Pázmány Péter Katolikus Egyetem • Mini-course • 11–12 January ...

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Marcel den Dikken — Pázmány Péter Katolikus Egyetem — Mini-course 2013 — The syntax of adpositional phrases 6 the fact that a FQ can occur between the r-word er and boven ‘up’ (which Koopman treats as a spellout of her Place, my Asp ), as in (11), is now immediately accounted [ SPACE] for (17) [ CP er [C[SPACE] [ DxP Dx [SPACE] [ RP allemaal t SU [RELATOR [ AspP Asp [SPACE] =boven [ PP op ...]]]]]]] to account for (12), we may either part ways with Koopman and treat phrasal een halve meter ‘half a metre’ as an adjunct to AspP (which would be more in line with the standard treatment of ‘time frame adverbials’ like for/in x amount of time in the literature) or assume that it is adjoined to DxP below the ‘structural subject position’ within xPP, SpecDxP, and that allebei is stranded in DxP (18) a. [ CP er [C[SPACE] [ DxP Dx [SPACE] [ RP allebei t SU [RELATOR [ AspP .5m [ AspP Asp [SPACE] [ PP achter ...]]]]]]]] b. [ CP er [C[SPACE] [ DxP allebei t SU [ DxP .5m [ DxP Dx [SPACE] [ RP t SU [RELATOR [ AspP Asp [SPACE] [ PP achter ...]]]]]]]] there is empirical reason to believe that (18b) is not right: if een halve meter ‘half a metre’ could be adjoined as high as DxP, one would expect allebei to freely be able to surface to its right; but as a matter of fact, allebei can occur in this position only on a marked focus reading, with emphasis on allebei [the ‘#’ diacritic is meant to bring this out: (19b) is bad in a neutral context, but grammatical in a special pragmatic context in which focus on the FQ is felicitous] (19) a. met [de spitsen [er allebei hooguit een halve meter achter]] with the forwards there both at.most a half metre behind b. # met [de spitsen [er hooguit een halve meter allebei achter]] exactly the same effect is found in the clause, with bare-nominal time-frame adverbials like een halve minuut ‘half a minute’ (20) a. ze stonden allebei een halve minuut stil they stood both a half minute still ‘they both stood still for half a minute’ b. # ze stonden een halve minuut allebei stil this strongly enhances the parallel between spatial modifiers like een halve meter ‘half a metre’ and temporal-aspectual time-frame modifiers like een halve minuut ‘half a minute’ I conclude that it is AspP, not DxP, that phrasal modifiers like een halve meter ‘half a metre’ are attached to — in parallel with time frame adverbials this now fully divorces DxP from the role that it has in Koopman’s proposal (recall that Koopman labels it ‘DegP’ and uses it specifically to host modifiers like vlak ‘right’ and tien meter ‘ten metre’) — the relabelling of DegP as DxP already loosens the link between this projection and modifiers (see Den Dikken 2010:103); the conclusion, based on the Q-float data, that even phrasal modifiers like een halve meter ‘half a metre’ are not attached to DxP/DegP, weakens that link even further • the hypothesis that the RELATOR linking the predicate to its subject is projected outside AspP is empirically supported by the fact that FQs cannot show up to the right of things like pal ‘right’ and boven ‘up’ [NB: Koopman has different positions for boven (Place=Asp) and pal (Deg=Dx); with degree modifiers shifted down to AspP, this positional difference is either lost or (preferably) recast in such a way that boven appears in the complement of Asp, as a particle (cf. aux verb) between Asp and PP]
Marcel den Dikken — Pázmány Péter Katolikus Egyetem — Mini-course 2013 — The syntax of adpositional phrases 7 (21) a. [er allemaal pal boven op] liggen de boeken [cf. (11)] there all right up on lie the books b. *[er pal allemaal boven op] liggen de boeken c. *[er pal boven allemaal op] liggen de boeken (22) *[ CP C [SPACE] [ DxP Dx [SPACE] [ RP SUBJECT [RELATOR [ AspP Asp [SPACE] [ PP allemaal [P...]]]]]]] Q (22) is ungrammatical because, in general, a FQ must not be c-commanded by the trace of the noun phrase that it is associated with why is (23b) ungrammatical, in stark contrast to (23a)? — put differently, why can the subject of the xPP not surface in its base-generation site in these with-absolute constructions? (23) a. met [de spitsen er allebei een halve meter achter] with the forwards there both a half metre behind b. *met [er de spitsen allebei een halve meter achter] the obvious problem with (23b) is that de spitsen, which is supposed to check Case with met, is prevented from doing so by the intervening er — more technically, with er in SpecCP , there is a [SPACE] phase boundary between met and de spitsen in (23b), which causes the derivation to crash Q where, then, is de spitsen in (23a), and how does it manage to get there? the answer to the first question must be ‘outside the CP [SPACE] of achter altogether’ the answer to the second question must be ‘via raising’ — after all, de spitsen cannot receive a è-role outside CP [SPACE] (met ‘with’ in absolutive constructions is not a è-role assigner) since the xPP of achter is as large as a full CP, and since de spitsen ‘the forwards’ must have originated inside this CP and have raised out of it, the conclusion emerges that ‘NP-raising’ can traverse CP boundaries; exactly how this is possible is a topic for research [NB: in the literature on raising, grammatical cases of ‘superraising’ and ‘hyperraising’ have been documented for diverse languages; I have always taken these to be instances of (covert) ‘copy raising’ instead (cf. he seems like he’s enjoying himself), which arguably does not involve trans-CP movement; possibly, this is what we are dealing with in (23a) as well] • back to (3), repeated below: a directional circumPP featuring two space-frame modifiers Q where can FQs show up in this string? to test this, we need an example in which the subject is plural, as in (24); the topicalisation cases in (25a–c) provide the experimental stimuli (24) de vliegtuigen vlogen tien meter (lang) tien meter (hoog) boven het strand langs the airplanes flew ten metre long ten metre high above the beach along ‘the airplanes flew along the beach over a distance of ten metres, at a height of ten metres’ (25) a. [er allebei tien meter lang tien meter hoog boven langs] vlogen de vliegtuigen there both ten metre long ten metre high above along flew the airplanes b. ?[er tien meter lang allebei tien meter hoog boven langs] vlogen de vliegtuigen c. #[er tien meter lang tien meter hoog allebei boven langs] vlogen de vliegtuigen d. [er allebei tien meter lang allebei tien meter hoog boven langs] vlogen de vliegtuigen
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