Dialect Variation and the Theory of Grammar: Proceedings of the GLOW Workshop in Venice, 1987 9783110869255, 9783110130515

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Dialect Variation and the Theory of Grammar

Paola Beninca (ed.)

Dialect Variation and the Theory of Grammar

¥ 1989

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Dialect Dialect variations and the theory of grammar : proceedings of the Glow Workshop in Venice / [ed.] Paola Benincd. - Dordrecht [etc.]: Foris With bibliogr., index ISBN 90 6765 366 7 paper SISO 805.9 UDC 800.87 Subject heading: dialectology

ISBN 90 6765 366 7

® 1989 Foris Publications - Dordrecht No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the copyright owner. Printed in The Netherlands by ICG Printing, Dordrecht.

Contents

Paola Benincà Introduction Andrea Calabrese Phonological variations Pieter Muysken The morphology/syntax interface in Quechua dialectology Kirsti Koch Christensen and Knut Tarald Taraldsen Expletive chain formation and past participle agreement in Scandinavian dialects Richard S. Kayne Facets of Romance past participle agreement Henk van Riemsdijk Movement and regeneration

Introduction

This volume collects five out of the eight papers presented at the workshop on "Dialect Variation and the Theory of Grammar", which closed the XI GLOW Colloquium in Venice (2 April 1987). Unfortunately, L. Rizzi (Subject clitics in northern Italian dialects), G. Longobardi (Parameters of negation in Romance dialects) and H. den Besten (Where do all those verbs go? Continental Germanic vs. Afrikaans) were unable to supply written versions of their contributions in time for publication. Yet I think that the articles presented here can give an idea of the ways in which linguistics and dialectology can profit from each other, especially at this particular time, when so much of the research in dialectology seems to have retired into its own quarters, and, at the same time, grammatical theory is becoming increasingly capable of dealing with fine-grained linguistic variation. What the contribution of dialectology was to the development of a theory of language is well known from the history of linguistics. At the very beginning, the first insights into linguistic "regularity" stemmed from the observation of linguistic variation. Franz Bopp, comparing the morphology of Indo-european languages, formulated the idea that similarities between inflectional endings were not chance resemblances, but were governed by certain rules. The dialectological model, then, could be seen as a natural tool for discovering linguistic "laws", or rules. When in 1907 Antoine Meillet drew up a summary of almost a hundred years of research in the field, he entitled it Les dialectes indoeuropeens. In the last decades of the XIX century, Ascoli took the route of analysing the dialects of living Romance languages, inaugurating dialectology as we know it today. He broadened the field of phonological comparison to include the study of dialectal areas, which means the study of phonological systems very similar to each other, differing in a limited number of properties of their phonological rules or underlying representations. Consideration of a group of Romance dialects and comparison of these with Latin, their common source, made it possible to discover and test diachronical rules of phonology. Dialects are in a sense particularly 'natural' linguistic objects, less exposed as they are to standardization processes or other types of correction of their natural development. Thus, for the first time, dialectology worked as an "experiment" to test the validity

2

Introduction

of the historical comparative method, which is based on the assumption that phonological evolution has to be thought of as, in principle, regular through time. The assumption would be proved right if the effects of historical change revealed regular correspondences with respect to the common point of departure, the phonological elements and contexts of Latin. In this century, interesting theoretical insights have resulted from two theoretical frameworks, involved in different ways with dialectology. For one of them, structuralism, dialect variation was a challenge that revealed a paradox; dealing with dialects, i.e. historically related languages, the structuralist model had to account for their similarity from a synchronic point of view, completely disregarding any historical information, which was, on the other hand, the only means of establishing a linguistic relationship between varieties. How was it possible, using a purely superficial, taxonomical model, to account for relationships - sometimes immediately evident - which could only be described by tracing ideal lines going into a "deep" structure (at that time, into history)? The second model, sociolinguistics, also dealt with linguistic variation; indeed, it aimed to absorb dialectology, and to explain linguistic change through it. For sociolinguistics, dialects are, in a sense, the centre of the theory: it is pointed out that linguistic communities are not uniform, as abstract linguistic models suppose, but are full of variations, free and non systematic, except for their sociological meaning. Dialect variation at the grammatical level - mostly in phonology - is considered (if we look, for example, at William Labov's work) the final stage of a long, unconscious process starting from an initial state of free variation - mostly at the phonetic level - which is taken as given and left unexplained. Change is driven by social factors, which cause the promotion of one variant over another. But, however deep you go in observing minimal linguistic variations, the moment of grammatical change as such remains out of reach, and still has to be considered generalized and discrete, as comparative theory had supposed. Neither structuralism nor sociolinguistics dealt with dialects as variations of grammatical systems; neither treated them as experimental material. For these as well as for other reasons, dialectologists loosened the links with linguistic theory and focused their attention on dialects, considering them as peculiar objects of the human cultural complex, more than as sources of facts pertinent to a theory of language. Early linguistic atlases were thought of as test material for historical phonology, which meant that they had a clear connection with linguistic theory. The items whose different linguistic forms were sought out in isolated villages and recorded on geographical maps, were chosen so as to draw a precise picture of the possible developments from a single, historically preceding form. Not

Introduction

3

long afterward, the purpose of dialect recording faded. Especially in Romance philology, it sometimes gives the impression of having been reduced to a purposeless collection of oddities. We think, on the contrary, that it is now possible to carry on research in dialectology which is an ideal continuation of the programme of historical comparative linguistics, and in which dialectology is once again treated as a source of experimental data for linguistic theory. Linguistic theory, like any theory about the real world, advances following a route that continuously switches from abstract proposals to empirical control. Simply looking at facts is not enough and cannot in itself be productive; on the other hand, a theory cannot be developed without a confrontation with real data. In fact, generative linguistics in the early stage, in which it developed a theory on the basis of a single language, seemed far from adequate for, or even interested in, coming to grips with linguistic variation. This was less true for morphology and phonology, since there was a large amount of abstract work done on these in the framework of other theories, including the unconscious, implicit theory that made written language possible. For syntactic study the limitation to a single language was a necessary starting point, since there was almost no previous theoretical study on syntax, if we limit ourselves to an empirical framework. But, at a certain point of its development, a theory of syntax has to face the fact that data from a single language underdetermine the part of the theory relating to choices between alternative hypotheses. A s Richard Kayne recently illustrated in a course given at the University of Venice, the experimental side of dialectology can be put back into action, not only for phonology and morphology, but for syntax as well. Syntactic theory has now accumulated a remarkable amount of specific analyses of different languages, and has refined its conceptual apparatus; it now has a more finely articulated structure, consisting of a core system of universal principles some of which are conceived as parameters, i.e. structures whose definition is left open and defined during the acquisition of a specific language, through positive evidence. In a linguistic group of interrelated dialects with little differentiation, we can expect to find realized only those possibilities which are admitted by the theory. It is evident, then, that the more the dialects are similar to one another, the more possible it becomes to find, for a specific grammatical area, the ideal case of some dialects differing only in respect to phenomena that can be traced back unambiguously to a single parameter. In the papers presented here, theoretical linguists will find a way suggested for verifying linguistic theory and its predictions, in particular with regard to parametric properties of Universal Grammar, while dialectologists will find a series of examples of how a strongly theoretically oriented analysis can recover and use data collected in the past, and, more important, a

4

Introduction

stimulus to renew their research and refine their descriptions, giving the field new direction. The first paper connects traditional, historical phonology directly to autosegmental theory. In the framework of autosegmental phonology, Andrea Calabrese presents an analysis of Southern Italian metaphony, resuming a large body of well known and long discussed phenomena. Metaphony is a typical morphophonological process, consisting in an interaction between stressed stem vowels and vowel endings, which in a single word alternate depending on morphology. It is a rule that involves non-adjacent segments, and in certain cases shows single segments (vowels) alternating with double segments (diphthongs). In autosegmental phonology the phonological matrix is split, with features assigned to different tiers, and this opens new perspectives for principled explanations of phenomena of the type illustrated. Southern Italian metaphony is essentially an assimilation of the stressed vowel, which becomes [+high] if the final vowel is [+high]. As observed in traditional studies as well, a puzzling variation is found in the case of [-ATR] stressed vowels, i.e. open e, o; these are not simply changed into a corresponding [+high] vowel by the assimilation rule, but undergo various changes: for example, in the metaphonetic contexts they show up as a diphthong, or a [-high + A T R ] vowel, depending on the dialect. This fact is analysed by Calabrese as the result of an incompatibility of features in the configuration created by the assimilation rule. The incompatibility is traced back to an ordered set of filters, which pertain to Universal Grammar, and an explanation is proposed as to why the disallowed configuration undergoes precisely the changes it does. The possibility for all languages to violate some of the UG filters, in an implicative order of markedness, is a factor of variation. During the process of language acquisition the child learns - through positive evidence - that in the system of the particular language he is learning, some of the filters, which constitute the unmarked starting point for each language, are violated. The filter at work in the case of metaphony is the one expressing, in a feature configuration, the incompatibility of the features [+high - A T R ] produced by the assimilation rule in a [-ATR] vowel. In an autosegmental representation, any feature, or node grouping a class of features can act independently. To repair the disallowed configuration, some specific rules can act on the incompatible features with selecting procedures. Calabrese introduces three "clean u p " rules that repair the disallowed configuration: a negation rule, which negates both the incompatible features, giving rise to [-high + A T R ] vowels; a linearization rule, which splits the incompatible features in two distinct slots of the skeleton, so that they are not in the

Introduction

5

same configuration anymore, and completes the configuration with the unmarked value of the other features. In the latter case a diphthong is the output of metaphony. A third clean up rule, called the delinking rule, simply delinks the feature [-ATR] from the skeleton and replaces it with [+ATR], The set of instruments that Calabrese introduces suggests parallel ways of approaching other phenomena that involve morphophonological substitution of double vowel segments for single ones. Some of the possible applications are pointed out by Calabrese, such as the rendering of foreign sounds like German u in Italian, or the loss of vowel length of classical Latin in vulgar Latin. Data and analysis of historical changes and synchronic systems from Kwa languages, Okpe, as well as Romance languages and dialects, are reconsidered in the light of the proposed theory. In the second paper P. Muysken analyses verb morphology phenomena in Quechua varieties. The underlying problem is whether they are better treated as part of a morphological component or as part of the syntax. In section 1, the interaction between reflexive, causative and reciprocal suffixes are examined. Interesting dialectal variation is found in the possibility of having the order reflexive-causative (ku-chi). Muysken argues in favour of phonological constraints that block the surfacing in certain contexts of the reflexive suffix ku, which has then to be recovered on syntactic or semantic (i.e. textual) grounds. Quechua phenomena are compared with facts and analyses of Romance languages (French and Italian) in causative constructions. On a more general basis, it is interesting to see how in a group like Quechua languages, completely independent from the Romance or Germanic groups, the impersonal morphology underwent an evolution in syntactic and semantic function exactly parallel to what we find for example in Italian or in German. The impersonal has, with some verbs, a passive value or an intensive value, a switch in meaning that is not expressible by means of pure semantic evolution, but can only be based on properties of the syntactic structure: this point is noteworthy for a theory of syntactic change. The variation examined in section 2 concerns verb inflection, which sets Ecuadorian Quechua apart form other Quechua varieties. The latter distinguish main clause verbal inflection from a generalized inflectional pattern shared by all other constituents, such as nouns or verbs in dependent clauses; Ecuadorian Quechua has person marking only in main clause verbs. The unmarked verbal forms are, nonetheless, able to license pro. The phenomena presented are evidence in favour of Rizzi's distinction between the "licensing" and the "identification" of empty categories, and support the idea that an abstract AGR node, licensing pro, is present in Ecuadorian morphology, even when there is no overt realization.

6

Introduction

Papers 3 and 4 deal with an area which has traditionally been considered part of morphology, but which generative study has demonstrated to have important consequences for syntax as well. We are referring to past participle agreement phenomena, an insightful topic for a better understanding of the syntactic properties of the verb. Scandinavian languages are the only ones in the Germanic group to show past participle agreement. By carrying out comparison of this area of phenomena with Romance languages, Christensen and Taraldsen are able to enrich the picture drawn in works by Richard Kayne, in particular with respect to expletive subjects. Past participle agreement with expletive subjects in Norwegian dialects shows a variation that mirrors the difference found, for example, between French and English: a group of Norwegian dialects has an expletive der, which, like English there, triggers agreement with a post-verbal subject; other dialects have the expletive det, which, parallel to French il, shows no agreement with a post-verbal subject. The arguments are against the obvious conclusion that der enters a chain, while det does not: the most generalizing theory seems to be the one that takes all expletives to form chains with a post-verbal NP; this makes a special convention on A-chain formation necessary. Evidence comes from two sets of data: the first set is from Swedish, where we have a non agreeing participle (traditionally called supine), besides the agreeing participial forms. Here, what in other Scandinavian languages appeared to be a non-agreeing participle with expletive subjects, in Swedish shows up as a neuter form, and can be seen to agree in neuter gender with the expletive. Further evidence comes from Norwegian dialects, where an SOV order is produced by preposition of a negative quantified object. With the auxiliary have, the participle does not agree with the preposed object, which is expected to be the subject of the small clause, but it agrees if the auxiliary is be. What is interesting for the authors' assumption is that there is no difference with respect to this pattern between det and der dialects, which supports the idea that both are in the same position with regard to chain formation. In Swedish there is past participle agreement (in the neuter form) with impersonal passives, where the expletive has no postverbal NP to be in chain with. Sentences of this type are analysed as having an NP PRO in postverbal position, to be interpreted as an empty agent, triggering past participle agreement. In this connection, an interesting interpretation of the PRO theorem is proposed. Kayne's theory of past participle agreement appears in the present book in an updated version, involving the analysis of a larger set of French, Provençal, Northern and Southern Italian dialects, at an impressive level of detail. The article primarily addresses the instances of past participle agreement with an object, when the object is clitic (French and Italian)

Introduction

7

or a wh- (French). The basic idea is, as it was in preceding works by Kayne, that the participle is in a small clause whose subject is an empty category forming a chain with the empty direct object and the clitic (or the wh- element). The purpose is still to reach a unified theory for finite verb and past participle agreement; in both cases we have to pose agreement with a subject and an AGR node. Agreement is conceived as a coindexing operation. In this version of the theory, the facts of French and the general phenomenology seem better accounted for by supposing, differently from preceding versions, that neither auxiliary assigns Case to an A-position, but auxiliary be assigns Case to a predicative, while have, as an auxiliary, does not. The trace of the clitic is assigned Case not by have but by the past participle of the verb. If the head of a Chain is in an A-position, Case must be assigned to that position: this theory leads one to conclude that the empty category, subject of the small clause and trace of the (clitic or wh-) object, being the head of the chain and being not Case-assigned in that position, would give an ungrammatical result. The head of the chain is then put in a position adjoined to IP. This hypothesis is supported by the behaviour of past participles of verbs that do not assign thetarole to their subject; a corollary is that expletive il cannot be the head of the relevant S. structure chain. Past participle agreement with cliticized objects behaves differently from past participle agreement with wh- objects, as expected, since we find the former in languages that lack the latter: the two typological paradigms are illustrated by means of many Romance dialects, on the basis of data supplied for the most part by traditional descriptive grammar. There is apparently an implicative typology, since there seems to be no language which has wh- past participle agreement and lacks clitic agreement. Finally, Kayne suggests a principled correlation between wh- past participle agreement and the impossibility of "free inversion". Henk van Riemsdijk's paper deals with a construction, called Split Topicalization, in which a constituent appears in first position in the sentence and, while the classic diagnostics seem to be positive as regards movement, on the other hand, the sentence is a full sentence and there is not a clear source for the moved element. In particular, if we try to reconstruct the sentence with the moved element in its source position, in many cases we obtain an overlapping of determiners. We have essentially two full NPs for a single position, though the NP in the sentence must have an empty head of some sort. Van Riemsdijk contrasts in detail two possible interpretations: first, an A-bar chain solution is examined, reviewing the DP hypothesis as well, which takes the NP as the maximal projection of the determiner, which is then the head of DP, having Nmax as its complement. The pronoun, including the resumptive pronoun, is in this theory the head of DP.

