Niina Ning Zhang (National Chung Cheng University) will present a hybrid colloquium in the Totem Field Studios Reading Room and online at this zoom link. Title and abstract below.
Hiding the syntactic category of a gap in a clause
A clause is often seen occurring in a non-clause position (e.g., Susie was [you can imagine how angry] at Tom). In such a foregrounding gap-filling clause, there is always an element that matches the lexical category of the gap in the host clause (the adjective [angry] in the example). This element, called Pivot, must be interpreted in the gap-filling clause, within the scope of any clause- internal modal or negative operator. The talk argues that a null element is merged with the gap-filling clause, to get its lexical category valued by the Pivot. After the valuation, the null element projects the valued lexical category, which can further be under an extended functional projection. It is this projection, not the Pivot or the gap-filling clause, that occurs in the gap of the host clause. This explains why some functional properties of a Pivot, e.g., definiteness, may be mismatched with the gap in the host clause. The talk explores a possible valuation of syntactic category features, in addition to other kinds of formal features.