morphosyntactic feature geometries

[Alana Johns]

Regarding the recent discussion of the dual and its interpretation, I
thought I would mention something I know but have not investigated
fully. This is that in at least one dialect of Inuktitut which is known
to have a dual, I have a story from a monolingual speaker where the
topic of the story is a couple (isolated), and they are consistently
referred to by the plural. It is possible that other dialects (e.g.
Labrador Inuttut) would not allow this so it has been on my agenda for
some time to investigate this more thoroughly. Alana
On Feb 28, 2004, at 2:50 PM, Martha McGinnis wrote:

> Rolf, thanks very much for your response!
>
> It's true, the two possibilities (feature geometries = Vocabulary,
> feature geometries = syntax) should indeed make the different
> empirical predictions you mentioned.  The syntactic agreement
> predictions might be hard to test, since agreement Vocabulary should
> be subject to the same feature geometry as pronoun Vocabulary... but
> one can imagine syntactic distinctions between e.g. number+gender
> agreement (as on French participles) vs. person+number agreement (as
> on French finite verbs) -- e.g. in French, the former type of
> syntactic agreement relation doesn't seem to block further syntactic
> movement of the nominal, while the latter type does.  If H&R's
> geometry is correct, we might expect to find other syntactic evidence
> for these kinds of agreement splits, rather than a person+gender vs.
> number split.
>
>> The idea that plurals in a language with duals mean "three or more"
>> does not strike me as being the result of a specifically interpreted
>> "minus dual" value of some sort, but rather a blocking effect. If
>> the speaker had meant two (s)he would have used a dual; thus using
>> the plural implies three or more. As a pragmatic or functional
>> inference however, one might expect this to be cancellable in the
>> appropriate discourse context.
>
> Good point.  It's important to know whether or not what we call
> "plural" really means "dual or plural" in languages with dual number
> morphology.  I (blush) don't know the number literature well enough
> to know this.  Reportedly though, what we call "1st exclusive plural"
> really doesn't mean "exclusive or inclusive plural" in languages with
> inclusive person morphology... so similar questions arise in the
> person domain in any case.
>
>> Since I am committed (as I think many of us are) to a semantics
>> which interprets the syntax rather than generates it, I don't
>> understand what it means to say "it uses the most specific
>> morphosyntactic category compatible with the intended meaning"
>> except as a kind of pragmatic rule of the Gricean sort "be as
>> informative as possible".
>
> Yes, me too -- that's what I find so disturbing about the notion that
> that's how these categories are used / interpreted.  If the feature
> geometries are Vocabulary items only, then it makes sense to me that
> they could be inserted into fully specified syntactic nodes whose
> features straightforwardly determine the way the category is
> interpreted.  So, for example, if it's true that 1st person exclusive
> Vocabulary can't be used in an inclusive context, then we could
> insert it into a node that's [-Addressee] -- even if the 1st
> exclusive Vocabulary item itself doesn't have this feature.
>
> But what if the feature geometries are syntactic?  Then we can't work
> any interpretive magic with negative-valued syntactic features.  That
> is, we really NEED to know if "plural" really does mean "not dual" in
> languages with dual number morphology (ditto "exclusive" and "not
> inclusive").
>
> Looking at cancellable implicatures is a fascinating idea!  That
> really made me think.  But I think I've convinced myself that this is
> actually *not* the way to determine the syntactic/semantic features
> of morphosyntactic categories.  At first, it seems promising.  For
> example, suppose you're an Arabic speaker and you hear (1), which is
> designed to cancel the plural's implicature of "greater than 2".  My
> guess is that the implicature CAN be cancelled -- that (1) in Arabic
> would not be a contradiction.  (Any Arabic speakers out there to
> confirm?)
>
> (1) Only they (pl.) are lucky -- in fact, only they (du.) are lucky.
>
> Anyway, suppose, for the sake of argument, that the implicature IS
> cancellable. From this, we might conclude that the plural really can
> be used for groups of two. But actually, I don't think that would be
> the correct conclusion.  Here's why: (2)-(4) all sound fine to me as
> well, given the right context.  There's a strong contrast with (5),
> for example.  But surely we DON'T want to say that first plural in
> English really can be used for a set consisting of just the speaker,
> or just the addressee, or just a 3rd person!
>
> (2)  Only we are lucky -- in fact, only I am lucky.
> (3)  Only we are lucky -- in fact, only you are lucky.
> (4)  Only we are lucky -- in fact, only he is lucky.
> (5) #Only I am lucky -- in fact, only he is lucky.
>
> I think these implicatures actually tell us about semantic relations
> between the two pronouns -- that is, "we" is a set that can *include*
> (not consist of) the sets "I", "you", and "he", while "I" is not a
> set that can include the set "he".  Likewise, "they (pl)" can include
> the set "they (du)". That doesn't tell us whether it can *consist of*
> such a set.
>
> So... oh well.  But what about just finding out whether a verb with a
> subject like "Rolf and Martha" can be plural, or whether it has to be
> dual?  Would that be a good enough way to find out if plural can
> refer to sets of two?  Suppose the verb in this context really does
> have to be marked as dual. If so, it seems to me that we WOULD need
> negative feature values in order to ensure this (e.g. plural
> morphology is inserted into [+Group, -Minimal] number in languages
> with dual morphology).  If there are negative feature values in the
> syntax, then H&R's privative feature geometry could only be in the
> Vocabulary. (Actually, I once tried to imagine what their feature
> geometry would look like with binary +/- feature values, but... my
> head exploded.  Perhaps others can do better than I..!)
>
> Best,
> Martha
>
>
_____________________________
Alana Johns, Dept. of Linguistics
130 St. George, Robarts Library
University of Toronto
Toronto, ON M5S 3H1 CANADA
Tel. 416-978-1761 FAX 416-971-2688