{"id":12066,"date":"2019-04-08T06:08:42","date_gmt":"2019-04-08T10:08:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whamit.mit.edu\/?p=12066"},"modified":"2019-04-07T22:43:03","modified_gmt":"2019-04-08T02:43:03","slug":"syntax-square-4-9-danfeng-wu-mit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/2019\/04\/08\/syntax-square-4-9-danfeng-wu-mit\/","title":{"rendered":"Syntax Square 4\/9 - Danfeng Wu (MIT)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Speaker:<\/strong>\u00a0Danfeng Wu\u00a0(MIT)<br><strong>Title:<\/strong>\u00a0Prefer the less specified form: Evidence from Lebanese Arabic<br><strong>Time:<\/strong>\u00a0Tuesday, 4\/9, 1-2pm<br><strong>Location:<\/strong>\u00a032-D461<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Abstract:<\/strong><br>For languages with resumptive pronouns (RPs), an&nbsp;<strong>Economy principle&nbsp;<\/strong>has been proposed that prefers gap realization whenever possible (e.g. Shlonsky 1992, Pesetsky 1998, McDaniel and Cowart 1999, Sichel 2014, and Rasin 2016). In Hebrew, for instance, the A\u0092-trace in a raising relative clause is realized as a gap, unless an island blocks the movement, in which case an RP is inserted in the trace position. Because an RP has more internal structure than a gap, this Economy principle can then be stated either as a preference for the&nbsp;<strong>least<\/strong>specified form or the preference for the&nbsp;<strong>less&nbsp;<\/strong>specified form.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In this preliminary and informal discussion I argue that the latter formulation of the Economy principle is correct. I present evidence from Lebanese Arabic, which has a richer resumption strategy than Hebrew and can use an independent morpheme (\u0093strong\u0094 pronouns), a clitic (\u0093weak\u0094 pronoun), or an epithet in resumption (Aoun et al. 2001). The strong pronoun and the epithet have more morphological complexity than the weak pronoun. When coindexed with a quantificational antecedent (a&nbsp;<em>wh<\/em>-phrase or a quantifier), the strong pronoun and the epithet have the same distribution on the one hand, while the weak pronoun and the gap pattern together and have a wider distribution on the other hand. Strikingly, a weak pronoun alternates with a&nbsp;<em>wh<\/em>-gap in non-island contexts, and the&nbsp;<em>wh-<\/em>antecedent can be reconstructed to the position of the weak pronoun (Aoun and Benmamoun 1998). Based on these facts I argue that the Economy principle is a comparative one rather than a superlative one, preferring the less specified form whenever possible. In the case of Lebanese Arabic, it prefers a gap and a weak pronoun rather than a strong pronoun and an epithet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Speaker:\u00a0Danfeng Wu\u00a0(MIT)Title:\u00a0Prefer the less specified form: Evidence from Lebanese ArabicTime:\u00a0Tuesday, 4\/9, 1-2pmLocation:\u00a032-D461 Abstract:For languages with resumptive pronouns (RPs), an&nbsp;Economy principle&nbsp;has been proposed that prefers gap realization whenever possible (e.g. Shlonsky 1992, Pesetsky 1998, McDaniel and Cowart 1999, Sichel 2014, and Rasin 2016). In Hebrew, for instance, the A\u0092-trace in a raising relative clause is realized [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-announcements"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12066"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12066\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12067,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12066\/revisions\/12067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}