8

Introduction

In section 4.2 a movement hypothesis is presented, along with the regeneration and relexicalization proposal. A free movement rule is maximized, which can move not only heads or maximal projections but any projection, and a checking mechanism is required at S-structure, which checks if all constituents are complete with respect to X-bar theory. In many languages movements producing "incomplete" constituents (i.e. X' nodes not dominated by their maximal projection node) are blocked by this mechanism, but some languages can be supposed to have a special device to save the sentence produced by "improper movement", regenerating the missing structure, along the lines of X-bar theory principles, with subsequent relexicalization. Arguments in favour of the real movement hypothesis are presented in section 5. Restrictions on the ordering of adjuncts, for example, predict, under the movement hypothesis, that only the elements nearest to the head can appear, with the head itself, in topic position, as is, in fact, the case. The author assumes that whenever we find that in a language movement of N* is permitted there is a marked rule of regeneration at work, and in section 6 he draws up a range of different options for moving part of NP, and outlines a dialectal typology which takes into account the extent to which regeneration and relexicalization are permitted in Germanic varieties. The dialectological side of this paper is more limited, but supplies a very useful typological schema to compare with the parallel, well-known phenomenology of constituent topicalization in Romance. Section 7 tentatively examines the possibility of the regeneration of parts of a moved VP, which is observed to be limited in known languages. Yet a possible interpretation along the lines of this theory is proposed for fronted inflected VPs in Swedish and in English. Paola Beninca University of Padua

Phonological Variations Andrea Calabrese MIT

0. INTRODUCTION

Within the framework of Generative Grammar, phonological change and phonological aspects of dialectal variation have been usually accounted for with the notions of rule addition, rule loss, rule reordering and rule inversion, as proposed in Halle (1962), King (1969) and Kiparsky (1968) (for rule inversion cf. Vennemann (1972)). In this article, I want to show that in addition to these mechanisms, there are also other mechanisms by which phonological change and dialectal variation are created. My idea is that these other mechanisms are required independently to prevent the surfacing of marked segments. I will begin by showing how these mechanisms function in the case of pronunciation of foreign sounds. The analysis of the phenomenon of metaphony in southern Italian dialects will then display the interaction of these mechanisms with phonological rules and it will illustrate how they may create dialectal variation. A key element of my proposal is the notion of filters, which is based upon Kiparsky (1981), (1985), but is somewhat different. I will develop this notion of filters by proposing that only filters that belong to UG are possible. The notion of UG filters in conjunction with the mechanisms that I am proposing will allow me to account for some cases of dialectal variation and phonological change. This paper is written in the framework of the non-linear phonology. For readers not familiar with this approach, I will give a brief summary of it and refer those interested to the literature for a more exhaustive account (cf. Goldsmith (1976), Steriade (1982), (1983), Halle (1986), Halle and Vergnaud (1980), Levin (1985) among others). In the model of Chomsky and Halle (1968), the phonological representation is unilinear, i.e., it consists of a single sequence of segments and boundary symbols where the segments are composed of linearly unordered sets of features. The study of tone languages, however, led linguists like Williams and Goldsmith to more complex representations. They proposed that certain distinctive features are represented on tiers which are separate from, and run parallel to the string of segments (cf. Williams (1976), Goldsmith (1976)). Thus, in (1) tonal features are represented on the tone tier, and segments get tone

10 Andrea Calabrese specifications by being associated with tones - where association is represented by drawing a vertical line between the segment and the tone.

(1)

tone tier:

H L L

1

H

segment tier:

ba sa

bIsa

y

Observe that in (1) the tones do not need a one-to-one correspondence with the segment. That is, there can be different kinds of associations between tones and segments, e.g., one tone can be associated with two segments, and one segment with two tones, as in (1). This proposal of multi-tiered representations represented the starting point of non-linear phonology. The crucial point in this approach is that distinctive features behave as autonomous objects in phonological representations as indicated by the fact they can have their own tier. This means that they are independent of the feature matrices and therefore that they can be manipulated by phonological rules independently of the other features in the matrix. This need for multi-tiered representations leads to representations that have a three-dimensional structure, in which we find not just one sequence of segments, but several sequences geometrically organized in the three dimensions of space. These three-dimensional representations consist of a number of half-planes, all of which intersect in a central line made up of a sequence of timing units, X-slots. Some of the half-planes in a nonlinear representation are the syllable structure plane, the stress plane and the segmental melody plane, as can be seen in (2) with a partial representation of the Italian word 'frutto':

Phonological Variations

11

Developments of this model (cf. Clements (1985), Halle (1986), Sagey (1986)) have shown that phonological segments must be analyzed as being composed of a timing slot and a melody containing all the distinctive features that are peculiar to this segment. These features are represented on distinct tiers or planes which are associated with a single root node. This root node with all the feature planes it dominates characterizes the phonological segment. The root node is linked to one of the timing units lacking phonological or phonetic properties represented by the sequences of x that compose the core skeleton. A timing unit together with all the distinctive features which are linked to it represents a phoneme. The distinctive features are hierarchically ordered into a feature tree. The terminal nodes are all articulatory features. The terminal nodes are further grouped together under various class nodes. Following Sagey (1986), Halle (1987), the tree is organised as in (3): (3)

root

The correct way of representing the tree in (3) is to imagine it as a threedimensional structure like that in (2). Each terminal node is linked to skeletal positions (via intermediate class nodes) on its own plane, and there is a plane corresponding to every terminal node in the feature tree. In this way, the feature tree in (3) appears to be most properly a set of half-planes intersecting with each other. A sequence of three skeletal slots together with the feature trees that are linked to them should therefore be represented

12 Andrea Calabrese (4) X—X—X—f

b-

\\

\ \ —

1 6

'

»

\\

\

\

aa' = root tier, bb' = manner tier, cc' = laryngeal tier, dd' = supralaryngeal tier, ee' = soft palate tier, ff = place tier. The hierarchical representations in (3) and (4) have the property of grouping together all features which appear to function together as a natural class in phonological rules across languages. The hypothesis is that when we have an assimilatory process in which several features are involved, there is not a spreading of the individual features, but rather the spreading of the class node that dominates these features. In the following example, we have a case of assimilation of a place node - dominating all place of articulation features - from a consonant to an adjacent consonant: the assimilative change from the cluster - mt- into the cluster - nt-:

Phonological Variations

13

(5)

labial tier coronal tier •am. -distr. With representations like these any node may act as an independent object, linking and delinking from skeletal positions independently of the linkings between the other nodes and the skeleton. For reasons of graphical simplicity, three-dimensional representations like those in (2), (4) and (5) are not used. They are instead transformed into bidimensional representations like that in (6) which corresponds to (5), but with the difference that every node is seen from the perspective of looking down the axis of the skeletal core: (6) ? .root -oatsX./ •stiff v.c. supralar^ngeal

supra aringeal

•nasal ace labial

place coronal •ant. -àistr.

14 Andrea Calabrese This is the type of representations that will be used in this paper. Observe that simplified representations will be used where intermediate class nodes are omitted if they are not independently needed.

1. PRONUNCIATION OF FOREIGN SEGMENTS

Let us consider the way in which a speaker of a certain language attempts to pronounce a sound that is not present in his language.1 Excluding the rare case in which he pronounces it right, he usually replaces that sound with a similar sound of his language. Now the point is that the original sound can be replaced in a limited number of ways. For example, let us consider the Italian pronunciation of the German front rounded vowel ii which is not present in the vowel inventory of Italian. An Italian speaker replaces this vowel with the vowels /i, u / or, more commonly, with the diphthong /iu/. No other replacement is possible in this case. Thus, for example, the German word fuhrer can be pronounced as firer, furer, fiurer. My proposal is that this is not accidental, but that there is a principled explanation for it. I hypothesize that UG provides a certain number of strategies to clean up configuration of features not allowed in a certain phonological system. The possible pronunciations of the German front rounded vowel / i i / are examples of applications of these strategies. The fact that Italian lacks front rounded vowels can be expressed by saying that the features [-back] and [+round] are incompatible in the phonological system of Italian. More formally, following Kiparsky (1981), (1985), we can say that in Italian the filter in (7) holds: (7)

"»[-back, +round]

(7) states that the feature [-back] and [+round] cannot cooccur in the same feature bundle in the phonological system of Italian. Now, whenever a speaker must deal with a configuration that is blocked by a filter like (7), something must be done to clean it up. I propose that UG provides a set of strategies which have the function of cleaning up configurations with disallowed combinations of features. I will call these strategies clean up rules. There are three kinds of clean up rules. One is linearization by which the feature bundle containing two incompatible features is broken into two feature bundles, each of which contains only one of the incompatible features. Another one is delinking by which one of the incompatible features is delinked and replaced with a compatible feature. The third clean up rule is the negation rule by which the values of the incompatible features are negated and therefore changed into their opposites.

Phonological Variations

15

Let us begin with the Linearization rule. Linearization is a rule that takes the root node (in the sense of (3)(4) above) which dominates the two conflicting features and splits it into two root nodes each of which dominates only one of the conflicting features. The splitting does not affect the timing slot with which the root node, which is the target of the rule, is associated. After the splitting, each of the conflicting features is matched with the opposite value of the other conflicting feature in its own root node. The linearization rule can be represented as in (8): (8)

X

X

•here af ( and bf 2 are features conflicting because of a filter and cFj and dF^ are non conflicting features.* a.b,c,d • •/-)

Through (8), we obtain a contour segment, that is, a segment which is characterized by having two feature bundles associated with the same timing slot. I will not account here for the temporal order of the split features. Delinking is a rule that delinks one of the features blocked by a filter. The delinked feature is then replaced with the opposite value of the delinked feature. I represent this in (9): (9)

X rdot > i\

bF2

X rok

where aF, is conflicting with bF,

r \

because of a filter G ( a.b - */-)

-(bF 2 )

The negation rule is a rule which takes the conflicting features and negates their values, so that they come out with the opposite values.2 The rule can be represented in (10):

16 Andrea Calabrese (10)

[aF^ bF 2 ] > - ([aFj, bF 2 ]) > [ - a F „ -bF 2 ]

where aF, and bF 2 are conflicting features with respect to a filter

Thus, given a configuration where [—F2] and [+F 3 ] are conflicting features because of a filter, (10) will yeld the clean up in (11): (11)

[ - F j , + F 2 ] > - ([—Fj, + F 2 ] ) > [ + F „ - F J

Let us go back to the Italian pronunciation of the German front rounded vowel / i i / . (1) states that the features [+round] and [-back] are incompatible. This means that for an Italian speaker, the German phoneme / i i / presents two incompatible features. The solution that the Italian speaker provides to this problem is usually the diphthong / i u / . A German word like fiihrer is pronounced /fiurer/ in Italian. This means that the disallowed configuration with two incompatible features [+round], [-back] is cleaned up by the application of the linearization rule. Thus, we have the derivation in (12): (12)

X^

( - iu )

>

•ATR With (12), we can explain how we get in Italian / i u / from the German /ii/. There are, however, as I mentioned earlier, two other possible pronunciations of the German front rounded / i i / . One is / i / and the other / u / . Thus, the word fiihrer can be also pronounced as / f i r e r / or / f u r e r / . These two cases are obtained by applying the rule of delinking to one of the incompatible features as the clean up strategy. In the first case, the feature [+round] is delinked and replaced by [-round] so that we get the feature bundle in (13):

Phonological Variations

17

(13) X

( -i)

-round -ba + -low +ATR In the second case, it is the feature [-back] to be delinked and replaced by [+back] so that we get the feature bundle in (14): (14)

X

(" u)

•ATR I suppose that all three forms /fiurer, firer, furer/ are available to the speaker, and that the choice of one of them in the performance is purely arbitrary. Of course, in the history of the language, it can happen that only one of the forms derivable by the clean up rules is established as the norm. In this case, the loan word will be apparently cleaned up by only one rule. In the preceding cases we have not seen an application of the rule of negation. However, we will see several applications of it later.

2. METAPHONY IN SOUTHERN ITALIAN DIALECTS

One of the most interesting phenomena that characterize Italian dialects, especially in the South, is the phenomenon called metaphony. Metaphony consists of the change in quality of a stressed vowel in the context of high vowel endings. One of the most interesting characteristics of metaphony is the fact that although its outputs are always the same across dialects when the targets are mid +ATR vowels, there is a lot of dialectal variation in the outputs when the targets are mid -ATR vowels. Mid +ATR vowels are always raised; in contrast, mid -ATR vowels can be diphthongized, tensed or

18 Andrea Calabrese raised, depending on the dialect. This is a very peculiar property of metaphony that must be accounted for. One could propose that metaphony be split into two rules: one of raising when the target is a + ATR vowel and one of diphthongization, or tensing, or raising, depending on the dialect, in case of the -ATR vowels. In this way, however, a generalization would be missed: both rules apply in the same context and to the same class of vowels. If we seek generalizations, this proposal must be dismissed and we have to search for a different solution. In Calabrese (1986), I proposed the following analysis of metaphony in Salentino, a southern Italian dialect. Northern Salentino has the underlying seven vowel vocalic system that you can see in (15 a) with the feature specifications in (15 b):3 (15)

a.

(15)

b.

i e e

high low back round ATR

u o a

i e e a D o + _ _ _ _ _

u +

- - - + + + - - - - + + + + - - - +

+ + +

In this dialect, the metaphony rule affects mid vowels in the following way. When the mid vowel target of the rule is +ATR, it is raised to its high counterpart; when it is -ATR it is diphthongized. For example, we have the alternations in (16) (data from Ribezzo (1912)): (16)

in case of +ATR vowels: sing. plur. paréte pariti 'wall' mése misi 'months' ngrése ngrisi 'english' krótje krutjl 'cross' stajóne sta/uni 'season' fem. pilósa karósa frédda

masc. pilusu 'hairy' karusu 'young' friddu 'cold'

Phonological Variations

19

in case of - A T R vowels: sing, plur. péte piéti 'foot' dènte dienti 'tooth' core cuéri 'heart' forte fuérti 'strong' fem. lènta bòna mòrta

mase. liéntu 'slow' buénu 'good' muértu 'dead'

All the forms in (16) are intermediate forms. To derive the right surface forms we need to apply a rule that raises mid vowels in unstressed syllables and another rule that laxes tense mid vowels. I shall not discuss these rules here (cf. Calabrese (1986) for a more complete analysis of these facts). Let us suppose now that the rule of metaphony is the one in (17) (I use simplified tree structures): (17) I«stress]

'T\ ' N

root

root

As shown, metaphony spreads the feature [+high] of a high vowel X 2 onto the preceding vowel X,, if X! contains the features [-high, -low] and if X[ is stressed. In (18) and (19), I give two sample derivations: (18)

p a r

e t root

-i

\

\ \

- high

+high

20 Andrea Calabrese (19)

p e t rdot

-i roit

-back'/ I

-ATR I -to

\

-high

+high

Thus, in the case of - A T R vowels, I assume that metaphony creates a high - A T R vowel. The problem is why there is diphthongization in this case. If we check the vocalic inventory of northern Salentino, we can see that there are no high - A T R vowels. My hypothesis is that the explanation for the diphthongization of the - A T R vowels must be based on this fact. The diphthongization of the - A T R high vowels produced by metaphony is a strategy to preserve the phonological structure of Salentino. The lack of high - A T R vowels in the vocalic inventory of Salentino is represented with filter (20): (20)

* [+high, -ATR]

The application of the rule of metaphony to - A T R vowels creates feature bundles containing exactly the configuration blocked by filter (20). My hypothesis is then that this disallowed configuration is cleaned up by the rule of linearization. Therefore, given the feature bundles in (21 a) and (b): (21) a.

