Lêzing Fenna Bergsma, CRISSP NanoDays II/KU Leuven, Brussel (BE)
Dr. Fenna Bergsma fan de Fryske Akademy is troch CRISSP útnûge as sprekker op de NanoDays II yn Brussel. CRISSP is in ûndersykssintrum foar formele taalkunde dat diel útmakket fan de KU Leuven. CRISSP is op it stuit spesjalisearre yn syntaksis, morfosyntaks, fonology en formele logika. Hja meitsje diel út fan ComForT, in ûndersyksgroep foar formele en komputasjonele taalkunde oan de KU Leuven.
Gearfetting fan de lêzing ‘Case competition in headless relative’
“In this talk, I propose an analysis of case competition in headless relatives, relative clauses without an overt head noun, within a nanosyntactic framework. Case competition arises when both the verb inside the relative clause and the verb in the main clause assign a case, but only one case can surface. The choice is determined by a universal hierarchy NOM < ACC < DAT (cf. Caha 2009), which follows naturally from cumulative case decomposition: higher cases structurally contain lower ones. Nanosyntax provides the tools to model this containment and thus predict the outcome of case competition. Languages differ, however, in whether the internal or external winning case is allowed to surface. This variation gives rise to three attested types: the unrestricted type (e.g., Old High German), which allows either case to appear; the internal‐only type (e.g., Modern German), which restricts surfacing to the internal case; and the matching type (e.g., Polish), which blocks mismatches but allows matches. Crucially, there is no evidence for a purely external‐only type. I propose an analysis that links this cross‐linguistic variation to independently observable properties of each language. In my account, headless relatives are derived from light‐headed relatives, which con‐ tain a light head and a relative pronoun. In headless relatives, one of these elements is deleted, provided it is structurally contained in the other. By examining the morphemes of light heads and relative pro‐ nouns and the features they encode, I show that the crucial difference lies in how phi and case features are spelled out. In Modern German, they appear as a single portmanteau; in Polish, they are realized separately; and in Old High German, light heads and pronouns are syncretic. These morphological dif‐ ferences ultimately produce the distinct grammaticality patterns observed in headless relatives.”