Delayed Valuation: A Reanalysis of Goal Features, “Upward” Complementizer Agreement, and the Mechanics of Case

Syntax ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vicki Carstens
Keyword(s):  
Complementizer Agreement

Complementizer agreement in eastern Wisconsin: (Central) Franconian features in an American heritage language community

2014 ◽  
Vol 67 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Bousquette
Keyword(s):  
Heritage Language ◽  
Language Community ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Subject Pronouns ◽  
Complementizer Agreement ◽  
American Heritage ◽  
Linguistic Cycle ◽  
Inflectional Affixes

AbstractThe present study shows that Wisconsin Heritage German licenses complementizer agreement for second person singular, with inflectional affixes developed through the reanalysis of phonetically-derived hiatus effects. Most frequently attested in speakers with direct ancestry to Franconian-speaking regions, this phenomenon is restricted to second person singular, consistent with the input varieties at time of immigration. Analyzed diachronically, complementizer agreement is shown to progress through a linguistic cycle involving the reanalysis and subsequent compensatory reinforcement of subject pronouns, with Wisconsin Heritage German exhibiting the earliest stage of this cycle.

Micro-change and macro-change in diachronic syntax

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Éric Mathieu ◽  
Robert Truswell
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Diachronic Syntax ◽  
Current Trends ◽  
Syntactic Change ◽  
Complementizer Agreement ◽  
Viewpoint Aspect ◽  
And Control

This introduction discusses current trends in diachronic linguistics with a focus on syntactic change and reviews the fifteen other chapters included in the volume. In the spirit of modern diachronic syntax, the selected articles show that very general patterns of change, emergent, multigenerational diachronic phenomena, interact with small, discrete, local, intergenerational changes in the lexical specification of grammatical features. General topics include acquisition biases, cross-categorial word order generalizations, typological particularities and universals, language contact, and transitional changes, while specific linguistic topics include tense and viewpoint aspect, directional/aspectual affixes, V2, V3, Stylistic Fronting, directional/aspectual prefixes, negation, accusative and dative marking, analytic passives, complementizer agreement, and control and raising verbs.

The Wackernagel complex and pronoun raising

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helmut Weiß
Keyword(s):  
The Third ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Syntactic Features ◽  
Complementizer Agreement ◽  
Subject Clitics

In many Indo-European languages, pronouns (and other clitic-like elements) tend to appear in second position or near it. This phenomenon was first described by Jakob Wackernagel, after whom the position is named the Wackernagel position (WP). This chapter describes the emergence of the WP in German where it is the third position following SpecCP and C. Since subject clitics in the WP interact phonologically and morphologically with verbs and complementizers in C, three additional syntactic features (double agreement, complementizer agreement, partial pro-drop) are associated with the WP in German (forming the so-called Wackernagel complex). The chapter surveys the evidence for the existence of the WP in OHG and, to a lesser extent, in MHG, using the additional features as diagnostics. It also contains a new explanation of how complementizer agreement could have emerged.

scholarly journals You Take the Low Road and I’ll Take the High Road: Variation in Agreement Structure in Wisconsin Heritage German

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 525-562
Author(s):  
Joshua Bousquette
Keyword(s):  
Heritage Language ◽  
American English ◽  
Control Group ◽  
High Agreement ◽  
English Grammar ◽  
Bilingual Speakers ◽  
Complementizer Agreement ◽  
Predicting Factor ◽  
Grammatical Structures ◽  
High Road

This article presents on interviews with 10 bilingual speakers of American English and Wisconsin Heritage German (WHG), with respect to their licensing of high (NP1) versus low (NP2) agreement. In terms of linguistic typology, English copular constructions license only NP1 agreement, in which the verb agrees in person and number with the first—or syntactically high—nominal element in the clause; Standard German copular constructions license NP2 agreement with the lower nominal element in the clause (though subsequent topicalization of this element is also licit). As a second variable, a subset (7) of these speakers license complementizer agreement (C-agr) in WHG, which obtains from a second, syntactically high agreement structure in the complementizer field, in addition to the canonical German NP2 structure. These data were compared to a control group of the remaining three WHG speakers who did not license C-agr. Data presented here suggest a bi-directional transfer of both NP1 and NP2 agreement structures for both groups of heritage language (HL) speakers. The control group produced a majority of forms consistent with both English and German language-specific grammars. Evidence of NP2 structures in the control group’s English, however, suggests that these speakers are HL-dominant—since NP2 is categorically prohibited in English. WHG speakers with C-agr, in contrast to the control group, produced a majority of NP1 forms in both languages, with the presence of C-agr being a predicting factor in the presence of NP1 agreement in the English of WHG speakers. It is here argued that the presence of C-agr in the HL is similar to the canonical NP1 structures of Standard English, allowing for overlapping licit NP1 structures in both varieties. Data from Assumed Identify Constructions (AICs) suggests that canonical NP2 agreement in C-agr WHG may have been weakened as a result. This research suggests that even superficially English-like grammar may obtain not from a direct transfer from the L2 into the HL, but rather from the interaction of English grammar with the autochthonous grammatical structures of non-standard HLs.

Rethinking Complementizer Agreement: Agree with a Case-Checked Goal

2003 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 393-412 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vicki Carstens
Keyword(s):  
Strong Phase ◽  
West Germanic ◽  
Verb Agreement ◽  
Marked Case ◽  
Complementizer Agreement ◽  
The Subject

Agree(X, Subj) accounts for all agreement in West Germanic: complementizer agreement (CA) results from an Agree relation between uninterpretable φ-features of Fin0 (Rizzi 1997) and φ-features of the subject; subject-verb agreement (SA) spells out uninterpretable φ-features of T0 on V0 raised to T0, even in OV clauses (Haegeman 2000). Although DPs need Case to participate in Agree relations (Chomsky 2000), deletion-marked Case remains syntactically accessible until the next strong phase (Pesetsky and Torrego 2001), allowing CA and SA to cooccur. In Frisian, ‘that’ cannot agree in embedded VO clauses because it is in Force; the verb is in Fin0, bearing CA (contra Zwart 1997).

Language production experiments as tools for corpus construction: A contrastive study of complementizer agreement

2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias Fingerhuth ◽  
Ludwig Maximilian Breuer
Keyword(s):  
Language Production ◽  
Experimental Methods ◽  
Response Behavior ◽  
Contrastive Study ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
Corpus Construction ◽  
Completion Task ◽  
Corpus Size ◽  
Complementizer Agreement ◽  
Task Types

AbstractThe investigation of linguistic phenomena in corpora of spontaneous speech is sometimes hindered by corpus size or by the complexity of the factors influencing their occurrence. Language Production Experiments (LPEs) can specifically elicit such phenomena and can therefore be used to build corpora that allow for their investigation. Yet experiments are a wide category that covers very different tasks, and there is little empirical research that compares speakers’ response behavior to different task types. In this paper, we compare the responses of a group of 22 speakers to a translation task and a completion task, both of which target the syntactic phenomena complementizer agreement (CA). The results indicate that both experimental methods offer legitimate ways to investigate the phenomenon with specific advantages and disadvantages. However, a comparison of results from both tasks allows for insights that a single task could not have provided.

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