32.787, Review: Romance; Linguistic Theories; Syntax: Fernández-Sánchez (2020)
The LINGUIST List
linguist at listserv.linguistlist.org
Thu Mar 4 02:10:58 UTC 2021
LINGUIST List: Vol-32-787. Wed Mar 03 2021. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.
Subject: 32.787, Review: Romance; Linguistic Theories; Syntax: Fernández-Sánchez (2020)
Moderator: Malgorzata E. Cavar (linguist at linguistlist.org)
Student Moderator: Jeremy Coburn
Managing Editor: Becca Morris
Team: Helen Aristar-Dry, Everett Green, Sarah Robinson, Lauren Perkins, Nils Hjortnaes, Yiwen Zhang, Joshua Sims
Jobs: jobs at linguistlist.org | Conferences: callconf at linguistlist.org | Pubs: pubs at linguistlist.org
Homepage: http://linguistlist.org
Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
https://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/
Editor for this issue: Jeremy Coburn <jecoburn at linguistlist.org>
================================================================
Date: Wed, 03 Mar 2021 21:10:27
From: Morgane Jourdain [morgane.jourdain at kuleuven.be]
Subject: Right Peripheral Fragments
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36637097
Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/31/31-1275.html
AUTHOR: Javier Fernández-Sánchez
TITLE: Right Peripheral Fragments
SUBTITLE: Right dislocation and related phenomena in Romance
SERIES TITLE: Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 258
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2020
REVIEWER: Morgane Jourdain
SUMMARY
In ‘Right peripheral fragments: Right dislocation and related phenomena in
Romance’, Javier Fernández-Sánchez aims at identifying why right-dislocated
constituents exhibit properties typical of both clause-internal and of
clause-external constituents. For this, the author argues that in Romance
languages, Right Dislocations (RD), as in (1), are better accounted for with a
biclausal interpretation.
(1) [Yo lo suelo hacer con menta]HC, [el cordero]D (Spanish)
I it often cook with mint the lamb
‘I usually cook it with mint, the lamb.’
(Fernández-Sánchez, 2020:6)
In Chapter 1, Fernández-Sánchez explains the general ‘paradox’ of the
structure of dislocation, by reporting several properties of the Dislocated
constituent (D) that would support the hypothesis that D is clause-internal.
For example, D acts as if it was within the Host Clause (HC) for binding
purposes. The author reports other properties, in favor of a clause-external
interpretation, such as the fact that a HC can function as an independent
clause, as D does not leave a gap. The author then claims that the best
approach to account for these seemingly contradictory properties is to assume
that dislocations are biclausal structure, D and HC belonging to two different
clauses. D would therefore be external to HC, but internal to another clause.
This approach was originally put forward by de Vries (2009) and Ott (2015) for
left- and right-dislocated constituents. The originality of the contribution
of Fernández-Sánchez is that this author provides a unified account of RD for
Romance languages.
In Chapter 2, Fernández-Sánchez provides a detailed account of the biclausal
interpretation of RD. In this analysis, D is assumed to belong to a separate
clause that has a similar syntactic and semantic structure as the HC. The
parts of the clause of D which are similar to the HC are then elided, as shown
in (2).
(2) [L’at mandata Juanne] [At mandata cudda líttera Juanne] (Sardinian)
It has sent John has sent this letter John.
‘John sent it, this letter’
(based on Jones, 1993: 320)
The author explains that this interpretation accounts for the clausal-internal
properties of D. Both the clitic pronoun within the HC and D have a theta
role, but this does not violate the Theta Criterion of Chomsky (1981) that
only one argument can carry a theta role, as the clitics in the HC and D have
a theta role in different clauses. Besides, D carries case-marking, not
because it is belongs to the HC, but because it carries the case of its own
separate clause. The biclausal analysis can also account for the
clause-external properties of D: D does not leave a gap in the HC because D
did not move from the HC.
In that chapter, Fernández-Sánchez also provides evidence against other
syntactic interpretations of RD. It is sometimes claimed in the literature
that clitic pronouns are agreement markers. Ds would therefore correspond to
the actual argument within the sentence, which could also explain some of the
clause-internal properties of D mentioned above. The author shows however that
RD cannot be analyzed in terms of agreement-marking, because in French, the
resumptive expression may be a strong pronoun, or even a lexical expression,
instead of a clitic pronoun (see also De Cat 2007, Horváth, 2018). He also
argues against a clitic doubling interpretation of RD, based on the fact that
in RD, D does not belong to the same intonation phrase as the HC. Finally,
Fernández-Sánchez demonstrates that Ds are opaque domains for extractions,
which is expected under a biclausal interpretation of RD.
