24.1283, Diss: Discourse Analysis/Morphology/Pragmatics/Semantics/Syntax: Sundaresan: 'Context and (Co)reference in the Syntax and its Interfaces'

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LINGUIST List: Vol-24-1283. Thu Mar 14 2013. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 24.1283, Diss: Discourse Analysis/Morphology/Pragmatics/Semantics/Syntax: Sundaresan: 'Context and (Co)reference in the Syntax and its Interfaces'

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Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2013 15:38:11
From: Sandhya Sundaresan [sandhya.sundaresan at uit.no]
Subject: Context and (Co)reference in the Syntax and its Interfaces

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Institution: University of Tromsø 
Program: Center for Advanced Study in Theoretical Linguistics 
Dissertation Status: Completed 
Degree Date: 2012 

Author: Sandhya Sundaresan

Dissertation Title: Context and (Co)reference in the Syntax and its Interfaces 

Linguistic Field(s): Discourse Analysis
                     Morphology
                     Pragmatics
                     Semantics
                     Syntax


Dissertation Director(s):
Artemis Alexiadou
Gillian Catriona Ramchand

Dissertation Abstract:

It is well known that referentially defective nominals fall into two broad categories: 
pro-forms whose reference seems structurally constrained (local anaphors, OC 
PRO) and those which are discourse-pragmatically conditioned (logophors, 
deictic pronouns, indexicals). Nevertheless, a strict binary distinction cannot be 
maintained because most actually straddle the syntax-discourse divide: e.g. 
deictic pronouns can be variable-bound, indexicals may be “shifted” under 
certain intensional operators, and logophors and long-distance anaphors often 
look and behave alike. The central thesis of this dissertation is that a proper 
subset of pro- forms can receive a unified analysis under an enriched 
grammatical model that posits the syntactic representation of mental and/or 
spatio-temporal perspective. To this end, I present novel evidence from verbal 
agreement triggered under anaphora to show that even so-called “logophoric” 
reference involves an indelible syntactic core. I propose that perspective is 
featurally represented on a silent pronominal operator in the specifier of a 
Perspectival phrase (PerspP) at the phasal-edge of certain CPs, PPs, DPs, and 
AspPs and may be exploited to yield a unified account of anaphora and 
agreement patterns triggered under it. Anaphora involves two distinct 
dependencies: an Agree relationship between the anaphor and the operator in the 
[Spec, PerspP] of its minimal phase, which is the equivalent of syntactic binding, 
and a conceptual relationship between the antecedent and this operator, which is 
the equivalent of non-obligatory control. Thus, all binding is local and syntactic; all 
antecedence is non-local and (primarily) non-syntactic. I also illustrate that 
perspective must be kept conceptually and structurally distinct from the 
Kaplanian utterance context and the intensional “context” responsible for 
indexical shift. The main language of investigation is the Dravidian language 
Tamil but crosslinguistic comparisons are made with: Abe, Aghem, Amharic, 
Czech, Donna SO, Dutch (standard and Brabant), English, French, German, 
Greek, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Korean, Malayalam, Mupun, 
Navajo, North Sami, Norwegian, Romanian, Russian, Slave, Swahili, Telugu, 
Uyghur, Zapotec and Zazaki. The Tamil judgments are bolstered by the results 
of an online survey conducted among 38 native speakers around the world.






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