Towards a Unified Treatment of Modality (abstract) Sumayya Racy, Ph.D. The primary claim of this thesis is that despite the numerous forms modality may take, both within and across languages, there are relatively few features, structures and operations which give rise to these numerous forms. For example, in English the modal notion of obligation may be expressed by a verb (He must go), but an adverb (He obligatorily goes), by an adjective (He is obliged), by a noun (He has an obligation), and even by a preposition (It's on him to go) or by no clear modal marker (He is to go). In other languages, we find still more ways in which modality may be expressed, such as through affixes (Garo), through evidentials (Tuyuca), through modal particles (Norwegian), and through mood (Latin). It is shown in this thesis that by adopting Cinque's (1999) hierarchy of functional projections, Distributed Morphology (Halle & Marantz 1993), the semantics of Kratzer (1991) and Hacquard (2006) and a limited feature set, we may account for many of these expressions of modality within a single unified framework. In particular, it is argued that modal roots are acategorial (accounting for the many parts of speech we find in modal expressions) and it is proposed that head movement and fusion may take place among modal functional heads (accounting for the fact that modality may be expressed through other categories like evidentiality). Along the way, several interesting facets of modality are pointed out, including the fact that modal nouns may only be used with unusual abilities, and the fact that in English intonation and ASL repeated movement we may find phonological correlates of epistimicity.

Working within the morphosyntactic framework of Distributed Morphology (DM, Halle and Marantz 1993, 1994) within the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1995), this dissertation proposes a new economy constraint on the grammar, MINIMIZE EXPONENCE, which selects the derivation that realizes all its interpretable features with the fewest morphemes. The purpose of this proposal is to capture the conflicting needs of the grammar to be both maximally contrastive and maximally efficient.I show that the constraint MINIMIZE EXPONENCE has a number of effects on analyses of morphosyntactic phenomena. I propose that, in order to satisfy MINIMIZE EXPONENCE, the roots in a derivation fuse with the functional heads projected above them, resulting in a simplex head that contains both a root and interpretable features. Following the tenets of DM, this head is now a target for the process of Vocabulary insertion. Since the target node contains both content and functional information, so too can Vocabulary Items (VIs) be specified for both types of information. This allows VIs such as eat and ate to compete with each other. This competition of forms linked to the same root allows for a new model of root allomorphy within the framework of DM. In this model of root allomorphy, following proposals by Pfau (2000), VIs that realize roots participate in competition in the same was as do VIs that realize abstract morphemes. Since root VIs are participating in competition and are specified for both content and formal features, the need for licensing through secondary exponence as proposed by Harley and Noyer (2000) is removed from the framework. Further, since eat and ate in this model are different VIs with different specifications that compete with each other for insertion, this model of root allomorphy also eliminates the need for readjustment rules as proposed by Halle and Marantz (1993, 1994) and elaborated on by Marantz (1997). This new model of root allomorphy allows for an account of the blocking of regular inflection in English nominal compounds (e.g. *rats-catcher), which was problematic for theorists working with DM, given the tenets of the framework.I also show that the fusion of roots and functional elements driven by MINIMIZE EXPONENCE allows for a new account of subcategorization. The model of subcategorization presented here falls out of the following facts: 1) arguments are introduced by functional heads; 2) those heads fuse with the root they are projected above, resulting in the node containing both the root and the features of the functional heads; 3) since the root now contains both the root and the formal features, the corresponding VI can be specified for both; 4) VIs that realize roots can also be specified for compatibility or incompatibility of the features of the functional heads that license argument structure. The result here is an underspecification model of subcategorization that predicts a number of behaviors of verbs with respect to their argument structure that it is difficult for a full specification model to account for. Those include polysemy (I ran the ball to Mary) and structural coercion (I thought the book to Mary).

In this paper I use the Distributional Morphology framework and semantic Locality Constraints proposed by Arad (2003) to look at category assignments of blends in Modern Hebrew, as well as blends, compounds and idioms in English where relevant. Bat-El (1996) provides an explicit phonological analysis of Modern Hebrew blends, and argues against any morphological process at play in blend formation. I argue, however, that blends and compounds must be accounted for within morphology due to category assignments. I first demonstrate that blends are unquestionably formed by blending fully inflected words rather than roots, and then subsequently reject an analysis that accounts for weakened Locality Constraints by proposing the formation of a new root. Instead, I propose a hypothesis of Idiomatic Root Merge where a root can be an n-place predicate that selects at least an XP sister and a category head. This proposal also entails that there is a structural difference between two surface-similar phrases that have respectively literal and idiomatic meanings.

