24.2319, Review: Syntax; Semantics; Language Acquisition: Grebenyova (2012)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-24-2319. Wed Jun 05 2013. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 24.2319, Review: Syntax; Semantics; Language Acquisition: Grebenyova (2012)

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Date: Wed, 05 Jun 2013 14:03:03
From: Qizhong Chang [zephyr_chang at hotmail.com]
Subject: Syntax, Semantics and Acquisition of Multiple Interrogatives

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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/23/23-4670.html

AUTHOR: Lydia  Grebenyova
TITLE: Syntax, Semantics and Acquisition of Multiple Interrogatives
SUBTITLE: Who wants what?
SERIES TITLE: Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 195
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2012

REVIEWER: Qizhong Chang, National University of Singapore

SUMMARY 

This book is a monograph comprising seven chapters covering various aspects of
a single linguistic construction, namely, multiple interrogatives (e.g. ‘Who
bought what?’). Five important topics within the field are discussed, with at
least a chapter devoted to each topic. There is a high degree of interaction
between the material covered in the different chapters, in terms of the
crosslinguistic patterns and paradigms presented. The book gives a
comprehensive account of both past and ongoing scholarship of interrogatives
and wh-questions, while providing the author’s novel contributions to this
debate.

English and Russian provide most of the empirical material, and these
languages are both complemented and contrasted with a rich variety of
languages such as Japanese, Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian, Icelandic, Malayalam,
and Brazilian Portuguese. This should give the reader confidence that
significant typological ground is being covered in the book. The book is
organized as follows:

Chapter 1: Superiority -- Syntactic and Interpretive
Chapter 2: Semantics of Multiple Interrogatives
Chapter 3: Multiple Interrogatives and Ellipsis
Chapter 4: Multiple Left Branch Extraction
Chapter 5: Acquisition of Multiple Interrogatives
Chapter 6: Acquiring Contrastive Focus and Multiple Interrogatives
Concluding Remarks

The Introduction section is very useful as a quick summary of the chapters of
the book. It also clearly defines the scope of topics discussed.

In Chapter 1, the author sets out to develop an analysis of Superiority in
multiple interrogatives based on the syntactic and semantic properties of
these structures. The Superiority Condition was first postulated by Chomsky
(1973); later, in the Minimalist approach to Superiority, the main
generalization is captured through the Minimal Link Condition (MLC). However,
the MLC alone cannot explain some data, such as the fact that Superiority
violations are judged to be stronger in embedded clauses than they are in
matrix clauses. Additionally, the author notes the ad-hoc nature of the
concept of domains and minimal domains and the problems related to the notion
of chains as theoretical constructs. She then formulates the Non-Identical
Agree Principle (NAP) to account for the relation between T-to-C movement and
minimality effects in wh-movement. Basically, her analysis hinges on the
assumption that T-to-C movement creates a complex head that functions as a
Probe for the mechanism Agree, yet this head has already been in an Agree
relation with another wh-phrase. The author then suggests that the degraded
status of an English wh-fronted matrix clause is caused by an independent
factor, Interpretive Superiority, borrowing the phrase from Bošković (2003).
Interpretive Superiority is the phenomenon where movement of a lower wh-phrase
over the higher wh-phrase takes away only one of two potential readings
(either Single Pair (SP) or Pair-List (PL)), instead of producing complete
unacceptability. The predictions of Interpretive Superiority are borne out in
the Icelandic, Bulgarian and Brazilian Portuguese data presented. Lastly, the
author briefly explored a split CP structure at the left periphery of a clause
in English. The reason for her doing so, was the need for a projection above
the TP in contexts where TP is elided leaving a wh-subject as a remnant.

