Comparative studies in word order variation: adverbs, pronouns, and clause structure in Romance and Germanic

382 Pages·1998·14.37 MB·English

by  Christopher Laenzlinger

COMPARATIVE STUDIES
IN WORD ORDER VARIATION
LINGUISTIK AKTUELL
This series provides a platform for studies in the syntax,
semantics, and pragmatics of the Germanic languages
and their historical developments.
The focus of the series is represented by its German title
Linguistik Aktuell (Linguistics Today).
Texts in the series are in English.
Series Editor
Werner Abraham
Germanistisch Instituut
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
Oude Kijk in 't Jatstraat 26
9712 EK Groningen
The Netherlands
E-mail: [email protected]
Advisory Editorial Board
Guglielmo Cinque (University of Venice)
Giinther Grewendorf (J.W. Goethe-University, Frankfurt)
Liliane Haegeman (University of Geneva)
Hubert Haider (University of Stuttgart)
Christer Platzack (University of Lund)
Ian Roberts (University of Stuttgart)
Ken Safir (Rutgers University, New Brunswick NJ)
Hoskuldur Thrainsson (University of Iceland, Reykjavik)
Lisa deMena Travis (McGill University)
Sten Vikner (University of Stuttgart)
G Jan-Wouter Zwart (University of Groningen)
Volume 20
Christopher Laenzlinger
Comparative Studies in Word Order Variation
Adverbs, pronouns, and clause structure in Romance and Germanic
COMPARATIVE STUDIES IN
WORD ORDER VARIATION
ADVERBS, PRONOUNS, AND CLAUSE
STRUCTURE IN ROMANCE AND GERMANIC
CHRISTOPHER LAENZLINGER
University of Geneva
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
AMSTERDAM / PHILADELPHIA
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Laenzlinger, Christopher.
Comparative studies in word order variation : adverbs, pronouns, and clause structure in Ro­
mance and Germanic / by Christopher Laenzlinger.
p. cm. - (Linguistik aktuell / Linguistics today, ISSN 0166-0829; v. 20)
Revision of the author's thesis-University of Geneva. 1996.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
1. Languages, Modern-Word order. 2. Languages, Modern-Variation. 3. Languages, Modern-
Adverb. 4. Languages. Modern-Pronoun. 5. Languages, Modern-Clauses. I. Title. II. Series:
Linguistik aktuell; Bd. 20.
PB213.L34 1998
415-dc21 98-17510
ISBN 90 272 2741 1 (EUR) / 1 55619 904 x (us) (Hb; alk. paper) CIP
© Copyright 1998 - John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other
means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. • P.O.Box 75577 • 1070 AN AMSTERDAM • The Netherlands
John Benjamins North America • P.O.Box27519 • Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 • USA
Contents
Foreword vii
1 Introduction 1
1.1 The empirical background 2
1.2 The theoretical background 10
1.2.1 The phrase structure component 12
1.2.2 The composition of clause structure 17
1.2.3 Checking Theory 23
1.2.4 Movement 28
1.2.5 Chains and conditions on representation 30
1.3 Organization of the book 34
2 The Syntax of Adverbs 37
2.1 Towards a typology of adverbs 40
2.2 The distribution of adverbs 46
2.2.1 Sentence adverbs 46
2.2.2 VP-adverbs 50
2.3 Towards a syntactic definition of adverbs 52
2.3.1 Adverbs as A-specifiers 52
2.3.2 Adverbs in predication 53
2.4 The semantics of adverbs 55
2.5 The syntax-semantics interface 63
2.6 The GB-based approaches 65
2.7 Adverb insertion and phrase structure 72
2.7.1 Against Adjunction 73
2.7.2 The double Spec model of X-schema 74
2.7.3 Kayne's (1994) Linear Correspondence Axiom . . .. 76
2.8 Extraposition in the right A-specifier 79
2.9 The licensing of adverb positioning 82
v
vi CONTENTS
