19.3247, FYI: CUNY Linguistics Colloquium Series-Sandra Chung

[LINGUIST Network]

LINGUIST List: Vol-19-3247. Mon Oct 27 2008. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 19.3247, FYI: CUNY Linguistics Colloquium Series-Sandra Chung

Moderators: Anthony Aristar, Eastern Michigan U <aristar at linguistlist.org>
            Helen Aristar-Dry, Eastern Michigan U <hdry at linguistlist.org>
 
Reviews: Randall Eggert, U of Utah  
         <reviews at linguistlist.org> 

Homepage: http://linguistlist.org/

The LINGUIST List is funded by Eastern Michigan University, 
and donations from subscribers and publishers.

Editor for this issue: Matthew Lahrman <matt at linguistlist.org>
================================================================  

To post to LINGUIST, use our convenient web form at
http://linguistlist.org/LL/posttolinguist.html.

===========================Directory==============================  

1)
Date: 27-Oct-2008
From: Nazik Dinctopal < nazik.dinctopal at gmail.com >
Subject: CUNY Linguistics Colloquium Series-Sandra Chung

 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2008 12:41:35
From: Nazik Dinctopal [nazik.dinctopal at gmail.com]
Subject: CUNY Linguistics Colloquium Series-Sandra Chung

E-mail this message to a friend:
http://linguistlist.org/issues/emailmessage/verification.cfm?iss=19-3247.html&submissionid=194836&topicid=6&msgnumber=1
  


The third CUNY Linguistics Colloquium of the fall semester will be held

on:    Thursday, October 30, 2008
at:    4:15 p.m.
at:   The CUNY Graduate Center - 365 Fifth Avenue - New York (room 
6417) 
by:    Sandra Chung (University of California, Santa Cruz)
on:    Chamorro Possessives at the Interface

Abstract:

One of the recurring issues at the syntax-semantics-pragmatics interface 
concerns the division of labor: should generalizations at this interface be 
explained in syntactic or semantic-pragmatic terms? Take, for instance, 
Milsark's (1977) generalization (MG) and what I call Horn's (1989) 
generalization (HG), which are stated below:

Milsark's Generalization (MG): Subjects of individual-level predicates must 
be strong. 

Horn's Generalization (HG): Subjects tend to be interpreted outside the 
scope of sentential negation.

Do these generalizations flow ultimately from the syntax of Logical Form, as 
Diesing (1992) claimed for MG? Or do they flow from a semantics-
pragmatics enriched by the Brentano-Marty- Kuroda theory of judgement 
types?specifically, from the two-part nature of the categorical judgement?
as proposed by Ladusaw (1994) for MG and by Horn (1989) and Ladusaw 
(1996) for HG?

In this talk, I investigate these questions for Chamorro, an Austronesian 
language of the Mariana Islands. Chamorro possessives have both a head 
determiner and a possessor. My inquiry focuses on bare possessives, in 
which the head determiner is the null indefinite article and the possessor is 
definite. After establishing that bare possessives are indeed a species of 
indefinite, I show that their ability to serve as subjects of individual-level 
predicates argues for an account of MG in terms of the theory of judgement 
types. I then show that the interaction of bare possessive subjects with 
negation appears initially to threaten an account of HG in terms of this 
theory. However, once the semantics-pragmatics of the possession relation 
(Barker 1991, 2008) is factored in, the threat dissolves. The conclusion 
seems to be that a uniform theory of this interface?if there is one?is more 
likely to be framed in terms of semantic-pragmatic notions than in terms of 
the syntax of Logical Form.

All Welcome! 



Linguistic Field(s): Pragmatics





 






-----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-19-3247