The 2nd Hilbert Question: Barbara Citko on Diagnostics for Multidominance

What are the Diagnostics of a Multidominant Structure?

Multidominant structures (doubly rooted structures of the kind given in (1)) have been invoked as a solution to a number of both empirical and theoretical puzzles.

(1)    XP          YP

                       /       \       /        \

    X           ZP           Y

The idea that such structures exist spans several decades and frameworks, going back at least to the seventies and the work of Sampson (1975) on raising and control and Williams (1978) on Across-the-Board wh-questions. Since then, many different mechanisms have been proposed to generate such structures, including (but not limited to): factorization of Williams (1978), Parallel Merge of Citko (2005), behindance-Merge of De Vries 2005, grafting of Van Riemsdijk (2000, 2006a,b), banyan trees of Svenonius (2005), sharing of Gračanin-Yuksek (2007), union of phrase markers of Goodall (1987), node contraction of Chen-Main (2006) and tree linking of Gärtner (2002). Interestingly, while the issue of linearization and interpretation of multidominant structures has received a fair amount of attention in the literature, the very fundamental issue of how to diagnose a multidominant structure has not. We have reliable ways to diagnose A versus A-bar positions, heads versus phrases, specifiers versus complements, covert versus overt movement; what still seems to be lacking is an adequate diagnostic (or set of diagnostics) of multidominance, something akin to crossover as a diagnostic of A-bar dependencies.   

Explication

The landscape of multidominance is quite diverse and includes both coordinate and non-coordinate structures, as evidenced by the far from complete list of constructions (coordinate ones in (2) and non-coordinate ones in (3)) that have been analyzed in a multidominant fashion. For the purpose of the question of how to diagnose multidominance, it is immaterial whether a multidominant analysis is the correct one for all of them or just a subset thereof; all that matters is that the grammar allows such structures. Simply put, if they exist, we need to know how to find them.

(2)  a.   Across-the-board wh-questions (Williams 1978, Goodall 1987, Citko 2005,

2011, De Vries 2009, among others)

b.         Right Node Raising (Citko 2011, McCawley 1982, Goodall 1987, Wilder 1999, De Vries 2009, Kluck 2009, Johnson 2007, among many, many others)

            c.         gapping (and determiner sharing) (Kasai 2007, Citko 2006, 2011, 2012)

d.         Questions with coordinated wh-pronouns (Gracanin-Yuksek 2007, Citko 2013,

Citko and Gracanin-Yuksek 2013, among others)

(3)        a.         Serial verb constructions (Hiraiwa and Bodomo 2008)

b.         Free relatives (Haider 1988, Citko 2000, Van Riemsdijk 1998, 2000, 2006)

c.         Parasitic Gaps (Kasai 2007)

d.         Amalgams (De Vries 2013)

e.         Parentheticals (McCawley 1982, De Vries 2005)  

f.          Appositives (McCawley 1982, Heringa 2009)

g.         Comparatives (Moltmann 1992)

h.         Discontinuous idioms (Svenonius 2005)

i.          movement in general (Chomsky 2004, Gärtner 2002, among others)

A natural way to proceed in the search for a reliable multidominant diagnostic (or set of diagnostics) is to ask what property (or set of properties) characterizes these constructions to the exclusion of others. Let us thus look at some that at various times been associated with multidominance. Intuitively, coordination might seem like a plausible candidate. After all, the two conjuncts in a coordinate structure are parallel. Thus perhaps multidominance is a way to capture this parallelism. However, it is clear that it cannot be one due to the simple the fact that there do exist non-coordinate multidominant structures, i.e. the ones given in (3). Likewise, ellipsis cannot be the right diagnostic, in spite of the intuitive appeal of the idea that perhaps what (some) cases of ellipsis involve is the non-pronunciation of one occurrence of the multiply dominated element. While movement is sometimes analyzed in a multidominant fashion, not all of the constructions in (2-3) involve movement. Similarly, while parentheticals of various types (appositives, amalgams) have been claimed to involve multidominance, there exist enough multidominant yet non-parenthetical constructions to be doubtful of a one-to-one correlation between the two.

What the multidominant constructions listed in (2-3) seem to have in common is the idea (or intuition) that a single element has to simultaneously fulfill the requirements imposed on it by the two elements between which it is shared. In other words, it has to match them in some relevant sense. If so, could matching be a diagnostic we are after? In order to answer this question, we need to further ask what kind of matching multidominant structures require, and what kinds of mismatches they tolerate (if they tolerate mismatches at all). If we limit our attention to constructions in which a nominal element is shared between two nodes, the question becomes whether this shared nominal has to match both in morphological case, Abstract case, thematic role, or (relative) thematic prominence. Logically speaking, mismatches could be due to syncretism effects, proximity effects (or the reverse, anti-proximity effects) or hierarchy effects. The ameliorating effects of case syncretism have been documented pretty well in the relevant literature. However, it is not the case that mismatches due to factors other than syncretism are never tolerated. Citko (2011), for example, points out that in Polish ATB wh-questions tolerate mismatches only with syncretic forms, whereas Right Node Raising tolerate mismatches that suggest proximity is at issue, as shown by the contrast between the ATB question in (4a) and the RNR construction in (5b). In both of them, the verbs inside the two conjuncts impose different case requirements on their objects: the verb lubić ‘like’ requires accusative case whereas the verb ufać ‘trust’ requires dative case. Furthermore, in both of them the object of these two verbs (bolded in (4a-b)) is shared between the two clauses. Interestingly, in the ATB case, neither the accusative nor the dative form of the shared (fronted) wh-pronoun yields a grammatical result, whereas in the RNR case, the dative form of the shared object is possible.

