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Workshop: Syntax Talks, English & Nordic Friday, April 4, 2025 |
Organisers: Anne Mette Nyvad, Ken Ramshøj Christensen & Sten Vikner, Department of English, Aarhus University, |
Venue: Room 366 (third floor), Building 1481 Aarhus University, Jens Chr. Skous Vej 4 DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark |
| Friday, April 4, 2025 | |||
| 10:00-10:10 |
-- Welcome -- |
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| 10:10-11:00 |
Sten Vikner (Aarhus University) |
Telicity-sensitive PPs, VPs with two objects, and VPs with one object followed by a PP complement |
abstract hand-out |
| 11:10-12:00 |
Henrik Jørgensen (Aarhus University) & Michael Nguyen (Danish Language Board) |
On some oddities concerning the initial positions of embedded wh-clauses in Danish |
abstract presentation |
| 12:10-13:00 |
Johanna Wood (Aarhus University) |
Juxtaposed pseudo-partitives old and new |
abstract hand-out |
| 13:00-14:00 |
-- Lunch -- |
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| 14:00-14:50 |
Caroline Heycock (University of Edinburgh) |
Ambiguity and non-ambiguity in temporal adjuncts |
abstract hand-out |
| 15:10-16:00 |
Anne Mette Nyvad & Ken Ramshøj Christensen (Aarhus University) |
Some oddly recursive treetops |
abstract presentation |
| 16:10-17:00 |
Katrine Rosendal Ehlers (Aarhus University) |
Some man-ly oddities: Variation in adjectival agreement with the Danish impersonal pronoun man ('one') |
abstract presentation |
| 18:00 |
-- Dinner -- |
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The talk by Caroline Heycock is financed by Anne Mette Nyvad's Sapere Aude project:
At the Edge of Language - An Investigation into the Limits of Human Grammar (Department of English, Aarhus University).
Abstracts
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Sten Vikner (Aarhus University)
Telicity-sensitive PPs, VPs with two objects, and VPs with one object followed by a PP complement -- (link to hand-out) |
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Looking at verb phrases (VPs) which contain both an indirect object and a direct object, e.g. send my son a book = sende min søn en bog, the picture is slightly confusing. Data from coordination indicate that the indirect and the direct object form a constituent which excludes the main verb, whereas data from idiomatic expressions point toward the main verb and the direct object forming a constituent to the exclusion of the indirect object.
A parallel and also somewhat confusing picture results from the consideration of verb phrases (VPs) which contain both a direct object and a following preposition phrase (PP) as complement, e.g. put something on the table/the web = lægge noget på bordet/nettet. Also here data from coordination indicate that the object and the PP form a constituent which excludes the main verb, whereas data from idiomatic expressions point toward the main verb and the PP forming a constituent to the exclusion of the object. I hope to show how these contradictory data can be reconciled by means of the analyses in Larson (1988) and Kratzer (1995) (and also a much younger Vikner 1989) where the object and the PP are not taken to be on the same level in the syntactic structure. This analysis will then be shown to also account for the fact that such VPs can be modified both by PPs which normally modify only atelic VPs (e.g. for two years = i to år) and by PPs which normally modify only telic VPs (e.g. in two hours = på to timer), as in (1) En. Because the club gave Liz the post of treasurer for two years in two minutes, ... (2) Da. Fordi klubben gav Lis posten som kasserer i to år på to minutter, ... Following Beck & Johnson (2004), I will also show why the two PPs cannot occur in the opposite order (i.e. telic before atelic, in two minutes for two years), and why only the telic PP (e.g. in two hours = på to timer) can occur before the finite verb (gave = gav) in (1) and (2).
