Against a feature driven view of wh -movement Hadas Kotek McGill - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Against a feature driven view of wh -movement Hadas Kotek McGill University DGfS workshop Leipzig, March 2015

Interpreting wh -in-situ English multiple wh -questions involve overt movement of just one wh -phrase. (1) Who . did Mary introduce . ☞ How are in-situ wh -phrases interpreted? 2 to whom ? .

Two traditional approaches to wh -in-situ The in-situ approach: ? . . to whom . C . LF: Who (3) (Hamblin, 1973; Rooth, 1985, 1992, among others). Wh -phrases are interpreted in their base-positions , without movement ? . The covert movement approach: . to . C did Mary introduce . whom . LF: Who (2) among others). Wh -phrases must move to C by LF for interpretability (Karttunen, 1977, 3 . did Mary introduce

Movement, Wh -in-situ, and intervention effects Certain quantifiers ( interveners ) cannot precede wh -in-situ. data from Tomioka (2007) ‘What did no one read?’ read-neg-past-Q yom-ana-katta-no? . no-one dare-mo what-acc . c. read-neg-past-Q yom-ana-katta-no? what-acc nani-o no-one b. ?* Dare-mo ‘What did John read?’ read-past-Q yon-da-no? what-acc nani-o John-nom a. Japanese: Intervention effects avoided through scrambling (4) 4 ✓ John-ga ✓ Nani-o

Movement, Wh -in-situ, and intervention effects angetroffen? niemanden has hat who b. ?? Wer ‘Who met Luise where’? met where wo wo Luise Luise has hat who a. no-one where (5) where data from Beck (1996) ‘Who met no one where’? met angetroffen? . no-one niemanden . angetroffen? wo has hat who Wer c. met German: intervention above wh -in-situ, rescued by scrambling (5) data from Beck (1996) where has hat who b. ?? Wer ‘Who met Luise where’? met angetroffen? wo ‘Who met no one where’? Luise Luise has hat who a. German: intervention above wh -in-situ, rescued by scrambling niemanden no-one wo where met angetroffen? . no-one niemanden where . wo has hat who c. met angetroffen? 5 ✓ Wer ✓ Wer ✓ Wer

Movement, Wh -in-situ, and intervention effects LF: Who ?. . met no one . . C . where . (8) Puzzle : no intervention effects in corresponding English questions. (Pesetsky, 2000; Beck, 2006; Cable, 2010): This is explained by the covert movement approach to wh -in-situ where ? b. meet anyone where ? a. (7) 6 ✓ Who did n’t ✓ Who met no one

Today no one It is not feature-driven. Covert movement happens for interpretability of the wh . ☞ scrambling . ? . . . Proposal: English behaves covertly as German does overtly met where . . C . LF: Who (9) 7

Today . . 1 Experimentally detecting covert movement . . 2 Experiment 1: scrambling-like movement . . 3 Experiment 2: varying the size of movement . . 4 Proposal: covert wh -movement is covert scrambling ☞ Cannot be accounted for using syntactic features 8

Experimentally detecting covert movement 9

10 Experimentally detecting covert movement • Hackl et al. (2012) paradigm • Self-paced reading • Tests for covert movement using the interaction between • Quantifiers in object position • Antecedent Contained Deletion (ACD)

Quantifiers in object position likes . . every student DP t . DP V VP Mary DP TP TP (10) 11 • For formal semantic reasons, cannot directly combine with the verb . • One prominent solution: Covert Movement (CM) of the object.

Verb-Phrase ellipsis (11) John likes flying planes . Bill doesn’t . 12 ✞ ☎ ✞ ☎ ✝ ✆ ✝ ✆ • Missing VP requires identical pronounced antecedent VP.

Antecedent Contained Deletion (ACD) . . . . ] k . read t k John (12) contained inside the other! (13) 13 John read every book Mary did ☛ ✟ ✞ ☎ ✝ ✆ ✡ ✠ • Missing VP requires identical pronounced antecedent VP. • A VP can never be identical to its antecedent if one is properly • The solution: Covertly move the object containing the ACD site ✞ ☎ ✞ ☎ ✝ ✆ ✝ ✆ [ DP every book Mary did

Ellipsis size and locality of movement . . . was did liked The size of the antecedent VP determines the minimal size of movement. book Mary 14 read every (14) John was willing to . ✗ ✔   ✞ ☎     ✝ ✆     ✖ ✕

