Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T01:14:42.589Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Multiple long-distance scrambling: Syntax as reflections of processing1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 September 2009

RUTH KEMPSON  and
JIEUN KIAER
RUTH KEMPSON*
Affiliation:
King's College London
JIEUN KIAER*
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
*
Author's addresses: (Kempson) Department of Philosophy, King's College London, The Strand, London WC2R 2LS, UK[email protected]
(Kiaer) Oriental Institute, University of Oxford, Pusey Lane, Oxford OX1 2LE, UK[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper argues that, with syntax defined as progressive projection of semantic representations along the left-to-right dimension provided by the sequence of words (Cann, Kempson & Marten 2005), explanations for local and (multiple) nonlocal scrambling of NPs in Japanese and Korean follow from general principles of tree growth, allowing differences between the languages while nevertheless retaining an integrated account of scrambling itself. This formalism is similar to the parsing mechanism of Miyamoto (2002), but goes further in using this as the base grammar formalism, with all concepts of movement replaced by progressive articulation of structural underspecification and tree growth starting from the left periphery. The account extends the analysis of Japanese scrambling of Cann et al. to encompass multiple long-distance scrambling, capturing both the attendant relative locality restriction on the constituents moved, and interaction of this restriction with scope-construal effects. Scope-construal variability is expressible as interaction between individual lexical specifications for the two languages and general constraints on scope construal; and the relative locality constraint on the construal of the expressions involved in multiple long-distance scrambling is an immediate consequence of the general dynamics of the framework. The resulting account extends Hawkins' (2004) program of defining grammars relative to performance considerations.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 46 , Issue 1 , March 2010 , pp. 127 - 192
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

[1]

This paper has evolved over a number of years. We thank Ronnie Cann, Eleni Gregoromichelaki, Stergios Chatzikyriakidis, and Miriam Bouzouita for regular and often detailed support in developing ideas, Wilfried Meyer-Viol for high standards of formal rigour, Hiroto Hoshi for sharpening our understanding of current scrambling issues and the relevance of our own emergent account to these, and many others for comments and ongoing discussion during the preparation of the revised version of this paper. There are many more whose comments have helped to tighten the account; yet none can be blamed for the final result. For help with judgements, discussion and transcription of the Japanese data, we thank Akiko Kurosawa, Yoshiki Mori, Hiroaki Nakamura, Shinichiro Okajima, Masayuki Otsuka, Yo Sato, Tohru Seraku, Ken-ichiro Shirai, Hiroyuki Uchida, Aiko Yamanaka, and Kei Yoshimoto. We also thank the anonymous JL referees and Orin Gensler, whose comments led to considerable improvement in contents and style of this paper.