In Chapter 3, Fernández-Sánchez reviews the other syntactic analyses of RD,
which all assume that RD is a monoclausal phenomenon, and highlights the
issues they have to accommodate RDs in Romance languages. The author first
reports the study of Kayne (1994), which states that D are produced in situ
instead of a derived position. The criticisms against the interpretation of
Kayne by Fernández-Sánchez include the facts that (i) the in situ
interpretation cannot account for the less strict ordering of right-dislocated
constituents than of their non-dislocated constituent counterparts in Catalan,
(ii) D does not allow extraction, (iii) the in situ interpretation cannot
account for the fact that RD is allowed in French and Italian but not clitic
doubling.
The next approach reviewed by Fernández-Sánchez is the peripheral approach,
according to which in RD, D is located in the C-domain of the clause. Some
authors argue that D is directly generated within the C-domain (De Cat, 2007)
while others claim that D is located in the C-domain after movement
(Fernández-Sánchez, 2012). The author demonstrates that this approach, both
for the base-generated view and the movement interpretation, leads to the
assumption of more complex processes to account for the clause-internal and
clause-external properties of D than the biclausal interpretation.
Finally, Fernández-Sánchez reviews the middle field approaches, according to
which D undergoes Ā-movement to the left periphery of the clause (see for
example Cecchetto, 1999). Under these approaches, RD and Left Dislocation (LD)
are assumed to be structurally different, which leads to several asymmetries
between RD and LD, including the possible extraction of a LD out of a RD but
not the other way around or different interaction with the c-command, intra
alia. Fernández-Sánchez reinterprets the original claims of asymmetry, and
shows that they do not hold. He even demonstrates that LD and RD behave
completely similarly in Italian and in Catalan. Therefore, it seems that the
biclausal approach described in Chapter 2 provides a better fit for RD in
Romance languages than the monoclausal approaches reviewed in Chapter 3.
In Chapter 4, now assuming that RDs are indeed biclausal, Fernández-Sánchez
determines whether D undergoes movement within its clause before elision, as
it is sometimes assumed in the literature that remnants from elided clauses
escape the domain of ellipsis via movement to the left periphery of the clause
(see for example Merchant, 2001). To test this claim, Fernández-Sánchez uses
islands. For this test, the author generates RDs with the resumptive clitic in
an island position. If D moves to the left periphery of its elided clause,
there should be island-violation, and the RD should not be grammatical. If the
RD is grammatical, then this would entail that D does not undergo movement.
Fernández-Sánchez shows that if D is not adjacent to the island containing the
resumptive clitic, the RD is not grammatical (3) but it becomes grammatical if
D is adjacent to the island containing the clitic (4).
(3) * [Qu’ elle sera fâchée contre son frère] c’est clair, Marie.
(French)
That she will-be angry against her brother it-is clear Marie
*’That she’ll be angry with her brother is clear, Marie.’
(Delais-Roussarie et al., 2004: 521)
(4) [Qu’ elle sera fâchée contre son frère], Marie, c’est clair.
(French)
That she will-be angry against her brother Marie it-is clear
(Delais-Roussarie et al., 2004: 521)
These mixed results mean that D cannot freely move, and that there are at
least restrictions if there is movement. Fernández-Sánchez argues that the
simpler explanation is that D does not move, for the following reasons. First,
there is no motivation that makes this movement necessary. Second, the
position of D in the left periphery of the elided clause would mean that D
would always take a wide scope, which is not supported by the data. Finally,
right-dislocated PPs must be produced with their preposition, as Romance
languages do not allow P-stranding. If D moved to the left periphery, it could
be produced without its preposition.
In Chapter 5, Fernández-Sánchez offers a unified syntactic analysis for
different types of right-peripheral fragments, namely Split Questions (SQ), as
in (5a) and Afterthoughts (AT) as in (5b). The author argues that SQs and ATs
exhibit similar clause-internal and clause-external properties as D in RD.
(5) a. Where did they stay, at the ritz?
b. He stayed at a nice hotel when he was in London - at the ritz.
(Fernández-Sánchez, 2020: 146)
The author shows that, similar to D, SQs and ATs do not undergo movement to
the left periphery of the elided clause, except for predicative ATs (6).
Fernández-Sánchez explains that this is due to the emphatic nature of
predicative ATs, that requires them to move to the left periphery.
(6) He leído Rayuela durante las vacaciones de verano – Una novella
maravillosa. (Spanish)
Have read Rayuela during the holiday of summer a novel
wonderful
‘I’ve read Rayuela during the summer holiday – a wonderful novel.’
(Fernández-Sánchez, 2020: 172)
One aspect that differentiates RD from SQ and AT according to the analysis of
Fernández-Sánchez is that, since the elided clause in SQ and AT have their own
illocutionary force, but not in RD, the coordination of the two clauses in RD
occurs below the level of Force0. By contrast, the author concludes that the
coordination of the two clauses in SQ and AT involves the coordination of two
ForcePs.
