This paper examines the role of subjecthood in the domain of anaphoric binding through the lens o... more This paper examines the role of subjecthood in the domain of anaphoric binding through the lens of West Circassian, a Northwest Caucasian language with ergative alignment. West Circassian reflexives and reciprocals display a puzzling mismatch in binding directionality with transitive ergative-absolutive predicates. Reflexives treat the ergative agent as the structurally higher argument, with the bound pronoun appearing in the position of the absolutive theme. A reciprocal pronoun, on the other hand, appears in the ergative position and is bound by the absolutive theme, suggesting that the absolutive theme is structurally superior to the ergative agent. The paper demonstrates that both anaphors are constrained in cross-linguistically familiar ways, but reflexives are subject to an additional licensing condition which limits the set of possible antecedents to the highest argument in the thematic domain. By demonstrating that structural superiority is domain-sensitive the paper challenges the significance of subjecthood as a grammatical primitive and argues that it should be replaced with a tree-geometrical notion of contextually determined prominence.
A'-extraction of possessors in West Circassian is constrained in a puzzling way: the possessor of... more A'-extraction of possessors in West Circassian is constrained in a puzzling way: the possessor of an ergative or applied argument DP may not undergo clausebound wh-movement, but long-distance possessor extraction across a clausal boundary is grammatical. Based on the variable islandhood of these DPs, this paper argues for an agree-based approach to phasehood. Phase opacity is treated as defective intervention, with the phase intervening between the probe and the goal. Defective intervention does not take place if the corresponding phase has independently entered an Agree relation with the movement-triggering probe. Islandhood is thus correctly predicted to be contextually determined: in West Circassian, the difference between clausebound and long-distance possessor extraction is conditioned by the set of agreement features on the local movement-triggering probe: a wh-feature on C in the case of clausebound extraction and a successive-cyclic edge feature on embedded C in the case of long-distance wh-movement. Additionally, the account appeals to the opacity of phase edges to explain the contrast between DPs which display islandhood effects (ergative and applied argument DPs) and constituents which are uniformly transparent for subextraction (the absolutive DP and postpositional phrases).
This paper identifies and tests a novel diagnostic for clause structure in West Circassian, a pol... more This paper identifies and tests a novel diagnostic for clause structure in West Circassian, a polysynthetic language with ergative alignment. The diagnostic concerns an unusual construction involving multiple wh-agreement in relative clauses. I argue that wh-agreement morphology uniformly tracks agreement with a wh-trace, and sentences with more than one instance of wh-agreement are surface manifestations of a parasitic gap dependency. Once multiple wh-agreement is understood in this theoretically familiar light, it can be used as a powerful tool for diagnosing asymmetries between various constituents in the West Circassian clause. By appealing to well-known constraints on parasitic gap licensing, the paper demonstrates that the absolutive DP raises to a position c-commanding other clausemate DPs, and applied objects may undergo optional scrambling to a position above the ergative agent.
Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America, 2018
This paper presents an analysis of word formation in West Circassian, a polysynthetic language. I... more This paper presents an analysis of word formation in West Circassian, a polysynthetic language. I argue that while verbs and nouns superficially share a similar morphological profile, they are in fact constructed through two distinct word formation strategies: while verbal morphology is concatenated via syntactic head movement, the noun phrase is pronounced as a single word due to rules of syntax-to-prosody mapping. Such a division of labor provides an account for why only nouns, and not verbs, exhibit productive noun incorporation in the language: West Circas-sian noun incorporation is prosodic, rather than syntactic. The evidence for this twofold approach to word formation comes from morpheme ordering in nominalizations.
Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America, 2017
This paper presents novel evidence for the syntactic distinction between unergative and unaccusat... more This paper presents novel evidence for the syntactic distinction between unergative and unaccusative verbs in East Circassian (or Kabardian). The evidence concerns a particular strategy of forming imperatives – simultaneous causativization and reflexivization – which is only applicable to unaccusative predicates. I argue that this type of imperative involves the promotion of the internal argument to the a higher position through the use of the causative morpheme which has been grammaticalized to mark imperative mood. The observed patterns suggest that imperative mood, while generally associated with the CP-layer, must be sensitive to the structure of vP.