In Chapter 2, the author aims to account for the distribution of PL and SP
readings in multiple interrogatives. PL readings are freely available in
mono-clausal multiple questions across languages, while SP readings are more
limited in its distribution. Another asymmetry she seeks to explain is that SP
readings become available once more when complex wh-phrases, instead of bare
wh-phrases, are used in a question; simply, there is a morphological
distinction such that complex wh-phrases are equipped with their own choice
function variables. The author examines the different approaches to
interpreting the semantics of wh-questions, namely: covert wh-movement,
Unselective Binding, and choice functions. She concludes that covert
wh-movement is a purely syntactic phenomenon, not a semantic one. The author
adopts Hagstrom’s (1998) semantics for wh-questions; in its simplified form, a
Q-morpheme leaves behind, through movement, a variable whose value ranges over
generalized choice functions. The author then proposes that the distinction
between languages with and without SP readings lies in the selectional
restrictions of the Q-morpheme. Basically, if a Q-morpheme cannot be merged
with TP in some languages, those languages do not have the option of licensing
the SP reading. Lastly, the author analyses the Interpretive Superiority facts
as a result of a strong/viral selectional feature on the Q-morpheme.

In Chapters 3 and 4, the author starts to examine how these syntactic and
semantic features of multiple interrogative constructions manifest themselves
in structures involving ellipsis, and Left Branch Extraction (LBE),
respectively. Sluicing is standardly assumed to be TP-deletion, licensed by a
complementizer bearing +Q and +wh features (Merchant, 2001). However, the
author presents data from Russian, Polish and Serbo-Croatian that shows
remnants of sluicing surviving deletion when their target position of movement
is part of the complement of C. To solve this problem, she shows a parallel
between multiple wh-constructions and clauses with multiple foci.
Subsequently, the author proposes that any functional category bearing a
+focus feature can license the deletion of its complement. Between the choice
of a +focus feature or a +wh feature licensing TP-deletion, the author argues
for the former. Grebenyova then turns her attention to LBE constructions. She
notices that languages with multiple wh-fronting prohibit multiple LBEs
(though a single LBE is possible). She argues that LBE is unlike regular
wh-movement; instead, it should be analysed as head movement to a Topic
projection above TP, essentially an instance of scrambling. Therefore, it
should not come as a surprise that sluicing does not repair instances of
multiple LBEs; since LBE violations are violations of minimality
(derivational) constraints, and sluicing can only repair the violations that
can actually take place in a derivation. Lastly, the author shows that
multiple LBEs out of an island cannot be repaired by sluicing, which is
surprising given that sluicing can repair island violations and LBEs when they
occur independently. A language like English has overt determiners and
disallows adjectival LBE, compared to a language like Russian, which lacks
overt determiners and allows adjectival LBE. The presence of DP in English
thus creates a phase, through which head extraction (recall that LBE is head
movement) is not possible. This leads to the novel generalization that the
encoding of violations is sensitive to the size of the copy (i.e. a copy of a
phrase vs. a copy of a head).

In Chapters 5 and 6, several experimental studies carried out by Gerbenyova
are discussed. She points out that acquisition studies on multiple
interrogatives were few and far between; additionally, positive linguistic
input of multiple interrogatives (using a search on the CHILDES database) does
not seem forthcoming to young children. To find out at what age children
exhibit the knowledge of the syntax and semantics of multiple interrogatives,
the author devises experiments to elicit such structures from both children
and adults in carefully constructed contexts. The author chose English-,
Russian- and Malayalam-speaking children, as these languages represent the
three distinct strategies for forming multiple wh-constructions. The overall
results of the experiments reveal that, even with limited direct evidence in
their linguistic input, children are able to acquire the language-specific
facts about multiple interrogatives at quite an early age of 4 years, 9
months. The author also observed that Russian-speaking children produced an
odd construction where only one wh-phrase is fronted in a multiple
interrogative, when normally all wh-phrases are fronted in these contexts. To
explain this, she suggests that the prior acquisition of contrastive focus is
crucial to the proper acquisition of multiple interrogatives in Russian. This
further supports the argument that contrastive focus is the underlying trigger
for multiple wh-fronting. Towards that end, the author elicited structures
containing contrastively focused R-expressions from monolingual Russian- and
English-speaking children. The Russian-speaking children, but not the
English-speaking ones, were found to make errors in these constructions. The
errors were very similar to the ones previously attested in multiple
wh-constructions. The author takes this to be evidence for her hypothesis that
the acquisition of the syntax of multiple interrogatives is linked to the
acquisition of the syntax of constructive focus.

