A “Maximal Exclusion” Approach to Structural Underspecification in Dynamic Syntax

Seraku, Tohru

doi:10.1007/s10849-019-09308-0

J of Log Lang and Inf

2019

DOI: 10.1007/s10849-019-09308-0

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A “Maximal Exclusion” Approach to Structural Underspecification in Dynamic Syntax

Tohru Seraku

Abstract: Case" and "grammatical function" are central to syntactic theories, but rigorous treatments of these notions in surface-oriented grammars like Dynamic Syntax (DS) are pending. Within DS, it is simply held that a case particle resolves structural uncertainty (i.e., unfixed node) in the course of incremental tree update. We model the relation between "case" and "grammatical function" with special reference to Japanese. In this language, the nominative case particle ga normally marks a "subject" NP, but it may ma… Show more

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Cited by 3 publications

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References 18 publications

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“…The nominative particle -ga may mark an object NP in certain environments; seeSeraku (2021) for a uniform account of subject and object NPs marked by -ga. Also, passives are not analysed here; seeCann (2011) andMarten & Gibson (2016).…”

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Intransparent-Gap Relatives in Japanese

Seraku

2024

J. Ling.

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In the present article, we describe what we call Intransparent-Gap Relatives (IGRs) in Japanese. In IGRs, a gap is located within the relative clause, and the head noun appears outside the relative clause. Unlike the standard head-external relatives, the gap in IGRs is not transparently associated with the head noun, but they are mediated through a metonymic relation. We propose a formal account of IGRs in terms of incremental parsing in Dynamic Syntax: an IGR string is processed in a left-to-right manner, and a semantic structure is progressively built up. This account unifies the standard head-external relatives and IGRs, relegating their differences to the ways in which the head noun is parsed and construed against the relative clause structure. Confirmation of this analysis comes from cross-constructional and cross-linguistic considerations. First, the analysis predicts that a metonymic reading is available in relatives but not in other rightward-displacement constructions, such as clefts and postposing. Second, the analysis suggests that IGRs are possible in languages such as Japanese and Korean, where the relative clause is processed before the head noun, but not in languages such as English and French, where the head noun is processed before the relative clause.

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Intransparent-Gap Relatives in Japanese

Seraku

2024

J. Ling.

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An Incremental Grammar Approach to Multiple Nominative Constructions in Japanese

Seraku

2022

J of Log Lang and Inf

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Grammars for placeholders: The dynamic turn

Seraku

2023

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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In verbal communication, when a speaker encounters a word-formulation problem (e.g. memory lapse), she may resort to several linguistic strategies, including the use of a placeholder (PH). A PH is a dummy item with which a speaker fills in the syntactic slot of a target form that she is unable or unwilling to produce. There is a growing body of work investigating PHs in a variety of languages, but the bulk of extant studies provide a descriptive and/or functional analysis and little attention has been paid to formal modelling. In the present article, we offer a wide range of PH examples in Japanese, French, and German, including new data on gender mismatches, and develop a formal account in Dynamic Syntax. We propose a general mechanism to process a PH time-linearly and show how it is implemented in the grammars of several languages. In this analysis, a PH-involving string is parsed incrementally, and a conceptual structure is built up progressively, during which a PH introduces a meta-variable, to be updated based on the parse of a target form on an unfixed node or a LINKed node. The account is further extended to various PH-involving dialogic phenomena in talk-in-interaction.

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A “Maximal Exclusion” Approach to Structural Underspecification in Dynamic Syntax

Cited by 3 publications

References 18 publications

Intransparent-Gap Relatives in Japanese

Intransparent-Gap Relatives in Japanese

An Incremental Grammar Approach to Multiple Nominative Constructions in Japanese

Grammars for placeholders: The dynamic turn

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