X i. root

b.

-ATR

X I root

-ATR

by linearization (8), we will obtain the contour segments in (22a) and (22b):

Phonological Variations

21

(22) a.

-round\ -back -low b .

-round -low (22 a) represents the diphthong/ie/, (22 b) represents the diphthong /uo/. For the last case, I have to suppose that in Salentino there is a dissimilation rule that gives / u e / . Observe that / u o / is the result of / o / in a metaphonic context in several other southern Italian dialects similar to Salentino. As I said, a possible objection to my treatment of Salentino metaphony is that instead of hypothesizing a rather complex interaction among phonological filters, rules and clean up rules, it would be simpler to state a different rule to treat each phenomenon. Thus, for example, Salentino metaphony could be handled by two different rules: a rule of raising and a rule of diphthongization. In this way, however, a generalization would be missed. We would in fact have two unrelated rules that apply in the same identical structural environment. This is what my approach avoids. I can suppose a very general rule of metaphony and derive the different outputs by using independently motivated filters and clean up rules. In this way, not only is the generalization concerning the rule captured, but a very straightforward analysis is also proposed. In sum, my approach leads to a meaningful simplification of the phonological analysis of metaphony in Salentino. It is interesting now to observe that the other clean up strategies are

22 Andrea Calabrese also found in other southern Italian dialects where metaphony affects mid -ATR vowels. For example, in southern Umbro, the outputs of metaphony are different from those in Salentino. In southern Umbro, +ATR mid vowels are raised to high vowels as in Salentino, but -ATR mid vowels are simply tensed. For example we have alternations like those in (23) (data from Rohlfs (1966) and AIS): (23)

in case of +ATR / e / : vérde virdi néra niru

"green" "black"

in case of +ATR / o / : tónna tunnu "round" róssa russu "red" in case of -ATR / e / : tjeka t/éku péde pèdi (23)

in case of -ATR / o / : nòstra nóstru nóva nóvu

Instead of postulating different rules of metaphony to explain this dialectal variation, I propose that the rule of metaphony is always the same and that the variation is due to different clean up rules. In particular, for the case of southern Umbro, I want to propose that the negation rule is the relevant clean up rule. In southern Umbro, as in Salentino, the application of the metaphony rule to -ATR mid vowels produces the configuration [-ATR, +high] blocked by filter (20), which holds in both dialects. My proposal is that, instead of being cleaned up by linearization as in Salentino, this disallowed configuration is cleaned up by the negation rule in southern Umbro. Thus, we have a clean up like the one in (24): (24)

[-ATR, +high] > - ( [-ATR, +high] ) > [+ATR, -high]

That is, the high -ATR vowel produced by metaphony is changed into a +ATR mid vowel. In another dialect, southern Lucanian, we find that the output of the metaphony rule is adjusted by delinking, the third clean up rule that I propose. We, thus, have alternations like those in (25) (data from Lausberg (1939) and Rensch (1964))4 (the examples in (25) are intermediate forms):

Phonological Variations (25)

23

sing. péa>€ zr-éna^e

plur. p\m "foot" a^in^i "tooth"

fem. sing, bbélla nova lènta

masc. sing, bbillu nuvu lintu

As shown in (25), we obtain high vowels from -ATR mid vowels. My hypothesis is that the disallowed configuration [-ATR, +high] is cleaned up in this dialect by delinking the feature [-ATR] as we can see in (26): (26)

p I d i root root

-low -round +high

+high

p i d I root

-low -round ' •high

i < root

+high

x

\

-ATR

+ATR

In (26), the high -ATR vowel which is produced by metaphony is changed into a high +ATR vowel. An interesting consequence follows from this analysis of metaphony. We have seen that the results of metaphony can vary from dialect to dialect. Instead of proposing a different rule of metaphony for each different dialect to account for this dialectal variation, I have proposed that the metaphony rule is always the same and that the dialectal variation is a result of the fact that a different clean up rule is chosen to repair the disallowed configuration produced by metaphony. In each particular dialect, one of the possible clean up strategies had been established in its historical development as the linguistic norm to treat those disallowed configurations. In other words, the history of the dialect grammaticalized one of the clean up strategies as the solution to the disallowed configuration produced by the phonological rule. In this way, I account for the observed dialectal variation in the phenomenon of metaphony. Therefore, the range of variation that we find should be limited to the range of results produced by the clean up rules.

24 Andrea Calabrese 3. UG FILTERS

My proposal about clean up procedures is based on the existence of filters that block certain configurations of features. The issue to address now is the status of these filters. Are the filters a language specific device that represents the gaps in the phonological system of that language, as proposed in Kiparsky (1981), (1985), or are they something else? I propose that there is a set of Filters provided by Universal Grammar and that only these filters are possible in a given language. There are no language specific filters. The only possible filters are those which block universally marked segments, that is, segments that tend to be missing in phonological systems. I will call these filters UG filters. I assume that the UG filters are hierarchically ordered. The more infrequent a phonological segment is, the higher the filter that excludes it is in the hierarchy. The hierarchy of UG filters is intended also to capture Jakobson's (1941) observations on language learning and loss, as well as his observations on the universal implications about the structure of possible phonological systems. My idea is that a child can learn a segment violating a filter in a certain position in the hierarchy only after he learns a segment violating a filter in a lower position. In contrast, an aphasic loses a segment violating a filter in a higher position in the hierarchy before he loses a segment violating a filter in a lower position. Another claim is that a segment disallowed by a filter at a higher position can be present in a phonological system only if a segment disallowed by a filter at a lower position is also present in that phonological system. I assume that a phonological system is maximally unmarked when no UG filter is violated. In the normal case, however, each particular language violates a subset of UG filters, i.e., its phonological system has a number of segments which violate these UG filters. The complement set of unviolated UG filters defines the shape and the structure of the phonological system of that particular language. I will call these unviolated UG filters lexical filters of that language. I propose that the markedness of a phonological system increases with the height in the hierarchy of the filter that the system violates and I want to suggest that a UG filter can be violated only if all filters lower in the hierarchy are violated. I propose the set of UG filters in (27) for vocalic systems: observe that the ranking is given only by numbers and not letters. Therefore, (4a) and (¥b) have the same hierarchical position. (27)

8) 7) (5)

*[+low, +high] *[-conson., +nasal] *[+low, +round]

Phonological Variations 5)

a. *[back,-round]/

4) 3) 2) 1)

a. *[-back, +round] *[-high, +ATR] *[+low, -back] *[-high, -low]

25 ,

b. *[+low, +ATR] b. *[+high, -ATR]

With the upside down ranking of (27) I intend to capture the relation between numerical height and spatial height so that no confusion in the use of the terms high and low is created. Most unmarked is the three vowel system in (28) where all the UG filters in (27) are respected; in this vocalic system, the set of lexical filters corresponds to the set of all UG filters. (28)

i

u a

A language with a five vowel system as in (29) violates only the UG filter (/); in this vocalic system, the set of the lexical filters contains the UG filters from (2) to (8). (29)

i e

u o a

A consequence of my approach is that the only true asymmetric segments are those predicted by UG filters. This is because UG filters express all the possible symmetries and asymmetries of a phonological system. For example, in the case of vocalic systems, the vowel / a / tends to be a true asymmetric vowel since the UG filter (2) and (6) may block its symmetric counterparts: the low front /ae/ and the low rounded /a/. Therefore in a vocalic system like the one in (30): (30)

i

u

E

a where the vowel / o / is missing, no UG filters can account for the missing vowel and thus for the asymmetric position of /E/. Therefore /E/ is not a true asymmetric vowel as / a / in the preceding example. This means that a phonological system is learned only through positive evidence: if a child encounters a certain segment in his or her learning

26 Andrea Calabrese process, then he or she learns that the UG filter that blocks that segment is violated. The absence of a segment does not lead to a new filter. There is no learning based on negative evidence. I now examine some consequences that derive from the idea that there are only UG filters. In the analysis of metaphony in southern Italian dialects, I crucially relied on the UG filter [+high, -ATR]. Here I will discuss two other UG filters involving the feature [ATR]. We will see how my proposal of hierarchically ordered UG filters works. The UG filters that I will discuss are filters (5), (4b) and (56) of (27) that I repeat in (31): (31)

c. b. a.

*[+low, +ATR] *[+high, -ATR] *[-high, +ATR]

I proposed that the filters in (31) are precisely in the hierarchical order in which they are given. A consequence of the hierarchical order in (31) is that the filter [+high, -ATR] cannot be violated unless the filter [-high, +ATR] is also violated. And also the filter [+low, +ATR] cannot be violated unless the two other filters are violated. I now want to discuss the status of UG filters in languages in which they are violated. My idea is that they are always present and that what is learned is the knowledge of their violation. In the case of language loss, Aphasia, what happens is that the memory of this knowledge is lost and therefore there is restriction of the phonological inventory. At this point, the distinction between lexical and post-lexical phonology is crucial. The theory of lexical phonology (cf. Mohanan (1982), (1986), Kiparsky (1982), (1985), among others) holds that there are two distinct types of phonological rule application. The first is when rules apply within the lexicon ( the LEXICAL PHONOLOGY), while the second is when rules apply to the output of the syntactic component (POST-LEXICAL PHONOLOGY). This bifurcation is based on the claim that the two types of phonological operations systematically differ in a number of interesting ways. That is, rules applying in one component of the grammar will show different properties than rules applying in the other component. Kiparsky (1982), (1985) has proposed that rules applying in the lexicon are subject to structure preservation constraints that do not necessarily hold for post-lexical rules. For example, if a given language's lexical inventory of segments does not include voiceless sonorants, then a lexical rule in such a language will not be able to create a voiceless sonorants. 5 On the other hand, post-lexical rules may create a variety of segments not attested in lexical representations, and in particular voiceless sonorants. In the terms proposed in this article, this means that a rule cannot create

27

Phonological Variations

a violation of a lexical filter in the lexical phonology, but that a rule may create this violation in the post-lexical phonology. This is because it is assumed that lexical filters are effective in the lexical phonology, but not in the post-lexical phonology. However, here I want to propose that UG filters not included in the set of the lexical filters of a certain language can play a role in the post-lexical phonology of this language. In other words, I propose that UG filters can be effective at the post-lexical level even in the case in which they are violated in the lexical phonology. What I mean is that a segment that is present in the lexical phonology of a language can be blocked in the post-lexical phonology insofar as it is a violation of a UG filter. Okpe, a West African language, seems to display a phenomenon of this kind: it has an underlying nine vowel vocalic system as in (32) (cf. Hoffmann (1973), Pulleyblank (1985)): (32)

i i e e

u v o o a

But this vocalic system is superficially reduced to a seven vowel vocalic system as in (34) by application of the context free reduction in (34) (cf. Hoffmann (1973)): (33)

i e e

u o 3 a

(34)

t, v > e, o

Therefore we find a mid + A T R vowel in all the words in which we have to presuppose an underlying high - A T R vowel. Thus instead of the alternations in (35), we have superficially the alternations in (36): (35)

rt sv

'eat!' 'sing!'

(36)

re

eryo

SO

ESW3

erys esw3

'to eat' (i, v > y, w / _ V) 'to sing'

Observe that in the case of (36), we have to suppose the presence of an underlying [-ATR] high vowel to explain the - A T R form of the prefix

28 Andrea Calabrese and the suffix and the presence of the glide (cf. Pulleyblank (1985)). My hypothesis is that rule (34) is an instance of the negation rule applied to the feature specifications [+high, -ATR], This application of the negation rule is triggered by the presence of the UG filter in (31b) in the post-lexical phonology. Observe that (31b) is violated in the lexical phonology of Okpe as the vocalic inventory in (32) shows. Therefore in the lexical phonology of Okpe, the configuration [+high, -ATR] is allowed, but in the post-lexical phonology it is disallowed, and thus cleaned up by the application of the negation rule to the two features. Thus, we get the configuration [-high, +ATR]. I propose that only UG filters that are higher in the hierarchy probably have a chance to occur post-lexically and their introduction at the postlexical level probably represents a change towards the simplification of the underlying phonological inventory, i.e. towards the stage when the UG filters previously introduced in the post-lexical phonology become part of the lexical phonology. Therefore, I want to hypothesize that one of the possible diachronic changes in the phonology of a language is the simplification of the segmental inventory through the introduction of a UG filter. Stewart (1971) analyzes the group of languages that goes under the name of Niger Congo Kwa. In these languages, we have the + / - ATR opposition in the vocalic system which characterizes most of the central African languages. If we had a + / - ATR opposition for each vowel, we should get the ten vowel vocalic system in (37) where capital / A / is the + ATR counterpart of - ATR / a / : (37)

-ATR I e

+ATR v o

a

i e

u o A

In a vocalic system like the one in (37), all the UG filters in (31) are violated. Stewart argues that the proto-language from which all the Niger Congo Kwa languages derive had precisely the vocalic system in (37). As Stewart shows, however, only a few of the modern Kwa languages have a vocalic system like that of (37) where the UG filters in (31a-c) are violated. Stewart shows that the +ATR low / A / , i.e., the violation of (31c) and the -ATR high /i, v/, i.e., the violations of (31b), are most commonly eliminated. Therefore, from a common ancestor that had to have the ten vowel vocalic system in (37) as the comparative analysis of the languages of this group requires, we obtain different languages differentiated in the structure of the vocalic system according to whether

Phonological Variations

29

(31b) or (31c) or both have become effective again post-lexically and then lexically. It is very interesting to see how the disallowed segments were cleaned up. In some languages, Stewart observes, +ATR / A / is replaced with its -ATR counterpart / a / and in some others the -ATR A, v/ are replaced with their +ATR counterparts /i, u / as is shown in (38a). I can explain both of these diachronic changes by postulating that the introduction of filters (31b) and (c) has triggered the application of the delinking rule which delinked one of the conflicting features, specifically [ATR], Therefore, we obtained [+low, -ATR] from [+low, +ATR], and [+high, +ATR] from [+high, -ATR], According to Stewart, there are also languages in which the low +ATR / A / is replaced by the mid +ATR / e / and / or in which the high -ATR A, v/ are replaced by their mid -ATR counterpart /e, o/ as is shown in (38b). I can explain these diachronic changes by supposing that the delinking rule triggered by the introduction of the UG filters (31b) and (c) applied to [ + l o w ] in the first case and [+high] in the second case. The most interesting fact that Stewart observes is however the following: "Quite commonly, however, the awkward vowels are eliminated by an interesting combination of two changes in tongue position; root-advanced low / A / is replaced with one or both of its root-unadvanced midcounterparts /e, o/, and root-unadvanced high A, v/ are replaced with their root advanced mid counterparts /e, o / . " (Stewart (1972), 180). I show this change in (38c). I can account for this phonological change quite simply. At a certain point in the history of the preceding languages, the two UG filters (31b) and (c) were introduced. Therefore, the feature configurations of the segments -ATR /i,v/ and +ATR / A / became disallowed in the phonological systems of those languages, because of the presence of the conflicting features [+high, -ATR] in the case of the former and of the conflicting features [+low, +ATR] in the case of the latter. Therefore, they had to be cleaned up in some way. My proposal is that they were cleaned up by applying the negation rule to both conflicting features. Thus we got [-high, +ATR] from [+high, -ATR], i.e., -ATR A, v/ changed into /e,o/, and we got [-low, -ATR] from [+low, +ATR], i.e., / A / changed into / e / . (38)

a. b. c.

