Sangam: A Confluence of Knowledge Streams

Fake Feature and Valuation From Context

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dc.contributor Elliott, Patrick D.
dc.contributor Fox, Danny
dc.contributor Heim, Irene
dc.contributor Schwarzschild, Roger
dc.contributor Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
dc.creator Bassi, Itai
dc.date 2022-03-03T19:28:55Z
dc.date 2022-03-03T19:28:55Z
dc.date 2021-09
dc.date 2022-02-16T23:01:45.657Z
dc.date.accessioned 2023-03-01T06:08:59Z
dc.date.available 2023-03-01T06:08:59Z
dc.identifier https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/140990
dc.identifier.uri http://localhost:8080/xmlui/handle/CUHPOERS/270084
dc.description This thesis offers a new account of a persisting puzzle in the theory of ellipsis and association with focus: the fact that φ-featural content on full DPs and on bound pronouns can sometimes be ignored in focus alternatives and in calculating identity for ellipsis (‘Fake Features’). I present new data about gender and number mismatch in ellipsis which proves difficult to model on existing approaches to fake features (e.g. Sauerland 2013; Sudo & Spathas 2020). The heart of the proposal is a derivational theory of contentful φ-features: they do not, as usually assumed, enter a derivation from the lexicon with listed meanings (presuppositions) that constrain the denotation of their host DP; rather, they are inserted late in the derivation towards PF by a process called “Valuation from Context” (Kucerov ˇ a´ 2018): the features are inserted based on the meaning of the DP in the (local or global) context of evaluation. Ellipsis identity and focus alternatives are computed off of the feature-less representation. The theory assumes that the construction of local contexts for embedded constituents (Schlenker 2009) is blind to information encoded in focus alternatives. The account supports an architecture of grammar in which representations that are submitted to semantic interpretation (meaning-in-context) feed morphological valuation processes. It also implies that there is no substantial difference between “interpreted” and “uninterpreted” φ-features; in a sense, both are uninterpreted, the distinction being whether they are valued from context or from pieces in the structure.
dc.description Ph.D.
dc.format application/pdf
dc.publisher Massachusetts Institute of Technology
dc.rights In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted
dc.rights Copyright MIT
dc.rights http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/
dc.title Fake Feature and Valuation From Context
dc.type Thesis


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