This dissertation explores the relation between the notion of subjecthood and syntactic ergativit... more This dissertation explores the relation between the notion of subjecthood and syntactic ergativity through the lens of West Circassian (or Adyghe; of the Northwest Caucasian family), a polysynthetic morphologically ergative language. West Circassian displays a number of unusual syntactic ergativity effects, i.e. effects which indicate that the absolutive argument occupies the structurally prominent position which is generally believed to be associated with subjecthood. Through the close examination of two such effects – reciprocal binding patterns and constraints on parasitic gap licensing – I arrive at the conclusion that the absolutive argument in West Circassian may be generated in a variety of positions within the verbal theta-domain, but then uniformly undergoes A-movement to the highest argument position in the clause regardless of its theta-role. The derived status of the high absolutive explains why a number of subjecthood diagnostics, such as reflexive binding and obligatory control configurations, single out the ergative agent as the subject: this is because the syntactic properties of these constructions rely on the voice projection, which is merged directly above the verbal theta-domain, i.e. vP. Given the low position of Voice, diagnostics which involve the use of this head single out the highest argument in vP as the subject, rather than the highest argument in the full clause. The proposed analysis provides support for the idea that subjecthood properties may be disbursed across several positions – in a syntactically ergative language like West Circassian, these positions are often occupied by two distinct nominals. In the absence of a single position or single nominal which could be labeled as a subject within a given clause structure, the term ‘subject’ becomes theoretically vacuous. The dissertation provides insight into the nature of syntactic ergativity, the structural status of subjecthood, and the syntax of anaphor binding, parasitic gap licensing and obligatory control constructions. Through the examination of argument asymmetries in a polysynthetic language, this project contributes to the line of research demonstrating that polysynthesis and non-configurationality cannot be defined macro-parametrically, but are rather a consequence of several micro-parameters at play, and that there is configurational structure at the core of such a language.
This paper examines the role of subjecthood in the domain of anaphoric binding through the lens o... more This paper examines the role of subjecthood in the domain of anaphoric binding through the lens of West Circassian, a Northwest Caucasian language with ergative alignment. West Circassian reflexives and reciprocals display a puzzling mismatch in binding directionality with transitive ergative-absolutive predicates. Reflexives treat the ergative agent as the structurally higher argument, with the bound pronoun appearing in the position of the absolutive theme. A reciprocal pronoun, on the other hand, appears in the ergative position and is bound by the absolutive theme, suggesting that the absolutive theme is structurally superior to the ergative agent. The paper demonstrates that both anaphors are constrained in cross-linguistically familiar ways, but reflexives are subject to an additional licensing condition which limits the set of possible antecedents to the highest argument in the thematic domain. By demonstrating that structural superiority is domain-sensitive the paper challenges the significance of subjecthood as a grammatical primitive and argues that it should be replaced with a tree-geometrical notion of contextually determined prominence.
A'-extraction of possessors in West Circassian is constrained in a puzzling way: the possessor of... more A'-extraction of possessors in West Circassian is constrained in a puzzling way: the possessor of an ergative or applied argument DP may not undergo clausebound wh-movement, but long-distance possessor extraction across a clausal boundary is grammatical. Based on the variable islandhood of these DPs, this paper argues for an agree-based approach to phasehood. Phase opacity is treated as defective intervention, with the phase intervening between the probe and the goal. Defective intervention does not take place if the corresponding phase has independently entered an Agree relation with the movement-triggering probe. Islandhood is thus correctly predicted to be contextually determined: in West Circassian, the difference between clausebound and long-distance possessor extraction is conditioned by the set of agreement features on the local movement-triggering probe: a wh-feature on C in the case of clausebound extraction and a successive-cyclic edge feature on embedded C in the case of long-distance wh-movement. Additionally, the account appeals to the opacity of phase edges to explain the contrast between DPs which display islandhood effects (ergative and applied argument DPs) and constituents which are uniformly transparent for subextraction (the absolutive DP and postpositional phrases).
This paper identifies and tests a novel diagnostic for clause structure in West Circassian, a pol... more This paper identifies and tests a novel diagnostic for clause structure in West Circassian, a polysynthetic language with ergative alignment. The diagnostic concerns an unusual construction involving multiple wh-agreement in relative clauses. I argue that wh-agreement morphology uniformly tracks agreement with a wh-trace, and sentences with more than one instance of wh-agreement are surface manifestations of a parasitic gap dependency. Once multiple wh-agreement is understood in this theoretically familiar light, it can be used as a powerful tool for diagnosing asymmetries between various constituents in the West Circassian clause. By appealing to well-known constraints on parasitic gap licensing, the paper demonstrates that the absolutive DP raises to a position c-commanding other clausemate DPs, and applied objects may undergo optional scrambling to a position above the ergative agent.
Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America, 2018
This paper presents an analysis of word formation in West Circassian, a polysynthetic language. I... more This paper presents an analysis of word formation in West Circassian, a polysynthetic language. I argue that while verbs and nouns superficially share a similar morphological profile, they are in fact constructed through two distinct word formation strategies: while verbal morphology is concatenated via syntactic head movement, the noun phrase is pronounced as a single word due to rules of syntax-to-prosody mapping. Such a division of labor provides an account for why only nouns, and not verbs, exhibit productive noun incorporation in the language: West Circas-sian noun incorporation is prosodic, rather than syntactic. The evidence for this twofold approach to word formation comes from morpheme ordering in nominalizations.
Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America, 2017
This paper presents novel evidence for the syntactic distinction between unergative and unaccusat... more This paper presents novel evidence for the syntactic distinction between unergative and unaccusative verbs in East Circassian (or Kabardian). The evidence concerns a particular strategy of forming imperatives – simultaneous causativization and reflexivization – which is only applicable to unaccusative predicates. I argue that this type of imperative involves the promotion of the internal argument to the a higher position through the use of the causative morpheme which has been grammaticalized to mark imperative mood. The observed patterns suggest that imperative mood, while generally associated with the CP-layer, must be sensitive to the structure of vP.
This dissertation explores the relation between the notion of subjecthood and syntactic ergativit... more This dissertation explores the relation between the notion of subjecthood and syntactic ergativity through the lens of West Circassian (or Adyghe; of the Northwest Caucasian family), a polysynthetic morphologically ergative language. West Circassian displays a number of unusual syntactic ergativity effects, i.e. effects which indicate that the absolutive argument occupies the structurally prominent position which is generally believed to be associated with subjecthood. Through the close examination of two such effects – reciprocal binding patterns and constraints on parasitic gap licensing – I arrive at the conclusion that the absolutive argument in West Circassian may be generated in a variety of positions within the verbal theta-domain, but then uniformly undergoes A-movement to the highest argument position in the clause regardless of its theta-role. The derived status of the high absolutive explains why a number of subjecthood diagnostics, such as reflexive binding and obligatory control configurations, single out the ergative agent as the subject: this is because the syntactic properties of these constructions rely on the voice projection, which is merged directly above the verbal theta-domain, i.e. vP. Given the low position of Voice, diagnostics which involve the use of this head single out the highest argument in vP as the subject, rather than the highest argument in the full clause. The proposed analysis provides support for the idea that subjecthood properties may be disbursed across several positions – in a syntactically ergative language like West Circassian, these positions are often occupied by two distinct nominals. In the absence of a single position or single nominal which could be labeled as a subject within a given clause structure, the term ‘subject’ becomes theoretically vacuous. The dissertation provides insight into the nature of syntactic ergativity, the structural status of subjecthood, and the syntax of anaphor binding, parasitic gap licensing and obligatory control constructions. Through the examination of argument asymmetries in a polysynthetic language, this project contributes to the line of research demonstrating that polysynthesis and non-configurationality cannot be defined macro-parametrically, but are rather a consequence of several micro-parameters at play, and that there is configurational structure at the core of such a language.
Uploads
Papers by Ksenia Ershova
Thesis Chapters by Ksenia Ershova
The derived status of the high absolutive explains why a number of subjecthood diagnostics, such as reflexive binding and obligatory control configurations, single out the ergative agent as the subject: this is because the syntactic properties of these constructions rely on the voice projection, which is merged directly above the verbal theta-domain, i.e. vP. Given the low position of Voice, diagnostics which involve the use of this head single out the highest argument in vP as the subject, rather than the highest argument in the full clause. The proposed analysis provides support for the idea that subjecthood properties may be disbursed across several positions – in a syntactically ergative language like West Circassian, these positions are often occupied by two distinct nominals. In the absence of a single position or single nominal which could be labeled as a subject within a given clause structure, the term ‘subject’ becomes theoretically vacuous.
The dissertation provides insight into the nature of syntactic ergativity, the structural status of subjecthood, and the syntax of anaphor binding, parasitic gap licensing and obligatory control constructions. Through the examination of argument asymmetries in a polysynthetic language, this project contributes to the line of research demonstrating that polysynthesis and non-configurationality cannot be defined macro-parametrically, but are rather a consequence of several micro-parameters at play, and that there is configurational structure at the core of such a language.
The derived status of the high absolutive explains why a number of subjecthood diagnostics, such as reflexive binding and obligatory control configurations, single out the ergative agent as the subject: this is because the syntactic properties of these constructions rely on the voice projection, which is merged directly above the verbal theta-domain, i.e. vP. Given the low position of Voice, diagnostics which involve the use of this head single out the highest argument in vP as the subject, rather than the highest argument in the full clause. The proposed analysis provides support for the idea that subjecthood properties may be disbursed across several positions – in a syntactically ergative language like West Circassian, these positions are often occupied by two distinct nominals. In the absence of a single position or single nominal which could be labeled as a subject within a given clause structure, the term ‘subject’ becomes theoretically vacuous.
The dissertation provides insight into the nature of syntactic ergativity, the structural status of subjecthood, and the syntax of anaphor binding, parasitic gap licensing and obligatory control constructions. Through the examination of argument asymmetries in a polysynthetic language, this project contributes to the line of research demonstrating that polysynthesis and non-configurationality cannot be defined macro-parametrically, but are rather a consequence of several micro-parameters at play, and that there is configurational structure at the core of such a language.