Uncentered attitude reports

Journal of Semantics · 2025-10-14 · 1 citations

Abstract I argue for a semantic distinction between two classes of attitude complements. One class is best modeled in terms of possible worlds compatible with what the attitude holder believes/says, in the tradition of Hintikka. The other is best modeled in terms of centered worlds representing the de se perspective of the attitude holder, in the tradition of Chierchia (in turn inspired by Lewis). Much work has assumed that all attitude complements are to be treated semantically in this second manner. I refer to this hypothesis as Uniformity. Uniformity predicts that all attitude complements should be equally semantically able to host elements that must refer de se, such as shifted first person indexicals or relative tenses. Drawing on new evidence from Nez Perce, I demonstrate that this prediction is false, and argue that the best explanation for the distribution of dedicated de se elements comes from variation in whether attitude complements denote sets of centered tuples or rather sets of possible worlds.

Current models of Agree

Berkeley Papers in Formal Linguistics · 2025-07-10 · 2 citations

This paper is an opinionated survey of issues and perspectives in current models of Agree, understood as a single abstract grammatical operation common to all syntactic long-distance dependencies. I begin with a brief introduction to Chomsky's 2000, 2001 foundational work on Agree. I then review three strands of literature that have in notable ways chipped away at the conceptual foundations of that work in the course of improving the cross-linguistic empirical adequacy of the theory. These center on valuation and relativized probing, in section 3; defaults and failure to value, in section 4; and the question of whether goals must be made “active” by uninterpretable features, in section 5. In section 6, I review an ongoing debate about the directionality of Agree in light of the issues raised for uninterpretable features in sections 3-5. The paper concludes with a presentation of what I see as a way forward for the theory of Agree: the interaction/satisfaction theory, which provides a new conceptual grounding for Agree that in various respects makes sense of the empirical landscape uncovered by the past two decades of intensive research on this topic.

Mayan animacy hierarchy effects and the dynamics of Agree

Natural Language & Linguistic Theory · 2025-04-03 · 3 citations

Abstract In many Mayan languages, combinations of subjects and objects are restricted by relative animacy hierarchy effects: subjects must be at least as high as objects in terms of animacy. Building empirically on a novel description of Chuj, as well as reported data for ten additional Mayan languages from across the family, we offer a new approach to these effects. Our analysis builds theoretically on recent work tracing person/animacy restrictions to the nature of featural representations and the operation Agree, bringing this literature together with current understandings of Mayan syntax and the high-/low-absolutive parameter. We argue that the cross-Mayan data— relative hierarchy effects holding in the same way across both high-absolutive and low-absolutive languages—are best handled by, and bring new support for, an interaction/satisfaction approach to Agree and hierarchy effects (Deal 2024). Our analysis also casts new light on key topics in Mayan syntax, including the proper analysis of ergativity and the nature of obviation effects (Aissen 1997).

Constraints on Agreement

Annual Review of Linguistics · 2025-10-29

Minimalist research on syntactic dependencies over the past two decades has sought a unified understanding of the behavior of ϕ-agreement (such as subject–verb agreement) and of more traditionally studied long-distance dependencies, such as wh -movement. Both have been attributed to a single abstract operation, Agree. In this review, I discuss proposed constraints on Agree-based dependencies arising from the structures in which Agree operates, from the features and feature structures in terms of which Agree is stated, and from the specifications of participants to Agree (probes and goals) that control fine-grained aspects of how features are transferred (interaction) and when probing halts (satisfaction). Relevant theoretical concepts include cyclic structure building, minimality, phases, and feature geometries.

Dependent Case by Agree: Ergative in Shawi

Linguistic Inquiry · 2024-03-07 · 3 citations

Ergative and accusative behave as dependent cases insofar as their appearance on a nominal depends on the presence of another nominal in the same domain. Recent work has taken the phenomenon of case dependency to challenge the idea that case is assigned via Agree. Focusing on Shawi (Kawapanan; Peru), we show not only that case dependency can be captured via Agree, but also that doing so opens up a new way of understanding the typology of global case splits. Ergative in Shawi appears when the subject is at least as high as the object on the person hierarchy—a global split—and can be accompanied by explicit realization of the object’s features on the subject (“object agreement on the subject”). We propose that ergative arises in Shawi when a probe on v Agrees with both the object and the subject, transferring object features to the subject; these features are spelled out as ergative case and as object agreement. In general, we show that dependent cases, both ergative and accusative, can be seen as a morphological outcome of Agree between a probe and a second goal, realizing features on that goal that were transferred from a previous goal in an earlier step of Agree.

Topics In The Nez Perce Verb

ScholarWorks@UMassAmherst (University of Massachusetts Amherst) · 2021-04-13 · 14 citations