This dissertation is an analysis of the morphosyntax of the Turkish causative construction within the framework of Distributed Morphology (DM). It is an attempt to capture a range of different phenomena in a principled way within this framework. Important aspects of DM for the analysis herein include the syntactic derivation of words; the existence of an acategorial Root from which all words are syntactically derived; and the late (post-syntactic) insertion of Vocabulary Items (VIs) into terminal syntactic nodes. A distinction is made between two different levels of causative: Root (or inner) causatives, and productive (or outer) causatives. Root causatives are minimal structures in which a Root phrase (comprising a Root and its nominal complement) is merged with a verbalizing head, little-v (Harley 1995; Chomsky 1995, 2001; Marantz 1997). This domain is the locus of idiosyncratic allomorphy, and it is where the traditionally recognized ‘irregular’ causatives suffixes are found. In addition, another type of idiosyncratic Root-adjacent phenomenon is identified in this study: independent exponence of the verbalizing feature and of the causative feature (CAUS). This is analyzed as CAUS fission: the result of a post-syntactic operation that splits the terminal node [v, CAUS] into two positions of exponence. Productive causatives are larger structures in which a vP is merged with a CAUS head. The identification of the Root causative head as v.CAUS but the productive causative head as simply CAUS is a departure from Harley's (2008) analysis of Japanese causatives, and is a new proposal in this work. Following Pylkkänen (2002, 2008), the external argument is not introduced by either v.CAUS or CAUS, but by a higher projection, Voice. This innovation makes it possible to model syntactic differences between Japanese and Turkish productive causatives. Japanese causatives embed Voice (i.e., they are ‘phase-selecting,’ in Pylkkänen's terminology) while Turkish causatives embed little-v (i.e., they are ‘verb-selecting’). Hence, the former behave as two clauses with regard to a range of diagnostics, while the latter behave as a single clause. Furthermore, it is proposed that productive causatives do not exhibit syntactic recursion, and that cases of causative iteration are actually morphological reduplication.

abstract: This thesis investigates the pronominal system in Standard Arabic. It seeks to unravel the correlation between independent and dependent personal pronouns. Although both pronoun groups are treated as distinct parts of the lexicon, I argue that dependent pronouns are reduced forms derived from the strong counterparts. This study examines how these forms (reduced and non-reduced) relate to one another phonologically and syntactically. Various analytical tools are utilized including vowel harmony, syllable structure as well as some principles of Distributed Morphology and Chomsky's 1995 Minimalist Program. With regard to the phonological relations, I argue that dependent subject pronouns are generated from their parallel strong forms by omitting the initial syllable. Dependent object pronouns are formed by omitting the first two syllables. The first person singular and third person plural masculine subject pronouns are suppletive forms completing the paradigm. They are not derived by reduction from their full counterparts. After investigating the distributional properties of both sets of pronouns, I propose a bipartite subcategorization of reduced pronominals into two subclasses: clitics and affixes. Clitics surface in positions in which strong pronouns cannot occur. As for affixes, they are used to mark verb-argument agreement. In light of these positions, I argue that dependent subject pronouns are always affixes while dependent object pronouns are always clitics. Clitics function as syntactically independent units which combine with hosts at the phonological phase as a result of their prosodic deficiency while affixes associate with hosts when features are valued during a sentence derivation. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. English 2013

