Mayfest 2025 - Constraints on Meaning
When and why are certain meanings missing?
Research
Research at our top-ranked department spans syntax, semantics, phonology, language acquisition, computational linguistics, psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics.
Connections between our core competencies are strong, with theoretical, experimental and computational work typically pursued in tandem.
A network of collaboration at all levels sustains a research climate that is both vigorous and friendly. Here new ideas develop in conversation, stimulated by the steady activity of our labs and research groups, frequent student meetings with faculty, regular talks by local and invited scholars and collaborations with the broader University of Maryland language science community, the largest and most integrated language science research community in North America.
Featured Research News
Korean topic constructions
A dissertation on topic-marking constructions in Korean.
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Joung-Ran Kim
Dates:
A dissertation on topic-marking constructions in Korean.
Issues on modern Greek sentential complementation
On the islandhood of factives in Greek, and the ambiguity of null subjects of subjunctives.
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Spyridoula Varlokosta
Dates:
This dissertation is concerned with a range of syntactic phenomena related to sentential complementation in Modern Greek and the consequences they have for the Theory of Grammar. Two types of complements are examined: (i) factive complements and their pattern of wh-extraction, and (ii) subjunctive complements and their implications for the theory of control and the licensing of case. In particular, evidence from the syntax of Modern Greek - more specifically, from the distribution of an A'-bound pronoun - is drawn against an operator approach to factive complements. It is argued that the strong islandhood observed in Modern Greek factive complements is due to the fact that they are not real complements of the subcategorizing verb but independent clauses standing in a paratactic relation to an empty nominal complement of the matrix predicate. The crosslinguistic variation attested with respect to extraction is attributed to the ability of languages such as English to form certain types of A'-chains which evidently are impossible in Modern Greek. Furthermore, upon investigation of the so-called subjunctive complements in Modern Greek it is shown that the position of their understood subject may be occupied sometimes by a pronominal pro and sometimes by an anaphoric PRO. The licensing of the two empty categories is derived through the aspectual and tense properties of these constructions. It is claimed that the presence of PRO in these configurations and the set of anaphoric properties it diplays provides evidence that the distribution of this category can be derived on a case theoretic account, along the lines of Bouchard (1984) or Chomsky and Lasnik (1991), and does not depend on the notion of government as in Chomsky (1981).
Topics in the Syntax and Semantics of Coordinate Structures
Coordination with an endocentric syntax and a semantics of group-formation.
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Alan Munn
Dates:
This thesis is concerned with developing a syntax for coordinate structures which is compatible with both the syntactic behaviour of conjunction structures and with their semantics. It argues that coordinate structures are asymmetrical, hierarchical structures that conform with X-bar theory. The conjunction head projects a phrase which is adjoined to the first conjunct. This provides an account of a number of syntactic asymmetries in conjunct ordering including agreement and binding asymmetries and provides a principled analysis of Across-the-Board extraction as instances of parasitic gaps. It further argues that the Coordinate Structure Constraint cannot be a syntactic constraint, but rather must be a condition on conjoining identical semantic categories. This provides an account of unlike category coordination which is shown to be freely possible if semantic identity is preserved and no independent syntactic constraints are violated, a result which follows from the adjunct nature of the coordinate structure. In order to account for the semantic identity, it is proposed that at Logical From, each conjunct is a predicate in an identification relation with the conjunction head, which raises to take scope over all the conjuncts. Assuming theta role assignment at LF, only the conjunction head receives a theta role; none of the conjuncts does. Because each conjunct is in a predication relation with the conjunction head at LF, the semantic identity constraint follows directly. The fact that the conjuncts do not receive a theta role accounts for their inability to act as antecedents for reflexive binding and for the fact that modal adverbs can appear inside conjoined NPs. The proposed analysis assimilates coordinate structures directly to plurals, and argues that a consequence of the proposed LF is that all natural language conjunction and disjunction is group forming rather than propositional. All semantic ambiguities between distributed and collective coordination can then be derived with the appropriate logical representation for plurals in general, rather than having a separate semantics altogether for coordination.
An I-parameter and its consequences
A new dissertation on Chinese syntax.
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Jie Xu
Dates:
A new dissertation on Chinese syntax.
Topics in the syntax of nonstandard English
A GB analysis of null copulas and negative concord in African American English.
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Stefan Edmund Martin
Dates:
Discusses two cononical systactic phenomena of nonstandard English dialects: Pleonastic negation (e.g., He ain't got no mone) and null copula sentences (e.g., He sick) in terms of Government Binding Theory.
On modularity and compilation in a government-binding parser
How to make a parser computationally efficient even when it is based on very general linguistic principles.
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Paola Merlo
Dates:
How to make a parser computationally efficient even when it is based on very general linguistic principles.
On serial verb constructions
A dissertation on serial verbs in Chinese and elsewhere.
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Daoping Wu
Dates:
A dissertation on serial verbs in Chinese and elsewhere.