2.9.1 Two types of adverbial operators 83
2.9.2 The Adv-Criterion vs. Checking Theory 86
2.10 Adverb hierarchy and clause structure 88
2.11 The linear placement of adverbs 92
2.11.1 Verb movement 92
2.11.2 Extraposition 104
2.11.3 The distribution of adverbs within CP 106
2.12 Conclusion 121
3 Pronouns 123
3.1 Object pronouns 127
3.1.1 Romance object pronouns 131
3.1.2 Germanic object pronouns 195
3.2 Subject pronouns 219
3.2.1 French and Northern Italian subject pronouns . . .. 219
3.2.2 Subject pronouns in Germanic 233
4 The Structure of the German Clause 243
4.1 An overview of the German Mittelfeld 244
4.2 A survey of scrambling transformations 252
4.3 Scrambling and specificity 279
4.4 Scrambling and focus 286
4.5 Scrambling and adverb distribution 290
4.6 Speculations on V2 299
4.7 Conclusion 305
5 Conclusion 311
Endnotes 320
Bibliography 349
Index 363
Foreword
This book adresses the question of word order variation in Romance lan­
guages - especially French - and in Germanic languages - especially Ger­
man. The theoretical framework adopted is the Principles & Parameters
Theory of Transformational Generative Grammar, from which a wide range
of comparative studies have emerged in recent years.
The main empirical contribution of this book lies in the fact that three
linguistically distinct phenomena - adverbs, pronouns and clause structure
- are treated in two typologically distinct classes of languages. French, like
most Romance languages, qualifies as an SVO language, whereas German,
like West-Germanic languages, qualifies as an SOV language, at least su­
perficially. A great amount of data are collected and discussed, leading to
significant, and sometimes unexpected, generalizations.
The theoretical contribution of the present work essentially consists of
the linguistic analyses developed for adverbs, pronouns and more generally
for the clause structure in Romance and Germanic. The aim of my research
is to lay down the properties which are common to the distribution and po­
sitioning of adverbs, pronouns and full noun phrases, notably with respect
to verb (dis)placement. The two main theoretical concepts explored in this
book are (i) a precise model of Checking Theory containing principles (set
and types of features, head-head configuration, Spec-head configuration,
Criterion, etc.) and parameters (A vs. A, head- vs. XP-features, checking
before Spell-Out vs. checking after Spell-Out, etc.) and (ii) a novel con­
ception of phrase structure within X-Theory. It is shown that these two
theoretical aspects of the Principles & Parameters framework can inter­
act in such a way as to explain the distributional peculiarities of adverbs,
pronominals, full noun phrases and verbs in a coherent and satisfactory
fashion. In other words, the analyses set forth in this book tend to capture
and formalize the checking relationships existing between pairs of elements,
following a specific conception of phrase structure.
The first part of the book deals with the typology and placement of
adverbs and, from a theoretical point of view, is essential to the rest of
VII
Vlll FOREWORD
the work. A novel model of the X-schema is introduced, which allows two
specifiers at most per projection - a low A-specifier and a higher (i.e. c-
commanding), possibly right-branching, A-specifier. I also present the the­
oretical tools related to the mechanism of feature checking, notably with
respect to the distinction between A-feature checking and A-feature check­
ing, the latter being subject to the system of Criteria (Rizzi 1991, Haegeman
1995).
