Norvin Richards
Biographic Data
| ID | 3601860 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Norvin Richards |
| GIVEN NAMES | Norvin |
| FAMILY NAME | Richards |
| SIGNATURE | RICHARDS N |
| AFFILIATIONS | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 212 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1987 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Speakers encode silent structures
Do speakers encode abstract structural representations devoid of perceptual-motor content, that is, phonology? In six recall-based production experiments, we examined whether English speakers encode the null complementizer in sentence production using structural priming , the tendency for speakers to reuse the structure they have recently encountered. The results show that the null complementizer can be primed across distinct construction types a…
Finding something to lean on
Phrases in a number of syntactic contexts are required, in a variety of languages, to end in their heads. This article offers a unified theory of the relevant properties of these contexts and of why the phenomena in question, while widespread, are not completely universal. The theory makes use of proposals made independently in contiguity theory (Richards 2010, 2016): the relevant syntactic contexts are argued to involve a prosodically dependent …
Reconstructing Stress in Wôpanâak
Weak Heads at the Interface
This paper proposes that weak heads in Chomsky’s (2015) sense are not only syntactically weak (i.e., unable to provide a label on their own), but also morpho-phonologically weak. To illustrate how this works, this paper examines temporal adverbial clauses (TACs) in Japanese, showing that the presence/absence of what we call Geis-ambiguity in Japanese TACs correlates with the presence/absence of yori ‘than’ in the clauses. Based on Miyamoto’s (199…
Immobile wh-phrases in Tagalog
I argue that overt movement cannot always be triggered by a need to create a specifier for the head bearing the Probe, as commonly assumed. In Tagalog, I claim, the best description of the behavior of wh-phrases is that they must become linearly adjacent to C; I show that Tagalog wh-phrases in fact occupy several different structural positions which are consistent with this linear requirement
Contiguity Theory and Pied-Piping
In this article, I apply the conditions of Contiguity Theory ( Richards 2016 ) to the problem of pied-piping. I derive the conditions on pied-piping discovered by Cable ( 2007 , 2010a , b ) and account for the connection discovered by Uribe-Etxebarria (2002) between the conditions on wh-in-situ in a given language and the conditions on pied-piping in that language. In the end, as in Cable's approach, pied-piping dissolves as a phenomenon; the sam…
Parental Love
This chapter begins from the intuition that love comes in different forms, and that the forms differ in the objects to which they are suited. It applies those thoughts to parental love. It identifies a sense in which it would be better if a parent’s love had certain qualities. It identifies some of those qualities and explains what it is about parenthood that makes them auspicious in a parent’s love. It draws contrasts between love of the kind th…
Two Components of Long-Distance Extraction
This article presents novel data from the Nilotic language Dinka, in which the syntax of successive-cyclic movement is remarkably transparent. We show that Dinka provides strong support for the view that long-distance extraction proceeds through the edge of every verb phrase and every clause on the path of movement ( Chomsky 1986 , 2000 , 2001 , 2008 ). In addition, long-distance dependencies in Dinka offer evidence that extraction from a CP requ…
Lardil "Case Stacking" and the Timing of Case Assignment
Lardil (Tangkic, Australia) allows nominals to surface with multiple case affixes. One condition on this so-called case stacking is that when new morphology is added to a nominal with a semantically uninterpretable Case (such as accusative), the Case is dropped; a nominal with a semantically interpretable Case (such as instrumental), by contrast, can stack more morphology outside the Case morpheme. I argue that uninterpretable Cases in these exam…
Uttering Trees
A study of the interface between syntax and phonology that seeks deeper explanations for such syntactic problems as case phenomena and the distribution of overt and covert wh-movement. In Uttering Trees, Norvin Richards investigates the conditions imposed upon syntax by the need to create syntactic objects that can be interpreted by phonolog—that is, objects that can be pronounced. Drawing extensively on linguistic data from a variety of language…
Lives No One Should Have To Live
It seems to follow that the first responsibility of those who plan to create children is to be very careful not to err in this way. I am going to argue, however, that parents who think in these terms would make a se rious moral error, if their reasoning did not follow a pattern I will de scribe. I believe the error they would make is a way of failing to respect autonomy as we should. It will certainly be necessary to explain how that could apply …