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Henrik Jørgensen (Aarhus University) & Michael Nguyen (Danish Language Board) On some oddities concerning the initial positions of embedded wh-clauses in Danish -- (link to presentation) |
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In standard Danish, the initial part of subordinate wh-clauses may contain the word der. If the wh-phrase is the subject, der is present (1); if the wh-phrase is a non-subject, der is not and cannot be present (2):
(1) Jeg spurgte dem hvilke lingvister der ville komme til workshoppen. I ask-PAST they_OBL which-PL linguist_PL der will-PAST come-INF to workshop-DEF ‘I asked them which linguists would participate in the workshop.’ (2) Jeg spurgte dem hvilke lingvister (*der) de (*der) ville besøge. I ask-PAST they-OBL which-PL linguist-PL (*der) they-NOM (*der) will-PAST visit-INF ‘I asked them which linguists they would visit.’ (der-insertion is not possible) In non-standard Danish, however, deviations from the above-mentioned pattern are frequent. Firstly, the marker som may appear in the initial part of subordinate wh-clauses, regardless of the syntactic function of the wh-phrase (3)-(5). If the wh-phrase is the subject, som occurs instead of der, as in (3). (3) At afgøre hvilke elementer som begrunder, og hvilke som begrundes, er aldrig blot en mekanisk øvelse – det involverer fortolkning. To decide-INF which element-PL som justify, and which som are-justified, is never just a mechanical practice – it involve-PRES interpretation ‘To decide which elements justify [other elements, MN & HJ] and which are justified [by other elements, MN & HJ] is never just a mechanical exercise – it involves interpretation.’ (4) Så fortæl mig, hva’ som jeg ska’ gør’ Then tell-IMP I-OBL what som I shall do ‘Then tell me what to do’ (5) Mange skoler ved ikke, hvilke tegn på mobning eller lignende, som de skal kigge efter. Many school-PL know-PRES not which sign-PL of bullying or similar, som they skall-PRES look-INF for ‘Many schools do not know which signs of bullying or similar issues they should be looking for.’ (authentic example from Kratschmer & Jørgensen 2020: 58-60) Secondly, in very rare cases, som co-occurs with der, with or without the subordinating conjunction at ‘that’, when the wh-phrase is the subject: (6) […] fordi der er så meget røg i luften, at man kun behøver at tage en dyb indånding for at få, hvad som at der svarer til en af de lange lungetorpedoer. […] because there is so much smoke in the air that you only need to take a deep breath to receive what som at der corresponds to one of the long lung torpedos. ‘[…] because there is so much smoke in the air that you only need to take a deep breath to receive what corresponds to one of the long lung torpedos.’ (Politiken 2014) (7) Saadan en Bavian som Gendarmen eller Tolderne eller Besucheren, han ved lige saa bestemt, hvad som at der tilkommer ham. Such a baboon like gendarme-DEF or customs-guards-DEF-PL or visitor-DEF, he know-PRES right so definitely what som at der is-due him ‘Such a moron like the police officer or the customs guards or the visitor, he knows exactly what he is entitled to.’ (from the corpus MeMo, containing data from the 19th century) Thirdly, wh-clauses may occur without any marker subordinate clause marker at all, that is, without either som and der (examples from Sørensen 1995: 143-144): (8) I den sidste ende blev det dog et spørgsmål om, hvem af Nixon-brødrene Ø bragte familien i størst forlegenhed. In the final end become-PAST it nevertheless a question which of Nixon brother-DEF-PL Ø brought family-DEF in greatest embarrassment ‘Ultimately, it became a question of which of the Nixon brothers caused the most embarrassment for the family.’ (Jyllands-Posten 1980) (9) [D]et må være op til den socialdemokratiske gruppe at vurdere, hvilken lære Ø skal drages af sagen. It must be up to the social-democratic group to assess which consequence Ø shall be-drawn from case-DF ‘It must be a task for the social democratic group to assess what consequences should be drawn from the case.’ (Jyllands-Posten 1989) In this talk, we will investigate these non-standard forms more closely. We will focus on the apparent alternation between der and som and on the different reasons for the omission of the markers.
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Johanna Wood (Aarhus University) Juxtaposed pseudo-partitives old and new -- (link to hand-out) |
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Although English is a member of the Germanic language family, it is often noted to be a typological outlier. In this paper, I focus on two related topics that that have long interested me when comparing English with other Germanic languages, the structure of pseudo-partitives and the grammaticalisation of measure phrases.
