ArcSyn
Syntactic Architecture »
Projectleader: Thorbjörg Hróarsdóttir
The project is divided into three main parts:
(i) I-Language versus E-Language Change
(Hróarsdóttir)
(ii) Rethinking Scandinavian Syntax
(Hróarsdóttir & Wiklund)
(iii) mOVe: Movement and OV languages
(Hróarsdóttir)
Collaborate partners »
Professor Richard Kayne (New York University)
Professor Anna Szabolcsi (New York University)
Professor Hilda Koopman (UCLA)
Professor Ian Roberts (Cambridge University)
Roland Hinterhölzl (the Humboldt-University of Berlin)
Sonderforschungsbereich 632: Information Stucture, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin.
CASTL: Center for Advanced Study in Theoretical Linguistics, University of Tromsø
NORMS: Nordic Centre of Excellence in Microcomparative Syntax, Tromsø
Kristine Bentzen (CASTL, University of Tromsø)
Gunnar Hrafn Hrafnbjargarson (Norms, University of Tromsø)
Anna-Lena Wiklund (ArcSyn, University of Tromsø)
ArcSyn forms the Tromsø Dream Team,
consisting of Thorbjörg Hróarsdóttir, Kristine
Bentzen, Gunnar Hrafn Hrafnbjargarson & Anna-Lena Wiklund.
Time span »
01. February 2005 - 31. January 2011
The project is
funded by the Norwegian Research Council (NFR). The budget frame for
the project is 6 millions NOK (6.341.000) or approximately 1 million
USD.
Current ArcSyn Activities »
Papers »
Published & to appear:
2006. "The
Tromsø guide to Scandinavian verb movement"
(Hróarsdóttir, Hrafnbjargarson, Wiklund & Bentzen). Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 78: 1-36.
2007.
"The Tromsø guide to the Force behind V2"
(Bentzen, Hrafnbjargarson, Hróarsdóttir & Wiklund).
Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 79: 93-118.
2007. "Extracting from V2" (Bentzen, Hrafnbjargarson, Hróarsdóttir & Wiklund). Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 79: 119-128.
2007. "Rethinking Scandinavian verb movement" (Wiklund,
Hrafnbjargarson, Bentzen & Hróarsdóttir). To appear in Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 10. 2007.
2007. "OV languages: Expressions of cues" (Hróarsdóttir). To be published in New Approaches to Word Order Variation and Change. Trends in Linguistics. Mouton de Gruyter. 2007.
To appear. "Information structure and OV order" (Hróarsdóttir). To be published in
Malte Zimmermann and Caroline Féry (eds.): Information Structure from Different Perspectives. Oxford University Press.
Accepted. "Types of DPs in OV order" (Hróarsdóttir). To appear in Studia Linguistica.
Submitted "On language change and grammar change" (Hróarsdóttir).
Submitted. "On the Force behind V2" (Wiklund, Bentzen, Hrafnbjargarson & Hróarsdóttir). Submitted to Lingua.
Submitted. "Extraction and V2" (Hrafnbjargarson, Bentzen, Hróarsdóttir & Wiklund).
Submitted. "The afterglow of verb movement" (Hróarsdóttir, Wiklund, Bentzen & Hrafnbjargarson).
Submitted. "Three types of verb movement" (Hróarsdóttir, Wiklund, Bentzen & Hrafnbjargarson).
In process:
In process. "Double objects in Older Icelandic: A remnant movement approach" (Hróarsdóttir).
In process. "Two types of V2" (The Dream Team).
In process. "The Tromsø guide to two types of V2" (The Dream Team).
2008 projects:
"Object Shift is
not object shift" (Hróarsdóttir & Wiklund).
"V3 word order in Scandinavian" (Hróarsdóttir & Wiklund).
"On OV order and object drop" (Hróarsdóttir).
"Verb particle constructions in Older Icelandic" (Hróarsdóttir).
"Scandinavian Infinitives. Part I: Empirical Issues" (The infinitive group). Work in process.
Book projects »
Rethinking Scandinavian Syntax (Hróarsdóttir & Wiklund)
mOVe: Movement and OV languages (Hróarsdóttir)
Presentations »
Bentzen,
Hrafnbjargarson, Hróarsdóttir & Wiklund.
"The Force behind V2". Paper presented at Comparative Germanic Syntax Workshop (CGSW) 22, University of Stuttgart, June 9, 2007.
Hróarsdóttir. "Prosodic properties and OV order". Paper presented at Comparative Germanic Syntax Workshop (CGSW) 22, University of Stuttgart, June 8, 2007.
Bentzen,
Hrafnbjargarson, Hróarsdóttir & Wiklund.
"Verb movement in Scandinavian non-V2 contexts". Paper presented at GLOW XXX, University of Tromsø, April 12, 2007.
Bentzen,
Hrafnbjargarson, Hróarsdóttir & Wiklund. "Spring
Cleaning of Embedded V2 in Scandinavian". Paper presented
at CASTL colloquium, University of Tromsø, March 15,
2007.
