Against The Null Comitative Analysis of Partial Control

Bibliographic Data

ID4828166
AuthorsIdan Landau (0000-0002-5583-1798, Ben Gurion University, corresponding author)
Year2016
Volume47
Issue3
Pages572-580
Publication date2016-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueLinguistic Inquiry (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0024-3892 • E-ISSN: 1530-9150
PublisherThe MIT Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1162/ling_a_00222
OpenAlexW2499185125
LanguageEN
Citations received8
References cited16

In partial control (PC), the null subject of a (typically) nonfinite complement is understood to be a group consisting of the referent of the matrix controller plus some other contextually salient individual(s) (Wilkinson 1971, Landau 2000, 2013).1On one analysis, PC PRO is syntactically singular but semantically plural at LF, like standard collective nouns (e.g., team, committee). A silent operator, licensed by certain matrix verbs, expands the reference of PRO to obtain the group reference (Pearson 2015, Landau 2016). On an alternative analysis, PC PRO is both syntactically and semantically singular. The PC reading arises indirectly from a null comitative phrase inside the complement (Hornstein 2003, Słodowicz 2008, Boeckx, Hornstein, and Nunes 2010:185, and specifically for Romance languages, Sheehan 2012, 2014). The two analyses are depicted in (2a) and (2b), respectively.2The two analyses differ on whether or not they take PC PRO to be semantically plural and on whether or not they posit a null comitative phrase. Therefore, grammatical tests that are sensitive to these properties can choose between them. Indeed, in earlier work (Landau 2007) I have pointed out that the null comitative analysis (barring stipulations) overgenerates nonexisting PC readings in simple clauses (3a) and undergenerates existing PC readings in complements containing collective predicates that do not take comitative phrases (3c) (see also the arguments in Sheehan 2014 against the null comitative analysis for English).In fact, simple reciprocal verbs in English resist a comitative phrase but can still appear in a PC complement.The question remains, however, whether the null comitative analysis is a viable account of sentences like (2b). Three novel arguments are presented here to show that it is not.First, genuine collective nouns cannot bind singular personal reflexives, even when the intended referent of the latter is included in the group denoted by the noun (5a). Individual subjects of sentences with comitative phrases, however, may perfectly bind such emphatic reflexives (5b).PC PRO patterns with the former and not with the latter. This is unexpected if PC PRO is semantically singular and the plural reading arises from a null comitative phrase (note that (6) has an irrelevant reading where the emphatic reflexive is construed upstairs).Second, if PC PRO is semantically singular (as the null comitative analysis has it), it should be able to saturate a secondary predicate whose domain is restricted to nonplural individuals. Consider, for example, predicates like as a free man.In fact, PC PRO patterns with (7b–c) in rejecting this secondary predicate, and not with (7a).Third, a singular subject with a discontinuous comitative phrase is not semantically equivalent to a group-denoting subject; its interpretation is, in fact, more specific (see Dimitriadis 2004, 2008, Siloni 2008, 2012). Consider the distribution of the adverb separately (not discussed in the works just mentioned).One reading of separately, presently irrelevant, is discourse-anaphoric (the meeting was held separately from some other meeting, previously mentioned). The reading of interest here is the NP-dependent one. In (9a,c), it amounts to the interpretation that Mary had one meeting/talking event with the chair and another (different) meeting/talking event with the dean. On this reading, separately distributes over a set of events, each associated with a member of the plural NP in the comitative phrase. Since this reading requires some syntactically plural NP to individuate the events distributed over, it is not sanctioned by a collective noun like department in (9b,d), nor by a singular NP in the comitative phrase, like the chair in (9d).3Therefore, a null comitative in a PC complement should be able to provide the adverb separately with the requisite plural NP. The result should be grammatical on the NP-dependent reading—but this prediction is disconfirmed. Note that (10) is grammatical without the adverb and that PRO is naturally interpreted as ‘Mary, the chair, and the dean’.4We thus see that the null comitative analysis fails in three independent respects. PC complements contain neither a syntactically singular subject (which could bind a personal reflexive), nor a semantically singular subject (which could saturate a predicate of individuals), nor a silent comitative phrase (which could sanction the adverb separately). Rather, they behave exactly as expected if their subject is a genuine collective noun not associated with any comitative phrase.While a null comitative phrase adjoined to VP cannot capture the facts of PC, perhaps a different implementation of the comitative analysis can. In particular, one could posit a comitative phrase adjoined to PRO itself, which would produce semantic plurality in PC. One such analysis was explicitly developed for PC by Rodrigues (2007) (see also Witkoś and Snarska 2009), and another one, which was developed for adnominal comitatives in Russian (McNally 1993, Dalrymple, Hayrapetian, and King 1998, Ionin and Matushansky 2003), can be straightforwardly extended to PC (as suggested by an anonymous reviewer).Assuming the movement theory of control for PC, Rodrigues claims that PC emerges when a null pronoun adjoins to the embedded DP, creating a ‘‘big DP’’ with it: [DPpro DP]. The internal DP segment then raises to become the controller, stranding pro in the base thematic position (the embedded Spec,VP). Rodrigues likens this null pronoun to associative morphemes, found in languages like Japanese and Chinese; when attached to a name (say, John), these morphemes yield a plural denotation (in this case, ‘John and his associates’). Alternatively, a null adnominal comitative may adjoin to PRO as it does to overt NPs in Russian. The two analyses are depicted in (11).Consider first analysis (11a). The singular number of PC PRO is explained by the fact that the embedded Spec,TP hosts a copy of a singular DP and not the complex big DP. In relation to the phenomena discussed above, the predictions of (11a) are not entirely