Pseudo-partitives are nominal expressions containing two nouns, designated N1 and N2, where N2 is either non-count or plural. Although most modern Germanic languages optionally juxtapose N1 and N2 to form pseudo-partitives in the Direct Partitive Construction (DPC), present-day English requires a preposition, termed the Indirect Partitive Construction (IPC) (van Riemsdijk 1998:11). (1) Da. en spand vand (2) En. *a bucket water (3) En. a bucket of water With respect to present-day English, it is sometimes claimed that there is a general trend towards loss of of, meaning that English is now developing a DPC (Selkirk 1977:308, Klockmann 2017). Anecdotal evidence for this invariably references couple. I present evidence showing that change is confined to this one item and is not a general trend. With respect to Middle English, it has been claimed that English used to have a DPC in container/measure expressions (Grestenberger 2015). I show that there is little evidence to support the claim that the DPC was widespread in Middle English and subsequently lost.
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Caroline Heycock (University of Edinburgh) Ambiguity and non-ambiguity in temporal adjuncts -- (link to hand-out) |
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| Temporal adjunct clauses introduced by when are often used as examples of how long-distance dependencies create just the same kind of ambiguities in different domains. Specifically, when-clauses show the same kinds of ambiguities as are also found in wh-questions with embedded clauses, as in When did you say that she was planning to arrive? and I had already left when you said that she was planning to arrive. In this talk, though, I will present collaborative work with Rob Truswell and Elise Newman where we discuss cases where this type of ambiguity is surprisingly absent and argue that in these cases the adjunct clauses have both a different kind of interpretation and a different syntax. | |
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Anne Mette Nyvad & Ken Ramshøj Christensen (Aarhus University) Some oddly recursive treetops -- (link to presentation) |
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In the traditional literature on generative syntax, extraction from various types of embedded clauses has been assumed to be ungrammatical across all languages, and these are therefore categorized as syntactic 'islands'. However, it has repeatedly been shown that there are counterexamples to this generalization in the Mainland Scandinavian languages. We review a number of results from our studies of Danish 'islands', where we have examined different island configurations, such as embedded wh-questions (1), adverbials clauses, (2), and relative clauses, (3):
(1) Hvilken forfatter ville hun gerne vide [hvor vi havde mødt ___ ]? Which author wanted she preferably (to) know where we had met? (2) Den slags ord bliver jeg rystet [når jeg hører ___ ]. That kind (of) words get I shocked when I hear. (3) Hende er der mange [der godt kan lide ___ ]. Her are there many who like. We argue that the variations we find in acceptability ratings of these constructions types reflect an interaction between structural complexity, working memory, and discourse-functional factors. We thus question whether these constructions are syntactic 'islands' cross-linguistically and discuss how we can account for them without throwing all of current syntactic theory-building overboard. |
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Katrine Rosendal Ehlers (Aaarhus University) Some man-ly oddities: Variation in adjectival agreement with the Danish impersonal pronoun man ('one') -- (link to presentation) |
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The Danish impersonal pronoun man is described in Grammatik over det danske sprog (Hansen & Heltoft 2011) as morphologically singular but semantically plural, akin to collective nouns. Egerland (2003) argues that man lacks phi-features altogether. Whichever analysis one (man) chooses, it seems to be the case that man may take either singular or plural adjectival agreement in Danish: (1) Hvad afgør, om man er tilfreds med livet? What determines if man is happy.Ø with life.DEF-SG (singular agreement, Berlingske 2023) (2) Hos kapitalfonden Axcel understreger NN, at man er tilfredse med investeringen. At capital-fund.DEF-SG Axcel stresses NN that man is happy-PL with investment.DEF-SG (plural agreement, Ekstra Bladet 2024) In this talk, I discuss the results of a study of the agreement patterns for man in two Danish corpora, KorpusDK and Hestenettet. I compare the results with the agreement patterns for Danish collective nouns and some quantitative pronouns which also show variable agreement patterns. Variable agreement with Danish collective nouns has recently been studied in Jensen and Schack (forthcoming) and I use their choice of collective nouns as the basis for the present investigation. This talk expands on a smaller study of the same kind that I reported in Ehlers (2023).
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| This document is https://tildeweb.au.dk/au132769/syn-talks-eng-nord-workshop/ | |
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First posted: March 2025 - Last modified: April 3, 2025 Comments and suggestions to Sten Vikner |
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