A> a l, v > i, u A> e i, v > e, o A> e i, v > e, o

(delinking (delinking (delinking (delinking (negation) (negation)

of+ATR) of -ATR) of +low) of +high)

30 Andrea Calabrese d.

Comparative correspondences of the different results of the original *i, *u in the Kwa Languages (from Stewart (1972), 180):

Cama Betibe Anyi-Bawule(Anyi) Anyi-Bawule(Bawule) Akan Awutu Chiripon-leter-Amun

father n-the e-he

under a-the

on a-t h o

o-ho su

Si

su

si 3-Sl

se si

ear

a-si a-in se a-si

su

(a-sù)

e-so su

su

Stewart observes then that it seems quite common for Kwa languages to have -ATR /i, u/, but not +ATR / A / , but quite ««common for them to have +ATR / A / but not - A T R / i, v/. According to my proposal, this means that the introduction of UG filters in the phonological systems of these languages respects the hierarchical order postulated in (31). Namely (31c) is much more likely to become effective than (31b), and that (31b) can be introduced only if (31c) is also introduced. Observe that (31a) is not introduced in any of the Kwa languages. The reason for this must be connected to the fact that (31a) is commonly violated among the languages of the world. This means that its position in the UG filters hierarchy is very low, much lower than (31b). Now, as I said before, the tendency to introduce a UG filter is correlated to its position in the hierarchy. The higher its position, the easier it can be introduced. In other words a more marked segment, that is a segment violating a UG filter in a high position in the hierarchy, is eliminated more easily than a less marked segment, that is, a segment violating a UG filter in a lower position. Therefore, +ATR mid vowels which violate a filter very low in the hierarchy tend not to be eliminated. In summary, we have seen how the dialectal and diachronic change can be explained by the hypothesis that UG filters can become effective again in the post-lexical phonology, as we have seen in Okpe, and then in the lexical phonology.

4. ROMANCE LANGUAGES

It is interesting now to consider the diachronic development of the vowel system which occurred in a completely different group of languages, the Romance languages. This development seems to be very nicely accounted for in my approach based on the interaction among phonological rules, UG filters and clean up rules.

31

Phonological Variations

The rule in (39) is traditionally assumed to explain the evolution of the vocalic system of classical Latin into the vocalic system of the Romance languages. (39)

f+highl L-ATRJ

>

[-high 1 |+ATRJ

Rule (39) changes into / e / , / o / the supposed -ATR high vowels A / , / v / that is produced by the interpretation of the opposition in quantity as opposition in tenseness that occurred in late Latin. Now, it is interesting to note that rule (39) looks like the case of negation rule that we used to explain the alternation between -ATR mid vowels and +ATR mid vowels in a metaphonic context in southern Umbro, the neutralization rule of Okpe and the historical changes in the Kwa languages. In this section I would like to consider this similarity and propose an analysis of the evolution of Latin into the Romance languages. In Calabrese (1986), I proposed that classical Latin had the vocalic system in (40): (40)

i e

u D a

Observe that in this vocalic system the three filters in (31) are respected. There are no mid +ATR vowels, high -ATR vowels or low +ATR vowels. The peculiar characteristic of classical Latin is that we can have vowels associated with two timing slots, independently of the presence of another timing slot in the rime. So in the same syllabic context, there is an opposition between vowels associated with only one timing slot and vowels associated with two timing slots, i.e. the opposition in quantity of the traditional grammar, as we can see in (41): (41)

X

XX

I v

V v

We, therefore, have the oppositions between short and long vowels in (42):

32 Andrea Calabrese (42)

X I i

- X X \/ i

(= I ~ I)

X I e

- X X \/ e

(= è ~ e)

X I a

- X X \/ a

(= a ~ à)

X I 3

- X X \ / D

(=5-5)

X I u

- X X \/ u

(= u ~ u)

Let's suppose now that at a certain point of the history of Latin the rules in (43) was introduced at the post-lexical level: (43)i a.

I

] > l+ATRl /

J V

b. (

1 > l-ATR] /

X I V

The rules in (43) applied when the feature bundles of the vowels were already fully specified. We can hypothesize that the features assigned by (43) affected the feature bundle of the vocalic segment, delinking the feature [ATR], when it had a different value. Thus, post-lexically, we had the four cases in (44) (we consider only the [-back] series): (44) a.

X X \ / i

I

[•ATR]

b.

X

Ii

l-ATR]

c. X X

\/e

[+ATR]

d.

X

l-ATR]

Phonological Variations

33

After the feature assigned by (43) affects the feature bundles of the vowels, we obtain the following feature bundles (we consider only the feature [high] and [ATR]; the other features are not important: (45)

v

a. X

X

b.

i

i v

X

c. X X

i

\*J\\

d. X

ie

e

l+hi]\ [-i)\ [-hil \

[+ATR]

[-ATR]

[+ATR]

[-ATR1

The most interesting question for me to consider is how we get from the classical Latin vocalic system to the Romance vocalic system. As I said before in section 3, at the post-lexical level, lexical filters do not hold any more. Therefore, a post-lexical rule can freely create segments which violate lexical filters: clean up rules will not be triggered by the presence of lexical filters. However, UG filters are available and can be effective, as I have proposed in the case of Okpe. These filters can actively block the outputs of the post-lexical rules and so trigger the application of clean up rules. In the case of Latin, I want to propose that the filters (31b) and (c) were activated, and therefore while mid +ATR segments were allowed to surface, high -ATR and low +ATR vowels were blocked and therefore had to be cleaned up. The strategy of cleaning up that was selected was negation in case of high -ATR vowels and delinking of +ATR in case of low +ATR vowels. Therefore, we had the derivations in (46) and (47): (46)

X

>

/ \ •High -ATR

(47)

X

IX

•low +ATR

>

X

>

X

/ \ / \ -( +high -ATR) -high +ATR

X

/\

+low -ATR

Therefore, the short -ATR high vowels A, v/ produced by rule (43b) were changed into the +ATR mid vowels /e, o / and the long +ATR low / A / produced by rule (43a) was changed into the -ATR / a / . Therefore, I hypothesize that the superficial vocalic system of Latin of this stage differed from that of classical Latin as indicated by the correspondences in (48):

34 Andrea Calabrese (48)

I i e e a a o S u u

II I I I I I I I I

I

e e e a a o S o u

What happened then in Latin was that short vowels lengthened in stressed open syllables and long vowels shortened in unstressed and closed syllables. In this way the opposition in quantity was lost. I will not discuss this well known phenomenon here. When the distinction in quantity was lost, the new quality of the vowels was preserved. Thus, we have the evolution in the vocalic system that we see in (49): (49)

I

l

e e a a 5 5 u u

I I I I I I I M I

I

e e e a a 5 o o u

I \/e eI \a/ oI \o/ Iu

i

With the loss of the distinction in quantity, the mid +ATR vowels / e , o / were lexicalized, and therefore the UG filter (31a) was lexically violated. The evolution that we show in (49) is the evolution characteristic of several Romance languages like standard Italian for example. The evolution of the Latin vocalic system into the vocalic system of Southern Lucanian and Sardinian, however, is different. I have to explain it. In these vocalic systems, we have the correspondences with the Latin vocalic system that we can see in (50): (50)

I i e e a a 5 5 u u

\ll \le \la \lo \lu

I want to hypothesize that in the variety of Latin that developed into these languages, the UG filters (31) were respected. In other words, no new segment in respect to the classical Latin system in (40) was introduced into the underlying vocalic system. In this case the clean up rule that applied was delinking of the feature [ATR] in all the disallowed configurations produced by rules (43a) and (b). What this variety of Latin shared with the other variety of Latin was the loss of opposition in quantity and we thus have the system of the bottom line of (50). Observe that if the other option of delinking is applied in case of [-high, +ATR], namely, the delinking of [-high], we would get the feature bundle [ +high, +ATR], that is, the feature bundle of / i / . This is actually what

Phonological Variations

35

happened in several southern Italian dialects, such as Sicilian or Southern Salentino where the Latin vocalic system evolved in a five vowel system as in Sardinian and southern Lucanian, but with a different evolution of the long mid vowels as you can see from the correspondences in (51): (51)

I

i

e e a a 5 5 u u

\l/ I \/ Io \l/ i e a u

Now let us consider the cases of Rumanian and eastern Lucanian, two varieties of Romance geographically very distant from each other. The characteristic of these languages is that the front and the back vowels of Latin did not develop in the same way, but had different outcomes. The correspondences between the Latin vowels and the vowels of these two languages are as follows: (52)

I i e e a a 5 5 u u

lI E\l/ Va M \lu o

Observe that the historical evolution brought about a five vowel system similar to the one that we find in southern Lucanian, Sardinian and southern Salentino. This means that also in Rumanian and eastern Lucanian, the UG filter *[-high, +ATR] was not violated as it was not violated in the other group of languages. Thus we get a standard five vowel system /i, u, e, d, a/. 6,7 The crucial peculiarity which characterizes the evolution of Rumanian and eastern Lucanian is the asymmetric development of the Latin short vowel / i / and / u / . I propose a very straightforward explanation of the change that led to Rumanian and eastern Lucanian. In these two languages, the UG filters of the Latin vocalic system were preserved as they were in the other languages where we get five vowel systems. The peculiarity of these two languages is that the disallowed configuration [+high, -ATR] is cleaned up in the front vowels in a way that is different from the way in which it is cleaned up in the back vowels. So we had delinking of [+high] in the case of the front vowels, and delinking of [-ATR] in the case of the back vowels, two of the possible procedures of clean up. So given the results of the application of rule (43) in late Latin in (53), where the configurations in (b), (c), (f) and (g) are disallowed by the UG filters (31a) and (b), we get the configurations in (54). I consider only the case of the -low vowel, since the development of the Latin low vowel is identical in all Romance languages:

36 Andrea Calabrese (53)

(54)

a.

-back +high +ATR

b. -back +high -ATR

c. -back -high +ATR

d.

-back -high -ATR

e. +back +high +ATR

f. +high +high -ATR

g-

+back -high +ATR

h. +back -high -ATR

(53b)

> -back (by delinking of +high) -high -ATR

(53c)

> -back (by delinking of +ATR) -high -ATR

(530

> +back (by delinking of -ATR) +high +ATR

(53g)

> +back (by delinking of +ATR) -high -ATR

In the case of the mid-vowels, we have the same clean up that we had in southern Lucanian and Sardinian, i.e., the symmetric delinking of + ATR in both front and back vowels. As I said, the peculiarity of the clean up in (54) is the asymmetric treatment of front and back high vowels. In conclusion, my hypothesis is that a rule was introduced in the postlexical phonology of Latin that produced configurations of features disallowed by the UG filters (31b) and (31c). The hierarchical ordering of the UG filters in (31) explain why (31b) and (c) became effective in the post-lexical phonology and not (31a). Different clean up rules operated on the configurations disallowed by (31b) and (c) in order to repair them. These clean up rules produced the different outputs that we have seen. In this way, a simplification of the treatment of the diachronical development is achieved as well as a straightforward account of its different possible outputs which created a situation of dialectal variation.

Phonological Variations

37

5. CONCLUSION

I have argued that by hypothesizing a modular interaction among phonological rules, UG filters and clean up strategies, it is possible to account for a vast variety of phenomena and in particular certain aspects of phonological variation and phonological change in a very simple and elegant way. I have proposed also that only UG filters are possible and that these UG filters are hierarchically ordered. By supposing that these UG filters can be available at the post-lexical level, certain cases of diachronical development have been accounted for. Finally, I wish to point out that if only UG filters are possible, my proposal comes very close to the Theory of Markedness of Chomsky & Halle (1968). The UG filters in fact define the class of the possible phonological segments and, given their hierarchical organization, they indicate the markedness status of these segments. Moreover, the clean up rules that I am proposing are essentially similar to the linking rules of Chomsky & Halle. The function of linking rules is to allow complex, highly marked segments created by rule application to be converted automatically into simpler segments. As a result of this device, natural processes which could be formulated only in terms of fairly complex looking rules can be formulated with a considerable economy of means. This is also the function of the clean up rules as I have formulated them. If we suppose, as is obvious, that violations of UG filters high in the hierarchy are more marked than violations of UG filters in a lower position, the function of the clean up rules is also that of eliminating marked segments, i.e., violations of UG filters high in the hierarchy, by reducing them to less marked ones. There is however an important difference between the linking rules and the clean up rules. While the linking rules always create the same unmarked segments - they are meant to produce a certain unmarked target - the clean up rules are much more flexible and can create a certain variety of unmarked segments as we have seen in this article. I believe that this is a very important point in favor of my approach. In this article, I hope to have given my reader a simple and clear image of it.

FOOTNOTES *I am indebted to Morris Halle, Jim Harris, S. Jay Keyser and Donca Steriade for their invaluable discussion of the issues considered here. I wish to thank all of them, Luigi Burzio and Ewa Czaykowska-Higgings for their careful consideration of earlier versions of this article, which led to many improvements. Errors remain, of course, my own responsibility. Section 1 and 2 are a revised version of the paper presented at NELS XVII, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, November 1986. 1. On loan phonology see Hyman (1970), Kiparsky (1973), Lovins (1973), (1974).

38 Andrea Calabrese 2. Delinking could also be considered to be a rule that operates in just one step by changing the value of one of the incompatible features into the opposite value. In this sense, it would be a case of negation applied to just one of the incompatible features, instead of to all of them. For reasons that I am not going to discuss here, however, I prefer to distinguish delinking from negation. 3. This underlying vocalic system is superficially reduced to a five vowel system /i, u, e, o, a / by a late rule that laxes tense vowels. See Calabrese (1986) for arguments in support of the existence of the underlying vocalic system in (9) in northern Salentino. 4. To derive the correct surface forms we need a rule that changes into schwa all final vowels. 5. I propose that two stages must be characterized in the lexical phonology: one in which lexical rules are blocked if they produce configurations in violation of lexical filters, as proposed in Kiparsky (1981), (1985) and another one in which lexical rules can produce violations of these filters, but then clean up rules apply that repair them. I assume that the rule of metaphony in southern Italian dialects applies at this second stage. In my analysis of metaphony, in fact, the metaphony rule is allowed to apply and create a violation of the lexical filter (20). Only afterwards, the presence of this filter in the lexical phonology triggers the application of the clean up rules to repair the disallowed configuration. Therefore, I am proposing that there are two possible cases: one in which a rule producing a violation of a lexical filter is blocked by the presence of this filter, and another in which such a rule is allowed to apply, but then the presence of the filter triggers the application of the clean up rules. I hypothesize that the difference between these two cases is related to the derivational stage in which a rule applies in the lexical component. I am not going to discuss the properties of these two stages here and I refer the reader to Calabrese (1986) for a more comprehensive discussion of this point. What is important to notice here is that no configuration that violates lexical filters can appear at the end of lexical phonology. Observe that in the approach I propose here, Kiparsky (1982), (1985)'s structure preservation principle must be interpreted not as a principle that prevents rules of lexical phonology from creating violation of lexical filters, but as a device that ensures that there will be no violation of lexical filters at the end of lexical phonology. 6. In Rumanian, the mid-vowels are not lax, but have an articulation intermediate between lax and tense. I suppose that this articulation is produced by a late phonetic rule. 7. In some varieties of Eastern Lucanian, the non-low vowels have contextual variants according to whether they are in closed syllables or in open syllables. They are +ATR in open syllables and -ATR in closed syllables. I assume therefore that, in these varieties, there is a rule that affects non-low vowels and assigns the feature +ATR or the feature -ATR to them according to whether they are in open or closed syllables. This rule must apply in the post-lexical component, since it creates violations of the lexical filters *[+high, -ATR], *[-high, +ATR]. Observe that these lexical filters must be supposed for the lexical component of these varieties of eastern Lucanian, if I am right in assuming that in standard five vowel systems like that of eastern Lucanian, the set of lexical filters includes all the UG filters in (27), except (7).

