Dissertation: Cross-linguistic variation in the semantics of comparatives

269 Pages·2014·0.72 MB·English

THEUNIVERSITYOFCHICAGO
CROSS-LINGUISTICVARIATIONINTHESEMANTICSOFCOMPARATIVES
ADISSERTATIONSUBMITTEDTO
THEFACULTYOFTHEDIVISIONOFTHEHUMANITIES
INCANDIDACYFORTHEDEGREEOF
DOCTOROFPHILOSOPHY
DEPARTMENTOFLINGUISTICS
BY
MICHAELRYANBOCHNAK
CHICAGO,ILLINOIS
AUGUST2013
Copyright(cid:13)c 2013byMichaelRyanBochnak
Allrightsreserved
forEva
Contents
LISTOFTABLES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
ABSTRACT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii
LISTOFGLOSSINGCONVENTIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiv
1 CROSS-LINGUISTICVARIATIONINSEMANTICS:ANOVERVIEW . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1.1 Universalsandvariationinmeaning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1.2 Varietiesofvariation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.2 Variationinatthesyntax-semanticsinterface: twohypotheses . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.3 Possiblelocioflexicalvariation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.3.1 Lexicalizationofopen-classitems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
1.3.2 “Semanticglue” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
1.3.3 Inventoryofsemantictypes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
1.3.4 Takingstock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
1.4 Mainclaims . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
1.4.1 Empiricalclaims . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
1.4.2 Analyticalclaims . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
1.4.3 Methodologicalclaims . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
1.5 Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
1.5.1 Thetypologyofcomparativeconstructionsintheworld’slanguages . . . . 26
1.5.2 Comparingcomparisons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
1.5.3 Fieldworkmethodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
1.6 Outlineofdissertation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
2 THELANDSCAPEOFGRADABLEPREDICATESANDCOMPARATIVES . . . . . 34
2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.2 Semanticpropertiesofgradablepredicatesandcomparatives . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
2.2.1 Vaguenessingradablepredicates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
2.2.2 Thetypologyofscalestructure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
2.2.3 Beyondthepositiveform: comparativesandmeasurephrases . . . . . . . 40
2.2.4 Explicitandimplicitcomparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
2.2.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
2.3 Thesemanticsofgradablepredicatesanddegreemorphology . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
2.3.1 Degree-basedanalyses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
2.3.2 Vaguepredicateanalyses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
2.3.3 DecidingbetweenthetwoaccountsforEnglish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
2.4 Thecompositionofcomparatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
2.4.1 Twosyntacticanalysesforcomparatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
iv
2.4.2 Deriving(clausal)comparatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
2.4.2.1 Thecomparativemorphemeasadegreequantifier . . . . . . . . 63
2.4.2.2 Clausalstandardsaswh-structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
2.4.3 Clausalvs.phrasalstandards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
2.4.3.1 Argumentsforphrasalstandards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
2.4.3.2 Thedirectanalysisforphrasalcomparatives . . . . . . . . . . . 69
2.4.4 Thecontributionofstandardmarkers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
2.5 Cross-linguisticvariation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
2.6 Alookahead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
3 EXCEEDANDCLEFTCOMPARISONSINLUGANDA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
3.2 IntroductiontoLugandamorphosyntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
3.2.1 Nounclassandagreement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
3.2.2 Distinguishingsyntacticcategories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
3.3 ExceedandcleftcomparisonsinLuganda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
3.3.1 Mainverbexceedcomparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
3.3.2 Subordinateexceedcomparatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
3.3.3 Cleftcomparisons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
3.4 Explicitversusimplicitcomparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
3.4.1 Exceedcomparisonsareexplicitcomparisons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
3.4.1.1 Crispjudgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
3.4.1.2 Absolutestandardadjectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
3.4.2 Cleftcomparisonsareimplicitcomparisons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
3.4.3 Interimconclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
3.5 Phrasalversusclausalstandards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
3.5.1 Diagnosingclausalcomparatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
3.5.2 Individualversusdegreestandards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
3.6 Alookahead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
3.7 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
4 THECOMPOSITIONOFLUGANDAEXCEEDCONSTRUCTIONS . . . . . . . . . . 115
4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
4.2 Initialhypotheses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
4.3 Thesemanticsofnominalizedgradablepredicates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
4.3.1 Previousworkonnominalizedgradablepredicates . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
4.3.2 Ananalysisofpossessiveandnon-possessiveadjectivenominalizations . . 126
4.3.3 Nominalizedverbphrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
4.3.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
4.4 Thecompositionofsubordinateexceedcomparatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
4.5 Thedistributionofmeasurephrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
4.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
v
5 CONJOINEDANDLOCATIVECOMPARISONSINWASHO . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
5.2 BackgroundonWashomorphosyntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
5.2.1 Verbalmorphosyntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
5.2.2 Complexverbstems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
5.2.3 Nominalmorphosyntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
5.2.4 ScalarpredicatesinWasho . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
5.3 ConjoinedandlocativecomparisonsinWasho . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
5.3.1 Conjoinedcomparisons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
5.3.2 Locativecomparisons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
