Abstract
In this chapter, I want to point to a number of parallels between overt syntactic movement and LF-movement which are seen quite clearly when we consider the scoping of phrases that are quantified with a focusing particle. I will also discuss cases of “standard” QPs and WH-phrases which seem to reach scope under violation of narrow syntactic restrictions, and explain why this discrepancy arises. The category at the center of my discussion will be prepositional as well as postpositional phrases. I will first take a closer look at the syntax of PP in general and see what the minimal prerequisites for movement from PP are. This analysis will then be extended to LF-movement from PP. In doing so, we will also consider data from other language groups, including Scandinavian, Romance, and head-final languages. We will finally address the question why in many languages PP is a barrier for overt movement and for the LF-movement of a DP which is quantified with a focusing particle, while no such effect appears for LF-movement of other types of operators. PPs like to which person or to almost every student and their correspondents in other languages (like German) must be dissolved at LF to guarantee standard semantic interpretation. It will be shown that this is a natural consequence of the pied piping mechanism that can affect such phrases but not phrases like to even MARY. The analysis proposed for PP will pave the way for the analysis of extractions from other major categories that will be discussed in subsequent chapters.
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Notes
For the reanalysis approach, see especially Hornstein and Weinberg (1981).
But so is preposition stranding, one may add. For further discussion see Fanselow (1991), Müller (1993), Trissler (1993), and Wiltschko (1993). One cannot test real postposition stranding in German because the few postpositions that select a DP can to my knowledge only be used in adjunct PPs. Therefore it is expected that cases like (i) are ungrammatical throughout:
i) *des schlechten Welters, ist er [e; wegen] zuhause geblieben the bad weather has he because at-home remained
This is surprising because it is assumed that the trace of an incorporated P does not have the relevant Case-licensing properties anymore; so it is not really clear why there should be a conflict. Furthermore, there are cases of overt incorporation in German which indicate that a Bakerian solution cannot be quite right. Certain intransitive verbs like laufen acquire - structural - Case assigning properties when P has been incorporated:
i) Er durch +lief den Walda0, he through+ran the forest He ran through the forest
ii) der Wald“”m wurde durchlaufen The forest was ran through
iii) das Durchlaufen des Waldes e“ the running through the forest
In each example, the deep object bears structural Case according to standard assumptions, and the element responsible for this seems to be the incorporated preposition.
Another argument that da really corresponds to a thematic position is given by the following coordination:
i) daß ich DA nicht (da+)mit gerechnet habe, and mit DIESER Sache auch nicht that I there not there+with reckoned have and with this matter also not that I have reckoned neither with this nor with that
As pointed out to me by Jim McCloskey (p.c.), this analysis is reminiscent of Shlonsky’s (1991) account of quantifier float in Hebrew. In Hebrew, a quantifier like kol (“all”) is unable to head-govern the trace of a complement-DP unless there is an agreement marker on kol.
I will not enter a discussion of the Case assignment problems which are, of course, highly relevant when we want to explain why the Romance languages disallow P-stranding although the syntax of PP in those languages is very much like in English.
That it is not a sufficient condition is immediately clear from the situation in the Romance languages.
Koster’s theory requires the computation of an extraction path on the basis of n governors with n 1. We will later see cases in which movement out of the domain of a single governor is enough to create an island violation.
The Romance, Scandinavian and Turkish examples which appear in this and the following sections were provided to me by the following native speaker colleagues: Danish (Sten Vikner), Italian (Giuseppe Longobardi, Laura Marchini, Giorgio Graffi and Gisella Ferraresi), Norwegian (Arild Hestvik), Rumanian (Alexander Grosu), Swedish (Christer Platzack, Inger Rosengren), Turkish (Jaklin Kornfilt). Many of the English examples in this and the previous chapters were discussed with Melissa Bowerman, Clive Perdue, Kerry Kilborn, Janet Randall, Craig Thiersch, John Frampton and Mike Reape.