References

REFERENCES

Abe, Jun. 2006. Identification of null arguments in Japanese. Ms., Tohoku Gakuin University.Google Scholar
Aoshima, Sachiko, Phillips, Colin & Weinberg, Amy. 2004. Processing filler–gap dependencies in a head–filler language. Journal of Memory and Language 51, 23–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Asher, Nicholas & Lascarides, Alex. 2002. Logics of conversation. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Baldridge, Jason. 2002. Lexically specified derivational control in Combinatory Categorial Grammar. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Blackburn, Patrick & Meyer-Viol, Wilfried. 1994. Linguistics, logic and finite trees. Bulletin of Interest Group of Pure and Applied Logics 2, 2–39.Google Scholar
Boškovič, Željko. 2002. On multiple wh-fronting. Linguistic Inquiry 34, 351–383.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boškovič, Željko & Takahashi, Daiko. 1998. Scrambling and last resort. Linguistic Inquiry 29, 347–366.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bouzouita, Miriam. 2008a. At the syntax–pragmatics interface: Clitics in the history of Spanish. In Cooper, & Kempson, (eds.), 223–265.Google Scholar
Bouzouita, Miriam. 2008b. Diachronic development of Spanish object clitics. Ph.D. dissertation, King's College London.Google Scholar
Cann, Ronnie & Kempson, Ruth. 2008. Production pressures, language change, and the emergence of clitic pronouns. In Cooper, & Kempson, (eds.), 179–230.Google Scholar
Cann, Ronnie, Kempson, Ruth & Gregoromichelaki, Eleni. 2009. Semantics: The study of meaning in natural language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cann, Ronnie, Kempson, Ruth & Marten, Lutz. 2005. The dynamics of language. Oxford: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Cann, Ronnie, Kempson, Ruth & Purver, Matthew. 2007. Context and well-formedness: The dynamics of ellipsis. Research on Language and Computation 5, 333–358.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cappelen, Hermann & Lepore, Ernest. 2005. Insensitive semantics. Oxford: Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carston, Robyn. 2002. Thoughts and utterances: The pragmatics of explicit communication. Oxford: Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Choe, Jaewoong. 1987. Anti-quantifiers and a theory of distributivity. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1995. The Minimalist program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Cooper, Robin. 1980. Quantification and syntactic theory. Dordrecht: Reidel.Google Scholar
Cooper, Robin & Kempson, Ruth (eds.). 2008. Language in flux: Dialogue dynamics in language variation, change and evolution. London: College Publications.Google Scholar
Ferreira, Victor & Yoshita, Hiroko. 2003. Given–new ordering effects on the production of scrambled sentences in Japanese. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 32, 669–692.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fong, Sandiway. 2005. Computation with probes and goals. In Di Sciullo, Anna-Maria & Delmonte, Rodolpho (eds.), UG and external systems: Language, brain and computation, 247–68. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Gibson, Edward. 1998. Linguistic complexity: Locality of syntactic dependencies. Cognition 68, 1–76.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gregoromichelaki, Eleni. 2006. Conditionals in Dynamic Syntax. Ph.D. dissertation, King's College London.Google Scholar
Grewendorf, Gunther. 2003. Improper remnant movement. Gengo Kenkyo: Journal of the Linguistic Society of Japan 123, 47–94.Google Scholar
Grice, H. Paul. 1989. Studies in the way of words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hawkins, John. 1994. A performance theory of order and constituency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hawkins, John. 2004. Efficiency and complexity in grammars. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hayashishita, J.-R. 2004. Syntactic and non-syntactic scope. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Southern California.Google Scholar
Hiraiwa, Ken. 2005. Dimensions of symmetries in syntax: Agreement and clausal architecture. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.Google Scholar
Hoji, Hajime. 1985. Logical Form constraints and configurational structures in Japanese. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Washington.Google Scholar
Hoshi, Hiroto (ed.). 2009. The dynamics of the language faculty: Perspectives from linguistics and cognitive neuroscience. Tokyo: Kuroshio.Google Scholar
Inoue, Atsui & Fodor, Janet Dean. 1995. Information-paced parsing of Japanese. In Mazuka, Reiko & Nagai, Noriko (eds.), Japanese sentence processing, 9–64. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Jun, Sun-Ah. 2000. K-ToBI (Korean ToBI) labelling convention Version 3. Speech Sciences 7, 143–169.Google Scholar
Kamide, Yuki & Mitchell, Geoffrey. 1999. Incremental pre-head attachment in Japanese parsing. Language and Cognitive Processes 14, 631–662.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kamp, Hans. 1984. A theory of meaning and semantic representation. In Janssen, Theo & Stokhof, Mark (eds.), Truth, interpretation, and information, 1–34. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Kaplan, Ron & Zaenen, Annie. 1989. Long-distance dependencies, constituent structure, and functional uncertainty. In Baltin, Mark & Kroch, Anthony (eds.), Alternative conceptions of phrase structure, 17–42. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Karimi, Simil (ed.). 2003. Word order and scrambling. Oxford: Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kempson, Ruth & Cann, Ronnie. 2007. Dynamic Syntax, dialogue and syntactic change. In Salmons, Joseph C. & Dubenion-Smith, Shannon (eds.), Historical linguistics 2005, 15–50. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Kempson, Ruth & Chatzikyriakidis, Stergios. 2009. The Person Case Constraint as a tree-growth property. Ms., King's College London.Google Scholar
Kempson, Ruth & Cormack, Annabel. 1981. Ambiguity and quantification. Linguistics and Philosophy 4, 259–309.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kempson, Ruth, Gregoromichelaki, Eleni & Sato, Yo. 2009. Incrementality, speaker-hearer switching and the disambiguation challenge. SRSL 2009: The 2nd Workshop on Semantic Representation of Spoken Language, 74–81. Athens, Greece: Association for Computational Linguistics. http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W09-0510 (30 July 2009).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kempson, Ruth & Kiaer, Jieun. 2009. Japanese scrambling: The dynamics of on-line processing. In Hoshi, (ed.), 5–45.Google Scholar
