Call for papers
For a downloadable version of the call for paper, click here.
IMPORTANT: The abstract submission deadline is June 16th, but to ensure everyone gets until midnight their time, the deadline on EasyAbs has been set to June 17. We will check whether or not the abstracts were submitted in time, using the time zone of the first author's affiliation.
Theme description
Dating back to seminal work by Joe Emonds (Emonds 1970, 1976), there is a longstanding tradition that identifies a set of syntactic phenomena as ‘Main Clause Phenomena’ (henceforth MCP) or ‘Root Transformations’. Such phenomena are restricted to root clauses and a limited set of embedded clauses. MCP that have been identified for English include the following: subject auxiliary inversion (including negative inversion), argument fronting (both topicalization and focalization), VP preposing, preposing around be, locative inversion, left dislocation, tag formation, subject omission, and imperatives.
An important research topic in this area concerns the characterization of the properties that distinguish the embedded clauses that allow MCP from those that do not. Various attempts have been made to characterize the relevant contrast in terms of positive or negative licensing of the MCP. In their influential paper, Hooper and Thompson (1973) propose that the distinctive factor that characterizes embedded clauses allowing MCP is ‘assertion’, seen as a semantic/pragmatic condition (1973: 495). In some form or other, Hooper and Thompson’s proposal has been adopted and elaborated by a number of researchers (see for example Green 1976, 1990, 1996, Krifka 2001, Sawada and Larson 2004). However, as observed in Heycock (2006), the precise identification of the semantic property that sets aside embedded domains that allow MCP remains elusive and often the reasoning seems circular. Moreover, Hooper and Thompson’s (1973: 484-5) own discussion of a finiteness requirement suggests that syntax plays a part. In view of this, there have been recent attempts at a syntactic reinterpretation of Hooper and Thompson’s ‘assertion hypothesis’, associating the encoding of assertion with a specific functional projection (‘ForceP’, Rizzi 1997) in the left periphery (cf. Bayer 2001, Julien 2008), which, by hypothesis, is unavailable in the domains that resist MCP (Emonds 2004, Haegeman 2003, Meinunger 2004, 2005; see also Basse 2008 for a minimalist reinterpretation in terms of defective phases).
Other syntactic approaches have maintained that, in the contexts that resist MCP, a conflict arises between the syntactic properties of the MCP and those of the embedding clause (Emonds 1976, Iwakura 1978, Haegeman 2010). Earlier proposals are in need of updating in light of current frameworks (cartography, minimalism), and more recent proposals (Haegeman 2010) have only been formulated for a subset of MCP and clause types. In order to make these syntactic proposals more precise, a better understanding of both the syntax of MCP themselves and of the syntactic derivation of different clause types is required. The latter crucially depends on further refinement of the syntactic properties that differentiate various clause types, so that potential link between the derivation of (a subset of) MCP and their relations with clause typing can be formalised.
The focus of this workshop is on the relation between clause typing and Main Clause Phenomena. The following are some of the questions the workshop aims to address:
- What are the embedded domains/clause types? that are (in)compatible with root phenomena?
- Are domains that resist MCP constant across languages? Is there a property that is common to these domains (positively or negatively)?
- Is there a (strict) correlation between the distribution of MCP and clause typing?
- How (if at all) are clause types syntactically encoded ?
- If there is a dependency between MCP and speech acts, are speech acts syntactically encoded, and if so, how?
- Does speech act encoding coincide with clause typing? If not, is a more fine-grained syntax required? For example, is assertion (exclusively) encoded in the left periphery (e.g. Force in Rizzi’s split CP) or is it (also) encoded TP-internally (cf. Duffield 2007)?
- Does the information status of the clause (‘familiar’ vs ‘novel’, topic vs focus) play a role in determining the availability of MCP and if so, is this syntactically encoded?
- Does the degree of embedding/syntactic integration interact with the distribution of MCP and if so, how? (de Haan 2001, Haegeman 2003)
Invited speakers
Joseph Emonds (Tomas Bata University, Zlin & Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic)
Shigeru Miyagawa (MIT)
Richard Larson (Stony Brook University)
Miyuki Sawada (National Kaohsiung Normal University)
Important dates
abstract submission deadline: June 16
notification date: 20 August
conference: 29 September - 1 October
Abstract Guidelines
Abstracts are invited for a 30-minute presentation followed by 10 minutes of discussion. An author may submit at most one single and one joint abstract. Abstracts should be anonymous, and at most 2 pages in 12-point font with 1'' margins, including data and references.