Hróarsdóttir. "Prosodic properties and OV order". Paper presented at DGfS
(German Linguistic Society) Workshop: The role of information structure in language change. Siegen, Germany, February 28 - March 02, 2007.
Bentzen, Hróarsdóttir, Hrafnbjargarson & Wiklund. "Embedded V2 in Scandinavian: Empirical
observations". Paper presented at the workshop Verb placement in main and embedded clauses. University of Iceland, Reykjavík, January 26, 2007.
Hróarsdóttir,
Hrafnbjargarson, Wiklund & Bentzen. "The Tromsø guide
to Scandinavian verb movement". Paper presented at Grammatikseminariet, Lunds Universitet, October 19,
2006.
Hróarsdóttir. "Information structure and OV order". Paper presented at the Conference on Information structure between linguistic theory and empirical methods, University of Potsdam, June 6-8 2006.
Bentzen, Hróarsdóttir,
Hrafnbjargarson & Wiklund. "Icelandic V-to-I movement reconsidered". Paper presented at 2006 ScanDiaSyn Grand Meeting in Solf, Finland, June 8,
2006.
Wiklund, Hróarsdóttir,
Hrafnbjargarson & Bentzen. "Spring Cleaning of Verb Movement in
Norwegian and Icelandic". Paper presented at CASTL colloquium, University of Tromsø, May 11,
2006.
Miscellaneous »
Scandinavian Infinitivals:
Project led by Wiklund (in co-operation with ScanDiaSyn), aiming
to identify the structure of infinitivals across Scandinavian.
Tromsø, Spring 2006.
Ramifications of Remnant Movement. Project led by Hróarsdóttir & Abels. Tromsø, Fall 2006.
Visiting Scholar, UCSC, 2007-2008.
Brief description of ArcSyn »
The overall purpose of this project is
to investigate, test, and compare the essential ingredients of
recent syntactic theory. We will pose the following questions: What are
the recent trends within syntactic theory? What do recent syntactic
approaches have in common and where do they diverge? What do they predict about dialect variation,
language change, and learnability?
Syntactic theory
can be viewed as the
union of two subtheories: A theory of configurational properties of
syntactic representations (phrase structure), and a theory of how such
data structures can be manipulated by syntactic operations (syntactic
transformations). One of the principal aims of the present project is
to examine ways to achieve a higher degree of unification between these
two subtheories.
Another
principal aim of the project is to investigate aspects of
movement. What can move?: X vs. XP. Whether or not phrases
are
required to move as remnants or full phrases within a particular
language could be determined either by cross-linguistic variation or
indirectly by other principles at work in the individual languages. A
cross-linguistic analysis would obviously require touching upon a wider
range of issues. Hence, variation on the surface order might be
reducible to the question: What kind of phrases are allowed or required
to move as remnants within languages?
We will focus on the following topics/questions that have yet not
been settled: (i) The triggers and landing sites for remnant movement
are unclear; (ii) the types of constituents that can move as a remnant
are not settled; (iii) how do we explain categorical differences?;
(iv) to which extent has (un)grammaticality of remnant movement to do
with the proper binding of traces in the remnant?; (v) when all
material has moved out of a remnant A except for one constituent, B,
how do we distinguish between movement of A and movement of B (e.g.
modification, stranded material)?; (vi) which cases of constituent
movement need to/can be reanalyzed as remnant movement?; (vii) is it
possible to reanalyze alleged violations of the HMC in terms of remnant
movement?;(viii) does head movement exist?
Chomsky (1995, 2001) argues that formal/morphosyntactic features are
required to implement movement. These features include the phi-features
of Infl and v, the Case features of a DP, and the EPP feature of Comp,
Infl, and v. However, there are a range of phenomena that are less
obviously triggered by features of the above mentioned kind;
differences in quantifier scope, cases of optionality, phenomena argued
to involve covert displacement, etc. In many of these cases,
extra-syntactic factors such as discourse
or information structure or prosodic properties need to be imposed. The
different syntactic approaches show some diversity regarding the locus
of such influences; within narrow syntax, at the interfaces, or
elsewhere.
Although researchers have sought to identify
movement triggers in terms of the interface properties of their
syntactic features, many problems remain unsolved. The application of
remnant movement makes the trigger problem even harder. An ideal case
study here, to be executed in the second part of the project, is to
look at the question of what triggers the leftward movement taken to be
responsible for the Germanic (OV and) VO patterns.
The general
conclusions emerging from our investigation of the formal properties
and empirical coverage
of recent generative theories of syntax will be put to the test in four
different domains: a) the syntax of the Scandinavian languages; b) the
syntax of OV languages, including both synchronic and diachronic data;
c) I-language versus E-language; and d) Null arguments in acquisition
and change.
(I) Scandinavian Syntax »
In
this first part of the project, we present a comprehensive review of
current trends in Scandinavian syntax. Lots of things have happened in
the domain of Scandinavian syntax during the last decade, on the
theoretical side as well as on the empirical side. We provide an
overview of the most recent empirical discoveries and a discussion of
how these discoveries pertain to the theoretical issues that are
important to the study of natural language. Our principal focus on the
theoretical side will be a comparison of approaches that make use of
head movement/movement of smaller chunks and approaches that make use
of movement of bigger chunks, yielding remnant movement.