Ellipsis size and locality of movement . . . was did liked The size of the antecedent VP determines the minimal size of movement. book Mary 15 willing to read every . (15) John was ✗ ✔       ✄ �   ✂ ✁   ✖ ✕

The Hackl et al. (2012) paradigm liked resolution small ellipsis ( did ) Prediction Upstream every facilitates ☞ before Verb/Aux . . (16) was did 16 every book Mary John was willing to read the   { }         • Assumptions about online processing: • L → R: parser encounters the/every • The does not require movement. → Movement only if Aux is reached • Every is moved when encountered → Small movement step: above read

Online processing of multiple wh -questions 17

Predictions for real-time processing which book ... and large ellipsis ( was ) facilitated. Antecedent containment preemptively undone, small ellipsis ( did ) ☞ ? . . was willing to read . C . . (17) Which boy (18) In-situ wh -phrases move to C by LF for interpretation. The covert movement approach: was did Which boy was willing to read which book Mary 18 { }

Predictions for real-time processing (19) Antecedent containment not preemptively undone, small ellipsis ☞ ... ? . . was willing to read which book . . C . Which boy (20) In-situ wh -phrases are interpreted in their base-positions The in-situ approach: was did Which boy was willing to read which book Mary 19 { } ( did ) and large ellipsis ( was ) not facilitated.

Experiment 1: Predictions book Mary or (21) did was every which Which boy was willing to read 20 { } { } • Every conditions as in Hackl et al. (2012), provides baseline: • small ellipsis facilitated. • large ellipsis not facilitated. • Which conditions should pattern with each other: • small ellipsis and large ellipsis facilitated (covert movement approach), • small ellipsis and large ellipsis not facilitated (in-situ approach)

Experiment 1: Residual reading times book Mary RRTs two words afuer Aux (22) was did . 21 every which Which boy was willing to read { } { } Every 50 Which 30 10 − 10 did was • Main effect of ellipsis size (small: did < large: was ) • Every : replicating Hackl et al. (2012)

Experiment 1: Results ☞ No difference between every and which . which both facilitate more ACD than the non-quantificational determiner the . 22 • Small ellipsis (did) is faster than large ellipsis (was). • Not predicted by either traditional approach to wh -in-situ. • Paradigm sensitive enough to detect differences between determiners: Every and

Proposal Covert wh -movement behaves like scrambling, not like unbounded movement. 23

Proposal Previous approaches: two places where wh -phrases can be interpreted. CP ( wh ) C V V ( wh ) 24

Proposal In contrast, quantifiers can be interpreted in a variety of positions: CP C V V (*every) 25 ( ✓ every) ( ✓ every) ( ✓ every)

Proposal ☞ A wh -phrase can be interpreted at any position with propositional type at LF (same as quantifiers, e.g. every ). CP V (*every) (* wh ) 26 ( ✓ every) ( ✓ wh ) C ( ✓ every) ( ✓ wh ) V ( ✓ every) ( ✓ wh )

Proposal In-situ wh s move locally immediately upon being integrated into the structure, like conventional quantifiers e.g. every . Small movement step is sufficient. CP C . V . V . t . 27 wh 1 wh 2

Proposal Following this movement step, the wh can but need not move any further: It can be interpreted in its landing site using in situ computation (e.g. the projection of focus alternatives to C), without movement. CP C . V . V . t . 28 wh 1 wh 2

Prediction If in-situ composition cannot be used in a certain region, expect wh -movement above the region of uninterpretability. CP C . . V . V . t . 29 wh 1 wh 2

Intervention effects in online sentence processing 30

Intervention effects: a very quick guide a. . .] b. ... wh . The intervention configuration: (23) 31 • Recall: two strategies for the interpretation of wh -in-situ: • Covert movement • In-situ interpretation • Beck (2006): In-situ strategy is sensitive to intervention effects. * [ CP C ... intervener . ] ✓ [ CP C ... wh . intervener ... t • Interveners: elements such as only , also , negation, ...

Experiment 2: Predictions every Which boy was also Also is an intervener. We can place it at different heights in Exp1 items: willing to read . which . . was book Mary did was . Expect: ☞ Facilitation of ACD resolution in the entire domain of movement. (25) . did every (24) Which boy was willing to also . read . which . 32 . book Mary { }       { }       • Wh -movement above also → more movement with high intervener. • Every (and other quantifiers) not affected .