-*- markdown -*- Author: Ivan Zakharyaschev I presented this work under the title: "Type logic served by co-Merge, Merge and Move: an account for sluicing and questions of `common European' and Japanese types" at one of the [predecessor conferences to MOSS], namely [Syntactic Structures 2007] in Moscow. Since people might be interested in how some things I have been exploring can work out, I'm posting a 2-page [abstract] and a version of the [handout] for that work of mine. I wrote these remarks quite a while after 2007, being encouraged by the atmosphere and discussions at [MOSS2] (April 2011). [abstract]: http://hal.inria.fr/docs/00/14/06/68/PDF/synt-Abstr.pdf [handout]: http://hal.inria.fr/docs/00/14/06/68/PDF/synt-handout.pdf (Archived at ; saved locally as [[imz_TLG-for-sluicing-and-wh-in-situ_abstract-2007-04-02.pdf]] and [[imz_TLG-for-sluicing-and-wh-in-situ_handout-2007-04-09.pdf]].) [Syntactic Structures 2007]: http://linguistics.ucla.edu/people/grads/korotkova/moss/previous/ss07_program.html [predecessor conferences to MOSS]: http://linguistics.ucla.edu/people/grads/korotkova/moss/previous/ [MOSS2]: http://linguistics.ucla.edu/people/grads/korotkova/moss/index.html "Moscow Syntax and Semantics 2 (2011)" Let me make some remarks: 0) I also presented this in a seminar with Mati Pentus, Michael Moortgat and several Mati's students at Moscow State University in 2007. Based on their comments, I would make further improvements to the presentation in the handout, also point to more related literature. (Vermaat on "movement" in TLG; also, at that time, the suggestions of a continuations-based semantics for the symmetricized Lambek calculus had only been worked on by Bernardi&Moortgat, and others, so I have only a vague statement in the abstract that a continuations-based semantics must be there for this calculus of types, with no more references to the research on this. ALso the references on the history of the employed calculus are missing.) Unfortunately, I haven't yet recovered my computer from a recent crash, and haven't yet recovered an updated revision of the handout. Once I have it, I'll try to make it accessible (to you and others) as well; perhaps, I'll post it to . (Unfortunately, I've been a perfectionist: I thought I would post a version of the handout onto the web after correcting the technical and stylistic problems in it.) In the handout, as compared to the abstract, you'll find the relevant type derivations spelled out, and also more remarks and discussion. I was thinking about people not familiar with type-logical grammars when I wrote this. (This explains some choices I made as to what to write.) 1) The main interest for me was to capture with a single type some uses of WH-items that are not interrogative sentences, namely, sluicing (where the WH-item hangs at the end and refers to preceding expressions) and "sluicing-based indefinites" (as in "He ate God knows what" or "He ate we don't know what"). My hope was that the more powerful type system of TLG would be flexible enough to derive the types that reflect the different uses of WH-items. This is a problem for syntactic frameworks with a fixed set of fixed syntactic categories like the "generative grammar": from the view of a generative-style approach, a sluicing-based indefinite looks like a sentence from inside, but behaves like a DP from outside, so one would need to plug in some covert "adaptor" categories in between the inner and outer level, which is not nice. 2) Then I had the idea that one could predict the different types of languages w.r.t. the patterns of how WH-items are used in those languages: starting from different base types for the WH-items in different languages, one would derive different patterns of the usage of WH-items. And I was excited to arrive at such a picture taking English vs. Japanese as examples. This is depicted with the diagram. As I have understood from the papers on Japanese syntax I looked into, Japanese sluicing is not really sluicing because--among other things--it is island-sensitive; so this is accounted for by showing that the usual sluicing mechanism shouldn't be available for the type I suggest for Japanese WH-items. I should have been accurate and should have put an example and a reference for this very fact (island sensitivity) into the handout. (A todo for me.) 3) I hope you won't be confused with 2 different uses of the word "type" in the texts. (Actually, for my presentations, I would substitute the word "category" for one of the uses of the word "type" -- in order not confuse the audience, which wasn't familiar with TLG.) 4) A better name for "sluicing-based indefinites" might be "sluicing-based XPs" ("XP" hints that there are not only DPs, but there are also "how", "where", "which", and so on). 5) Please don't be confused by the fact that I denote the type of a complete interrogative sentence as "q" -- some people were inclined to think that "q" is a notation for the single WH-items (or perhaps quantifiers). (What could be a better notation for the type of a complete interrogative sentence then?..) 6) Actually, I also should not have a single "q" type, but rather I should "index" the "q" type with the type of what is asked for ("dp" for questions about entities, introduced by "what" or "who"; a different index for questions introduced with "how"; with "where"; and so on). 7) Here, my designation of only the "movement" and "merge" module as "(low-level) Syntax" is not something essential. Of course, one can include also the TLG module into "Syntax", or perhaps call it "Syntax-Semantics interface". It's just a matter of words. 8) I consider this to be only a preliminary interesting idea, which is not very convincing until, first, we have a corresponding semantics which would make sense, and second, have an understanding of "movemeant" (particularly, of "WH-movement") in TLG, and third, know how to make sense of the bad stipulation I'm making there (the conversion from the dual types). Of course, these three things are interrelated. It's better to think about the analysis ingredients in a "modular" way: although I had to suggest a particular mechanism, say, for "movement" in order to be able to present the overall view on how the WH-based constructions can be worked out in a type-logical fashion, I do not insist that we should stick to these particular ancillary suggestions. (Simply, the presentation would become too abstract otherwise.) I expect they can be replaced by other analyses someone comes up with. A more tricky type for the fronted WH-items is to be expected, but I don't know what it should look like exactly; it's oversimplified for now. (Yesterday, in [Daniel's talk][Gutzmann2011] on modal particles in German, we saw a simplification of the word-order issues -- I think, its role was similar: it is done in order to be able to express the ideas about the particles independently of other complications, but still formal enough.) [Gutzmann2011]: http://linguistics.ucla.edu/people/grads/korotkova/moss/files/2011/a_gutzmann.pdf "Modal particles: Deriving syntax from semantics" 9) Also, there is the question of how to treat inflectional morphpology (particularly, on the WH-words) in TLG in a language like Russian, but also in German, and perhaps even English (with some remnants of cases). I'm putting this issue aside. 10) (A longer note on my guess about the possible similarity of the TLG analyses for Sluicing-based XPs and for the "sau"-phrases from [GutzmannTurgay2011] has been extracted from this file to [[sluicing-based-NPs-and-sau_Gutzmann.mdwn]].) [GutzmannTurgay2011]: http://linguistics.ucla.edu/people/grads/korotkova/moss/files/2011/a_gutzmann_turgay.pdf "Some (in)definiteness effects of expressive intensifiers" I'm writing this just in the hope that some of this can turn out to be interesting for you; if it is so, then it's great. If you have questions, corrections, ideas, please write me; I'll try to reply. Ivan Copies of these notes ("mirrors") are at: * ; * .