All the examples in (16) become grammatical when the particles attaches to PP and associates with the focused DP:
i) Hans verläßt sich nur auf seinen BRUDER
ii) Hans entschied sich nur für den FILM
iii) Maria kümmert sich sogar um ihren GROSSVATER
iv) Maria schreibt sogar über SUBJAZENZ
Obviously, this cannot be the entire reason because PPs with R-pronouns may create contexts in which P and V are adjacent, as seen in (i), while P+V does only marginally behave like a constituent for most speakers, as pointed out to me by Hubert Haider (p. c.). A relevant example is shown in (ii):
i)daß dal mal jemand e1 für sorgen) sollte that there once someone for care should
ii) ??[e1 für sorgen] hätte dal schon lange mal jemand ej sollen for care had there long ago someone should
See Culicover (1976: 297ff.) and Wexler and Culicover (1980).
See Baker (1988) for the effects of debarrierization by head-to-head movement. For discussion with respect to German see Sternefeld (1989) and Müller (1989).
According to Fiengo, Huang, Lasnik and Reinhart (1988), this should be possible because PP is in an A’-position.
This is not unusual. English also,for example, does not combine with a DP, while German auch and English too do. A remarkable feature of the Danish construction is that particles can attach to the subject-DP (Sten Vikner, p.c.).
See Koster (1987: 184) where relevant observations by Christer Platzack are reported.
Sten Vikner fmds the corresponding sentence in Danish bad, while he accepts mint when there is a numeral as in (i):
i) John snakkede med *kun /*bare/mint THE lingvister John talked with only/only/at-least three linguists
Icelandic does not have pseudopassives, but can strand P in A’-movement contexts.
Schwarze (1988: 63 and 234ff.) calls categories like anche, solo, proprio, almeno, addrittura etc. “adverboids”. He points out that they can be part of all kinds of constituents and always appear in initial position. Their distribution is easily comparable with the distribution of German nur etc.
This seems to be true, at least, for the more liberal speakers. There are speakers who find even these cases somewhat deviant.
This can be seen in yet another of Longobardi’s examples where sol-shows plural agreement:
i) La presenza di due sole persone potrebbe mettere in imbarazzo it nostro conferenziere the presence of two only persons might throw in embarrassment the our lecturer
The mechanism is actually a bit more complicated, because solo Gianni or solo alone must first adjoin to the copied phrases (see Chomsky, 1993). We return to a more detailed account in chapter 5.
One cannot use the word for “only”, sadece,because sadece must precede its syntactic domain; this would again leave room for an attachment ambiguity.
Trissler and Lutz (1992) point to German cases which indicate that feature percolation should not universally be confined to the spreading from argument type XPs to YP. One of their examples is (ii), a legitimate alternative to (i):
i) [Wie schön] muß man geschrieben haben um eine Eins zu bekommen how nice must one written have in-order an A to get How nicely does one have to have written to get an A?
ii) [Wie schön geschrieben] muß man haben um eine Eins zu bekommen
Like Longobardi’s account, this one too does not automatically exclude ill-formed cases like
i) *Zerstörungen keiner Telefonzelle würden hier geduldet destructions no phone-booth-GEN would-be here tolerated
It seems to be necessary that the matrix DP is referentially dependent on QP such that a unique referential value is determined by each assignment of a value for the variable bound by QP. Such unique determination is not possible between the assignment of the value for the variable and the phrase headed by the plural noun in (i).
Another option would be to delete the entire restrictor part, only leaving the operator in the operator position. This would give us a representation like those of Hornstein and Weinberg (1990); see also Chomsky (1993: 35f.)). An open question is then how fastjed-can bind the possessive pronoun. The operator would have to occupy a head position from which it binds the affected positions like polarity items.
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© 1996 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Bayer, J. (1996). Focusing Particles and Quantifiers in Pre- and Postpositional Phrases. In: Directionality and Logical Form. Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, vol 34. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1272-9_4
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