(4) a.         *Kogo/*komu                   Jan       lubi     a           Maria  ufa? [Polish]                         

who.acc/who.dat      Jan       likes       and      Maria  trusts

            ‘Who does Jan like and Maria trust?’                                                  atb question

      b.   Jan       lubi       a     Maria ufa      tej          koleżance/*tȩ koleżankȩ z pracy.                 

Jan       likes     and Maria trusts   this.dat friend.dat/this friend.acc from work

‘Jan liked and everyone avoided this friend from work.’                RNR

The fact that not all multidominant constructions are subject to the same kind of case matching requirement casts doubt on the correlation between multidominance and matching, and, consequently, on matching as a multidominance diagnostic. Thus, the search for a reliable diagnostic of a multidominant structure continues.

References

Chen-Main, Joan. 2006. On the Generation and Linearization of Multi-Dominance Structures. Ph.D. dissertation, Johns Hopkins University.

Chomsky, Noam. 2004. ‘Beyond Explanatory Adequacy.’ In Structures and Beyond: The Cartography of Syntactic Structures, ed. by A. Belletti, 104-131. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Citko, Barbara. 2000. Parallel Merge and the Syntax of Free Relatives. Ph.D. thesis. Stony Brook University.

Citko, Barbara. 2005. “On the Nature of Merge: External Merge, External Merge, and Parallel Merge,” Linguistic Inquiry 36: 475–497.

Citko, Barbara. 2011. Symmetry in Syntax: Merge, Move and Labels. Cambridge: CUP. 

Citko, Barbara. 2012. ‘A Parallel Merge Solution to the Merchant/Johnson Paradox,’ In Ways of Structure Building, ed. by M. Uribe-Etxebarria and V. Valmala. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Citko, Barbara. 2013. ‘The Puzzles of Wh-Questions with Coordinated Wh-Pronouns,’ In Principles of Linearization, ed. by T. Biberaurer and I. Roberts. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Citko, Barbara and Martina Gračanin-Yuksek. 2013. ‘Towards a New Typology of Wh-Questions with Coordinated Wh-Pronouns.’ Journal of Linguistics 49-1-32.

Gärtner, Hans-Martin. 2002. Generalized Transformations and Beyond: Reflections on Minimalist Syntax. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.

Goodall, Grant 1987. Parallel Structures in Syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gracanin-Yuksek, Martina 2007. About Sharing. PhD thesis, MIT.

Haider, Hubert 1988. ‘Matching Projections.’ In Constituent Structure: Papers from the 1987 GLOW Conference, ed. by A. Cardinaletti, G. Cinque and G. Giusti, 101-123. Dordrecht: Foris.

Heringa, Herman. 2009. A Multidominance Approach to Appositional Constructions. Ms., University of Groningen.

Hiraiwa, Ken & Adams Bodomo. 2008. ‘Object-Sharing and Symmetric Sharing: Predicate-Clefting and Serial Verbs in Daagare.’ Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 26: 795–832.

Johnson, Kyle.  2007. ‘LCA+Alignment=RNR,’ Handout of a talk presented at the Workshop on Coordination, Subordination and Ellipsis, Tubingen, June 2007.

Kasai, Hironobu. 2007. Multidominance in Syntax. PhD thesis, Harvard University.

Kluck, Marlies. 2009. ‘Good Neighbours or Far Friends. Matching and Proximity Effects in Dutch Right Node Raising.’ Groninger Arbeiten zur Germanistischen Linguistik 48.

McCawley, James 1982. ‘Parentheticals and Discontinuous Constituent Structure.’ Linguistic Inquiry 13: 91–106.

Moltmann, Frederike. 1992. Coordination and comparatives. Ph.D. thesis. MIT.

Riemsdijk, Henk van 1998. “Trees and scions - science and trees,” manuscript, Fest-Web-Page for Noam Chomsky.

Riemsdijk, Henk van 2000. ‘Free relatives inside out: transparent free relatives as grafts.’ Proceedings of the 8th Annual Conference of the Polish Association for the Study of English.

Riemsdijk, Henk van 2006a. ‘Free Relatives.’ in Everaert and van Riemsdijk (eds.), pp. 338–382.

Riemsdijk, Henk van 2006b. ‘Grafts Follow from Merge.’ in Frascarelli (ed.), pp. 17–44.

Svenonius, Peter 2005. ‘Extending the Extension Condition to Discontinuous Idioms.’ Linguistic Variation Yearbook 5: 227-263.

Sampson, Geoffrey. 1975. ‘The Single Mother Condition.’ Journal of Linguistics 1:1-11.

Vries, Mark de. 2005. ‘Coordination and Syntactic Hierarchy.’ Studia Linguistica 59, 83–105.

Vries, Mark de. 2009. ‘On Multidominance and Linearization’ Biolinguistics 3:344–403.

Vries, Mark de. 2013. ‘Unconventional Mergers.’ In Ways of Structure Building, ed. by Myriam Uribe-Etxebarria & Vidal Valmala. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Wilder, Chris 1999. ‘Right Node Raising and the LCA.’ WCCFL 18 Proceedings, 586-598.

Williams, Edwin 1978. ‘Across-the-board Rule Application.’ Linguistic Inquiry 9: 31–43.

Derivation Trees: Syntacticians' Best Friend?

Usually I would have been busy today bringing the excitement of parts of speech and phrase structure rules to a group of surprisingly energetic students --- some of them take the train all the way from NYC, which according to my calculations means that they have to get up around 5:30 in the morning. But at least today they get to sleep in, as the roads and tracks are covered in this weird, cocaine-colored substance that has been pestering us east coast residents for quite a while now and has even found its way south to Georgia. So classes are canceled, and I'm sitting at home with a glass of milk and a habitual desire to talk about syntax. Good thing there's tons of stuff I haven't told you about Minimalist grammars yet, starting with derivation trees.