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Scholarly Works (7 results)

  • Article
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UC Davis Previously Published Works (1995)
This paper shows that neither of the two most obvious potential analyses of the Brazilian Portuguese periphrastic causative construction is viable and that its various properties invite us to adopt instead a hitherto under-appreciated type of analysis that I call BACKWARD CONTROL. This arises as a natural possibility under a conceptual semantic approach to causativization and control (Jackendoff 1990, Farrell 1995).
    Cover page: Backward control in Brazilian Portuguese
    • Article
    • Peer Reviewed
    UC Davis Previously Published Works (2005)
    This paper offers a comprehensive analysis of the constituent-structure and linear-order properties of English transitive and intransitive V-P constructions involving so-called ‘particles’ (turn on the lights/the lights on, mess up the song/the song up, shut up, sit down, etc.). Drawing on both standard and certain new evidence and arguments, it is proposed that V-P constructions generally come in one or both of two varieties: lexical compounds (mess up in mess up the song) and/or discontinuous verbs, i.e. lexemes with more than one piece projected as a word or phrase (mess ... up in mess the song up), and that the alternation, for those that have both manifestations, reflects different argument structure possibilities for a lexeme with the same overall conceptual semantics. The internal structure of VPs built on V-P lexemes is examined in some detail. The popular ‘small-clause’ approach, according to which the DP of transitive V-P structures is the subject of a phrase that has the P as its predicate, is shown to be problematic, primarily because there in fact exists a true small clause construction that can have a P as its predicate and the putative small clause of cases like mess the song up systematically lacks the defining properties of this construction. The word order restrictions that the small-clause approach is designed, in part, to account for are shown to follow from a set of independently needed linearization constraints, which are motivated by functional principles.
      Cover page: English verb-preposition constructions: Constituency and order
      • Peer Reviewed
      UC Davis Previously Published Works (2005)
      This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of a hitherto understudied distinct class of subject-containing phrases apparently headed by a preposition, exemplified by sentences such as Try to imagine the pope in a bikini . Relying on standard kinds of evidence for phrasal status, it is argued that these are true prepositional small clauses (PrepSCs), i.e., subject-containing phrases lacking tense and auxiliaries and headed by a preposition, which differ in important ways from what has more commonly, and with considerably less motivation, been analyzed as a small clause consisting of a DP and a particle/preposition (e.g., Kayne 1985, Aarts 1989, Guéron 1990, Dikken 1995, Haegeman and Guéron 1999). It is further shown that true prepositional small clauses are profitably analyzed as mixed-category phrases whose head is a dual category word, as in Lapointe 1993. Under this analysis, their head belongs to the two categories D and P and therefore projects both a PP node containing the preposition and its complement and a higher DP node containing the subject phrase and the PP. This analysis is supported, in large part, by the same kind of evidence that has been used to argue for a mixed-category analysis of possessive gerund phrases, which have the internal syntax of VPs and the external syntax of nominal phrases (NPs or DPs). PrepSCs have the external syntax of DPs but the internal syntax of PPs. The prepositional character of these phrases is accounted for by the inner PP level; their DP-like distribution is accounted for by the outer DP level.
        Cover page: Prepositional small clauses in English: A dual-category analysis
        • Article
        • Peer Reviewed
        UC Davis Previously Published Works (1992)

        An understanding of the syntactic and semantic properties of the two constructions illustrated in the sentences below has been an important achievement of generative grammar and has played a key role in the development of current syntactic theories.

        a. It seems that the tire's flat.

        b. The tire seems to be flat.

        As is well known, in classical transformational grammar and its derivatives in which transformations are preserved in some form, (b)-type sentences are related, in part, to the corresponding (a)-type sentences by RAISING, a phenomenon whereby what is the subject of the embedded clause at an underlying level of representation becomes the subject of the main clause at a superficial level of representation. More precisely, in the principles and parameters framework, as developed in Chomsky (1981) and much subsequent work, it is assumed that such verbs have no external argument (or underlying subject) and subcategorize for either a tensed or infinitival clausal complement. When the complement is infinitival, its subject must move into the empty subject position of the main clause in order to be Case-marked, since there is no Case-assigning governor of the embedded subject position and all NPs must be assigned Case; the result is the construction in (b), in which a trace of the moved NP occupies the embedded subject position. When the complement is tensed, the embedded subject finds a Case-assigning governor within the complement itself (i.e., the agreement inflection); the result is the construction in (a), in which the underlyingly empty main clause subject position is filled by the expletive pronoun it.

        This paper considers some different potential solutions to the problem posed by paraphrases of (a-b) such as The tire seems like it's flat, which looks like it has raising while at the same time having an overt pronoun in a Case-marked position in the complement clause.

          Cover page: Comparative Complementation with Verbs of Appearance in English
          • Article
          • Peer Reviewed
          UC Davis Previously Published Works (2014)
          In Imbabura Quechua, accusative case occurs on core arguments that are patient-like to some degree, including patient, theme, causee, goal, and experiencer. There are double-accusative causative and transfer-ofpossession constructions that have the kind of typical asymmetrical objectf properties that are handled straightforwardly in Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG) by the distinction between primary object (OBJ) and secondary object (OBJ†). The accusative case marker can be analyzed as going on both kinds of object because it is constrained to occur on NPs with the GF feature specification [+o]. In addition, there is a desiderative construction that can have no apparent subject and the experiencerargument realized with accusative case, possibly in addition to another patient-like accusative argument. In this case, the more patient-like accusative argument behaves like an OBJ† and the experiencer like an OBJ in some ways and like af subject in others. In earlier analyses (Jake 1985, Hermon 1985), the experiencer is analyzed as an object at some level and a subject at another. The properties of this construction can be accounted for in LFG by analyzing the experiencer as OBJ and attributing its subject-like properties to its status as pivot (PIV) in the sense of Falk (2006).
            Cover page: Case and grammatical functions in Imbabura Quechua: An LFG approach
            • Article
            • Peer Reviewed
            LBL Publications (2020)
            We consider a flexible mechanical metamaterial comprising an elastomeric matrix with an embedded square array of circular holes. First, we use the deflated continuation technique of bifurcation analysis to explore its complex energy landscape, characterized by multiple bifurcations from which stable and unstable branches emanate. We then investigate how this landscape can be used to design materials with advanced programmability. We find that the response of the system can be constantly reprogrammed through local manipulation, moving it from one stable branch to another, and that small targeted imperfections can be harnessed to enhance such programmability.
              Cover page: Navigating the landscape of nonlinear mechanical metamaterials for advanced programmabilityCreative Commons 'BY' version 4.0 license
              • Article
              • Peer Reviewed
              UC Davis Previously Published Works (2014)
              Lewis Carroll's English word game Doublets is represented as a system of networks with each node being an English word and each connectivity edge confirming that its two ending words are equal in letter length, but different by exactly one letter. We show that this system, which we call the Doublets net, constitutes a complex body of linguistic knowledge concerning English word structure that has computable multiscale features. Distributed morphological, phonological and orthographic constraints and the language's local redundancy are seen at the node level. Phonological communities are seen at the network level. And a balancing act between the language's global efficiency and redundancy is seen at the system level. We develop a new measure of intrinsic node-to-node distance and a computational algorithm, called community geometry, which reveal the implicit multiscale structure within binary networks. Because the Doublets net is a modular complex cognitive system, the community geometry and computable multi-scale structural information may provide a foundation for understanding computational learning in many systems whose network structure has yet to be fully analyzed.
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