analysis of ellipsis that combines:(i) the licensing of the antecedent-anaphor relationship in elided structures via mutually entailing Givenness, modulo focus (Rooth 1992, Merchant 2001) with (ii) a syntax based phase driven account of ellipsis (Rouveret 2012, Chung 2013, Boskovic 2014). The connection between the syntax and semantics of ellipsis will be the observation that the lower bound of a Givenness Domain is encoded in the syntax in the form of a [G] operator that can trigger overt XP movement (Kucerova 2012).

Data will come from Polish and other...

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Label Assignment in Restrictive Relative Clauses Needs Semantic Information, at Rutgers Univeristy, Linguistics Colloquium , Friday, March 29, 2013:
relative_clauses_labels_semantic_types.ppt.pdf

Aim:
- Provide an unified derivation for restrictive relative clauses that predicts matching and raising behavior of the head noun
- Examine the nature of syntactic labels
- Establish the algorithm responsible for assigning derived structures a syntactic label
- Combine the three above into a convincing analysis

Relativizing Two Types of Degrees, at LingLunch, MIT Linguistics, Thursday, April 5, 2012:
relativizing_two_types_of_degrees.pdf
This talk will propose an alternative to Carlson (1977) and Grosu and Landman (1998) derivation of (1) and (2) that combines a raising analysis of DegP and a matching analysis of NP. Support for this claim will come from head noun reconstruction facts, as well as scope contrasts between degree relatives and comparatives. DegP will be argued to have its denotation built via subsequent overt raising within CP, where it undergoes Maximization and then moves out of CP to a position modifying the external NP. Differences between (1) and (2) will be attributed to differences in the type of DegP (... Read more about Relativizing Two Types of Degrees
Polish Relative Clause Structure, at Brown Bag Lunch, NYU Linguistics, Friday, April 2, 2010:
polish_relative_clause_structure.pdf
This talk will argue for a derivation of relative clauses along the lines
proposed in Cinque (2008). The proposal is an attempt to unify RC structure and Adjectival
modification. Moreover, it aims at providing a single structure for both
matching and raising analyses.
Islands in Sluicing in Polish, at 27th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, UCLA, Los Angeles, Saturday, May 17, 2008:
islands_in_sluicing_in_polish_1.pdf

Link to WCCFL abstract at UCLA

This paper accounts for previously unknown facts involving the alleviation of islands in sluicing. It argues that sluicing does not alleviate islands and that cases reported as island alleviation actually involve a non-movement derivation in languages like Polish. Sluicing is no different than other types of Ellipsis (like VP ellipsis) in that it does not alleviate Island effects when we control for the...

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Moving into Islands, at Harvard Univeristy, Monday, May 7, 2007:
moving_into_islands.pdf
(1) a. The clause is partitioned into three domains corresponding to VP, TP,
CP. However, it is denied that TP is the intermediate projection of VP
and CP the final projection. Rather both CP and TP are final projections
on their own. This means CP does not dominate TP, but both dominate
VP.
b. Different syntactic objects (SO) can move into [Spec,CP] and [Spec,TP].
c. The positions correlate with the two types of phrasal movement:
(i) [Spec,TP] is the position for A-movement,
(ii) [Spec,CP] is the position for A’-movement.
d. A- and A’-movement are triggered for... Read more about Moving into Islands

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