superiority violations

[Emily M. Bender]

Dear Gisbert,

If I understand you correctly, you are asserting that the claim about
superiority
violation mitigation is a "linguistic fact", except that it cannot be
shown using
judgments from non-linguists only.

The more likely explanation (it seems to me) is that the claim is in
fact spurious,
but one that linguists working in syntax have been trained to see in the data
through exposure to the relevant type of sentences with *s on them.

Emily

On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 7:12 AM, Gisbert Fanselow
<gisbert.fanselow at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear HPSG-List members,
>
> thanks for the numerous replies to my data query.
>
> The claim has been made in the GB/minimailst literature that the superiority
> violation in the lower clause of
>
> who wonders what who bought
>
> is licensed (mitigated) only with an interpretation of the question in which
> the lower _who_ takes matrix scope, i.e. it is licensed only as a question
> that would be answered as
>
> John wonders what Jane bought, Mary wonders what Bill bought ...
>
> In two experiments with non-linguists, we could not confirm this claim.
>
> However, among the members of the HPSG list who responded (some 20), there
> were three or four native speakers who showed a shift of preferences in the
> direction predicted by the claim cited about, i.e. they preferred answer a)
>
> "John does"
>
> for the non-superiority violating question
>
> who wonders who bought what
>
> but the more complex answer to the question involving crossing movement in
> the lower clause. The reverse preference shift does not occur.
>
> I will have to sort out various non-native replies, so that I can see
> whether there are enough native judgments left for drawing a firm
> conclusion, but I am convinced our small survey shows that
>
> a) a subtle claim concerning readings of multiple wh's made in community A
> can be confrmed by judgments from community B
>
> and
>
> b) there are linguistic facts which at least the standard method cannot
> establish by consulting non-linguists.
>
> Currently, I am checking if the GB/minimalist intuitions are also shared by
> phonologists and semanticists.
>
> Thanks A LOT for your help!
>
> Gisbert Fanselow
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Gisbert Fanselow
> Linguistics, University of Potsdam
> Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse 23-24
> 14476 Potsdam
> x331-977 2446
>
>
>



--
Emily M. Bender
Associate Professor
Department of Linguistics
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