EVALUATION

An important merit of this book is that it provides a holistic view of a
single linguistic construction -- multiple interrogatives. That is to say, the
construction is examined from different perspectives: syntax, semantics and
acquisition. This is rarely done in a single study. It also makes this book an
excellent resource for scholars who are simply looking for specialized
discussions of Multiple Interrogatives.

The author formulates the Non-Identical Agree Principle (NAP), which says “A
Probe cannot establish an Agree relation with a Goal more than once at
different points in the derivation” (p. 6), to account for Superiority effects
and asymmetries. This is a hugely interesting principle and could have a much
wider and significant impact on linguistic theory than it was originally
intended to have. I would be very keen to see the NAP developed and tested on
other linguistic constructions, such as the Genitive of Quantification in
Russian.

In Chapter 5, while discussing the syntactic strategies in forming multiple
wh-questions, the author mentions English (only one wh-phrase fronted),
Russian (all wh-phrases fronted), and Malayalam (no wh-phrases fronted).
Additionally, the author pointed out an interesting phenomenon in Russian she
refers to as ‘Partial wh-Fronting’ (p. 111). Such alternative and exceptional
strategies should theoretically, and do, exist. For instance, a language might
have wh-fronting in an embedded multiple interrogative, where one wh-word
fronts the matrix clause, and the other fronts the embedded clause. The
existence of such patterns would, of course, have implications on the way the
author’s experiments are designed.

In some instances, a clear pattern of speaker/informant judgments could not be
found. For example, whether Icelandic multiple interrogatives allow SP
readings in both main and embedded clauses, and whether Serbo-Croatian
embedded clauses allow SP readings, is unclear (pp. 46-47). Also, it is not
exactly clear whether there is an obligatory switch from PL readings to SP
readings in English multiple questions with an island boundary between the two
wh-phrases (p. 53). One might attribute the lack of a clear pattern to quirks
of the respective languages, or inconsistent, or unstable judgments of their
native speakers. However, it might yet turn out to be a new and even more
finely tuned paradigm within the language. Due to space constraints, the
author could not spend more time discussing the implications of such
judgments, on theories of Multiple Interrogatives. It would be worthwhile if
future research could pick up on these patterns and accord them a clearer
account.

This book is generally an excellent piece of scientific writing and suffers
only from very infrequent spelling and formatting errors. Each chapter can be
read more-or-less independently of the others; this makes it more convenient
for readers who are interested only in very specific parts of the author’s
analysis. The book is meant for more advanced students and scholars of
linguistics and presumes a certain level of familiarity with both syntactic
and semantic concepts. Overall, ‘Syntax, Semantics and Acquisition of Multiple
Interrogatives’ provides insightful and detailed analyses of a narrow yet
productive area of linguistics. The analyses are firmly grounded in a
generative framework, with more than a slight nod to Minimalist theories.
Additionally, the two chapters on acquisition of Multiple Interrogatives round
out the book, and make it a good source of information and inspiration for
theoretical and applied linguists and researchers alike.

REFERENCES

Bošković, Z. 2003. On the interpretation of multiple questions. Linguistic
Variation Yearbook 3: 1-15.

Chomsky, N. 1973. Conditions on transformations. In: A Festschrift for Morris
Halle, Stephen R. Anderson & Paul Kiparsky (eds.), 232-286. New York NY: Holt
Rinehart & Winston.

Hagstrom, P. 1998. Decomposing Questions. PhD dissertation, MIT.

Merchant, J. 2001. The Syntax of Silence: Sluicing, Islands, and the Theory of
Ellipsis. Oxford: OUP.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Chang Qizhong is a PhD candidate in the Department of Linguistics in the
National University of Singapore (NUS). His research interests are in the
general areas of syntax and semantics, with a particular focus on contact
languages and emerging varieties of English such as Singapore English. He is
currently working on wh-questions in Singapore English.








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