In the second part of the book, a well-defined version of Checking The­
ory is developed further (distinction A- vs. A-features and head- vs. XP-
features) and, in interaction with the double-Spec model of X projections,
is applied to weak and clitic pronominal forms. The application of spe­
cific phrasal and checking mechanisms to pronouns yields the expected re­
sults, since it can account for the exact positioning of non-strong (i.e. non-
accented, unmodified) pronominal forms, notably with respect to agreement-
bearing elements, that is, heads associated with -features. The distinction
between head-head and Spec-head checking requirements, in other words
between X°-feature and XP-feature checking, allows one to explain the head-
properties as well as the XP-nature of weak/clitic (dis)placement. In addi­
tion, the distinction in checking between pre-Spell-Out and post-Spell-Out
feature licensing/interpretation, leads to a typology of pronouns reduced to
two main classes (cf. Cardinaletti & Starke 1993 for a tripartite typology
clitic-weak-strong): clitic pronouns, on the one hand, and strong pronouns,
on the other hand. CHtic forms are subject to parametrization as to the
level at which they criticize (i.e. incorporate into the appropriate head):
either before Spell-Out or after Spell-Out. Depending on the strength or
weakness of their head-features, say their -features, they qualify as syn­
tactic clitics or as LF-clitics. Finally, the adjacency effects and clustering
possibilities observed in the case of pronominalization of clitic/weak forms
are explained on the basis of their derivational path: they first move as max­
imal projections and then as heads. It is shown that pronominal clusters are
formed derivationnally and that adjacency effects are reducible to the Head
Movement Constraint (HMC, Travis 1986, Baker 1988). The HMC can be
formalized in terms of Shortest Move (Chomsky 1995) from a derivational
point of view, and/or in terms of Relativized Minimality (Rizzi 1990) fol­
lowing a representational conception of locality conditions. I argue that a
derivational vs. a representational formulation of the HCM can have impor­
tant empirical and theoretical consequences, notably as regards some cases
of head movement known as Long Head Movement (Roberts 1993).
In the third part of the book, the analyses developed so far for adverbs
and pronouns, and based on the mechanisms of checking and phrase struc-
FOREWORD IX
ture composition, are extended to the distribution and placement of full
nominals and prepositional phrases in Germanic languages. Particular at­
tention is paid to the phenomena called scrambling in West Germanic and
object shift in Scandinavian. As expected, the relevant data regarding the
range of word order variations in these languages can be adequately handled
if one follows the formahzation of Checking Theory and Phrase Structure
Theory proposed in the previous parts of the book. It is shown that the
ordering constraints on the distribution of full arguments, adverbs, weak
pronouns and verbal elements within the clause structure find a straightfor­
ward explanation in the present syntactic framework.
We are also led to the conclusion that an articulated clause structure is
required both empirically and theoretically, but with a Hmited number of
functional projections. An enriched layered structure is proposed not only
for the inflectional (cf. Pollock 1989, Chomsky 1990) and verbal domains
(cf. Larson 1988, Chomsky 1995), but also for the complementizer domain
(cf. Rizzi 1995). Arguments, pronominal or not, adverbs and verbs find
their appropriate position within such a clause structure, depending on the
linguistic contexts (V2, topicalisation, scrambling, and so on).
This book is a revised version of my doctoral dissertation, which has been
achieved in July 1996 and defended in November 1996 at the University of
Geneva. I would like to thank Prof. Eric Wehrli for being the director of my
thesis committee. He has always trusted me, providing me with interesting
tasks and challenging jobs in large-scale projects, and I hope that I have
never disappointed him. I am indebted to him for my career within the
Department of General Linguistics. Second, I would like to thank Prof. Luigi
Rizzi for having accepted to preside my thesis committee. His influence on
my work and my career as a linguist is without limit. He taught me how
to approach the data and to handle them in the comparative perspective
of a rich theoretical model, such as the Principles & Parameters Theory.
Third, I thank Prof. Liliane Haegeman, for having served as a member
of my thesis committee. I owe her the achievement of my undergraduate
studies in linguistics. She encouraged me to keep on in that direction, even
when I felt that I could abandon everything. She feels personnally involved
with her students, and we can benefit from her positive personality during
her exciting seminars. Her influence on my work is also incalculable. Next, I
would like to thank Prof. Ian Roberts for being one of the 'external' members
of my thesis committee. Much of the material of my disseration finds its
origin in his teaching when he was in Geneva, and in his own work. Finally,
I express my gratitude to Prof. Werner Abraham, first, for having accepted
to be the Germanic specialist member of my thesis committee, and second,