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Grand Meeting 2007 at Lake Mývatn
Report from the 3nd Grand Meeting for "Network for Scandinavian Dialect Syntax" at Lake Mývatn, Iceland
By Þórhallur Eyþórsson, University of Iceland
Date: August 16–19, 2007
Place: Hótel Reynihlíð, Mývatnssveit, Iceland
Participants: 59 linguists from Denmark,
the Faroe Islands, Finland, Germany, Great Britain, Iceland, Italy, The
Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United States.
The meeting was organised around the following main topic:
• “Syntactic variation and interfaces”
Other topics figuring in the meeting were:
• Workshop for PhD students and young researchers
• Presentation of ongoing research on (Scandinavian) dialect syntax
• Group work on and discussion of the main topic (‘Syntactic variation and interfaces’)
The keynote speaker at the Grand Meeting was David Lightfoot,
Georgetown University & NSF. Additional featured speakers were
Artemis Alexiadou (Stuttgart), Frederick J. Newmeyer (Washington), and
Luigi Rizzi (Siena).
1. Syntactic variation and interfaces
There were 13 lectures on the main topic “Syntactic variation and
interfaces”, which is a central theme in the work of the ScanDiaSyn
project. The lecturers were (in order of appearance):
Henrik Rosenkvist (Lund University) gave a talk entitled “Multiple
subjects in Övdalian”, in which he reported on his recent survey on
Övdalian concluding that pronominal doubling still is a vivid feature
of this dialect, and that it seems to be dependent of certain class of
non-factive predicates.
In her talk on “On negation splitting and doubling” Cecilia Poletto
(Universities of Padua and Venice) examined the distribution of various
negative markers in Northern Italian dialects, starting from the
observation that there are various negative markers located in
different positions inside the sentence structure. Poletto argued that
each negative marker corresponds to an ‘etymological type’; however,
only some combinations of the various negative markers can be found.
Finally, Poletto proposed an analysis in terms of a complex NegP,
intended to handle the distribution of the negative markers in the
clause, their semantics, and the impossible combinations.
Olaf Koeneman (Meertens Institute), presenting a joint paper with Sjef Barbiers and Marika Lekakou, discussed perfect doubling in southern Dutch dialects (i.e.,
Brabantish). On the basis of a systematic investigation of perfective
auxiliaries and participial morphology in 55 southern Dutch dialects
they presented two central findings of general relevance. First,
perfect doubling provides new evidence for the split tense hypothesis
as advanced by various researchers (Vikner 1985, Zagona 1988, Giorgi
and Pianesi 1991 and Cinque 1999, a.o.). Their second finding is that
the absence of perfect doubling in Standard Dutch is the result of an
haplology rule (cf. Neeleman and Van der Koot 2006) applying to
morphosyntactic features at PF.
Helge Lødrup (University of Oslo) presented a richly documented study on “Objects binding reflexives in Norwegian”.
Øystein Alexander Vangsnes (University of Tromsø) presented some
results from a sosiolinguistically inspired case study of lack of Verb
Second (V2) in main clause wh-questions in dialectal Norwegian. The
subjects were divided into two groups of eight females – i.e. four
groups and 32 individuals in total – at two locations in the Sognefjord
(western Norway), one being the regional center and the other a local
center (periphery). The subjects were either around 18 or around 40
years of age. Some of the general findings from the questionnaire part
of the investigation included the following. First, it was confirmed
that speakers belonging to the older peripheral group was the least
permissive one whereas the young peripheral and older central groups
were the most permissive. Second, different kinds of complex
wh-constituents were judged differently in non-V2 contexts, suggesting
that complexity need not be just a matter of mono- vs. polysyllabicity
in the relevant dialects.
In his keynote talk entitled “Parameters as cues” David Lightfoot
(Georgetown University & NSF) presented a summary of his cue-based
approach to language acquisition and change. Under this approach a
child grows her I-language in response to structures expressed in the
ambient E-language. These structures are the cues designated in UG and
they are expressed in sentences that a child hears which can only be
analyzed, given everything else the child knows, if a particular cue is
utilized. This provides strong predictions about the learning path and
a discovery procedure for language acquisition instead of the usual
procedure of evaluating grammars against a corpus of sentences.