Nouns, verbs, and hidden structure in Tagalog
Kaufman’s article is rich in interesting facts about Tagalog, many of them gathered from underexplored corners of the language. Space constraints prevent me from discussing at length many of his insights; I will instead devote this space to some concerns I have with some of his conclusions
Phase Edge and Extraction
In this article, we examine evidence for the phase theory of movement (Chomsky 2000, 2001) in the context of Tagalog, arguing in particular that Tagalog has overt morphology that signals movement of arguments to checkan EPP-feature on the head of the vP phase. We show that this morphology interacts with extraction in ways Chomsky's theory leads us to expect, and we develop a theory of the Tagalog facts that also accounts for the effects of Huang'…
Against Bans on Lowering
A number of syntactic theories posit explicit bans on lowering operations. Such bans are largely redundant on cyclic approaches to the syntactic derivation, which can rule out most instances of lowering without an explicit ban. I concentrate here on one instance of lowering not ruled out by the cycle, namely, an Agree relation between a probe and a goal in the probe's own specifier. Facts about Bulgarian wh-movement suggest that operations of thi…
Movement in Language
This book is the most comprehensive, integrated explanatory account yet published of the properties of question formations and their variation across languages. It makes an important contribution to the current debate over whether syntax should be understood derivationally, arguing that the best model of language is one in which sentences are constructed in a series of operations that precede or follow each other in time. The central problem it a…
An Idiomatic Argument for Lexical Decomposition
Idioms have long been regarded as conforming to some kind of locality requirement constraining the relations between their parts. This requirement has taken various forms in the literature (see Marantz 1996, Nunberg, Sag, and Wasow 1994, and references cited there), and it will not be important here to develop a specific version of it; in the interests of concreteness, we might assume (1), adopted from Koopman and Sportiche 1991. (1) If X is the …
An Island Effect in Japanese
Another Look at Tagalog Subjects
The Principle of Minimal Compliance
The syntactic literature discusses a number of phenomena in which a constraint that rules out a certain class of syntactic dependencies fails to rule out structures containing both an ill-formed dependency and a well-formed dependency; well-formed dependencies seem to be able to "help" dependencies that would be ill formed in isolation. In this article I attempt to provide a unified account of these phenomena. I postulate a principle that allows …
Loyalty
Journal Article Book Reviews Get access Loyalty: an Essay on the Morality of Relationships. By George P. Fletcher. (Oxford UP, 1993. PP. xii + 211. Price £l6.95.) Gerard J. Hughes Gerard J. Hughes Heythrop College, University of London Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 45, Issue 180, July 1995, Pages 403–405, https://doi.org/10.2307/2219669 Published: 01 July 1995
Acting Under Duress
Journal Article Acting Under Duress Get access Norvin Richards Norvin Richards University of Alabama Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 37, Issue 146, January 1987, Pages 21–36, https://doi.org/10.2307/2220059 Published: 01 January 1987
Phase Edge and Extraction
In this article, we examine evidence for the phase theory of movement (Chomsky 2000, 2001) in the context of Tagalog, arguing in particular that Tagalog has overt morphology that signals movement of arguments to checkan EPP-feature on the head of the vP phase. We show that this morphology interacts with extraction in ways Chomsky's theory leads us to expect, and we develop a theory of the Tagalog facts that also accounts for the effects of Huang'…
Two Components of Long-Distance Extraction
This article presents novel data from the Nilotic language Dinka, in which the syntax of successive-cyclic movement is remarkably transparent. We show that Dinka provides strong support for the view that long-distance extraction proceeds through the edge of every verb phrase and every clause on the path of movement ( Chomsky 1986 , 2000 , 2001 , 2008 ). In addition, long-distance dependencies in Dinka offer evidence that extraction from a CP requ…
Lardil "Case Stacking" and the Timing of Case Assignment
Lardil (Tangkic, Australia) allows nominals to surface with multiple case affixes. One condition on this so-called case stacking is that when new morphology is added to a nominal with a semantically uninterpretable Case (such as accusative), the Case is dropped; a nominal with a semantically interpretable Case (such as instrumental), by contrast, can stack more morphology outside the Case morpheme. I argue that uninterpretable Cases in these exam…
The Principle of Minimal Compliance