REFERENCES AIS = Jaberg, K. and J. Jud (1928-1940) Sprach- und Sachatlas Italiens und der Südschweiz, Ringier, Zofingen. Calabrese, A. (1986) "Metaphony in Salentino", Rivista di Grammatica Generativa 9-10, [1984-5], 3-140. Chomsky, N. and M. Halle (1968) The Sound Pattern of English, Harper and Row, New York.

Phonological

Variations

39

Clements, G.N. (1985) "The Geometry of Phonological Features", Phonology Yearbook 2, 223-252. Goldsmith, J. (1976) AutosegmentalPhonology, Doctoral Diss., MIT, Cambridge, Mass. [pubi, by Garland, New York 1979], Halle, M. (1962) "Phonology in a Generative Grammar", Word 18, 54-72. Halle, M. (1986) "Speech Sounds and their Immanent Structure", unpubl. ms., MIT, Cambridge, Mass. Halle, M. (1987) "Phonology", unpubl. ms. [to appear in D. Osherson (ed.) An Invitation to Cognitive Science, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.]. Halle, M. and J.-R. Vergnaud (1980) "Three Dimensional Phonology", Journal of Linguistic Research 1, 83-105. Hyman, L. (1970) "The Role of Borrowing in the Justification of Phonological Grammars", Studies of African Linguistics 1, 83-105. Hoffmann, C. (1970) "The Vowel Harmony System of the Okpe Monosyllabic Verb", Research Notes 6, Univ. of Ibadan. Jakobson, R. (1941) Kindersprache, Aphasie, und allgemeine Lautgesetze, Uppsala Universitets Aarskrift. King, R.D. (1969) Historical Linguistics and Generative Grammar, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs. Kiparsky, P. (1968) "Linguistic Universals and Linguistic Change", in E. Bach and R. Harms (eds.) Universals in Linguistic Theory, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 171-204. Kiparsky, P. (1973) "Phonological Representations", in O. Fujimura (ed.) Three Dimensions of Linguistic Theory, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 171-202. Kiparsky, P. (1981) "Vowel Harmony", unpubl. ms., MIT, Cambridge, Mass. Kiparsky, P. (1982) "Lexical Morphology and Phonology", in The Linguistic Society of Korea (ed.) Linguistics in the Morning Calm, Hanshin, Seoul. Kiparsky, P. (1985) "Some Consequences of Lexical Phonology", Phonology Yearbook 2, 85-138. Lausberg, H. (1939) "Die Mundarten Südlukaniens", Niemeyer, Halle [Beihefte z. Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie, 90]. Levin, J. (1985) A Metrical Theory of Syllabicity, Doctoral Diss., MIT, Cambridge, Mass. Lovins, J. (1973) Loanwords and the Phonological Structure of Japanese, Doctoral Diss., University of Chicago. Lovins, J. (1974) "Why Loan Phonology is Natural Phonology", in Papersfrom the Parasession on Natural Phonology, Chicago Linguistic Society, Chicago, 240-251. Mohanan, K.P. (1982) Lexical Phonology, Indiana University Linguistic Club, Bloomington, Indiana. Mohanan, K.P. (1986) The Theory of Lexical Phonology, Reidel, Dordrecht. Pulleyblank, D. (1985) "Underspecification and Low Vowel Harmony in Okpe", unpubl. ms., Univ. of Southern California, Los Angeles. Rensch, K.H. (1964) Beiträge zur Kenntnis nordkalabrischer Mundarten, Aschendorff, Münster. Ribezzo, F. (1912) Il dialetto apulo-salentino di Francavilla Fontana, Martina Franca. Rohlfs, G. (1966) Grammatica storica della lingua italiana e dei suoi dialetti. Fonetica, Einaudi, Torino. Sagey, E. (1986) The Representation of Features and Relations in Non-linear Phonology, Doctoral Diss., MIT, Cambridge, Mass. Steriade, D. (1982) Greek Prosodies and the Nature of Syllabification, Doctoral Diss., MIT, Cambridge, Mass. Stewart, J.M. (1972) "Niger-Congo, Kwa", in T. Sebeok (ed.) Linguistics in Sub-Saharan Africa. Current Trends in Linguistics 7, Mouton, The Hague, 179-213. Venneman, T. (1972) "Rule Inversion", Lingua 29, 209-249. Williams, E. (1976) "Underlying Tone in Margi and Igbo", Linguistic Inquiry 7, 463-484.

The morphology /syntax interface in Quechua dialectology Pieter Muysken Universiteit van Amsterdam

In this note I will illustrate some of the problems that the grammar of Quechua poses for linguistic theory by looking at differences between different varieties of Quechua. The two problems I will consider both involve the interaction between morphology and syntax. The question that these dialect differences pose is, consequently, whether they are to be accounted for in the syntax, or in the morphology. The first difference involves the interaction of reflexive and causative morphology, and will be discussed in section 1. Section 2 is dedicated to an analysis of the absence of non-Main Tense person morphology in Ecuadorian Quechua, and the possibility of abstract AGR in that variety. The fact that there is no concluding section is indicative of the preliminary nature of this paper, the beginning of an exploration of Quechua dialectology from a theoretical point of view. It will be clear, as the analysis is presented, however, that the approach taken here concords with more general tendencies in generative dialectology: to look at dialect variation from the same parametric perspective as linguistic typology. Before turning to the first set of data, it may be useful to give an indication of the amount of variation within Quechua. While researchers and the general public alike tend to speak of Quechua as a language and of Quechua varieties as dialects, this gives a misleading impression. In fact, it is more useful to compare Quechua to the Romance language family as regards the amount of internal variation we find. Some of the variation encountered can be characterized in terms of a dialect continuum, some shows more drastic ruptures, which in part reflect the complex history of Quechua as a pre-Inca tribal language and consequently as the Inca imperial language.

1. CAUSATIVE/REFLEXIVE INTERACTIONS

A first set of problems involves the ordering of the reflexive and causative affixes on the verb.Three affixes are involved, as in (1): (1)

ku — reflexive suffix chi — causative suffix na = reciprocal suffix (in conjunction with ku)

42

Pieter Muysken

What is labelled here as the reflexive affix, ku, actually has more complex meanings, as in many other languages. In (2a) it is something like a reflexive; in (2b) it is a medio-passive, with an understood impersonal subject; with an intransitive verb, as in (2c), it means that the action takes place without reference to other persons. (2)

a.

b.

c.

riku - ku - ni see RE 1 'I see myself riku - ku - n see RE 3 'It is seen' danza - ku - n see RE 3 '(S)he dances by her/himself

In (3) I present the causative affix chi, used with various types of verbs. With intransitives, as in (3a), and with transitive verbs intransitively used, as in (3b), the causee is marked accusative ta. With experiencer subject verbs, as in (3c), the subject is marked with dative case man, and with agentive subject verbs we find instrumental wan, as in (3d): (3)

a.

b.

c.

d.

xwan - ta asi chi - ni Juan AC laugh CAU 1 'I make Juan laugh' xwan - ta riku - chi - ni Juan AC see CAU 1 'I make Juan see' xwan - man qulqi - ta riku - chi - ni Juan D A T money AC see CAU 1 'I show Juan the money' xwan - wan qulqi - ta suwa - chi - ni Juan with money AC steal CAU 1 'I make Juan steal the money/ I have the money stolen by Juan'

There are some additional patterns involving verbs of saying, etc., which need not concern us here. I will assume without further analysis a set of thematically related realization or linking rules to account for the different patterns in (3). With reciprocal na we have the peculiarity that it cannot occur without ku. This explains the contrast in grammaticality between (4a) and (4b):

The morphology /syntax (4)

interface

43

a.

riku - na - ku - nki - chis see REC RE 2 2PL 'You see each other' b. *riku - na - nki - chis

In Muysken (1981b) I accounted for this contrast by assuming that na creates an anaphor in lexical structure, and that ku serves to coindex this anaphor with the subject. (4b) is ungrammatical in this account because the anaphor remains unbound, a violation of Principle A of the Binding Theory. Note that we cannot assume that na-ku in (4a) is simply one suffix in Peruvian Quechua. The two parts can be separated, for instance. Below, we will see that the ku in the reciprocal has the same distribution as reflexive ku. With respect to these three affixes, reflexive, causative, and reciprocal, we find an interesting pattern of dialect variation. The dialects in Central Peru, e.g. that of Tarma (Adelaar, 1977), Wanka Quechua (Cerron, 1976), and the Junin dialect (Sayk, 1974) allow ku before chi, but those of Southern Peru, e.g. Ayacucho (Parker, 1968), Cuzco (Cusihuaman, 1976), and Chumbivilcas (Muysken, 1987) do not. This distribution can be represented with the following isogloss:

A number of contrasts in interaction between the different processes described can be related to this isogloss. The cases in which ku follows chi are identical in both dialect groups, i.e. (5a), (5c), and (5d). The combinations in (5b) and (5e) are simply ungrammatical in the Southern varieties.

44 (5)

Pieter Muysken Central Peru a. chi ku riku - chi - ku - n see CAU RE 3 'x makes y see x' 'x makes x be seen (by y)' b. ku chi riku - ku - chi - n see RE CAU 3 'x causes y to see y' c. chi na ku riku - chi - na - ku - n - ku see CAU REC RE 3 PL 'x cause x-rec to see y' d. na chi ku riku - na - chi - ku - n - ku see REC CAU RE 3 PL 'x cause y to see x-rec' 'x cause x-rec to be seen (by yY e. na ku chi riku - na - ku - chi - n see REC RE CAU 3 'x causes y to see y-rec'

Southern Peru idem *

idem

idem

The meaning of (5b) can only be expressed periphrastically in the Southern dialects. The meaning of (5e) is conveyed by (6): (6)

riku - na - chi - n (Southern equivalent of (5e)) see REC CAU 3 'x causes y to see y-rec''

The question is now how to account for the dialect difference involved. A first possibility, explored in Muysken (1987), is that we are dealing with a morphophonological rule, as in (7): (7)

Hypothesis I: In the phonological component, there is a rule of deletion: ku -*• 0 / chi

In that article I adduced supportive evidence involving the transformative suffix lli, as in (8). The contrast between (8a) and (8b) shows that, like na, lli cannot occur without ku. We could explain the obligatory occurrence of ku in (8a) by assuming that lli is an unaccusative affix, creating a deep

The morphology /syntax

interface

45

structure internal argument, ku would make it possible for this argument to be realized as the subject. (8c) and (8d) show, however, that ku must be absent in the context of chi. (8)

a.

punki - lli - ku - n swell TRA RE 3 'It swells' b. *punki - lli - n c. punki - lli - chi - n swell TRA CAU 3 'It causes to swell' d. *punki - lli - ku - chi - n

(TRA = transformative)

The same rule of ku deletion could apply then in (8c) as in (5) and (6). This morphophonological treatment poses several problems, however: (9)

a.

Why can't (3b), without ku, mean 'I make Juan see himself, if (6), likewise without ku, means what it means, in the Southern dialects? xwan - ta riku - chi - ni (=3b) Juan AC see CAU 1 'I make Juan see' not: 'I make Juan see himself riku - na - chi - n (=6) see REC CAU 3 'He causes y to see y-rec' b. We have to take the following contrast between different Romance languages into account (e.g. Zubizarreta, 1985): On a fait se raser Pierre (French) 'They have made Peter shave himself *Mario ha fatto accusarsi Piero (Italian) 'Mario has made Peter accuse himself

French seems like the Central Peruvian varieties, allowing a reflexive internal to a causative. Italian seems like the Southern varieties, disallowing it:

V

ku

V

si/se

46

Pieter Muysken

These problems suggest a second hypothesis, along the lines of the analysis for Romance proposed by Zubizarreta (1985): (10)

Hypothesis II: chi causes internalization of the embedded subject in Southern Peru, but not in Central Peru. In both varieties ku requires an external argument.

How can we test whether this hypothesis is correct? Zubizarreta (1985) shows that together with the differences in reflexivization between French and Italian we find a difference in passivization. In Italian the complement of fare cannot undergo passive (presumably since there is no external argument position available), in French it can. We cannot apply the passivization test to the Quechua varieties since the closest equivalent to passive involves A-bar movement in Quechua (like tough constructions). Fortunately, there are a number of tests involving verbal morphology that can be applied. Consider first the interaction between causative and object marking. (11) shows that in Southern Peruvian Quechua (SoP) object marking is sensitive to something like the Specified Subject Condition, with affixes such as ysi 'help' in (11a) and impersonal naya 'desire' in (lib). The lower object cannot be marked as first person: (11)

a.

riku - ysi - wa - n see help lOB 3 ok SoP 'He helps me see x' *SoP 'He helps x see me' b. riku - naya - wa - n see DESI lOB 3 ok SoP 'I feel like seeing' *SoP 'He feels like seeing me'

We can plausibly attribute this to the fact that ysi and naya do not internalize the embedded subject. If this is correct, it should not come as a surprise that in Southern varieties, where chi does trigger internalization, wa can refer to the lower object, as (12) shows: (12)

riku - chi - wa - n see CAU lOB 3 ok CeP, ok SoP 'he causes x to see m e / he causes me to see x'

The big problem is now that, with respect to (12), there is no difference between Southern and Central (CeP) varieties, while we would have expected that in the latter we would find a Specified Subject effect even with chi.

The morphology /syntax

interface

47

We must conclude that the distribution of ku has nothing to do with the internal/external distinction. This conclusion is further supported by two additional observations regarding the Southern varieties. If ku could occur when there is an external subject we would expect the examples in (13), where the embedded subject is external, to be grammatical. They are not: (13)

a. *riku - ku - ysi - ni see RE help 1 'I help him see himself b. *riku - ku - naya - w a - n see RE DESI 10B 3 'I feel like seeing myself

These facts suggest that the distribution of ku is determined by other factors, outside of (morpho-)syntax. A final observation has to do with the interpretation of (6), repeated here as (14a). In the Zubizarreta-like account (of course I do not want to make her in any way responsible for the analysis of Quechua that I am arguing against), the verb riku in (14a) has no external argument. Therefore reciprocal na should be able to link a reciprocal anaphor to another internal argument. As (14b) shows, however, this prediction is not borne out: (14)

a.

riku - na - chi - n (Southern equivalent of (5e)) see REC CAU 3 'x causes y to see y-rec' b. *qu - na - n give REC 3 '(S)he gives them to each other/... each other to them'

The analysis of the Quechua dialect variation along the lines proposed by Zubizarreta (1985) makes the wrong predictions. For this reason, I will maintain the morphophonological analysis. Certain affixes, like ku, are restricted in their occurrence. (In Muysken (1987) I suggest that the reson for this restriction is that ku contains a / u / , and all affixes with / u / have to occur at the end of the word.) When ku occurs to the left of chi, and there is another affix requiring ku present, deletion of ku is recoverable. In the other cases, ku is simply not possible there even in underlying structure.