(II) OV languages »
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We will investigate data from the Germanic (OV/VO)
languages, focusing on a comparative study of (i) Modern Dutch and
German with overt OV word order patterns, (ii) English and the
Scandinavian languages with overt VO word order patterns, and
(iii) Old
and Middle English, Old High German, and Old Norse, all with overt OV
(and VO) order, and the diachronic change towards the modern stage of
these
languages. An important part of the case studies involves using data
from language acquisition and change (from the Germanic OV languages)
in order to evaluate the explanatory potential of the various syntactic
theories. This includes rethinking language change as an interaction of
changes in E-language and I-language. However, we need to examine not
only the Germanic OV and VO
languages, but also the non-Germanic language. Hence,
during this phase we will also want to know to what extent the OV
languages of the world constitute a homogeneous class. This will
include a typological investigation of the various syntactic properties
shared by OV languages.
One reason the syntax of OV languages is chosen as the object of
detailed study, is that a subset of OV languages, the West Germanic
ones, have been extremely well studied by generative grammarians, and
detailed information about their properties is easily available. More
importantly, competing syntactic theories make widely divergent claims
about them. According to the classical analysis, OV-order reflects a
setting of the ”head parameter” such that the V must be
final within the VP, the phrase it is the head of. More recent
incarnations of this idea are found, for example in Brody (2000), who
suggests that OV- vs. VO- order is determined at the level of Spell-out
by the properties of the functional heads projected on top of the verb.
On the other hand, Kayne (1994) develops a framework that requires
constituents to begin in specifier-head-complement order, with only
leftward movement. In more recent work within this framework, Kayne
(1998) begins the exploration of the possibility that there is no
covert movement, and Koopman and Szabolcsi (2000) show how head
movement is not needed in the analysis of verbal complexes. With the
restricted grammatical options these theories make available,
“remnant movement” has come to have increasing prominence,
where a “remnant” is a constituent from which material has
been extracted.
Adopting remnant movement as an analytical tool also opens up for a
view of the relationship between VO and OV structures that has
previously been explored in Hróarsdóttir (2000). Based on
the observation that VO and OV languages within the Germanic family
seem to position the complements of the verb in the same way with
respect to one another and with respect to adverbials, the working
hypothesis would be that the mechanisms forcing large-scale evacuation
from the VP, leaving only the verb cluster behind, are taken to be
operative in VO languages as well as in OV languages (contra Zwart
(1993), for example), except that, subsequently, the VO languages front
the remnant VP across the extracted complements. A similar analysis has
been shown by Nilsen (2002) to lead to an interesting new account of
Scandinavian ”object shift”, from which Holmberg’s
Generalization seems to follow without stipulation.
Taking VO-order to result from leftward movement of a remnant VP (or a
larger constituent containing the V), we also already have a way of
providing at least a partial account of some of the most important
differences between the Germanic OV languages and their VO cousins. The
apparent absence of long distance scrambling (enabled by verb cluster
formation), for example, could turn out to be an illusion created by
the leftward movement of the constituent containing the verb cluster
across the landing site of scrambled constituents. Particle shift
across the direct object could also be attributed to such movement,
provided (some) verb particles can be allowed the option of remaining
inside the constituent carrying the verb leftwards.
A particularly intriguing question is what triggers the leftward
remnant movement taken to be responsible for the Germanic VO-patterns.
Kayne’s (1998) analysis does not even attempt to address this
issue, although it seems crucial to reaching a real understanding of
the phenomenon. Thus, the trigger question comes back with full force,
as do closely related questions concerning the nature of syntactic
parameters.
Empirical domains to be investigated include two classes
traditionally analyzed as involving right adjunction: (i) postverbal
adverbs and adverbial PPs, and (ii) heavy shift and extraposition
phenomena. The following claims need to be put to the test against
typological data:
(1) right-adjunction does not (cannot) exist (Kayne 1994).
(2) the extended projection of the clause (VP/IP) is more extensive
than hitherto assumed, obeying a rigid universally determined hierarchy
of more than 30 (mostly abstract) functional heads that determine the
placement of a corresponding number of classes of adverbs (Cinque 1999).
(3) the syntax of VO and OV languages is defined on a ‘universal
base’ in which the order SVO is fixed for the "base VP" (thematic
domain), with OV orders arising from movement of the object across the
verb (Kayne 1994; Zwart 1993; Hróarsdóttir 1996).
(4) the syntax of the post subject "VP-domain" in VO languages like
English involves more (leftward) movement operations than is standardly
thought, including (overt leftward) object-raising plus remnant
VP-fronting across the object to a position below the subject (e.g.
Kayne 1998; Hróarsdóttir 2000).
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"Hver dáð sem maðurinn drýgir er draumur um konuást" (Þér konur)
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