Locus and limits of syntactic microvariation Sjef Barbiers. 1. Introduction

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1 Locus and limits of syntactic microvariation Sjef Barbiers Meertens Institute (Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences) and Utrecht University. Postbus 94264, 1090 GG Amsterdam, The Netherlands Abstract A central hypothesis of the Minimalist Program is that syntactic principles are constant across languages. Apparent syntactic variation would be reducible to variation in the lexicon, in particular variation in morphosyntactic features, and variation at the level of phonological interpretation (PF), in particular in the way syntactic structure is spelled out. This hypothesis invites large-scale microcomparative syntactic research, as minor morphosyntactic differences between closely related language varieties are expected to cause syntactic variation, such as variation in word order. In this paper, the hypothesis is tested against the data of the Syntactic Atlas of the Dutch Dialects (SAND), a project in which over 100 syntactic variables in 267 dialects of Dutch were investigated. In four case studies, involving complementizer drop, ONE-insertion, strong reflexives and doubling in Wh-chains, it is shown that most of syntactic variation can indeed be reduced to lexicon and PF, but that there is a residu of variation in the syntactic module concerning the size of the constituents that are copied in movement operations. Two further conclusions are that syntax plays a role in the lexicon in that it determines the limits of lexical variation and that part of syntactic variation must be explained by language-external factors. Keywords: microcomparative syntax, modularity, complementizer drop, ONE-insertion, strong reflexives, Wh-doubling 1. Introduction A core goal of syntactic research is to identify the building blocks of natural language and to discover the principles according to which these building blocks can be combined into complex units, i.e. into phrases, clauses and sentences. This should yield a theory that captures all natural languages. Therefore, such a theory should define the variation space and explain its limits. For theoretical, methodological and practical reasons, formal syntactic research of the past fifty years was primarily based on idealized versions of standard languages. In the nineties of the past century, there was a growing consensus that syntactic theory had reached a stage in which it had become both possible and necessary to focus on microcomparative syntax, i.e. the study of closely related language varieties such as a family of dialects. This shift in focus was possible because there had been a drastic increase in insight in syntactic structure (e.g., displacement properties, referential dependencies, phrase structure, argument structure and predication, ellipsis, morphosyntactic features etc.). This knowledge was sophisticated enough to address more detailed questions. The shift was necessary because hypotheses about correlations between syntactic variables should be based on and tested against a sufficiently large sample of language varieties. As Kayne, one of the central figures in this development, puts it, microcomparative research provides us with an almost ideal language laboratory. Studying the dialects of a particular dialect family enables us to keep most properties of the dialects involved constant and observe which properties of a dialect change if one feature of that dialects changes (Kayne 2000). This is all the more important in the current version of generative syntax, the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1995 and subsequent work), which hypothezises that much of syntactic variation can be reduced to morphosyntactic properties of individual morphemes, i.e. to the lexicon. In 1

2 this program, small morphosyntactic differences such as the absence of an inflectional morpheme are expected to have effects on syntactic structure. In the wake of this shift to the microcomparative perspective a large-scale dialect syntax project was carried out in the Dutch language area in which over 100 syntactic variables in 267 dialects of Dutch were compared. This project yielded, among other things, a two-volume syntactic atlas of the Dutch dialects (SAND Volume 1 and 2; Barbiers et al and Barbiers et al. to appear), an on-line database with search engine and cartographic tool ( and six dissertations (Van Craenenbroeck 2004, Van Koppen 2005, Zeijlstra 2004, De Vogelaer 2005, Haslinger 2007, Spruit 2008). For descriptions of the SAND-project, its design, methodology and results I refer the reader to Barbiers et al. (2007). The methodological aspects and motivation relevant for this paper will be discussed in section 2. The main goal of this paper is to demonstrate what this large data collection can tell us about current major issues in theoretical syntactic research. I take these issues to include: (i) What is the locus of syntactic variation within the grammar model? Is all syntactic variation reducible to the Lexicon (morphosyntactic properties of lexical items) and Phonological Form (variation in the spell-out of syntactic positions)? (ii) What is the relation between morphosyntactic feature specification and displacement options (movement)? (iii) What are the limits of syntactic variation? (iv) Does optionality play a role in syntactic (micro-)variation? These general theoretical issues will be addressed on the basis of three case studies that were carried out in the SAND project. They include: (i) Complementizer drop, (ii) ONE-insertion; (iii) Reflexives; (iv) Doubling in dependency chains. Part of these studies have been published elsewhere (cf. Barbiers and Bennis 2003), Barbiers (2005), Barbiers, Koeneman and Lekakou (to appear). Readers interested in the empirical and analytical details are referred to the cited works. Here I will restrict myself to a sketch that is sufficient for the purposes of this paper. 2. Methodology of large-scale microsyntactic research The generative method of investigating idealized idiolects on the basis of wellformedness judgments of a limited set of informants has yielded an impressive amount of new data, generalizations and insights, exactly because it abstracted away from all kinds of empirical complications. Yet, the method has been criticized for lack of methodological rigor and empirical coverage, sometimes casting doubt on the validity of data and generalizations (cf. also Schütze 1996; Cornips and Poletto 2005, to appear). Some of the key problems are listed in (1). (1) Methodological problems (i) Empirical basis. The number of judgments/informants/language varieties is often too low to formulate reliable generalizations and correlations and to test hypotheses. (ii) Disagreement on the judgments. Speakers of the same language may disagree on a judgment. When an analysis based on the judgments of speaker A is contradicted by the judgments of speaker B, it is often unclear whether this is a problem for the analysis. It may be that speaker B speaks a variety of the language that differs from that of speaker A. 2