clear, as it is not obvious which of the two subject positions—the embedded Spec,VP, which is plural, or the embedded Spec,TP, which is singular—is the criterial one. The null hypothesis should be that both positions are available and visible. If so, (11a) seriously overgenerates. A singular reflexive or secondary predicate should be able to take the singular subject in Spec,TP as antecedent—contrary to fact (see (6) and (8)). A syntactically plural big DP subject in Spec,VP should provide a distributive set for separately, also incorrectly (see (10)). In fact, as I show in Landau 2000, 2016, plural reflexives and secondary predicates are also ruled out in PC, given that PC PRO is syntactically singular. The big DP, however, being plural, should be able to license these elements from the embedded Spec,VP.5The adnominal comitative analysis in (11b) is equally challenged by the absence of any evidence for syntactic plurality in PC complements, as overt NP comitatives license—in fact, require—plural agreement on verbs and reflexives/reciprocals (Dyła 1988, McNally 1993). Dyła and McNally have not discussed secondary predicates, but these forms too display plural agreement when predicated of [NP1with NP2] (Olga Kagan, pers. comm.).Furthermore, to the extent that the analyses in (11) are motivated by and therefore retain the properties of actual constructions with adnominal comitatives, they fail to capture a central semantic fact about PC, highlighted in Landau 2016: PC PRO denotes a group, not a sum, hence is not distributable. In contrast, associative plurals (strategy (11a)) clearly allow distributive readings in the presence of an overt distributor, as illustrated in (14) for Hungarian (Moravcsik 2003) and Japanese (Satoshi Tomioka, pers. comm.).Similarly, comitative plurals (strategy (11b)) license distributive readings in the presence of an overt distributor (Dalrymple, Hayrapetian, and King 1998).(14)–(15) should be contrasted with (10) and (16a), where separately and different fail to distribute over PC PRO (different in (16a) only has a discourse-anaphoric reading). Note in particular that standard plural pronouns pattern with the comitative constructions in allowing distributivity (16b–c).Evidently, then, the NP comitative analysis of PC fares no better than the VP comitative analysis. Even if one is willing to accept the idea that null comitative phrases are available in the grammars of many languages, such phrases should exhibit distributional and interpretive properties quite different from those observed in PC. Hence, these analyses do not contribute to our understanding of the nature of PC.One possible conclusion from the data considered in section 1 is that while the null VP comitative analysis is untenable for English, it is still a viable option for other languages. Indeed, this position is taken by Sheehan (2012, 2014). In particular, Sheehan claims that PC in Italian, French, Spanish, and (uninflected infinitives in) European Portuguese is exclusively formed with a null comitative phrase adjoined to VP. The main evidence for this claim is the selective availability of PC in these languages. According to Sheehan, PC is only attested with embedded predicates that can occur with a comitative phrase. For example, French se disputer ‘argue’ can take a comitative phrase, but se rencontrer ‘meet’ cannot, and therefore only the former may occur in a PC complement. English, as we saw in (3), does not respect this correlation.While I cannot evaluate Sheehan’s evidence here, I would like to point out an immediate prediction her proposal makes: the interactions of the postulated null comitative structure that were attempted (and failed) in section 1 should succeed in the Romance languages. A semantically singular null subject and a syntactically present null pronominal in the comitative phrase should display the characteristic behavior of their overt counterparts.As it turns out, at least French patterns with English in failing all the relevant tests that could diagnose a null comitative structure. As (17a) shows, the verb se réconcilier ‘reconcile’ is a comitative verb in French. Nevertheless, just like the subjects of its English counterparts in (6)–(7), when occurring inside a PC complement, its subject can neither bind a singular personal reflexive (17b) nor license a singular secondary predicate (17c); and just like its English counterpart in (10), it does not license the NP-dependent reading of séparément ‘separately’ in a PC complement (17d).Exactly the same pattern is attested with other comitative verbs, like correspondre ‘correspond’.6Such examples should be carefully tested in the other Romance languages for which the null comitative analysis has been proposed. Nevertheless, the French data already raise a very curious puzzle: why would the null comitative analysis give rise only to a PC reading and not to any other detectable syntactic or semantic effect? The ungrammatical versions of (17b–d) furnish a stronger negative argument against the null comitative analysis of French PC than the positive argument furnished by the alleged absence of PC with noncomitative verbs. The reason is that the latter fact does not exclude an alternative noncomitative analysis, whereas the former facts do exclude a comitative analysis (given the grammatical (5b), (7a), and (9a)).7 That being said, if PC in Romance is sensitive to the choice of embedded predicate in the way Sheehan suggests, this remains an open question for the noncomitative analysis.Comitative constructions implicate a (possibly) singular subject and a comitative phrase. The comitative analysis of PC claims that both elements are present in PC complements, albeit in a null form. However, syntactic and semantic consequences of these elements when they are overt are systematically absent from PC, undermining the case for a common analysis. This is true both for English (pace Hornstein 2003 and Boeckx, Hornstein, and Nunes 2010) and for French (pace Sheehan 2012, 2014). The alternative analysis of PC posits no null comitative phrase and takes PRO to be a group-denoting, semantically plural noun. While this analysis should be further elaborated in view of the selective availability of PC in Romance, it is free of the problematic predictions that afflict the null comitative analysis

Control (management) · Linguistics · Null (SQL) · Advanced Algebra and Logic · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · Linguistics and Discourse Analysis · Mathematics · Philosophy · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation

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