Kempson, Ruth, Kiaer, Jieun & Cann, Ronnie. 2009. Topic and focus at the peripheries: The dynamics of tree growth. In Shaer, Benjamin, Cook, Philippa, Frey, Werner & Maienborn, Claudia (eds.), Dislocated elements in discourse: Syntactic, semantic and pragmatic perspectives, 141–170. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kempson, Ruth & Kurosawa, Akiko. 2009. At the syntax–pragmatics interface: Japanese relative-clause construal. In Hoshi, (ed.), 47–84.Google Scholar
Kempson, Ruth & Meyer-Viol, Wilfried. 2004. Indefinites and scope. In Bezuidenhout, Anne & Reimer, Marga (eds.), Descriptions and beyond, 558–584. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kempson, Ruth, Meyer-Viol, Wilfried & Gabbay, Dov. 2001. Dynamic Syntax: The flow of language understanding. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Kiaer, Jieun. 2007. Processing and interfaces in syntactic theory: The case of Korean. Ph.D. dissertation, King's College London.Google Scholar
Kiaer, Jieun & Kempson, Ruth. 2006a. Pro-active parsing of Korean scrambling. The West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL) 24, 209–217.Google Scholar
Kiaer, Jieun & Kempson, Ruth. 2006b. Pro-active parsing in Korean: At the syntax–phonology interface. European Conference on Korean Linguistics 1, 58–72.Google Scholar
Ko, Heejong. 2005. Syntactic edges and linearization. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.Google Scholar
Ko, Heejong. 2007. Asymmetries in scrambling and cyclic linearization. Linguistic Inquiry 35, 315–337.Google Scholar
Koizumi, Masatoshi. 2000. String vacuous overt verb raising. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 9, 227–285.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuno, Susumu. 1973. The structure of the Japanese language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Kuroda, Sigeyuki. 1971. Remarks on the notion of subject with reference to words like also, even or only (part 2). Journal of Japanese Linguistics 11, 98–156.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kurosawa, Akiko. 2003. A Dynamic Syntax account of Japanese relative clauses. Ph.D. dissertation, King's College London.Google Scholar
Mahajan, Anoop. 1997. Rightward scrambling. In Beerman, Dorothee, Leblanc, David & Riemsdijk, Henk van (eds.), Rightward movement, 186–214. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Marcus, Mitchell. 1980. A theory of syntactic recognition for natural language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
May, Robert. 1985. Logical form. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Meyer-Viol, Wilfried. 1995. Instantial logic. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Utrecht.Google Scholar
Miyagawa, Shigeru. 1997. Against optional scrambling. Linguistic Inquiry 28, 1–25.Google Scholar
Miyagawa, Shigeru. 2003. A-movement scrambling and options without optionality. In Karimi, (ed.), 177–200.Google Scholar
Miyagawa, Shigeru. 2005. EPP and semantically vacuous scrambling. In Sabel, & Saito, (eds.), 181–220.Google Scholar
Miyagawa, Shigeru. 2006. On the ‘undoing’ property of scrambling: A reply to Boškovič. Linguistics Inquiry 37, 607–624.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miyamoto, Edson. 2002. Case markers as clause boundary inducers in Japanese. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 31, 307–347.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Müller, Gereon. 1996. A constraint on remnant movement. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 14, 355–407.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Muromatsu, Keiko. 2003. Classifiers and the count–mass distinction. In Li, Audrey & Simpson, Andrew (eds.), Functional structure(s), form and interpretation: Perspectives from East Asian languages, 65–96. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Nordlinger, Rachel. 1998. Constructive case. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Partee, Barbara & Rooth, Mats. 1983. Generalized conjunction and type ambiguity. In Bauerle, Rainer, Egli, Urs & Stechow, Arnim von (eds.), Meaning, use and interpretation of language, 361–383. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phillips, Colin. 1996. Order and structure. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.Google Scholar
Phillips, Colin. 2003. Linear order and constituency. Linguistic Inquiry 34, 37–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Purver, Matthew, Cann, Ronnie & Kempson, Ruth. 2006. Grammars as parsers: Meeting the dialogue challenge. Research on Language and Computation 4, 289–326.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rogers, James. 1994. Studies in the logic of trees with applications to grammar formalisms. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Delaware.Google Scholar
Sabel, Joachim & Saito, Mamoru (eds.). 2005. The free word order phenomenon: Its syntactic sources and diversity. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saito, Mamoru. 1985. Some asymmetries in Japanese and their theoretical implications. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.Google Scholar
Saito, Mamoru. 1992. Long distance scrambling in Japanese. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 1, 69–118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saito, Mamoru. 2003. A derivational approach to interpretation of scrambling chains. Lingua 113, 481–518.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saito, Mamoru. 2005. Further notes on the interpretation of scrambling chains. In Sabel, & Saito, (eds.), 335–376.Google Scholar
Sauerland, Uri & Elbourne, Paul. 2002. Total reconstruction, PF movement and derivational order. Linguistic Inquiry 33, 283–320.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sells, Peter. 1999. Postposing in Japanese. Ms., Stanford University.Google Scholar
Shirai, Ken-ichiro. 2004. Context, thought and utterance: Where context meets syntax (un)expectedly. Ms., University of Nagoya.Google Scholar
Sperber, Daniel & Wilson, Deirdre. 1986. Relevance: Communication and cognition. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Steedman, Mark & Baldridge, Jason. 2003. Combinatory categorial grammar (tutorial paper). Ms., University of Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Szabolcsi, Anna. 1997. Strategies for scope taking. In Szabolcsi, Anna (ed.), Ways of scope taking, 109–154. Dordrecht: Kluwer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tada, Hiroaki. 1993. A/A-bar partition in derivation. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.Google Scholar
Takahashi, Daiko. 2008. Quantificational null objects and argument ellipsis. Linguistic Inquiry 39, 307–326.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Takano, Yuji. 2002. Surprising constituents. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 11, 243–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ueyama, Ayumi. 1998. Two types of dependency. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Southern California.Google Scholar