3 (iii) (iv) (v) (vi) (vii) Multilingualism and accommodation. In many language areas, dialect speakers are multilingual. In addition to their dialect, they speak the related standard variety and some intermediate variety (regiolect). It is well-known that an interview setting in which the researcher asks his questions in the standard language easily gives rise to accommodation, the phenomenon that the informant adapts his speech to the interviewer. Since a speaker may switch between dialect, regiolect and standard language without this being noticed by the researcher, the latter runs the risk of wrongly assuming that two or more syntactic properties belong to one and the same language variety. Normativity. For certain phenomena it is unclear whether the informant s judgment is a true grammaticality judgment or the application of an artificial normative rule. Gradedness of judgments. Grammaticality judgments are often not absolute but graded. Thus, intermediate levels of well-formedness have been distinguished, indicated by?,??, *? in addition to *. It is not always clear what the status of these levels is and whether they are being used consistently across different research reports. Ungrammatical vs. unrealized. When a speaker claims that a certain structure is not possible in his language variety, the common interpretation of this is that the structure is excluded by his grammatical system. An alternative interpretation, however, could be that the structure is allowed by the grammatical system, but happens to be unrealized. This distinction is quite common and important in phonotaxis and morphology. If we fail to make it for syntax, this may hamper our understanding of the system. Reported versus actual language behavior. There may be a discrepancy between judgments and actual language use. Large-scale microcomparative syntax projects such as SAND can overcome at least part of these problems, provided that a proper methodology is adopted. An extensive discussion of the methodology of the SAND-project can be found in Cornips and Poletto 2005, to appear). Here I will mention some of the methodological features that are relevant for the problems above. To ensure that the number of informants and judgments was large enough, we carried out interviews in 267 locations with a reasonably even distribution over The Netherlands, Belgium and France and with at least two informants in each location. Statistical analysis of the data is therefore possible (for an interesting example of this, cf. Spruit 2008; Spruit et al., this volume). Together, these dialects can be taken to be representative for the Dutch language if the latter is taken to be a family of language varieties defined by a core set of common linguistic properties, e.g., all varieties of Dutch are asymmetric V2 languages, OV, etc. Since the 267 locations tend to form geographic clusters of dialects, the actual number of judgments/informants per dialect is considerably higher than two. To make sure that we were investigating the relation between syntactic variation and geographic location, i.e. dialects, we controlled for various extralinguistic factors. Selection of the informants was based on the following requirements: born and raised in the location of the interview, just like their parents; between 55 and 70 years old; no higher education, lower middle class; active dialect 3

4 speakers in at least one public domain. In this way, potential sociolinguistic sources of variation were filtered out as much as possible. Disagreement on the judgments cannot be avoided completely, of course, but the quite exhaustive description of dialectal features in the language area makes it easier to establish whether two informants speak the same or different dialects. To deal with the problem of bilingualism, code-switching and accommodation towards the language of the field worker, the interviews were held in the local dialect, i.e. one dialect speaker interviewed the other one. The field worker did not actively participate in the interview. When possible, a test sentence was offered in the local dialect, to make sure that a sentence was not rejected on phonological or lexical grounds. Investigating dialects rather than standard languages decreases the chance of normative influence, since for most of the Dutch dialects there are no norms codified in grammars and dictionaries and taught in schools. To further avoid normative judgments, we never asked whether a sentence was good or bad, but rather, whether it occurred in the local dialect. Even if an informant has a negative normative attitude towards a syntactic construction, he can still report that he sometimes hears people saying such things in his dialect. To deal with the problem of gradedness of judgments, we worked with relative judgments when we knew that there was more than one variant of a construction and we asked informants to grade the commonality of each variant on a scale from 1-5. Obviously, this does not solve the problem of gradedness completely and more sophisticated methods (e.g. magnitude estimation) are necessary. The problem concerning impossible and unrealized syntactic structures requires complementary research such as neurocognitive and language acquisition experiments. Still, the large amount of data and the subtle variation in the data can give at least an initial idea about which constructions are categorically excluded by universal grammatical properties or by the grammatical system of Dutch, and which constructions are absent but not excluded. A large part of the problem of reported versus actual language behavior can be solved if the analysis of large sets of well-formedness judgments is combined with the analysis of text and speech corpora. Obviously, corpus research alone cannot do the job, as it cannot show that a construction type is impossible. A low frequent construction (e.g., long subject relativization) may be absent in a corpus even though it is possible. Also, the relation between syntax and semantics becomes much harder to investigate if we restrict ourselves to corpora (e.g., corpora often don t show us whether a sentence is ambiguous). If this type of large-scale microcomparative syntactic research is extended to other dialect families, it becomes possible to test correlations and generalizations and contribute to a general theory of natural language and the architecture of the mental grammar. To make the data comparable, it is necessary that similar methodological standards are applied and that the data are made available in a distributed network of databases with a common search engine. These are all goals of the the ESF project European Dialect Syntax that is currently being carried out (Edisyn; 3. Locus of syntactic variation Let us now see what the SAND data can contribute to syntactic theory. The first theoretical issue we address is the locus of syntactic variation in the grammar 4