The question of how to integrate idioms into standard theories of grammar has been a matter of investigation since at least the beginning of generative grammar. Idioms are uniquely positioned at the interface between the lexicon and the syntax, demonstrating properties of both words and phrases. On the one hand, idioms behave like stored units, arbitrary correspondences between sound and meaning that must simply be memorized by speakers of the language. In this way, they are similar to words, which have long been recognized as arbitrary sound-meaning pairs (cf. Saussure (1986)'s arbitrariness of the sign). On the other hand, idioms in the traditional sense are multiword units, often with some degree of syntactic flexibility, ranging from tense inflection (e.g. Eli kicked the bucket yesterday vs. I'm pretty sure Eli's going to kick the bucket tomorrow) to passivizability (e.g. Lisa spilled the beans vs. The beans were spilled (by Lisa)), and beyond. This places idioms in the purview of the syntax, where the combination and manipulation of multiword units is typically assumed to take place. Idioms, then, bridge the gap between the lexicon and the syntax, challenging traditional assumptions about grammar. This dissertation provides a proposal for dealing with just such issues. I provide an account of idiomatic representations that is consistent with theoretical and empirical research in the field. I explore what kinds of structures are licensed to have special idiomatic interpretations, and I present novel experimental and corpus results that bear on the issue of how idioms are represented. Ultimately, I argue that the structural requirement model alone is able to sufficiently account for the data.

In dieser Dissertation schlage ich eine Synthese (Distributed Optimality, DO) von Optimalitätstheorie und einem derivationellen, morphologischem Asatz, Distributed Morphology (DM; Halle & Marantz, 1993) vor. Durch die Integration von OT in DM wird es möglich, Phänomene, die in DM durch sprachspezifische Regeln oder Merkmale von lexikalischen Einträge erfasst werden, auf die Interaktion von verletzbaren, universellen Constraints zurückzuführen. Andererseits leistet auch DM zwei substantielle Beiträge zu DO, Lokalität und Impoverishment. Lokalität erlaubt eine formal einfache Interpretation von DO, während sich Impoverishment als unverzichtbar erweist, um Kongruenz-Morphologie adäquat zu beschreiben. Die empirische Grundlage der Arbeit sind die komplexen Kongruenzsysteme von genetisch unterschiedlichen Sprachen.<br /> Der theoretische Schwerpunkt liegt in zwei Bereichen: Erstens, sogenannte Direkt/Invers-Markierung, für die gezeigt wird, dass eine Behandlung durch Constraints über Merkmalsrealisierung am angemessensten ist. Zweitens, die Effekte von Abfolge-Constraints, die den Satus von Affixen als Präfixe und Suffixe sowie ihre relative Reihenfolge regeln. Eine konkrete Typologie für die Abfolge von Kongruenz-Affixen auf der Basis von OT-Constraints wird vorgeschlagen. / In this thesis I propose a synthesis (Distributed Optimality, DO) between Optimality Theory (OT, Prince & Smolensky, 1993) and a morphological framework in a genuine derivational tradition, namely Distributed Morphology (DM) as developed by Halle & Marantz (1993). By carrying over the apparatus of OT to DM, phenomena which are captured in DM by language-specific rules or features of lexical entries, are given a more principled account in the terms of ranked universal constraints. On the other hand, also the DM part makes two contributions, namely strong locality and impoverishment. The first gives rise to a simple formal interpretation of DO, while the latter is shown to be indispensable in any theoretically satisfying account of agreement morphology. The empirical basis of the work is given by the complex agreement morphology of genetically different languages. <br /> Theoretical focus is mainly on two areas: First, so-called direction marking which is shown to be preferably treated in terms of constraints on feature realization. Second, the effects of precedence constraints which are claimed to regulate the status of agreement affixes as prefixes or suffixes and their respective order. A universal typology for the order of agreement categories by means of OT-constraints is proposed.

Dual number marked on personal pronouns and verbal agreement suffixes disappeared in the majority of Slavic languages except for three - Slovenian, Upper Sorbian, and Lower Sorbian. Previous studies do not provide a principled account why (i) the monomorphemic dual was reanalyzed as bimorphemic in Slovenian, Upper, and Lower Sorbian, and why (ii) it was replaced by the plural in the majority of Slavic languages including Russian and Kashubian. In this dissertation, I investigate diachronic changes in the morphosyntactic category of the Slavic dual which occurred in the 11th-15th centuries. In this dissertation, I present new diachronic data obtained through digital corpora of Old Slavic manuscripts. Within the framework of Distributed Morphology, I propose a new principle of Morphosyntactic Feature Economy which explains these two different patterns of diachronic change in the Slavic dual pronouns and verbal agreement. I argue that the principle of Morphosyntactic Feature Economy is one of the factors which drives diachronic change in the category of number in Slavic languages. Morphosyntactic Feature Economy is a principle of efficient computation. It plays an essential role in restructuring of the morphosyntactic category of the Slavic dual. Morphosyntactic restructuring of the Slavic dual, triggered by its morphosyntactic and semantic markedness, results in a morphosyntactically 'simpler' category of number. As a consequence of the application of the principle of Morphosyntactic Feature Economy, the language learner acquires a featurally restructuctured category of number, which is simpler and more computationally efficient.