48

Pieter Muysken

2. THE LICENCING OF SMALL PRO

The second isogloss I would like to consider here sets Ecuadorian Quechua apart from all varieties to the South, principally Peruvian and Bolivian Quechua. It is clear that the Ecuadorian pattern represents an innovation. Let me first describe, for that reason, the Peruvian and Bolivian situation, to which I will refer as the standard case. In the standard case, person marking in Quechua is separated into two paradigms: the paradigm for verbs in main clauses, and the paradigm for all other constituents, including nouns and verbs in dependent clauses. The paradigms have the following realization in Southern Peruvian Quechua. It is clear that they only differ minimally: (15)

a.

[+ Main Tense paradigm] ni nki n nchis

b.

[ - Main Tense Paradigm] y yki n nchis

The person markers licence small pro both with verbs and with nouns: (16)

a.

b.

pro hamu - nki come 2 'You come' pro mama - yki mother 2 'your mother'

The isogloss separating Ecuadorian Quechua from the standard situation consists in the fact that the [-Main Tense] paradigm has been lost in presentday Ecuadorian Quechua. Only verbs in main clauses can be marked for person. With respect to small pro, the isogloss results in the not unexpected pattern in (17): (17)

Peru a.

Ecuador nouns mama - yki mother you 'your mother'

mama mother '(*your/etc.) mother'

1 2 3 4

The morphology /syntax interface b.

main tense verbs hamu - nki come 2 'You come'

49

shamu - ngi come 2 'You come'

Whenever we find agreement marking, we have small pro. What is of more theoretical interest is that in non-main clauses, where person marking has also been lost, small pro can appear in Ecuadorian Quechua. This is shown in (18): (18)

Peru

a. nominalizations hamu - sqa - n - ta yacha - ni come NOM 3 AC know 1 I know (s)he has come'

Ecuador shamu - shka - ta yacha - ni come NOM AC know 1 'I know (s)he/etc. has come'

b. adverbial subordinate clauses hamu - qti - yki mikhu - saq shamu - kpi miku - sha come SUB 2 eat 1FU come SUB eat 1FU 'When you come I'll eat' 'When you/etc. come I'll eat' In nominalizations, as in (18a), the subject of the complement clause has to be interpreted from the context. The same is true for different subject switch' reference adverbials, as in (18b), with the restriction that in that case the subjectof the adverbial clause cannot be first person. (19) and (20) contain some examples, found in just a few pages of recorded texts (Naula Guacho and Burns, 1975,86-92) from Ecuador, to illustrate this phenomenon: (19)

shka nominalizations a. wikilla, kushikuni [pro yanapak shamu-shka-manta] little-drop I-am-glad to-help come-NOM-from 'Little drop, I am glad that you have come to help' b. wikipish kushikurka [pro yanapa-shka-manta] drop-also was-glad help-NOM-from 'The little drop was also glad that it had helped' c. prol kushi karka [pro2 [pro3 manda-shka-ta] rura-shka-manta] glad was order NOM AC do NOM from '(The wind) was glad that they had done what he had ordered'

The examples in (19) show how the reference of the understood subject is not determined grammatically. In (19a) pro is understood as coreferential

50 Pieter Muysken with the addressee. In (19b) it refers back to the subject. In (19c) pro2 refers to an element in the discourse context and pro3 refers back to the matrix subject, prol. We find a similar situation in different-subject adverbials: (20)

a.

b.

c.

... shitan wawata. [pro Na uranikman urma-kpi-ka], throws child already down there fall-SUB-TO mamaka washapi chakikunawan llutsanmi mother in-back with-claws grabs '...throws the child. When it has fallen down there, the mother grabs it in the back with her claws' [pro karumanta riku-kpi], shuk hatun killu linsu from-far see-SUB one big yellow cloth kwintami rikurin like looks 'If you look at it from afar, it looks like a big yellow cloth' kazarachishami piru [pro shuk killata kaypi] I'll marry but one month here trabaja-kpi-ka work-SUB-TO 'I'll marry you but only when you have worked here for a month'

In (20a) the subject is interpreted from the immediate narrative context. In (20b) the understood subject is interpreted as the idealized listener, and in (20c) pro refers back to the understood object of the matrix verb. I have provided such detailed documentation in (19) and (20) because Hermon (1985) has claimed that this type of examples is ungrammatical in Ecuadorian Quechua. In recent work, Rizzi (1986) has distinguished between features that licence an empty category, and features that identify it. The Ecuadorian data support this distinction. AGR in main clauses identifies pro as possessing certain person features, but pro is licenced by the presence of an INFL node, whether it contains overt agreement or not. The question that remains is what exactly licences pro in Ecuadorian Quechua. Do subordinate clauses retain a rudimentary AGR, albeit one without person features, licencing pro, or can a Tense node under INFL licence pro by itself? In Lefebvre and Muysken (in press) we argue, developing earlier work by Finer (1985), that the switch reference phenomenon should be accounted for by postulating that INFL may possess the features [± pronominal] and [± anaphoric]. If INFL is pronominal, it must be disjoint from a higher INFL, following a generalized version of Binding Principle B, if

The morphology /syntax interface

51

INFL is anaphoric, it must be coreferential with a higher INFL. Consider now these two examples from Ecuadorian Quechua: (21)

a. b.

shamu-fc/u, miku-nga (disjoint) come SUB eat 3FUT 'When I etc. come, he'll eat' shamu-sAa, miku-nga (coreferential) come SUB eat 3FUT 'When he comes, he'll eat'

If we carry our analysis for Peruvian Quechua over to these new data from Ecuadorian Quechua, and there is no reason not to do so, we must conclude that INFL in Ecuadorian Quechua has pronominal or anaphoric features even when there is no overt agreement. This allows us to maintain the idea that AGR licences pro, rather than INFL by itself. By extension, specific nominalizing morphemes such as shka can be analyzed as marking an abstract AGR node. The difference between Ecuadorian Quechua and the standard varieties is not as large, then, as originally envisaged. The morphological loss of the [-Main Tense] person paradigm has not led to the loss of AGR in non-main verb contexts, only to the disappearance of person specification.

REFERENCES Adelaar, W. (1977) Tarma Quechua. Grammar, Texts, Dictionary, Brill, Leiden. Cerrón Palomino, R. (1976) Gramática Quechua Junin-Hanca, Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, Lima. Cusihuamán, A. (1976) Gramática Quechua Cuzco-Collao, Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, Lima. Finer, D. (1985) "The Syntax of Switch Reference", Linguistic Inquiry 16, 35-56. Hermon, G. (1985) Syntactic Modularity, Foris, Dordrecht. Lefebvre, C. and P. Muysken (in press) Mixed Categories. Nominalizations in Quechua, Reidel, Dordrecht. Muysken, P. (1987) "Affix Order and Interpretation. Evidence from Cuzco Quechua", in M. Everaert and M. Trommelen (eds.) Morphology and Modularity, Foris, Dordrecht. Naula Guacho, J. and D. Burns (1975) Bosquejo Gramatical del Quechua de Chimborazo, ILV and Universidad Central, Quito. Parker, G. (1968) Gramática de! Quechua Ayacuchano, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Lima. Rizzi, L. (1986) "Null Objects in Italian and the Theory of pro", Linguistic Inquiry 17, 501558. Sayk, E. (1974) Derivación Verbal en el Quechua del Norte del Departamento de Junin, CILA, Lima. Zubizarreta, M.-L. (1985) "The Relation between Morphophonology and Morphosyntax: The Case of Romance Causatives", Linguistic Inquiry 16, 247-290.

Expletive chain formation and past participle agreement in Scandinavian dialects Kirsti Koch Christensen and Knut Tarald Taraldsen University of Oslo and University of Tromse

0. INTRODUCTION

Several dialects of modern Scandinavian have overt agreement in gender and number between a past participle and a NP in certain environments. The following are examples from the standard nynorsk variety of Norwegian and standard Swedish. (1)

Gjestene guest-the

er nett komne/*-e is just arrived-pl/*-0

(2)

Breven blev skrivna/*-it letters-the was written-pl/*-0

No other branch of Germanic has this kind of past participle agreement (henceforth: pp-agr). 1 On the other hand, pp-agr is a typical feature of Romance dialects. In this article, we will use Scandinavian dialects as a testing ground for an analysis of pp-agr developed for Romance, namely the one in Kayne (1984, 1986). Given certain properties peculiar to Scandinavian, we will be able to isolate some consequences of Kayne's analysis which cannot be determined on the basis of Romance data. In particular, these consequences concern the nature of expletive subjects and expletive chain formation. In this way, we will be able to illustrate how detailed study of closely related dialects seen in a particular theoretical perspective yields surprisingly specific conclusions with regard to rather abstract questions.

1. SOME B A C K G R O U N D NOTIONS

Before venturing into the Scandinavian data, we will lay out some of the theoretical concepts that will recur in our discussion. We start by describing the main properties of Kayne's analysis of pp-agr. Then, we turn to some issues relevant to the formation of A-chains headed by expletive subjects.

54 Kirs ti Koch Christensen and Knut Tarald Taraldsen 1.1. Pp-agr Kayne (1984, 1986) maintains that X agrees with Y just in case Y is in the specifier position of a projection headed by X.2 This view entails that an Italian sentence like (3) must be analyzable as in (4), with a "small clause" (SC) headed by the participle (or by AGR; cf. footnote 2).3 (3)

Gli ospiti sono appena arrivati/*-o the guests are just arrived-pl/*-0

(4)

gli ospiti sono [sc t [v' arrivati t]]

In (4), the head of the SC agrees with the subject trace. Since the features of this trace are somehow determined by the head of its chain, the features spelt out on the participle are ultimately those of the subject of the auxiliary, the head of the chain (gli ospiti, t, t). We will assume that pp-agr is automatic in the configuration (4), in accordance with Chomsky's (1986b, 24ff.) convention for Specifier/Head agreement. Then the obligatoriness of pp-agr in (3) is accounted for provided the representation in (5) is ill-formed. (5)

gli ospiti sono [v' arrivati t]

In (5), the projection of the participle (or the associated AGR element) does not contain a specifier. Hence, pp-agr is not included. Kayne notes that (5) is excluded by the ECP, if A-bound traces must be antecedent-governed, as suggested by Chomsky (1986b, 77). In the context of Chomsky (ibid.), one can sustain that the postverbal trace in (5) fails to be governed by its immediate antecedent gli ospiti because of the "minimality condition" on government:4 (6)

C is a barrier for B in ... [ C . . . D . . . B . . . if C is the immediate projection of D, a zero-level category distinct from B.

By (6), the embedded V' is a barrier for the postverbal trace in (5). Since the embedded V' "excludes" the subject of the auxiliary, it therefore cannot govern the trace, which remains non antecedent-governed. In (4), the embedded V' is also a barrier for the object trace. In particular, the minimality condition prevents this trace from being (antecedent-)governed by the trace in the subject position of the SC. Again following Chomsky (1986b), however, we take it that spec'fier/head

Expletive chain formation

55

agreement transmits the index of the SC-subject to the head of the SC, the participle.5 Thus, the participle can act as an antecedent governor for its object, by virtue of being incorporated into the "extended chain" linking the object trace to the matrix subject (cf. Chomsky (1986b, 74)).6 Similarly, the subject trace is governed by the auxiliary, which also counts as an antecedent governor, because of Specifier/Head agreement between it and gli ospiti. Hence, all traces in (4) are properly governed, and (4) is well-formed. Consequently, the assumption that A-bound traces only meet the ECP by virtue of being antecedent-governed suffices to predict obligatory pp-agr in sentences like (3). Extending this analysis to Scandinavian, we will of course maintain that the obligatory pp-agr found in (l)-(2) reflects the well-formedness of (6)(7) vs. the ECP-violation in (8)-(9). (6)

gjestene er [sc t [v' komne t]]

(7)

breven blev [sc t [v' skrivna t]]

(8)

gjestene er [y komne t]

(9)

breven blev [v' skrivna t]

Kayne also notes that pp-agr is suspended in compound tenses formed with auxiliary have. Thus, we have no pp-agr in a Romanian sentence like (10) or in similar sentences in other Romance dialects that use have with unaccusative participles. (10)

Oaspet,ii au venit/*-i guests-the have arrived-0/*-m.pl

This effect is also seen in Scandinavian. A participle never shows agreement with the subject of auxiliary have. This is particularly striking in those Norwegian dialects where both have and be occur with unaccusative verbs.7 In these dialects, a sentence like (1) will contrast with (11). (1)

Gjestene er nett komne/*-e guest-the is just arrived-pl/*-0

(11)

Gjestene har nett kome/*-ne guests-the has just arrived-0/*-pl

Since (11) is grammatical without pp-agr, it must be assigned the structural analysis in (12):

56 Kirsti Koch Christensen and Knut Tarald Taraldsen (12)

gjestene har [v' kome t]

Yet, (12) is quite similar to (5) and (8)-(9), which we took to be ill-formed with respect to the ECP. Adopting a suggestion by Kayne, we assume that auxiliary have differs from auxiliary be by being a Case-assigner. As such, it transmits to the participle the index it receives through Specifier/ Head agreement with its subject, thus enabling the participle to act as an antecedent-governor for its object even in (12). Conversely, the property of being a Case-assigner prevents auxiliary have from occurring in configurations isomorphic to (4) or (6)-(7), e.g. (13): (13)

gjestene har [sc t [v' kome t]]

In (13) as in (6), there must be an A-chain (gjestene, t, t). But the auxiliary have governs and Case-marks the second member of this chain, creating a violation of the following condition on A-chains:8 (14)

If C = (a0, ..., a„) is an A-chain, and a; is Case-marked, then i = 0.

In the next subsection, we will apply these ideas to sentences where the subject of the auxiliary is an expletive. 1.2. Expletive chains Within Germanic and Romance, it seems that an expletive subject is either a singular, neuter pronoun (Scandinavian det, English it, German es, French il) or a pronominal adverb (Scandinavian der, English there, Dutch er, Romance pro). At least in the latter case, it is standardly assumed (since Chomsky (1981, 333)) that the expletive subject may head an A-chain. Thus, example (15) gives rise to the chain (there, two strangers, t): (15)

There were two strangers arrested by the police.

