Research Interests
The Origins of A'-Movement
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Austronesian Voice and High Absolutive Syntax
Many Western Austronesian languages show a clausal syntax built around two interlocking systems: VP-level ``voice'' alternations that determine the identity of the absolutive argument and a higher syntax that draws that DP to the highest A-position in the clause. In a series of papers, I deconstruct the syntax of this system in Mandar, a language of Sulawesi. In a paper in the Journal of East Asian Linguistics, I show that the lower system reduces to a series of alternations in verbal transitivity that guide patterns of Object Shift and VP-internal Case-Licensing, yielding a natural analysis of the Agent Focus Construction- a special voice employed in many Austronesian languages in the clauses that feature extraction of the external argument. In a recently submitted paper, in turn, I show that the absolutive argument is raised to its high position in this verb-initial language through a sequence of two covert steps: one that draws it to a low subject position at the edge of the voiceP and another that raises it to a high subject position in the middle field. The ensuing pattern of movement- and the patterns of expletive insertion that occur when it fails to apply- show that the absolutive arguement behaves as a subject in the classical generative sense: it enters into a cascading series of relationships with VP-external functional heads that ultimately raise it to a position where it can receive the highest clause-internal structural Case.
Phonological strings are organanized into a hierarchical prosodic constituent structure that roughly reflects the syntax beneath them. In a paper in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, I document phonotactic diagnostics for high-level prosodic constituents in Mandar and leverage them to build phonological cases for two language-internal syntactic results: (1) VSO strings are built from a descending series of functional projections, and (2) VOS strings are derived by rightward A'-scrambling which adjoins the S to the TP. Beyond informing the larger theoies of linear order, A'-scrambling, and adjunction, these results extend and refine the emerging analytical toolkit that will allow us to mobilize prosody to investigate the most fundamental questions in syntactic theory.
A central question of research at the interfaces surrounds visibily: what can the morphology and phonology see at the derivational moments where they operate? In a paper in Linguistic Inquiry, I show that mechanism that handles allomorph selection-vocabulary insertion-must have access to high-level phonological information about prosodic constituent structure to handle eight patterns of suppletion in Mandar. In tandem with this result, I argue that vocabulary insertion must operate in an output-oriented phonological calculus in order to capture a systematic symmetry between these suppletive alternations and a larger conspiracy of repairs in the phrasal phonology: one which implicates a type of phonological displacement and suspends suppletion in the positions where it is expected when the global phonological context allows the driving constraint to be resolved through a more optimal repair.
Mandar has two locative adverbs that are routinely generated within DPs but systematically moved to the right edge of the clause. In a paper accepted to Linguistic Inquiry, I argue that these adverbs move in the phonology, postposing to the right edge of the intonational phrase and escaping islands and violating relativized minimality constraints on the way. In tandem with this result, I show that this step of movement is triggered by a phonological tension within the elements that move that can only be resolved in their landing site- a conclusion which suggests that movement in the phonology may be driven by the principle of Greed.
Minimalist investigations of the syntax have made great progress from the hypothesis that syntactic displacement proceeds through copy-formation or multidominance- yielding representations where moved elements take multiple positions in the syntax and have their linear positions fixed through a postsyntactic process of chain reduction. In a submitted paper, I build a novel argument that this type of reduction must play out at the derivational moment where syntax and phonology meet-where it can be guided by output constraints on balance that guide the parse of complete syntacic derivations into the hierarchical constituent structure of the prosody. The case emerges from a step of movement that seems to be conditioned by the distribution of word-level stress within the Mandar VP: absolutive arguments, in short, must be realized outside of that domain whenever corresponding strings of the usual verb-initial order would receive a prosodically imbalanced parse.
The default Minimalist hypothesis is that the syntax operates in strict derivational terms over structures that contain no linear order. This position complicates the classical analysis of Path Containment Constraints (Pesetsky 1982), which ban crossing A'-dependencies in English and elsewhere. In a submitted paper, I show that Path Containment Effects are bound up with visible restrictions in the surface prosody in Mandar: (1) certain types of movement in the language require their paths to be wrapped by phonological phrases, (2) these movements can nest but cannot cross (phonological phrases can be recursively nested, but constituents cannot intersect), and (3) Path Containment Effects only arise between the movements that have this phonological shape. Pressing further, the paper develops an output-oriented analysis of specific Freezing Effects and asymmetries in subextraction from Coordinate Structures, allowing for a simpler syntax and a fully representational evaluation of all of these constraints in the global evaluation of the surface phonology.
Ergative languages systematically ban reflexive anaphors from appearing in the position of the external argument. In an paper accepted to Glossa, Justin Royer and I demonstrate that this restriction persists when the absolutive argument raises above the external argument to a high clause-internal A-position in Mandar and Chuj (Mayan). Building a common analysis of the clausal syntax of Mandar and Chuj, we show that the Ban on Ergative Anaphors falls out naturally from contemporary approaches to the distribution of reflexive anaphors even in contexts that show High Absolutive Syntax. We then argue that certain differences between Mandar and Chuj in the domain of Condition A can be readily derived by positing that their reflexive anaphors are built and bound through distinct derivational routes.
Prosodic Investigation of the Syntax
Suppletion at the Morphology-Phonology Interface
Movement in Cross-Modular Perspective
Chain Reduction at the Syntax-Prosody Interface
Path Containment Revisited
Reflexive Anaphors and High Absolutive Syntax