Intervention everywhere! Hadas Kotek McGill University hadas.kotek@mcgill.ca GLOW 38 April 2015
The question Wh -questions in English involve an overt movement step : How are in-situ wh -phrases interpreted? ☞ . did Mary introduce . Who (2) In multiple wh -questions, only one wh -phrase moves overtly. to Fred? . . did Mary introduce . Who (1) 2 to whom ? .
Two approaches to wh -in-situ The in-situ approach: ? . . to whom . C . LF: Who (4) alternative computation (Hamblin, 1973; Rooth, 1985, 1992, a.o.). Wh -phrases are interpreted in their base-positions , through focus- ? . The covert movement approach: . to . C did Mary introduce . whom . LF: Who (3) among others). Wh -phrases must move to C by LF for interpretability (Karttunen, 1977, 3 . did Mary introduce
Wh -in-situ and intervention effects ☞ . 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 Hanako read?’ read- PAST - Q yon-da-no? what- ACC nani-o Hanako- NOM a. Japanese: Intervention effects avoided through scrambling (5) Wh -in-situ is sensitive to intervention effects . 4 ✓ Hanako-ga ✓ Nani-o
Wh -in-situ and intervention effects . Different theories of what interveners/intervention is about: . .] Intervention effects affect regions of alternative computation but not ... wh b. a. The Beck (2006) intervention schema: (6) Kotek and Erlewine, to appear) (overt or covert) movement (Beck, 2006; Beck and Kim, 2006; Kotek, 2014a,b; 5 * [ CP C ... intervener . ] ✓ [ CP C ... wh . intervener ... t • Focus (Beck, 2006; Beck and Kim, 2006) • Quantification (Beck, 1996; Mayr, to appear) • Topics (Grohmann, 2006) • Prosody (Tomioka, 2007)
Proposal (7) Movement can’t target a region where focus alternatives are computed. of alternative computation not well-defined (in simple semantic models). Shan (2004, cf Rooth 1985): semantics of Predicate Abstraction in region . . t i saw John . who i Predicate Abstraction: (8) movement , abstracting over the trace. introduced below the landing site of . wh . . * The new intervention schema 6 C ... λ ... Heim and Kratzer (1998): a λ λ -binder is λ λ i
Proposal (7) The new intervention schema * . . wh . ☞ Predict intervention in more places than previously thought. ☞ Predict more interveners than previously thought. Today: Both of these predictions are correct. 7 C ... λ ...
The state of the art 8
Background: intervention effects in English Which student didn’t ?) (cf Which book did which student not read violating ? * Which book didn’t which student read d. obeying read which book ? c. Pesetsky (2000): intervention correlates with superiority violating ? Which book did which student read b. obeying read which book ? Which student a. (9) 9
Background: intervention effects in English Superiority-violating questions: intervention! Predict: ? . . read . C . LF: Which book (11) Wh is truly LF-in-situ, interpreted via focus-alternatives computation. intervention Syntax by Pesetsky (2000); Semantics by Beck (2006): Predict: no ? . . read . C . which book . LF: Which student (10) Superiority-obeying questions: Wh -in-situ covertly moves to C at LF. 10 . did which student
A note on judgments Note: for many (perhaps all) speakers, intervention will be diagnosed by the loss of the pair-list reading of the question. A single-pair may survive. (12) Who ate what ? a. Fred ate the beans. single-pair b. Fred ate the beans, Mary ate the eggplant, and John ate the broccoli. pair-list This has been reported for superiority-violating questions in English and for German questions in footnotes in previous work (Beck, 2006; Pesetsky, 2000, cf also Beck 1996). 11 ( )
Today . 3 Some implications . . are computed in the same part of structure Intervention happens whenever movement and focus-alternatives ☞ 12 2 Breaking the superiority correlation . . 1 New patterns of intervention . • A-movement chains trigger intervention • Turning non-interveners into interveners • Intervention in superiority-obeying questions • Avoiding intervention in superiority-violating questions
New patterns of intervention 13
The nature of interveners The literature has several different ways of defining what interveners are (Beck, 1996, 2006; Grohmann, 2006; Tomioka, 2007; Haida, 2007). ☞ Everyone agrees that indefinites, existentials, and definite descriptions, do not act as interveners . However, they act as interveners if forced to take scope via movement. 14
A-movement and reconstruction English subjects normally undergo A-movement from a v P-internal . ... wh VP v . subject v P T 15 . subject TP . C CP Narrow syntax: (13) position to Spec,TP. λ . ...