5.4 Theanalysisofconjoinedcomparisons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
5.4.1 Testsforexplicitvs.implicitcomparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
5.4.1.1 Crispjudgmentcontexts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
5.4.1.2 Absolutestandardpredicates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
5.4.2 Thesemanticsofconjoinedcomparisons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
5.5 Theanalysisoflocativecomparisons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
5.5.1 Locativecomparisonsareimplicitcomparisons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
5.5.2 Locativecomparisonviapragmaticimplicature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
5.5.2.1 Thebasisforderivingacomparisonimplicature . . . . . . . . . 184
5.5.2.2 Coercingatypeshift . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
5.5.2.3 Thebasisforasemanticchange . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
5.6 Alookahead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
6 DEGREE-LESSGRADABLEPREDICATESINWASHO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
6.2 Nomeasurephrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
6.3 Distributionofmodifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
6.3.1 Thedistributionandinterpretationofˇsemu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
6.3.2 Capturingscalestructureeffects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
6.4 Noequativesorsuperlatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
6.5 Thebehaviorof‘degree’achievements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
6.6 Twoalternativehypotheses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
6.6.1 Hypothesis1: Washomakesreferencetodegrees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
6.6.2 Hypothesis2: scalarpredicatesinEnglisharevaguepredicates . . . . . . . 226
6.7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
7 TAKINGSTOCKONCROSS-LINGUISTICVARIATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
7.1 Summaryofresults . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
7.2 Formalresearchandtypology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
7.3 Locatingvariation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
7.3.1 Aspectsoflexicalvariation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
7.3.2 Aspectsofvariationatthesyntax-semanticsinterface . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
7.4 Makingcomparisonsvs.comparativeconstructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
7.5 Closingremarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
vi
REFERENCES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
vii
List of Tables
1.1 Thetree/wood/woodssemanticfield(vonFintel&Matthewson,2008,p.149) . . . 17
viii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thisdissertationwouldnotexistinitscurrentformwereitnotforthesupportandencouragement
of my advisor, Chris Kennedy. I feel extremely lucky to have had him as a mentor throughout
my grad school career. In every meeting I had with him, even when I was feeling frustrated and
directionless, I left his office feeling invigorated and refreshed, and ready to tackle the challenges
aheadofme. Hehasatalentforpullingoutjusttherightpieceofguidanceoradviceatexactlythe
right moment, whether it be about points of analysis, preparing abstracts and grant applications,
or navigating the job market. I am proud to have him as my Doktorvater, and cannot thank him
enoughforallhehasdoneformeoverthelastsixyears.
Myothercommitteemembersalsohadaprofoundinfluenceoverthisdissertationandmyyears
at Chicago. Jason Merchant and Karlos Arregi advised me on my second qualifying paper, which
turned into chapters 3 and 4 of this dissertation. Jason is a font of all things syntactic (and in
fact most things semantic as well), which made my meetings with him invaluable. I really don’t
know how one person manages to keep all that stuff in his head, but somehow Jason does it with
ease. It is truly awe-inspiring. I thank Karlos for his unrelenting enthusiasm for this project. I
remember the day of my proposal defense when he was sitting at the table in the lounge and said,
“I’m just looking forward to all the cool data.” My meetings with him helped me to sharpen my
reasoningandstrengthenmyarguments,andmydissertationisbetteroffforthat. Finally,AlanYu
wasinstrumentalinmycareerbymentoringmeinmyfieldwork,andofcoursebyintroducingme
to the Washo community. When I entered grad school, I never thought I would be a fieldworker,
andIamgratefulthatheinvitedmetojoinhiminhisfieldworkinoneofthemostbeautifulplaces
onEarth.
Several other faculty members played important roles in my education, both leading up to and
duringthedissertation-writingphase. IthankAnastasiaGiannakidouformanyenjoyablemeetings
andseminarsovertheyears,andforencouragementandsupportinmycareerandmypersonallife.
Thetitleofchapter2isanodtoher. ItamarFrancezwasalwaysenthusiastictotalkaboutanything
ix
semantics related (or not), and provided valuable insights into several aspects of my work that
wouldhaveotherwisegoneunnoticed. IthankJasonRiggleforincludingmeinhislabresearchin
myfirstyear,andgivingmevaluablecareeradvicethroughoutmyyearshere. AmyDahlstromand
Lenore Grenoble deserve special mention for teaching Field Methods in my second year, together
withAlan,whichintroducedmetoLugandaandourconsultantKisuule. Iwouldalsoliketothank
whicheverfacultymemberwhowasonthegradstudentadmissionscommitteein2007anddecided
to give a young foreigner without a linguistics degree a chance. Thank you for believing in me.
Finally, I must also thank Vanessa Wright for handling all my administrative issues and requests
withgraceandafriendlysmile.
I have also benefitted from discussions and comments from many other linguists during my
graduate career, and I am honored that they have taken an interest in my work. I would like
to mention Peter Alrenga, Chris Barker, Sigrid Beck, Rajesh Bhatt, Elizabeth Bogal-Allbritten,
Regine Eckardt, Andrew Koontz-Garboden, Stefan Hofstetter, Vera Hohaus, Lisa Matthewson,
Louise McNally, Paula Menendez-Benito, Marcin Morzycki, Jessica Rett, Galit Sassoon, Roger
Schwarzschild, and Peter Svenonius. I would also like to thank audiences at conferences where
portions of my dissertation work were presented, especially the Annual Conference on African
Linguistics 41 in Toronto, Semantics of Under-represented Languages of the Americas 6 at the
UniversityofManchester,theNorth-EastLinguisticsSociety42attheUniversityofToronto,Mod-
ificationwithandwithoutModifiersinMadrid,theLinguisticSocietyofAmerica2012meetingin
Portland, Oregon, the Workshop on the Structure and Constituency of Languages of the Americas
17attheUniversityofChicago,andTheMeaningofPattheRuhrUniversityofBochum.
Averyspecialshout-outisduetoJudithTonhauser,whosecourse“Cross-linguisticSemantics
ofTense”atthe2009LSASummerInstituteintroducedmetotheworldofbridgingformalseman-
tics with fieldwork. Judith is directly responsible for inspiring my interest in semantic variation
and universals. She is an inspiration as a semanticist and fieldworker, and I am grateful that she
hascontinuedtotakeaninterestinmyworkeversinceourfirstmeeting.
x