Furthermore, it changes the terms of recent debates about the nature of
parameters.
Kristin Melum Eide (NTNU, Trondheim) argued that the relevant
finiteness distinction in the Germanic languages is the one between
absolute and relative tense forms, and this is morphologically encoded
as +/- finiteness. Adopting the view that the erosion of this
distinction in the verbal paradigm leads to a loss of main verb
raising, as in English, Eide noted that the reverse situation is also
possible, notably in certain Creole languages. Moreover, Eide pointed
out that the productive verb classes in certain Northern Norwegian
dialects lack the morphological distinction between finite and
non-finite forms. Therefore, she proposed, these dialects are likely to
undergo a change similar to English.
Hans Bennis (Meertens Institute) presented an overview of the variation
in the realization of present tense verbal inflection in more than 250
Dutch dialects (“Principles of Paradigmatic Levelling: Variation in
Verbal Inflection in Varieties of Dutch”). Bennis argued that the
occurring paradigms can be explained by linguistic principles
exclusively, by relating synchronic geographic variation to diachronic
variation. Moreover, he proposed that general principles of economy
belonging to the linguistic component determine the variable process of
deflection that is the dominant feature of verbal inflection in
varieties of Dutch.
Artemis Alexiadou (University of Stuttgart) scrutinized the link
beetween argument supporting (AS) nominals and the mass vs. count noun
distinction, which seems to be a valid generalization
cross-linguistically. According to Grimshaw (1990), AS nominals differ
from non-argument supporting ones in that the former cannot pluralize
and cannot occur with indefinite determiners. However, it has been
noted that argument supporting (AS) nominals can occur both with plural
morphology and indefinite deteminers, if they are telic. This fact
provided the point of departure for Alexiadou’s detailed investigation.
The purpose of the talk given by Frederick Newmeyer (University of
Washington) was to reassert the ‘classic’ view of the Autonomy of
Syntax (AS), which was predominant among generative syntacticians until
the 1980s Beginning with two examples from English, the modal
auxiliaries and derived nominalizations, Newmeyer stated that there are
profound formal generalizations involving both, which were uncovered
many decades ago. Newmeyer further criticized ‘current practice’ for
leading to redundancy, by representing in the syntax many semantic
generalizations that need to be represented in conceptual structure
anyway (for example, the Cinque hierarchy). Moreover, he noted that the
arguments for the poverty of the stimulus leading to an innate UG are
based entirely on the correctness of AS. Newmeyer concluded that the
semanticization of syntax poses a potential threat for the entire
‘Chomskyan’ program.
Luigi Rizzi (University of Siena) focused on ‘delimiting’ principles,
determining under what conditions movement can start, and must stop,
with special reference to the cases which force a movement chain to
stop and pass the representation on to the interpretive systems. Rizzi
looked in some detail at the effects of a particular kind of delimiting
principle, Criterial Freezing, terminating a chain as soon as a
criterial position is reached. He illustrated a system based on the
criterial freezing idea, revisiting two classical topics of
Government-Binding syntax: the Extended Projection Principle, requiring
that clauses have subjects, and the Empty Category Principle,
originally introduced to capture subject-object asymmetries in
extraction processes. He showed, among other things, that if the
obligatoriness of subjects is expressed in criterial terms, the
difficulty of moving subjects may be derived from Criterial Freezing.
Höskuldur Þráinsson & Ásgrímur Angantýsson (University of Iceland)
reconsidered the basic evidence for and against the Rich Morphology
Hypothesis (RMH), especially its strong variant, according to whih a
language has V-to-I if-and-only-if it has rich verbal morphology. They
argued that one particular version of the RMH, namely that of Bobaljik
and Thráinsson (1998), in fact predicts that it should be possible to
find apparent exceptions to the RMH of the kind that have been
illustrated in recent literature on Scandinavian, such as the
Tromsø-dialect (that has poor verbal morphology but appears to have
V-to-I) and Älvdalsmålet (that appears to have rich verbal morphology
but numerous exceptions to V-to-I).
