Word Order and Scope: Transparent Interfaces and the ¾ Signature

Abstract

A recurring pattern of partial correlations between word order variation and scope possibilities (the 3 ⁄ 4 signature) supports a particular view of economy constraints in syntax, with these properties: (1) There are economy conditions (soft constraints) that value a particular type of correspondence between LF and PF representations. (2) These constraints are unidirectional: LF (broadly construed) is calculated first and determines PF (surface word order). (3) Scope rigidity is a property not of languages but of specific configurations, and the distribution of rigidity effects is (largely) predictable from independent variation in the syntactic resources of various languages.We focus here on the interaction of these three assumptions and on the role of (2) in predicting the 3 ⁄ 4 signature effect. We contrast our proposal with Reinhart's (2005) Interface Economy model, in which economy conditions regulate a mapping that takes overt structure as its input and yields permissible interpretations. OverviewOur primary concern in this article is the relationship between word order and (certain aspects of ) interpretation. It is a commonplace observation that there appears to be an inverse correlation between rigid word order and scope rigidity: languages with free word order are often said to ''wear their LF [scope] on their sleeves'' (Szabolcsi 1997:111), while languages with restricted possibilities for word order permutation, like English, have a high tolerance for scope ambiguity. Our focus here is not on this (inverse) correlation per se, but on the particular ways in which For useful feedback, we wish to thank as well as the participants in seminars at the University of Connecticut (Spring 2007(Spring , 2009) and audiences at Nanzan University, Harvard University, GLOW 31 (Newcastle), CGSW 23 (Edinburgh), and PLC 33. We also thank the anonymous referees for their very helpful comments and suggestions. Our names are listed in alphabetical order.

Scope marking and prosody in Hungarian

“…The preference for the linear scope interpretation that we have observed in all of our experiments seems to be in line with traditional accounts like Fodor (1982), JohnsonLaird (1969) and Lakoff (1971), or recent accounts that assume a soft constraint favoring correspondence between word order and scope interpretation, independently of syntactic hierarchy, including Bobaljik (1995;, Bobaljik & Wurmbrand (2012), Broekhuis (2008), Reinhart (2005), Müller (2000;, and Williams (2003). 16 The processing experiments discussed in Tunstall (1998) and Anderson (2004) involving doubly quantified sentences indicated a "default preference" for the linear scope interpretation, which the authors attribute to a lower degree of processing complexity.…”

Against information structure heads: A relational analysis of German scrambling

“…For example, there can be no doubt that scrambling QPs can avail these QPs of new scopal properties (cf., e.g., Frey 1993;Bobaljik & Wurmbrand 2012;Fanselow 2012;Hinterhölzl 2012 Not only the scrambling of quantified material across negation elements yields semantic effects, but the scrambling of QPs across each other leads to scopal ambiguity, as has been pointed out in the literature: While there are endless complications when different prosodic realizations are taken into account, at least under some prosodic implementations (e.g., verum focus), the base order has only the surface scope reading (Frey 1993 Whereas the reciprocal einander can hardly be interpreted as bound by the (following) direct object in a) under most prosodic renderings, the reading becomes available unproblematically when the direct object comes to precede einander via scrambling, as in b. Thus, scrambling can feed binding interpretations, as expected, e.g.…”

“…This is unattested for most semantic effects, cf. Frey (1993); Bobaljik (2002); Bobaljik & Wurmbrand (2012). To rule out unwanted side-effects of this kind, various restrictions need to be formulated, complicating the (only) seemingly simple spellout solution.…”

The cost of raising quantifiers

“…Alternatively, as suggested in fn. 20, the cost computation of movement could involve an additional penalty for interpretations in which PF and LF mismatch (perhaps along the lines suggested in Bobaljik & Wurmbrand 2012). The latter would also predict that reconstruction in complex clauses incurs a processing burden, which, as stated by the same reviewer, is impressionistically the case (for simple clauses it depends on where the subject quantifier is interpreted-Spec,TP or Spec,vP, which is still an open question).…”