This dissertation is an analysis of two types of nominal compounds in Turkish, primary compounds and synthetic compounds within the framework of Distributed Morphology. A nominal primary compound is formed by two nouns, and its meaning is largely determined by world knowledge. A synthetic compound, on the other hand, is formed by a noun and a derverbal noun, such that the former is a true argument of the latter. The meaning of such compounds is always compositional. In many languages, the structural difference between these two types of compounds is not immediately observable. However, in Turkish, a primary compound would be obligatorily marked with the compound marker, -(s)I(n) while a synthetic compound would never be marked as such. In this dissertation, I claim that primary compounds in Turkish are underlyingly possessive phrases, a claim that has been previously made by several others. My analysis differs from those previous analyses in that it maintains that -(s)I(n) figures in a morphological component that follows syntax but precedes PF. Such a post-syntactic analysis has a number of advantages as it can account for a wide range of descriptive observations about the behavior of -(s)I(n). I claim that -(s)I(n) and an agreement marker never form a sequence at any stage in the grammar. I test this claim in an experiment conducted with Turkish-speaking individuals with aphasia, and show that only a vanishingly rare number of -(s)I(n)-agreement sequences are attested in aphasic speech. My analysis of synthetic compounds in Turkish is based on three types of nominalizers and the types of categories they can select. I show that only event-denoting nominals can form true synthetic compounds. I also show that nominals that are derived directly from roots can never form true synthetic compounds, which casts doubts on roots as projecting categories. I also consider a third group of seemingly synthetic compounds, which have an overt complex verbal stem, and yet, fail to derive true synthetic compounds. Following Marantz (2013), I claim that such pseudo-synthetic compounds, in fact, have semantically null verbalizing morphemes, and therefore, the root and the nominalizing head are semantically adjacent at LF.

This dissertation is an application of the framework of Distributed Morphology to the morphosyntax of Chemehuevi, an endangered Southern Numic language of the Uto-Aztecan family. Following one of the central claims of DM, I argue that word formation in Chemehuevi happens in the syntax and provide evidence for this claim from the formation of lexical categories, as well as from the morphosyntax of the Chemehuevi causative verbs. I frame my discussion of lexical categories around the Root Hypothesis (Marantz 1997, Arad 2005), a notion that there are no underived nouns, verbs, or adjectives in the grammar, but roots that receive interpretation and assignment to a `part of speech' depending on their functional environment. I show that Chemehuevi nouns and verbs are formed when roots are incorporated into nominal or verbal functional heads, many of which are overtly represented in the language. I also demonstrate that there is no distinct class of adjectives in Chemehuevi, and that roots with adjectival meanings are derived into stative verbs or nominalizations, depending on their function.My discussion of predication in Chemehuevi centers around the previously unexplained distribution of the enclitic copula -uk, which under my analysis is viewed as an overt realization of a functional head Pred (based on Baker 2003), which is obligatory in the formation of nominal and adjectival, but not verbal predicates.Another major theme of the dissertation is the notion that word-formation from roots differs from word-formation from derived words, known as the Low vs. High Attachment Hypothesis (Marantz 2000, Travis 2000, etc.). This approach explains the differences between compositional and non-compositional word formation by the distance between the root and functional head(s) attached to it. On the basis of Chemehuevi causatives, I show that causative heads attached directly to the root derive words that exhibit morphophonological and semantic idiosyncrasies, such as allomorphy and availability of idiomatic meanings, while high attachment heads derive words that are fully compositional. This locality constraint on interpretation of roots is explained in terms of phase theory, and I present evidence from Chemehuevi showing that what constitutes a phase may be subject to parametric variation.Each chapter of the dissertation contains a section for non-linguistic audience where I provide a summary of the main points in non-theoretical terms and connect them to practical applications for the purposes of language learning and revitalization.