In Chapter 6, Fernández-Sánchez concludes his analysis of RD in Romance
languages as a biclausal construction. The author explains that this
interpretation of RD does not require any language-specific mechanism, which
makes it generalizable across languages. He also mentions that this work has
implications for the theory on ellipsis, as he showed in Chapter 4 that
movement of D was not required to account for the structure of RD.
EVALUATION
The aim of this monograph is to provide a unified account of RD, and possibly
of other types of constituents produced in the right periphery, in Romance.
Fernández-Sánchez manages to provide a cohesive analysis, that seems to solve
many issues of the other approaches to RD. The fact that this author’s
analysis can be extended to any language is also extremely appealing. Another
strength of this work is that the author strives to take into account a very
large range of different syntactic properties that right-dislocated
constituents may have. It is also highly commendable of the author to attempt
to include such a wide variety of Romance languages, even those studied less
frequently, such as Sardinian.
This monograph will be of high interest to researchers investigating
generative syntax, especially those interested in the phenomena related to the
peripheries, as this book provides a particularly interesting angle of
analysis. The overview of the monoclausal approaches to RD seems quite
complete, and exhaustive enough for readers who are less acquainted with
dislocation to be able to follow the explanations and arguments for or against
each approach. The number of examples throughout the book is also quite
impressive, and really allows the reader to understand each point of the
argumentation, even though in some instances, the author could have included
more explanation on how the example illustrates the argument put forward.
Nevertheless, the content of this book is still accessible and easy to read.
The only small issue with this monograph could be that by aiming at providing
an analysis that could fit any language, and by only using created examples,
the author might have missed some potential counter-examples for his
interpretation. More precisely, I am not sure how the biclausal interpretation
with no movement of D in the left periphery of the elided clause can account
for dislocated strong pronouns, which are very common in French (De Cat,
2007). Such strong pronouns cannot function as the subject of the sentence,
unless they belong to D. In the example in (7), the D ‘moi’ cannot belong to a
clause with a similar structure as the HC, with elision without movement,
because the clause hosting D is not grammatical in French.
(7) [Je ne l’ai pas vu] [moi ne l’ai pas vu]
I NEG him-have not seen me NEG him-have not seen
‘I haven’t seen him.’
Fernández-Sánchez does not consider RD with strong pronouns as Ds in his
analyses, as he provides almost exclusively examples with lexical phrases.
Maybe an extension of the current biclausal approach of the author could
account for pronominal Ds. Overall, another potentially interesting way to
carry this very interesting biclausal interpretation of dislocation forward
could be to consider attested examples from corpora. This might allow testing
of whether the different types of dislocation produced by speakers all follow
the structure described by the author.
REFERENCES
Cecchetto, Carlo. 1999. A comparative analysis of left and right dislocation
in Romance. Studia Linguistica 53. 40-67.
De Cat, Cécile. 2007. French dislocation: Interpretation, Syntax, Acquisition.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
De Vries, Mark. 2009. Specifying coordination: An investigation into the
syntax of dislocation, extraposition and parenthesis. In Language and
Linguistics: Emerging Trends, Dreyer, Cynthia (ed.). New York: Nova. 37-98.
Delais-Roussarie, Elizabeth, Doetjes, Jenny & Sleeman, Petra. 2014.
Dislocation. In Handbook of French Semantics, Corblin, Francis & de Swart,
Henriëtte (eds). Stanford CA: CSLI. 505-530.
Fernández-Sánchez, Javier. 2012. The Syntax od PredNPs. MA thesis, University
College London.
Horváth, Marton Gergeley. 2018. Le français parlé informel: Stratégies de
topicalisation. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter.
Jones, Michael Allan. 1993. Sardinian Syntax. London: Routledge.
Kayne, Richard. 1994. The Antisymmetry of Syntax. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.
Ott, Dennis. 2015. Connectivity in left-dislocation and the composition of the
left periphery. Linguistic Variation 15(2). 225-290.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Morgane Jourdain is a PhD candidate in linguistics at the university KU
Leuven, Belgium, and the University of Lille, France.<br />Her research is
centered around the L1 acquisition of information structure in French. She
focuses on the development of the syntax/information structure interface in
children’s production of clefts and dislocation, using both qualitative and
quantitative methods. She is also interested in the L1 acquisition of
register.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*************************** LINGUIST List Support ***************************
The 2020 Fund Drive is under way! Please visit https://funddrive.linguistlist.org
to find out how to donate and check how your university, country or discipline
ranks in the fund drive challenges. Or go directly to the donation site:
https://crowdfunding.iu.edu/the-linguist-list
Let's make this a short fund drive!
Please feel free to share the link to our campaign:
https://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/
----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-32-787
----------------------------------------------------------
More information about the LINGUIST
mailing list