The syntactic literature discusses a number of phenomena in which a constraint that rules out a certain class of syntactic dependencies fails to rule out structures containing both an ill-formed dependency and a well-formed dependency; well-formed dependencies seem to be able to "help" dependencies that would be ill formed in isolation. In this article I attempt to provide a unified account of these phenomena. I postulate a principle that allows …
An Idiomatic Argument for Lexical Decomposition
Idioms have long been regarded as conforming to some kind of locality requirement constraining the relations between their parts. This requirement has taken various forms in the literature (see Marantz 1996, Nunberg, Sag, and Wasow 1994, and references cited there), and it will not be important here to develop a specific version of it; in the interests of concreteness, we might assume (1), adopted from Koopman and Sportiche 1991. (1) If X is the …
Against Bans on Lowering
A number of syntactic theories posit explicit bans on lowering operations. Such bans are largely redundant on cyclic approaches to the syntactic derivation, which can rule out most instances of lowering without an explicit ban. I concentrate here on one instance of lowering not ruled out by the cycle, namely, an Agree relation between a probe and a goal in the probe's own specifier. Facts about Bulgarian wh-movement suggest that operations of thi…
Contiguity Theory and Pied-Piping
In this article, I apply the conditions of Contiguity Theory ( Richards 2016 ) to the problem of pied-piping. I derive the conditions on pied-piping discovered by Cable ( 2007 , 2010a , b ) and account for the connection discovered by Uribe-Etxebarria (2002) between the conditions on wh-in-situ in a given language and the conditions on pied-piping in that language. In the end, as in Cable's approach, pied-piping dissolves as a phenomenon; the sam…
Acting Under Duress
Journal Article Acting Under Duress Get access Norvin Richards Norvin Richards University of Alabama Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 37, Issue 146, January 1987, Pages 21–36, https://doi.org/10.2307/2220059 Published: 01 January 1987
Loyalty
Journal Article Book Reviews Get access Loyalty: an Essay on the Morality of Relationships. By George P. Fletcher. (Oxford UP, 1993. PP. xii + 211. Price £l6.95.) Gerard J. Hughes Gerard J. Hughes Heythrop College, University of London Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 45, Issue 180, July 1995, Pages 403–405, https://doi.org/10.2307/2219669 Published: 01 July 1995
The Principle of Minimal Compliance
The syntactic literature discusses a number of phenomena in which a constraint that rules out a certain class of syntactic dependencies fails to rule out structures containing both an ill-formed dependency and a well-formed dependency; well-formed dependencies seem to be able to "help" dependencies that would be ill formed in isolation. In this article I attempt to provide a unified account of these phenomena. I postulate a principle that allows …
An Island Effect in Japanese
Another Look at Tagalog Subjects
Movement in Language
This book is the most comprehensive, integrated explanatory account yet published of the properties of question formations and their variation across languages. It makes an important contribution to the current debate over whether syntax should be understood derivationally, arguing that the best model of language is one in which sentences are constructed in a series of operations that precede or follow each other in time. The central problem it a…
An Idiomatic Argument for Lexical Decomposition
Idioms have long been regarded as conforming to some kind of locality requirement constraining the relations between their parts. This requirement has taken various forms in the literature (see Marantz 1996, Nunberg, Sag, and Wasow 1994, and references cited there), and it will not be important here to develop a specific version of it; in the interests of concreteness, we might assume (1), adopted from Koopman and Sportiche 1991. (1) If X is the …
Against Bans on Lowering
A number of syntactic theories posit explicit bans on lowering operations. Such bans are largely redundant on cyclic approaches to the syntactic derivation, which can rule out most instances of lowering without an explicit ban. I concentrate here on one instance of lowering not ruled out by the cycle, namely, an Agree relation between a probe and a goal in the probe's own specifier. Facts about Bulgarian wh-movement suggest that operations of thi…
Phase Edge and Extraction
In this article, we examine evidence for the phase theory of movement (Chomsky 2000, 2001) in the context of Tagalog, arguing in particular that Tagalog has overt morphology that signals movement of arguments to checkan EPP-feature on the head of the vP phase. We show that this morphology interacts with extraction in ways Chomsky's theory leads us to expect, and we develop a theory of the Tagalog facts that also accounts for the effects of Huang'…
Nouns, verbs, and hidden structure in Tagalog
Kaufman’s article is rich in interesting facts about Tagalog, many of them gathered from underexplored corners of the language. Space constraints prevent me from discussing at length many of his insights; I will instead devote this space to some concerns I have with some of his conclusions