Authors are requested to submit their abstracts using EasyAbstracts (http://linguistlist.org/confcustom/GIST2). Only submissions through this system will be considered. Please direct all the questions related to the submission procedure to: gistinfo@ugent.be.
References
Basse, Galen. 2008. Factive complements as defective phases. Proceedings of the 27th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, ed. Natasha Abner and Jason Bishop, 54-62. Somerville, MA Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Bayer, Josef. 2001. Asymmetry in emphatic topicalization. In: Féry, C., Sternefeld, W. (Eds.), Audiatur Vox Sapientiae. Studia Grammatica 52, 15-47.
Duffield, Nigel. 2007. Aspects of Vietnamese clausal structure: separating tense from assertion. Linguistics 45–4; 765–814.
Emonds, Joseph. 1970. "Root and Structure-preserving Transformations." Ph.D. diss., Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Emonds, Joseph. 1976. A transformational approach to English syntax. New York: Academic Press.
Emonds, Joseph. 2004 Unspecified categories as the key to root constructions. In David Adger, Cécile DeCat & Georges Tsoulas (eds.) Peripheries, 75-121. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Giorgi, Alessandra. 2009. About the speaker: Toward a syntax of indexicality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Green, G. (1976) 'Main clause phenomena in subordinate clauses.' Language 52, 387-97.
Green, G. (1980) ‘Some wherefores of English inversion.’ Language 56, 582-601.
Green, G. M., 1996. Distinguishing main and subordinate clause: the ROOT of the problem. Ms. University of Illinois.
Haan, G. de 2001. “More is going on upstairs than downstairs: Embedded root phenomena in West Frisian.’ Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics. 4, 1, 3-38.
Haegeman, Liliane. 2003. Conditional Clauses: External and Internal Syntax. Mind and Language 18, 317-339.
Haegeman, Liliane. 2006a. ‘Argument fronting in English, Romance CLLD and the left periphery.’ In: Zanuttini, Raffaella, Héctor Campos, Elena Herburger et Paul H. Portner. Cross-Linguistic Research in Syntax and Semantics: Negation, Tense and Clausal Architecture. Georgetown University Press pp. 27-52.
Haegeman, Liliane. 2006b. Conditionals, factives and the left periphery. Lingua 116, 1651-1669.
Haegeman, Liliane. 2010. Speculations on the syntax of adverbial clauses. In Kleanthes Grohmann & Ianthi Tsimpli (eds.). Exploring the left periphery. Lingua. 120: 628-648.
Heycock, Caroline. 2006. Embedded root phenomena. In Martin Everaert & Henk van Riemsdijk (eds.), The Blackwell companion to syntax. Vol II: pp 174-209. Oxford and Boston: Blackwell.
Hooper, John & Sandra Thompson. (1973). On the applicability of Root Transformations. Linguistic Inquiry 4: 465-97.
Iwakura, Kunihiro. 1978. On Root Transformations and the Structure preserving hypothesis. Linguistic Analysis 4:321-364.
Julien, Marit. 2008. Embedded V2 in Norwegian and Swedish. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 80, 103-161.
Krifka, Manfred. 2001 Quantifying into question acts. Natural Language Semantics 9, 1-40.
Meinunger, André. 2004. Verb Second in German(ic) and mood selection in Romance. Paper presented at the Workshop on Clause Typing and the Left Periphery. Georgetown University Round Table.
Meinunger, André. 2005. Remarks on the verb second phenomenon, the nature of volitional predicates, 'Konjunktive' and speculations on illocution. Ms. Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft. Berlin.
Rizzi, Luigi. 1997. The fine structure of the left periphery. In Elements of grammar, ed. Liliane Haegeman, 289-330. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Sawada, Miyuki and Richard Larson. 2004. Presupposition and root transforms in adjunct clauses. NELS 34.
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