The chain formation can be taken to determine the agreement features assigned to the verb (were rather than was). The features of the plural NP two strangers would somehow be associated with all members of the chain, including the expletive subject. Consequently, standard subject/verb agreement between there and the verb transmits the features of two strangers to the verb. A similar analysis could be applied to the Italian (16): (16)

pro sparirono tre libri disappeared-pl three books

57

Expletive chain formation

On the other hand, standard subject/verb agreement does not support expletive chain formation with English it or French il. In (17), the verb does not have the features of the postverbal NP: (17)

Il est apparu beaucoup d'animaux it is appeared many animals

étranges strange

In recent work, J.-Y. Pollock has suggested that il in fact cannot enter an A-chain containing another nonnull NP. One of the reasons for taking this position comes from the contrast between (19)-(20) and (22)-(23) (all from Pollock (1985)): (18)

J'aurais aimé qu'il vienne des linguistes I would-have liked that it comes some linguists à mon anniversaire to my birthday

(19)

Des linguistes, j'aurais aimé qu'il en vienne some linguists I would-have liked that it of-it comes à mon anniversaire to my birthday

(20)

Combien de linguistes aurais-tu aimé qu'il how many linguists would-have you liked that it vienne à ton anniversaire? comes to your birthday

(21)

J'aurais aimé que viennent des linguistes à mon I would-have liked that come some linguists to my anniversaire birthday

(22)

*Des linguistes,j'aurais aimé qu'en viennent some linguists I would-have liked that of-it come à mon anniversaire to my birthday

(23)

*Combien de linguistes aurais-tu aimé que viennent how many linguists would-have you liked that come à ton anniversaire? to your birthday

Pollock assumes that the expletive subject pro occurring in (21)-(23) must

58 Kirsti Koch Christensen and Knut Tarald Taraldsen form an A-chain with the postverbal NP. Thus, the two must be co-indexed. From this, it follows that (22) violates clause B of the Binding Theory, since en, a pronoun, is bound in its governing category. (Pollock assumes that en in (22) corresponds to the head of the postverbal NP, so that it must have the same index as the postverbal NP and thus be co-indexed with the expletive too.) In (23), on the other hand, the postverbal NP would be an A-bound variable, in contradiction of clause C of the Binding Theory. Since (22)-(23) ultimately are ungrammatical because pro must form an A-chain with the postverbal element, Pollock concludes from the grammaticality of (19)-(20) that il does not head a similar A-chain. From this point of view, it would be natural to say that an expletive enters an A-chain containing features of gender and number if and only if it does not itself bear such features. Thus, pro and adverbial there etc. must be part of an A-chain containing a postverbal element, but il must not. In the next section, we will show that this hypothesis is inconsistent with certain facts concerning pp-agr in Scandinavian dialects.

2. EXPLETIVE CHAINS AND PP-AGR IN SCANDINAVIAN

We will first examine two different Norwegian dialect groups. Both have pp-agr in examples like (1). (1)

Gjestene er nett komne/*-e guest-the is just arrived-pl/*-n

But if the subject is filled by an expletive, a contrast emerges. In one group, the expletive element is der, 'there', and the participle takes on the number/gender features of the postverbal NP:9 (24)

Der er nett komne/*-e nokre gjester there is just arrived-pl/*-n some guests

In the other group, the expletive is det, 'it', and the participle is invariably in the neuter singular (n) form. 10 (25)

Det er nett kome/*-ne nokre gjester it is just arrived-n/*-pl some guests

Expletive chain formation

59

Thus, der and det differ with respect to pp-agr the same way there and il differ with respect to standard subject/verb agreement (cf. (15) and (17)). 2.1. The der-dialect We will begin by examining the ifer-dialect from the point of view of the theory described above. For pp-agr to be possible, the participle must head a SC, as in (26). (26)

der er [sc t [v' komne nokre gjester]]

The trace subject of the SC must be part of an A-chain including nokre gjester, so that it can "inherit" the number specification of the latter. On the other hand, the subject trace will violate the ECP unless co-indexed with der. Therefore, (26) has the chain (der, t, nokre gjester). We also want to know why pp-agr is obligatory in (24). Part of the answer comes from the ECP. Suppose der must enter a chain containing the postverbal NP. This requirement would itself be satisfied by formation of the chain (der, nokre gjester), as in (27): (27)

der er [y kome nokre gjester]

However, if we consider ECP as a condition on non-initial members of chains, rather than "empty categories", we expect that nokre gjester must be antecedent-governed, just like a trace entering a chain as a non-head member. Hence, der must govern nokre gjester in (27). But this is impossible because of the minimality condition on government. Therefore, (27) is impossible for the same reason as (8), a case already discussed: (8)

gjestene er [v' komne t]

In (26), the postverbal NP is antecedent-governed provided it is co-indexed with the subject trace. Then, specifier/head agreement has the effect of co-indexing the participle with the postverbal NP, leading to the formation of an "extended chain" in the sense of our preceding discussion. In effect, (26) is just like (6) from the point of view of the ECP: (6)

gjestene er [sc t [v' komne t]]

But this line of reasoning obviously leads to a second question: Why is it that the expletive der must form a chain with the postverbal NP? Three possible answers come to mind.11 (A) The postverbal NP is part of a Casemarked chain only if it enters a chain headed by the expletive. (B) All

60 Kirsti Koch Christensen and Knut Tarald Taraldsen argument positions must be part of 9-marked chains (post D-structure). (C) All NP positions must be associated with nominal features (minimally: number and gender). We will evaluate these different responses later on, after we have discussed the rfei-dialect. To complete this initial examination of the ifer-dialect, we want to point out that the pp-agr changes in the expected way, if we substitute auxiliary have for auxiliary be: (28)

Der har nett kome/*-ne nokre gjester there has just arrived-n/*-pl some guests

This follows from the general analysis of pp-agr and previous assumptions about the auxiliary have. For agreement to be possible, (28) must be analyzable as (29), with an A-chain (der, t, nokre gjester): (29)

der har [sc t [v' komne nokre gjester]]

But such a chain would not conform to the requirement that only the head of an A-chain may be Case-marked, because auxiliary have assigns Case to the subject trace. Conversely, (30) is a well-formed structure because auxiliary have, unlike be, transmits to the head of its complement the index it receives from its subject under specifier/head agreement: (30)

der har [v' kome nokre gjester]

The parallelism between (28) and (11) supports our decision to view ppagr in sentences with expletive subjects as being induced the same way as agreement in sentences with NP-movement to the subject position: (11)

Gjestene har nett kome/*-ne guests-the has just arrived-0/*-pl

2.2. The det-dialect Turning now to the det-dialect, one notes at once that the lack of agreement with the postverbal NP in (25) follows, if indeed expletive det does not form a chain with the post-verbal NP, as Pollock suggests for il, its French counterpart: (25)

Det er nett kome/*-ne nokre gjester it is j,ust arrived-n/*-pl some guests

Expletive chain formation

61

Then, the structure of (11) could be simply (31), with no SC-subject inducing agreement: (31)

det er [v'kome nokre gjester]

The actual form of the participle would then be determined by a default rule assigning it the features corresponding to neuter singular, the same rule that applies in sentences like (32)-(33) in both dialects: (32)

Vi har skreve boker om emnet we has written books about topic-the

(33)

Borna har sove children-the has slept

This view seems superior to the alternative suggested by Pollock for French sentences like (17): (17)

II est apparu beaucoup d'animaux étranges it is appeared many animals strange

He proposes that the expletive is co-indexed with the projection of the participle, so that the participle actually agrees with il. But this possibility seems to undermine the restrictiveness of the theory of agreement adopted here. In particular, it would no longer be true that (verbal) agreement only is triggered by a local subject. Hence, we will only consider the possibility that both (25) and (27) reflect the operation of a default rule (one postulated also by Pollock (1983)) in the absence of agreement. If we assume that (25) is analyzable as (31), we must ask why expletive der, but not expletive det, form chains with postverbal NPs. Reconsidering the possible reasons why der must head an A-chain containing the postverbal NP, we first note that hypothesis (A) can be correct only if an unaccusative participle Case-marks its object in the 0, is locally bound by a¡ i, ...

Hence, the chain is ill-formed for two reasons: it is doubly 0-marked, and it contains two arguments, himself and the variable. The most problematic case is probably the following: (57)

"John seems likes Mary

Why is (57) ungrammatical? If it is analyzed as in (58), one might suggest that the subject trace cannot be governed across a tensed S-boundary, and therefore stands in violation of the ECP: (58)

John seems [s t likes Mary]

But why cannot (57) be analyzed as in (59), with an "extra" trace in the embedded Spec-CP position?: (59)

John seems [CP t [s t' likes Mary]]

Since we already have committed ourselves to the view that Spec-CP can enter an A-chain, one might in particular expect that there could be an A-chain {John, t, t') formed from (59). On the other hand, it is conceivable that an element in the Spec-CP position can head an A-chain, but cannot appear as a non-initial member of one. This would be true if, for instance, only elements with the feature [+wh] can be Spec-CP, and only wh-phrases and variables are [+wh]; cf. Kayne (1983, (10)). To conclude this discussion of pp-agr interacting with wh-movement, we call attention to the following points: If we maintain that both kinds of expletives form A-chains with postverbal NPs, we have an account of the (cross-dialect) contrast in (37)-(38), only if we assume that lexical government is a mode of proper government for wh-traces, that (45) is the correct definition of "variable", and that traces cannot be analyzed as operators. In particular, the conjunction of the last two assumptions leads to various further consequences. Since these assumptions need not be made, if expletive det never forms an A-chain with the postverbal NP, we have good reasons to stick to this hypothesis, if the various consequences of (45) and "trace

70 Kirsti Koch Christensen and Knut Taraid Taraldsen ^ operator" are unacceptable, and if this hypothesis is otherwise tenable. We have already argued that the consequences in question are perhaps not intolerable. In the next section, we will examine evidence that in fact the hypothesis that det does not form chains, is not tenable.

4. TWO CASES OF CHAIN FORMATION WITH DET

There are two sets of data which to our mind constitute rather compelling evidence that expletive det must form an A-chain with a postverbal NP. The first case has to do with the distribution of participial forms in Swedish. The second concerns the interaction between pp-agr and object preposing in Norwegian. 4.1. Participles and supines in Swedish Traditional grammars of Swedish distinguish between the participle, the form that the principal verb takes on in passives, and the supine, the form of the verb used in combination with auxiliary have.10 (60) illustrates the use of the participle, while (61) contains a supine.21 (60)

Lejonet blev skjutet lion-the was shot

(61)

Jens har skjutit ett lejon J has shot a lion

Morphologically, the distinction between the participle in (60) and the supine in (61) is marked by the contrast between the affixes, -et vs. -it. The affix -et used in (60) turns out to show agreement with the subject, a neuter singular NP. Examples (62)-(63) illustrate the same kind of agreement with common gender (c) and plural subjects: (62)

Álgen blev skjuten elk-the was shot-c

(63)

Djuren blev skjutna animals-the were shot-pl

Thus, participles always show agreement. This, of course, is predicted by Kayne's account of pp-agr, since Swedish participles always occur in passives. In sentences like (60) and (62)-(63), the subject position is not ©-marked, and the NP filling it must accordingly head an A-chain containing the empty object position:

Expletive chain formation (64)

71

NPi blev [se ti [v skjut-aff t¡]]

By Kayne's assumptions, the ECP forces the presence of the trace in the subject position of the SC, which in turn forces agreement in the participle, determining the value of the affix. In (61), however, the subject of the auxiliary is somehow assigned the external 0-role corresponding to the participial V'. Following Kayne, we assume that the structure of (61) is simply as in (65), where there is no embedded SC: (65)

Jens har [y skjutit ett lejon]

Since skjutit does not have a subject, it cannot agree with anything in (65). But since the supine only occurs in constructions like (65), with auxiliary have, it now becomes quite natural to assume that the supine is simply the non-agreeing form of the participle. On this view, there is no inherent distinction between participles and supines in Swedish. The only thing that makes Swedish look different from other languages in this respect, is the relatively superficial property that there is a morphological distinction between neuter singular and non-agreeing participle forms (in one paradigm; cf. footnote 20). Or, equivalently, the neuter singular is not (always) supplied as the default form, when pp-agr fails. Although this property is of no great importance in itself, it provides a fairly good testing case for the two hypotheses concerning expletive det. Swedish too uses expletive det. Consider now the structures (66)-(67). (66)

det blev [v' skjut-aff en alg] it was shot an elk

(67)

det blev [sc t [v' skjut-aff en alg]]

If expletive det does not form an A-chain with a postverbal NP, the structure of (66) is well-formed, and pp-agr is not induced. Thus, if this hypothesis is correct, we expect the affix to show up in the non-agreeing shape (0), i.e. -it (the "supine" ending). But if it is correct that expletive det, like expletive der, must enter a chain, then only the structure in (67) is available, for reasons explained previously. Hence, pp-agr is obligatory, and we expect to see the affix showing agreement with the subject trace, taking on the neuter singular form. And that is precisely what we find: (68)

Det blev skjutet/*-it en alg it was shot-n/*-0 an elk

72 Kirs ti Koch Christensen and Knut Tarald Taraldsen Thus, the test provides quite direct evidence for the view that expletive det must form an A-chain with a postverbal NP. 4.2. Object preposing and pp-agr Most dialects of Norwegian allow indefinite quantified object NPs to move into the preverbal position, although this process is fairly marginal in colloquial speech, yielding best results with negated NPs; cf. Christensen (1986, 1987) for details: (69)

Jens har J has

V. mange/ ingen baker lese many no books read

Compare (70), showing the normal position of the object NP:22 (70)

Jens har lese mange baker

We assume that sentences like (69) are derived by leftward NP-movement from structures like (70). More specifically, we assume that the object NP is left-adjoined to the (locally) maximal projection of the V governing its trace. Thus, a sentence like (69) is assigned the S-structure in (71): (71)

Jens har | y ingen baker [y lese t]]

The assumption that the preposed NP ends up in an adjoined position, rather than in the subject position of SC, accounts for the lack of ppagr in (69). At the same time, it suggests an explanation why only quantified NPs can prepose.23 If object preposing gives rise to an A-bar-chain, obligatory Case-assignment to the trace is not problematic. On the other hand, we note that object proposing is subject to locality conditions reminiscent of movement to subject positions. In particular, it is basically clause bounded: (72)

*Jens har ingen baker pravd á lese J has no books tried to read

In this respect, object preposing contrasts sharply with topicalization and other instances of wh-movement: (73)

Ingen/ kva for baker har Jens pravd á lese? no which books has J tried to read

We propose that this is so, because the trace left behind under object

Expletive chain formation

73

preposing must be antecedent-governed, just like A-bound traces, but unlike (lexically governed) wh-traces (see above). Then, the structure in (74) is excluded by the ECP: (74)

*...|y ingen b0ker[v'V prevdfcp t C [ s PRO a [v lese t]]]]]

The trace in the embedded Spec-CP position does not antecedent-govern the object trace, given the minimality condition. (Nor can we have a trace adjoined to the embedded V', for reasons invoked above in connection with wh-movement, i.e. because of the definition of "variable" plus the claim that a trace is not an operator). The claim that the trace created by object preposing must be antecedentgoverned is compatible with the following patterns found in sentences with expletive der. (75)

Der har ingen gjester kome/*-ne there has no guests arrived-n/*-pl

(76)

Der er ingen gjester komne/*-e there is no guests arrived-pl/*-n

In (75), auxiliary have assigns its index to the participle so that the latter can act as antecedent-governer for the object in the extended A-chain {der, har, kome, t) permitting a structural analysis like (77): (77)

derj harj [v' ingen gjesten [v' kome ti, j]]

As required for object preposing, antecedent-goverment also holds for the A-bar-chain {ingen gjester, t), since the adjoined ingen gjester is not excluded from the V' containing the trace. With auxiliary be, however, the index of the auxiliary is not transmitted to the participle. Hence, we must have the structure in (78): (78)

derj er [ s c ingen gjester, [ s c ti, j [v' komne ti, J]]

Each non-initial member of the A-chain {der, t, t) is antecedent-governed by its predecessor. This is also true of the A-bar-chain {ingen gjester, t), with t being the SC-subject. Notice, however, that the object trace would not be antecedent-governed by ingen gjester in (78), because of the minimality condition, as the preposed object is now adjoined not to V',24 but to SC, here the locally maximal projection of the participle. Hence, it is essential that the subject of the SC is analyzed as the variable bound by the preposed object NP.25

74 Kirsti Koch Christensen and Knut Tarald Taraldsen This fact is irrelevant to determining the result of pp-agr in (78). Suppose the last trace in the A-chain (der, t, t) were the variable associated with ingen gjester. Then, this trace would share the features of ingen gjester, and, by our convention, spread it to its predecessor, the SC-subject. Hence, the participle would in any event be expected to have the plural ending. However, the forced choice of the SC-subject as the variable linked to the preposed object is crucial, when we consider examples with expletive det, which, interestingly, show the same pp-agr pattern as (75)-(76): (79)

Det har ingen gjester kome/*-ne it has no guests arrived-n/*-pl

(80)

Det er ingen gjester komne/*-e it is no guests come-pl/*-n

If we assume that expletive det also forms an A-chain with the postverbal NP, than (80) must receive essentially the same structural analysis as (76), given the ECP: (81)

detj er [sc ingen gjester¡ [sc ty [v' komne t¡¿]]]

Since the SC-subject must be the variable locally bound by the preposed object NP, the expletive constitutes a standard chain {det) of its own within the A-chain {det, t, t). Thus, the features of det do not spread to its successors in the chain. Rather, the SC-subject trace inherits the features (plural) of its local operator-binder, like all variables. Hence, the form of the participle induced by pp-agr is the plural form, not the neuter singular. We have seen that the instance of pp-agr in (80) is accounted for without extra assumptions within the analysis based on the assumptions that det must head an A-chain containing a postverbal NP. The alternative analysis fails here. For, suppose det did not have to form an A-chain with the postverbal NP. Since object preposing may in general adjoin the moved NP to V' (compare (69), (75) and (79) above), there would be no reason why (82) should not be well-formed, giving rise to a sentence without pp-agr (hence, with a neuter singular participle, by default): (82)

detj er [v' ingen gjester¡ [v' kome t¡, J]

Since in fact pp-agr is obligatory in (80), just as in (76), it does not seem possible to deny that expletive det forms an A-chain with a postverbal NP.