This dissertation investigates several topics in the morphology, syntax and semantics of the Nez Perce verb and verbal clause. The first part of the dissertation focuses on the morphological segmentation of the Nez Perce verb and on the semantic description of the verb and clause. Chapter 1 provides a grammar sketch. Chapter 2 discusses the morphology, syntax and semantics of verbal suffix complexes for tense, space, aspect and modality. Chapter 3 investigates the modal suffix <em>o'qa,</em> which is variously translated <em>can, could (have), would (have), should, may,</em> and<em>must,</em> and used to make circumstantial, deontic and counterfactual claims. I argue that this suffix has only a non-epistemic possibility meaning, and that apparent necessity meanings are artifacts of translation. Chapter 4 investigates the future suffix <em>u',</em> generally translated <em>will.</em> Based on evidence from truth-value judgment tasks, conjunctions of <em>u'</em> sentences describing incompatible states of affairs, and negation, I argue that <em>u'</em> sentences have non- modal truth conditions. I also discuss challenges to this analysis from free choice licensing and from certain acceptable conjunctions of incompatible <em>u'</em> sentences. The second part of the dissertation explores the syntax of the verb and clause as revealed by the system of case-marking. Nez Perce case follows a tripartite pattern, with no case on intransitive subjects, and both ergative and objective cases in transitive clauses. Transitive clauses may alternatively surface with <em>no</em> case, however. I show that caseless transitive clauses in Nez Perce come in two syntactically and semantically distinguished varieties. In one variety, the subject binds a possessor phrase within the object. Chapter 6 takes up this construction together with possessor raising, which I analyze as involving movement to a [straight theta]-position. I argue that the absence of case under possessor-binding reflects an anaphor agreement effect. In the other variety of caseless clause, the object is a weak indefinite. Chapter 7 concludes that such objects are not full DPs. In chapter 8, I propose a morphological theory of case-marking which captures the cased/caseless distinction for transitive clauses. Both ergative and objective cases are analyzed as morphological results of the syntactic system of agreement.

Interaction, Satisfaction, and the PCC

Linguistic Inquiry · 2021-11-24 · 48 citations

The Person-Case Constraint (PCC) is a family of restrictions on the relative person of the two objects of a ditransitive. PCC effects offer a testing ground for theories of Agree and of syntactic features, both those on nominals and those found on agreement probes. This article offers a new theory of PCC effects in an interaction/satisfaction theory of Agree (Deal 2015a) and shows the advantages of this framework in capturing PCC typology. On this model, probes are specified for interaction, determining which features will be copied to them, and for satisfaction, determining which features will cause probing to stop. Applied to the PCC, this theory (a) captures all four types of PCC effect recognized by Nevins (2007) under a unified notion of Agree; (b) captures the restriction of PCC effects to contexts of “Double Weakness” in many prominent examples (e.g., in Italian, Greek, and Basque, where PCC effects hold only when both objects are expressed with clitics); (c) naturally extends to PCC effects in syntactic environments without visible clitics or agreement for one or both objects, as well as to the absence of PCC effects in some languages with clitics or agreement for both objects. Two refinements of the interaction/ satisfaction theory are offered: a new notation for probes’ interaction and satisfaction specifications, clarifying the absence of uninterpretable/unvalued features as drivers of Agree; and a proposal for the way that probes’ behavior may change over the course of a derivation, dubbed dynamic interaction.

A Theory of Indexical Shift: Meaning, Grammar, and Crosslinguistic Variation

2020-10-13 · 27 citations

"This book answers both the 'what' and the 'why' question raised by indexical shift in crosslinguistic perspective. What are the possible profiles of an indexical shifting language, and why do we find these profiles and not various equally conceivable others? Drawing both from the literature (published and unpublished) and from original fieldwork on the language Nez Perce, Amy Rose Deal puts forward several major generalizations about indexical shift crosslinguistically and present a theory that attempts to explain them. This account has consequences for the way we think about the semantics of attitude verbs, the nature of contexts, the typology of first person, and the relationship between indexicals and logophors, of course along with numerous consequences for the analysis of particular languages (e.g. Nez Perce, Uyghur, Korean, English, Zazaki, Amharic, Mishar Tatar). The book contains numerous glossed examples from a range of languages (including a detailed description of Nez Perce indexical shift, based on original fieldwork, as described above); a bibliography; and an appendix providing grammatical background about Nez Perce"--

A Theory of Indexical Shift

The MIT Press eBooks · 2020-10-13 · 44 citations

A comprehensive overview of the semantics and syntax of indexical shift that develops a constrained typology of the phenomenon across languages. The phenomenon of indexical shift—whereby indexicals embedded in speech or attitude reports draw their meaning from an attitude event rather than the utterance context—has been reported in languages spanning five continents and at least ten language families. In this book, Amy Rose Deal offers a comprehensive overview of the semantics and syntax of indexical shift and develops a constrained typology of the phenomenon across languages—a picture of variation that is both rich enough to capture the known facts and restrictive enough to make predictions about currently unknown data points. Deal draws on studies of indexical shift in a broad range of languages, focusing especially on Nez Perce, Zazaki, Korean, and Uyghur. Using new data from fieldwork, Deal presents an in-depth case study of indexical shift in the Nez Perce language, and uses this evidence to propose a novel theoretical approach based on the meaning and grammar of shifty operators. She explores several dimensions of variation related to indexical shift across and within languages, showing how the cross-linguistic patterns can be explained (and constrained) within the shifty operator view. Finally, she contrasts indexical shift with surface-similar phenomena, clarifying the controls needed to test the constrained typology on new data sets.

Third readings by semantic scope lowering: Prolepsis in Tiwa

Movebank · 2019-07-24 · 1 citations

Tiwa (Tibeto-Burman; India) attitude reports allow for proleptic objects, base-generated in the matrix clause but semantically related to a bound pronoun in the embedded clause. Unlike prolepsis in German (Salzmann, 2017b) and Nez Perce (Deal, 2018), which only allow for classic de re readings of the proleptic object, Tiwa prolepsis supports both classic de re and third readings. We provide an analysis that derives third readings via semantic scope lowering, an analytical relative of semantic reconstruction, and consider cross-linguistic implications.