The final talk in the main session was by Peter Svenonius (University
of Tromsø). It was entitled “Parameters, Microparameters, and Things
that go Bump in the Night”. Svenonius argued that microparameters do
not shoulder the explanatory burden that parameters were introduced to
bear, because in order to be explanatory, a parameter must have effects
beyond the evidence that causes it to be set the way it is. Therefore,
Svenonius claimed, the search for Universal Grammar has been most
fruitful when it has focused on what were referred to as principles in
Chomsky (1981). This includes universal constraints on phrase structure
such as Kayne's LCA, Cinque's postulation of a richly structured
functional sequence, Baker and Brody's Mirror Theory of morphosyntax,
and Chomsky's phase theory, none of which introduces a parameter, in
the 1981 sense of the term. Finally, Svenonius outlined what kind of a
a theory is needed of how lexical items may vary from each other, and
how their variant properties can be learned.
2. Workshop for PhD students and young researchers
- Magnus Brenner (University of Helsinki): “S-forms of verbs in Finland
Swedish dialects”. This talk presented the results from my empirical
investigation on the s-form of the verb in dialects in Finland that do
not occur in standard Swedish.
- Federica Cognola (University of Padua): “The loss of OV patterns in
the German dialect spoken in the Fersina valley”. This talk discussed
the German dialect spoken in the Fersina Valley (Mòcheno) which has
lost many syntactical properties typical of the German varieties it
belongs to, sharing a well known pattern for the languages spoken in
the so called “linguistic islands”. The main focus was on the variety
of Palù, the most conservative one, which shows a very interesting
shift from OV to VO syntax.
- Piotr Garbacz (Lund University): “What determines V°-to-I° movement
in Oevdalian?” The purpose of this talk was to show what can determine
the V°-to-I° movement in Oevdalian. Factors such as type of adverb that
the finite verb moves across were argued to play a central role, and to
be independent on both the geographical and the individual variation.
On the other hand, the type of subject and verb, as well as verb
inflection, appear to be less important in this respect.
- Terje Lohndal (University of Oslo): “Steps towards a generalized
freezing theory”. This talk focused on the relationship between
subjects and direct objects from the point of view of freezing theory
(Boeckx 2003, 2007a, to appear, Boskovic to appear, Lohndal 2007a,b,
Rizzi 2006, Rizzi and Shlonsky 2005). Specifically he showed how they
differ empirically. While under the general freezing theory, direct
objects are expected to be frozen in situ, Lohndal argued that Boeckx'
decomposition of EPP provides a natural explanation for the freezing
asymmetry related to subjects and direct objects.
- Einar Freyr Sigurðsson (University of Iceland): “Possessive
hjá-construction in Icelandic”. This talk contained a presentation of
the results for the possessive hjá- (‘with’) construction in Icelandic
in a written questionnaire study conducted in 2006 as a part of the
Icelandic Syntax Variation project. Showed that the possessive reading
for PPs containing hjá is becoming more common and there is a clear
difference between generations with respect to the kinds of NPs that
this construction can be used with. This is of some comparative
interest since the exact same preposition typically has a possessive
reading in Faroese and possessive PPs are also common in Norwegian, for
instance.
3. Project reports
At the beginning of the meeting porper on Thursday 16 August Øystein
Vangsnes (University of Tromsø) gave a short presentation of the status
of ScanDiaSyn and NORMS. Subsequently, the following project
presentations were given:
- Status report for the Swedish subproject by Lars-Olof Delsing & Henrik Rosenkvist (Lund University)
- Status report for the Icelandic subproject by Þórhallur Eyþórsson (University of Iceland)
- Edisyn household report by Olaf Koeneman (Meertens Institute)
4. Group work
At previous Grand Meeting, Leikanger 2005 and Solf 2006, different
research topics were discussed, with the aim to pin down the phenomena
to be included in the final empirical cross-Scandinavian investigation.
However, at Mývatn a different approach was taken and there the group
work concentrated on a discussion of the main topic of the 2007 meeting
(‘Syntactic variation and interfaces’).
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