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75

4.3. Summary We have presented two pieces of evidence in favor of the claim that expletive det is just like expletive der with respect to A-chain formation. Both expletives must form A-chains with postverbal NPs. In a previous section, we have discussed some consequences of this view, and argued that these are not intolerable. Thus, evidence from pp-agr in Scandinavian dialects appears to settle the question in favor of the hypothesis that expletive det (and, presumably, its cognates in other languages) must form an Achain with a post-verbal NP.

5. THE V'-INTERNAL AGENT POSITION

The conclusions reached in the preceding section could be challenged on the grounds that we get obligatory pp-agr with the expletive det even in Swedish passives with intransitive verbs: (83)

Det blev drucket/*-it hela natten it was drunk-n/*-0 all night

Since there is no plausible overt postverbal NP for the expletive to form an A-chain with, one might take (83) as evidence that our claim about chain formation is not sufficiently general to explain all instances of ppagr with expletive det. However, the obligatory pp-agr seen in (83) may also be interpreted as evidence that (83) is uniquely analyzable as (84), where NP is a phonologically empty agent: (84)

deti blev [Sc U [V'[V' drucket] NPi]]

Given standard assumptions about the partitioning of empty categories, the null agent is likely to be PRO. In this section, we shall present some evidence that the representation in (84), with NP = PRO, is indeed correct. 5.1. The two ik-constructions In most Scandinavian dialects, we find sentences like the Norwegian examples (85)-(86): (85)

Vi fekk skrive breva we got written-0 letters-the

76 (86)

Kirsti Koch Christensen and Knut Tarald Taraldsen Vi fekk breva skrivne we got letters-the written-pl

Interestingly, there is a difference between (85) and (86) with respect to the semantic interpretation. (85) is ambiguous. On one reading, the covert agent of the participle, the "writer", is identified with the subject of fekk, and fekk itself functions as an aspectual. On the other reading, the sentence has a causative sense, and the covert agent of the participle is interpreted as distinct from the matrix subject, but otherwise left unspecified. But (86) is not ambiguous. It only has the second of the two readings associated with (85). Why? To answer this question, we start by considering the question how one should represent the two readings of (85), assuming that the ambiguity has a syntactic basis. In particular, what is the syntactic form giving rise to the interpretation where the "writer" is the matrix subject? We find it natural to assume that the solution minimally involves postulating a null NP, bearing the "writer" role, which is bound to the matrix subject. Since we see from the other reading that fekk assigns an independent 0-role to its subject, it also follows that the bound null NP cannot be a trace. Hence, we postulate the following syntactic representation as the source for the reading of (85), where the matrix subject is understood to be the writer: (87)

vii fekk [v'[v' skrive breva] PROi]

Adopting a suggestion by Kayne (1986), we assume that the position assigned the "external" 8-role is internal to the V-projection (e.g. adjoined to V', as here); cf. also Sportiche (1986). However, the agent position must be locally bound by a NP in the domain of Tense (cf. Kayne (1986)). Like Kayne, we take the occurrence of PRO in this position to be consistent with a version of the B(inding) Theory almost identical to the one in Chomsky (1986a). Simplifying, we have the following: (88)

B-theory (A) If A is an anaphor, A is bound in B (B) If A is a pronoun, A is free in B (C) If A is an R-expression, A is free where B is the least constituent C with the following properties: (1) A is governed in C (2) C is a complete functional complex (CFC) (3) There is an assignment of indices I to elements in C such that every NP in C would satisfy (A)-(B) with respect to B = C under I (i.e. I is "B-theory compatible")

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We shall understand the notion CFC to mean "locally maximal projection of X where all 9-roles associated with X are syntactically represented". Basically, the B-theory says that if B is the least CFC where A is governed, then A must meet the requirements of the B-theory in B, if B is a domain in which A could satisfy the B-theory. (If it is, we call B the "B-domain of A"). Adopting Kayne's idea, we deviate from Chomsky's formulation only by assuming that a B-domain is determined with respect to occurrences of the features [+/-anaphoric] and [+/-pronominal] rather than the constituents bearing these features. This has consequences only for PRO, the only element which is both [+anaphoric] and [+pronominal], because the B-domains associated with these features need not coincide. As a result, it turns out no longer to be true that PRO cannot be governed, although the "PRO-theorem" still follows for direct objects and most other governed positions. In particular, PRO is allowed to be governed (by the participle) in (87): (87)

vi; fekk [v'[v' skrive breva] PROi]

The embedded V' is the least CFC where PRO is governed. The [+pronominal] feature of PRO is free under any indexing of the embedded V', since there is no other NP c-commanding PRO within this projection. Thus, the embedded V' has the properties (l)-(3) specified in (88), and is therefore the B-domain associated with the feature [+pronominal] of PRO. The [+anaphoric] feature, on the other hand, is also necessarily free in the embedded V' under any indexing. With respect to this feature, then, the embedded V' lacks property (3). The B-domain associated with the [+anaphoric] feature of PRO is therefore the matrix clause, rather than the embedded V'.26 Therefore, the fact that PRO is both [+anaphoric] and [+pronominal] does not lead to a conflict between conditions (A) and (B) of the B-theory. Both conditions are in fact met, in separate Bdomains. Turning now to (86) (repeated below), we first note that the lacking interpretation could only come from a syntactic representation like (89): (86)

Vi fekk breva skrivne we got letters-the written

(89)

vii fekk [ s c brevaj [ v '[v' skrivne t j PROJ]

There are two indications that (86) involves movement to an SC-subject position rather than adjunction. Unlike the case of object preposing

78 Kirsti Koch Christensen and Knut Tarald Taraldsen discussed in the preceding section, the movement seen in (86) is not restricted to quantified NPs. Moreover, it always induces pp-agr. Suppose we take SC to be a projection of the participle, e.g. VP. Then, SC, rather than V', is the least CFC where PRO is governed in (89). This CFC is still the B-domain assigned to the feature [+pronominal] of PRO, since there is an indexing of SC (e.g. the actual one) that leaves PRO free in SC. But SC is now also the B-domain of the feature [+anaphoric] of PRO, since there is a B-theory compatible indexing of the elements of SC that would make PRO bound, namely an indexing under which breva and PRO are co-indexed.27 Thus, (89) falls under the purview of the PRO theorem: PRO must be both bound and free in the same Bdomain. Hence, (89) is ill-formed, and there is no syntactic source for the missing reading of (86). As for the licit interpretation of (86), the choice of representation seems tied in with the broader question concerning the status of the syntactic source of the reading normally associated with PROarb. If we choose to assume that there is a syntactic element - say PRO ar b - underlying this reading, we should represent the correct interpretation of (86) as based on a structure like (89), but with P R O , replaced by PROarb. Correspondingly, we may have to assume that PROarb, unlike controlled P R O , is really [-anaphoric], i.e. really like PRO ar b, an element whose licensing conditions essentially fall outside the B-theory. 5.2. Auxiliary have with SC-complements We have used the interpretive contrast (85) vs. (86) to argue (1) that the external 9-role is assigned to an "agent-position" internal to the Vprojection, and (2) that this position can be filled by PRO. Further support for the claim (1), as well as for the B-theory, comes from the behavior of auxiliary have with SC-complements. Kayne (1984) points out that apparent pp-agr with clitics in French and Italian can be reduced to standard subject/V agreement, provided sentences like Italian (90) can be given S-structure analyses like (91): (90)

Maria li ha comprati all'estero M them has bought-m.pl. abroad

(91)

Maria lii ha [sc ti [v' comprati ti]]

This raises the question of why we do not also have (93), alongside (92): (92)

Maria ha comprato questi libri all'estero M has bought-0 these books abroad

Expletive chain formation (93)

79

*Maria ha questi libri comprati all'estero

(93) would have a structure similar to (91): (94)

Maria ha [sc questi librii (y comprati ti]]

Why should (94) be ill-formed when (91) is good? The idea that there is an "agent position" within the V-projection provides the key to one interpretation of this contrast. On this view, it is possible to claim that the subject of the auxiliary is associated with the external 0-role of the participle, because the latter is assigned to an empty "agent" NP bound by the matrix subject, as in (95). (95)

Mariaj ha [sc questi librii [v' comprati t j tj]

We represent the empty agent NP as a trace rather than as controlled PRO, because we assume that the auxiliary itself assigns no 0-role to its subject. Hence, this NP must form an A-chain comprising the participle's agent NP. Since the matrix subject of (95) is an argument, an A-chain may only contain one argument, and PRO is always an argument, it follows that the empty agent NP is trace rather than PRO in this case. This is the only difference between (95) and (89) (repeated below): (89)

vii fekk [ s c brevaj [v'[v' skrivne tj] PROJ]

Because the empty agent is a trace in (95), it is [+anaphoric] and [-pronominal]. As in (89), the B-domain assigned to the feature [+anaphoric] is the SC. Since the trace is free in the SC, we have a violation of principle (A) of the B-theory. Thus, (93) is ungrammatical for the same reason that (86) lacks the reading where the matrix subject is the writer. Notice that (96) provides a well-formed structure for (92), since the Bdomain associated with the [+anaphoric] feature of the agent trace, is the matrix clause, just as in (87) (repeated below): (96)

Mariai ha [v'[v' comprato questi libri] t,]

(87)

vii fekk [ v '[v' skrive breva] PROi]

(92) is grammatical for the same reason that (85) is ambiguous. Hence, the grammaticality of (92) is consistent with the view that the subject of the auxiliary have can only be associated with the external 0-role of the participle, if it binds a trace in the agent position of the participle projection.

80 Kirsti Koch Christensen and Knut Tarald Taraldsen The question remains why (91) (repeated below) does not also violate the B-theory: (91)

Maria li¡ ha [se t¡ [v' comprati t¡]]

We hypothesize that cliticization has the effect of enlarging the CFC induced by the participle; compare Aoun (1985,125). To this end, we will tentatively assume that the trace of a clitic pronoun does not qualify as the syntactic representation of an argument. Only the clitic itself does. 5.3. Conclusion We have found some evidence favoring the hypothesis that a V assigns its external 0-role to a NP-position internal to the V-projection, the agent position. If our conclusions are correct, then ((97), with PRO a r b filling the embedded agent position, is the right representation of (83): (83)

Det blev drucket/*-it helanatten it was drunk-n/*-0 all night

(97)

deti blev [ s c t¡ [ v '[v' drucket] PRO¡]]

The existence of the SC-subject trace follows from the ECP, if we assume that any expletive must form an A-chain with a postverbal NP. Simultaneously, we can now go beyond this assumption, proposing a specific reason why expletives must enter A-chains comprising some postverbal NP. Previously, we have suggested three possible analyses: (A) When the subject is expletive, the V always fails to Case-mark its object NP, which therefore must form a chain with the expletive in order to belong to a Case-marked A-chain. (B) When the subject is expletive, the subject position is not 6-marked, and must form a chain with a postverbal NP in order to be part of a 0-marked chain. (C) An expletive must form a chain with some other NP in order to be associated with gender/number features. The last of these three options was already eliminated as being insufficiently general, when we decided that even expletive det, inherently a neuter singular, must form an A-chain with some other NP. Hence, it remained to choose between hypotheses (A) and (B). We now see that even (A) is insufficiently general, since an expletive must form a chain even when the postverbal element is PRO, an element that in general does not need to be part of a Case-marked chain. Accordingly, we now conclude that hypothesis (B) is most likely to be correct, suggesting a generalization of the 9-criterion that has the following implication:

Expletive chain formation (98)

81

Every A-position belongs to a 0-marked A-chain.

NOTES 1. Probably, there is a correlation with adjective agreement in predicative position, also existent in Scandinavian, but not in other Germanic languages. However, the correlation is not perfect. Certain Scandinavian dialects, most notably Danish and the Oslo-variety of Norwegian, have predicative adjective agreement, but lack pp-agr; e.g. Norwegian Gjestene er fulle/*full "the guests are drunk-pl/*-0" vs. Gjestene er kommet/*-e "the guests are come-0/*-pl". Notice also that we have no data from those extremely rare Scandinavian dialects that have subject/tensed verb agreement. The choice of finite verbal forms in the English glosses is essentially arbitrary. 2. More precisely, Kayne assumes that X must be AGR, represented as a separate constituent governing a (locally) maximal V-projection. Largely for ease of exposition, we will take X to be V, considering AGR an optional, base-generated affix on V. In order to adopt Kayne's formulation at this point, we would have to modify slightly our account of antecedentgovernment mediated by Specifier/Head agreement. More seriously, it would be harder to explain why certain preposed NPs (see section 4.2.) may adjoin to SC, but not to V\ a critical element of our analysis. 3. We are assuming, like Burzio (1986), that verbs taking auxiliary essere, 'be', are ergative, i.e. they assign a thematic role, but no Case, to the direct object position. We shall make an analogous assumption for Scandinavian. Ergative verbs also have other properties in common, e.g. non-passivizability, providing criteria that may be applied to test our claims in this area. 4. See Chomsky (1986, 42ff) for an evaluation of two slightly distinct formulations. We have adopted the formulation restricting minimality effects to the immediate projection of the head. However, our analysis does not depend on this choice beyond matters of execution. 5. But see footnote 2. 6. This analysis rests on the presupposition that traces entering an A-chain, the so-called "NP-traces", cannot appear in adjoined positions, so that the structure ,..[v't [v' V t]] ... (with ergative V) is unavailable in (3). This, again, is an assumption we share with Chomsky (1986b). 7. Northern Italian dialects, such as Friulian and Venetian, share this property of Norwegian; cf. Beninci (1984). 8. Kayne's formulation allows the leftmost A-position on the chain to be Case-marked, even when it is not the head of the chain. This may be needed for chains headed by clitics. Adopting Kayne's formulation, however, would also be consistent with what we have to say. 9. The ifer-dialects are mainly located along the south coast and the west coast; cf. Sanday (1986) for details. 10. See Sand0y (1986) for details on the geographical distribution of the