This paper explores empirical merits of a version of Agree that is defined based on Minimal Search (MS-Agree). Compared to the standard Agree, MS-Agree, essentially a search algorithm, uniquely ...allows the independent assignment of its search target and search domain. This unique feature enables MS-Agree to accommodate both upward and downward agreement phenomena, and offers a unified downward search analysis for negative concord, inflection doubling, multiple case-assignment, cyclic agreement, and complementizer agreement observed across languages. This paper thus argues that these core empirical data that have served as the main motivation for Upward Agree can be successfully reanalyzed with MS-Agree. It is also argued that the proposed MS-Agree analysis makes better predictions than Upward Agree regarding intervention effects in apparent upward agreement phenomena.
This article develops a formal definition of Minimal Search to evaluate the idea that Agree and Labeling can be reduced to Minimal Search. Different aspects of the search algorithm used in Minimal ...Search (i.e., breadth-first vs. depth-first search, parallel vs. serial search, global vs. modular search) are compared, and reasons for choosing between each of these pairs are given based on detailed examinations of their theoretical and empirical consequences. Given the formal definition of Minimal Search, the article argues that Agree and Labeling can only be partially unified by Minimal Search: the search algorithms used in Agree and Labeling can be unified by Minimal Search, but the values of the search targets and search domains are determined by Agree and Labeling independently. On the basis of the definition of Minimal Search, the article (re)defines Agree and Labeling to capture both the similarities and the differences between these two operations.
Neural responses appear to synchronize with sentence structure. However, researchers have debated whether this response in the delta band (0.5–3 Hz) really reflects hierarchical information or simply ...lexical regularities. Computational simulations in which sentences are represented simply as sequences of high-dimensional numeric vectors that encode lexical information seem to give rise to power spectra similar to those observed for sentence synchronization, suggesting that sentence-level cortical tracking findings may reflect sequential lexical or part-of-speech information, and not necessarily hierarchical syntactic information. Using electroencephalography (EEG) data and the frequency-tagging paradigm, we develop a novel experimental condition to tease apart the predictions of the lexical and the hierarchical accounts of the attested low-frequency synchronization. Under a lexical model, synchronization should be observed even when words are reversed within their phrases (e.g., “sheep white grass eat” instead of “white sheep eat grass”), because the same lexical items are preserved at the same regular intervals. Critically, such stimuli are not syntactically well-formed; thus a hierarchical model does not predict synchronization of phrase- and sentence-level structure in the reversed phrase condition. Computational simulations confirm these diverging predictions. EEG data from
= 31 native speakers of Mandarin show robust delta synchronization to syntactically well-formed isochronous speech. Importantly, no such pattern is observed for reversed phrases, consistent with the hierarchical, but not the lexical, accounts.
A systematic evaluation of syntactic behavior of nouns that take as their possessor the topic of the possessive topic constructions in Mandarin Chinese calls for an understanding of the syntactic and ...semantic nature of relational nouns (RNs) and non-RNs. This evaluation leads to four empirical generalizations that divide NP possessees into four subtypes, some important differences between which are understudied in the literature. These generalizations are then explained with differences in the lexical syntactic and semantic properties of the four NP subtypes, namely, non-RNs, kinship type nouns, body-part type nouns, and whole-part nouns: whether the nouns bear a local or long-distance syntactic reflexive argument, or a pronominal argument, or no argument at all, is the determining factor of their distinctive syntactic behavior in the possessive topic construction. This study sheds light on long-standing problems concerning the nature of empty categories in connection with the topic in possessive topic constructions. Critical aspects of the nouns’ syntactic behavior are arguably orthogonal to a movement or base-generation approach to topicalization in Mandarin Chinese. Instead, this article proposes that the semantic or syntactic arguments of the nominal possessees relate to the topic via some general mechanisms other than movement or base-generation: reflexive and pronominal reference resolution. This study thus offers us a novel viewpoint on the syntax and semantics of nouns as well as their typology in the context of possession and inalienability.
This paper argues that inalienable relational nouns in Mandarin Chinese, specifically kinship nouns (KNs, e.g. father, sister) and body-part nouns (BPNs, e.g. head, face), have an implicit reflexive ...argument. Based on a syntactic comparison between KNs, BPNs, locally and long-distance bound reflexives, we argue that the implicit reflexive arguments of BPNs must be locally bound, whereas that of KNs can either be locally or long-distance bound. We conclude that these two types of implicit arguments in Mandarin Chinese correspond to locally and long-distance bound reflexives, respectively. We analyze this difference in connection with binding theory and a theory of logophoricity. We argue that the implicit argument of BPNs is a locally bound anaphor and cannot be used as a logophor, whereas that of KNs can, supporting a proposal that the logophoric property leads to long-distance binding, as argued by Huang & Liu’s (2001) for reflexives in Mandarin Chinese.
Which NP does
all
associate with in e.g. “The pandas, the children all saw”—the pandas, the children, or both? The intuition of adult Mandarin Chinese native speakers regarding the interpretation ...of the adverbial quantifier
dou
‘all’ remains unclear and controversial, and various incommensurate theories of domain selection have been proposed. These studies may have failed to yield clear results because they used testing materials in which the interpretation of
dou
is confounded with other principles of NP interpretation (e.g.
zhexie xiaohai
‘these children’ is truth-functionally synonymous with ‘all these children’). To address these concerns, we present the first set of experimental studies on adult knowledge and use of syntactic constraints on the quantifier domain of
dou
. The results support the hypothesis that
dou
can take one and only one c-commanding NP as its domain, but falsify interesting theoretical accounts that assume a strict locality constraint on
dou
quantification.
This paper provides experimental and theoretical evidence for the syntactic realization of an implicit possessor argument in Relational Nouns (RNs, e.g.
father
) in Mandarin Chinese. The results of ...Experiment 1 show that the antecedent of the implicit argument in RNs must be a noun phrase (NP) in the sentence where the RN is located, rather than an NP in the discourse context. Experiment 2 shows that the implicit argument of RNs must be bound by a c-commanding NP. The results exclude the possibility that the RNs’ implicit argument is a pronominal that would link to a contextually salient NP and would not require a c-commanding referential antecedent. Rather, the experimental results show that the identification of the antecedent of the RNs’ implicit argument is constrained by the same principle of binding theory that constrains the reflexive
zìjǐ
‘self’, specifically requiring a c-commanding antecedent.
This paper argues that inalienable relational nouns in Mandarin Chinese, specifically kinship nouns (e.g. father, sister) and body-part nouns (e.g. head, face), have an implicit reflexive argument. ...Based on a syntactic comparison between kinship nouns, body-part nouns, local- and long-distance bound reflexives, we argue that the implicit reflexive arguments of kinship nouns and body-part nouns differ from each other: The implicit argument of kinship nouns must be locally bound, whereas that of body-part nouns can either be locally bound or long-distance bound. Therefore, we conclude that these two types of implicit arguments in Mandarin Chinese correspond to local- long-distance bound reflexives, respectively. Finally, we relate this difference to binding theory concerning local and long-distance anaphors.
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