Uttering Trees
A study of the interface between syntax and phonology that seeks deeper explanations for such syntactic problems as case phenomena and the distribution of overt and covert wh-movement. In Uttering Trees, Norvin Richards investigates the conditions imposed upon syntax by the need to create syntactic objects that can be interpreted by phonolog—that is, objects that can be pronounced. Drawing extensively on linguistic data from a variety of language…
Lives No One Should Have To Live
It seems to follow that the first responsibility of those who plan to create children is to be very careful not to err in this way. I am going to argue, however, that parents who think in these terms would make a se rious moral error, if their reasoning did not follow a pattern I will de scribe. I believe the error they would make is a way of failing to respect autonomy as we should. It will certainly be necessary to explain how that could apply …
Lardil "Case Stacking" and the Timing of Case Assignment
Lardil (Tangkic, Australia) allows nominals to surface with multiple case affixes. One condition on this so-called case stacking is that when new morphology is added to a nominal with a semantically uninterpretable Case (such as accusative), the Case is dropped; a nominal with a semantically interpretable Case (such as instrumental), by contrast, can stack more morphology outside the Case morpheme. I argue that uninterpretable Cases in these exam…
Two Components of Long-Distance Extraction
This article presents novel data from the Nilotic language Dinka, in which the syntax of successive-cyclic movement is remarkably transparent. We show that Dinka provides strong support for the view that long-distance extraction proceeds through the edge of every verb phrase and every clause on the path of movement ( Chomsky 1986 , 2000 , 2001 , 2008 ). In addition, long-distance dependencies in Dinka offer evidence that extraction from a CP requ…
Parental Love
This chapter begins from the intuition that love comes in different forms, and that the forms differ in the objects to which they are suited. It applies those thoughts to parental love. It identifies a sense in which it would be better if a parent’s love had certain qualities. It identifies some of those qualities and explains what it is about parenthood that makes them auspicious in a parent’s love. It draws contrasts between love of the kind th…
Contiguity Theory and Pied-Piping
In this article, I apply the conditions of Contiguity Theory ( Richards 2016 ) to the problem of pied-piping. I derive the conditions on pied-piping discovered by Cable ( 2007 , 2010a , b ) and account for the connection discovered by Uribe-Etxebarria (2002) between the conditions on wh-in-situ in a given language and the conditions on pied-piping in that language. In the end, as in Cable's approach, pied-piping dissolves as a phenomenon; the sam…
Immobile wh-phrases in Tagalog
I argue that overt movement cannot always be triggered by a need to create a specifier for the head bearing the Probe, as commonly assumed. In Tagalog, I claim, the best description of the behavior of wh-phrases is that they must become linearly adjacent to C; I show that Tagalog wh-phrases in fact occupy several different structural positions which are consistent with this linear requirement
Weak Heads at the Interface
This paper proposes that weak heads in Chomsky’s (2015) sense are not only syntactically weak (i.e., unable to provide a label on their own), but also morpho-phonologically weak. To illustrate how this works, this paper examines temporal adverbial clauses (TACs) in Japanese, showing that the presence/absence of what we call Geis-ambiguity in Japanese TACs correlates with the presence/absence of yori ‘than’ in the clauses. Based on Miyamoto’s (199…
Speakers encode silent structures
Do speakers encode abstract structural representations devoid of perceptual-motor content, that is, phonology? In six recall-based production experiments, we examined whether English speakers encode the null complementizer in sentence production using structural priming , the tendency for speakers to reuse the structure they have recently encountered. The results show that the null complementizer can be primed across distinct construction types a…
Finding something to lean on
Phrases in a number of syntactic contexts are required, in a variety of languages, to end in their heads. This article offers a unified theory of the relevant properties of these contexts and of why the phenomena in question, while widespread, are not completely universal. The theory makes use of proposals made independently in contiguity theory (Richards 2010, 2016): the relevant syntactic contexts are argued to involve a prosodically dependent …
Reconstructing Stress in Wôpanâak
Philosophy (17 works) · Linguistics (15 works) · Computer Science (14 works) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (12 works) · Epistemology (6 works) · Natural language processing (5 works) · Natural Language Processing Techniques (5 works) · Syntax (5 works) · Artificial Intelligence (4 works) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (4 works)