"exceptional AdjPh-s" (fwd)

[Edith A Moravcsik]

This is a message sent on behalf of Jason Merchant.

Edith


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2000 11:45:25 +0200
From: Jason Merchant <J.R.Merchant at let.rug.nl>
To: Edith A Moravcsik <edith at csd.uwm.edu>
Subject: Re: "exceptional AdjPh-s"

Dear Edith,

Thanks for the update. Just a couple brief comments.
1. AP prenominal "inversion" with "a" also occurs with "very", but in
a more restricted set of environments: M. Borroff presented a paper
at the 2000 LSA in which she claimed such inversion tracked
negative-polarity licensing environments, pretty good as a first
approximation:

(1)  John is *(not) [very good a student].  (her bracketing)

(She's at SUNY Stony Brook, a student of Larson's, I think;
Mlborroff at aol.com)

2. I have some discussion of some Dutch and German data in my
dissertation (pp. 200-205), which I'd be happy to send you a copy
of (it's also downloadable from my webpage -- ch 5 would be the
relevant one; it's also going to appear next year with OUP, but I
don't know exactly when), though I'm mostly interested there in the
"how AP a N" versions, since they're relevant to sluicing.  I'll copy
and paste some of the data here, though:

        In some southern dialects, however, { REF _Ref425575190 \* MERGEFORMAT }(23e) is grammatical (the data
presented here are from the Brabant dialect; thanks to N. Corver, I.
Mulders, and R. van Rooy for discussion):

({  SEQ ( \* ARABIC }24)        Hoe’n lange man hebben zij aangesteld?
    [Brabants]

        This strategy is found in standard Dutch with zo ‘so’, though not
with hoe ‘how’, and compares with similar constructions found in
German and English (cf. Corver 1990:319 for the middle Dutch equivalent).

({  SEQ ( \* ARABIC }25)        a.      Zo’n lange       man heb  ik nooit  eerder gezien!
    [standard Dutch]
    so  a  tall-agr man have I  never before seen
    b.  So einen großen Mann hab   ich nie     zuvor gesehen!
    [German]
    so  a        tall       man    have I    never before seen
    c.  I’ve never seen such a tall man before.
    d.  I’ve never seen so tall a man before.


Standard Dutch is more restricted wrt inversion with "how":

({  SEQ ( \* ARABIC }23)        a.      * Hoe lang(e)     een man hebben zij     aangesteld?
    how tall(agr) a     man have     they hired
    b.  * Hoe lang(e)     man hebben zij    aangesteld?
    how tall(agr) man have     they hired
    c.  * Hoe een lang(e)    man hebben zij      aangesteld?
    how a    tall(agr) man have      they hired
    d.  * Hoe’n lang man hebben zij     aangesteld?
    how a tall   man have    they hired
    e.  * Hoe’n lange       man hebben zij    aangesteld?
    how a tall-agr man have     they hired
    (How tall a man did they hire?)
    f.  Een HOE lange       man hebben zij    aangesteld?       [echoic]
    a     how   tall-agr man have     they hired
                ‘A HOW tall man did they hire?’


The German equivalents seem to be out:

({ SEQ ( \* ARABIC }29) a.      * Wie groß(en)  einen Center haben sie    eingestellt?
                   how tall(agr) a        center have   they hired
                (‘How tall a center did they hire?’)
        b.      Einen WIE großen   Center haben sie   eingestellt?      [echoic]
                a-agr how tall-agr center  have they hired

Also, *"So gross(en) einen Mann habe ich nie gesehen!"

In German and standard Dutch, then, the morpheme "so" seems to
correspond more with Eng "such" than with Eng "so". (Cf. also "So
einen Kerl habe ich nie gesehen!" 'Such a guy I've never seen'.)

Thanks again,
--Jason
 ========================================================================
Jason Merchant                     Dept. of Dutch, Frisian, and Low Saxon
merchant at let.rug.nl                University of Groningen
http://www.let.rug.nl~merchant     PO Box 716
Office phone: +31 50 363-5632      9700 AS Groningen
Department fax: +31 50 363-6855    The Netherlands