A-movement and reconstruction English subjects normally undergo A-movement from a v P-internal . . ... wh VP v . subject v P T . . subject TP . C CP This causes intervention at LF: (13) position to Spec,TP. 16 λ λ λ λ . ...
A-movement and reconstruction v P . ... wh VP v . subject T Subjects which undergo A-movement from a v P-internal position to TP . C CP Avoid intervention by reconstructing at LF: (14) Spec,TP are normally able to reconstruct , avoiding intervention. 17 . ...
A-movement chains and intervention b. . . individual-level ? issue with Subjects of individual-level predicates must vacate v P (Diesing, 1992). * Which person are counselors stage-level ? issue with a. (15) Hence, the subject can’t reconstruct and we observe intervention: 18 ✓ Which person are counselors available to discuss which λ λ λ . careful to discuss which
A-movement chains and intervention seem to the reporters to be likely to . . ? likely to appeal which decision to * Which court did the lawyers b. ? Reconstruction can also be prevented by binding from the subject into a the lawyers appeal which decision to LF: Which court did a’. ? likely to appeal which decision to a. decisions to different courts. Context: The lawyers seem to be likely to appeal different (16) pronoun or reflexive. 19 ✓ Which court did the lawyers seem to the reporters to be λ λ λ . seem to each other to be
A-movement triggers intervention effects ☞ A-movement chains intervene when the movement can’t reconstruct. Bare plurals and definite descriptions act as interveners. Next: We can turn traditional non-interveners into interveners by forcing them to move . 20
Argument Contained Ellipsis Argument contained ellipsis (ACE) (Kennedy, 1994, 2004) requires without movement. NB: Definite descriptions like the woman can otherwise be interpreted . buy the tuna ]. .did [ t buy the tuna b. The woman who said she (17) movement for its interpretation. 21 a. The woman who said she would △ bought the tuna. ✞ ☎ . would ✝ ✆ ✞ ☎ ✝ ✆
Non-interveners and Argument Contained Ellipsis to which girl ? ? to introduce which boy to b. to which girl ? to introduce a. ACE test case: (20) ? here] to introduce which boy to (18) b. here] to introduce a. More elaborate baselines: (19) ? b. to which girl ? a. Baselines ( obeying and violating ): 22 ✓ Which boy did you tell someone to introduce ✓ Which girl did you tell someone to introduce which boy to ✓ Which boy did you tell [ someone who (really) shouldn’t be ✓ Which girl did you tell [ someone who (really) shouldn’t be ✓ Which boy did you tell [ someone who (really) shouldn’t △ ] * Which girl did you tell [ someone who (really) shouldn’t △ ]
Non-interveners and Argument Contained Ellipsis (22) As a result, we observe intervention effects in superiority-violating Qs. ACE forces covert movement of an otherwise in-situ element. ☞ ? * Which girl did you tell [ {the, a, some} man who (really) b. to which girl ? (21) a. ? shouldn’t be here] to introduce which boy to b. to which girl ? shouldn’t be here] to introduce a. This happens with other traditional non-interveners as well: 23 ✓ Which boy did you tell [ {the, a, some} man who (really) ✓ Which girl did you tell [ {the, a, some} man who (really) ✓ Which boy did you tell [ {the, a, some} man who (really) shouldn’t △ ] to introduce shouldn’t △ ] to introduce which boy to
Summary ☞ . wh . . * The new intervention schema (23) region where focus-alternatives are also used. 24 ☞ ... when reconstruction is blocked or movement is forced . Intervention caused by traditional non-interveners... • Bare plurals • Indefinites • Definite descriptions • Existential quantifiers Intervention happens whenever a λ λ λ -binder must be used in a C ... λ ...
Consequences Previous theories assume a fixed set of interveners , with different characterizations: ☞ However: anything that moves into a region of focus alternatives computation is an intervener. This new characterization of interveners, is incompatible with all existing approaches to intervention effects. 25 • Focus (Beck, 2006; Beck and Kim, 2006) • Quantification (Beck, 1996; Mayr, to appear) • Topics (Grohmann, 2006) • Prosody (Tomioka, 2007)
Superiority, movement, and intervention effects 26
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