5 model. In the Minimalist program (Chomsky 1995) it is suggested that syntactic variation in fact does not exist. All apparent syntactic variation would be reducible to lexical variation and phonological variation. For a proper understanding of this claim it is necessary to have a look at the model of the mental grammar adopted in the Minimalist Program. This model is given in (2). Since we are concerned with variation in the form, I leave the module responsible for the semantic interpretation of a syntactic structure, LF, undiscussed. (2) Model of Mental Grammar Lexicon Syntax Logical Form (LF) Phonological Form (PF) The mental lexicon is a list of morphemes with their unpredictable properties, i.e. properties that cannot be derived from general building principles. Properties of lexical items include argument structure and subcategorization, morphosyntactic feature specifications, e.g. the inflectional features of a finite verb, phonological specifications, meaning. It is clear that the lexical specification is a locus of crosslinguistic variation and that many of its properties are not innate but must be acquired on the basis of language input. Such lexical variation often causes syntactic variation. The following contrast between English and Standard Dutch is a case in point. 1 Dutch nouns are inherently specified for gender: neuter or non-neuter. This must be a lexical property, because the gender of a particular noun cannot be predicted on the basis of other properties. English nouns do not have gender specifications at all. Attributive adjectives in Dutch agree with the noun in gender, so Dutch adjectives have a slot for gender inflection that is missing in English. This can be taken to be a second lexical difference between the two languages. These lexical differences between English and Dutch have consequences for the syntax of noun phrases in the two languages, in particular for the properties of noun ellipsis, as illustrated in (3). (3) a. (Talking about movies): I have seen a nice *(one). b. (Talking about wine): I like red (*one). c. (Over films gesproken): Ik heb een leuk-e (*een) gezien. (Talking about movies): I have a nice.non-neuter one seen d. (Over boeken gesproken): * Ik heb een leuk (een) gelezen. (Talking about books) I have a nice.neuter one read In English noun phrases with an attributive adjective, noun ellipsis is possible if ONE occurs in the position of the noun (3a). This only holds for count nouns, ONE does not 1 Data and analysis are simplified considerably here for expository reasons. See Nerbonne et al. (1989), Nerbonne and Mullen (2000) and Barbiers (2005), among others, for more detailed analyses and formalization. Cf. Lobeck (2005) for an extensive recent overview and discussion of the noun ellipsis literature. 5

6 show up when the elided noun is a mass noun (3b). In Standard Dutch, noun ellipsis is possible when the adjective has visible inflection for gender, and ONE substitution is neither necessary nor possible (3c). However, when the elided noun has neuter gender, there is no visible inflection on the adjective, and in such cases noun ellipsis is excluded (3d). Instead of stating different syntactic rules for noun ellipsis in English and Dutch, we could formulate one rule that holds for both languages and reduce the cross-linguistic differences to the lexicon. Suppose the general rule for noun ellipsis would be: Formal features of the noun must be locally visible (where locally can be informally defined as: close to the position of the noun). Which formal features a noun has depends on the noun and the language. On the basis of the small data set in (3) we can say that the set of relevant formal features contains at least [± count, ± neuter]. In the lexicon of Dutch we find [± neuter] as a formal feature of nouns, and an agreement slot on the adjective that can express gender. In the lexicon of English we find [± count] and no agreement slot on adjectives. Consequently, noun ellipsis in Dutch can be licensed by gender inflection on the adjective, but only when visible (cf. the contrast between (3c) and (3d)). In English, this is not possible, but the English lexicon contains a pronoun ONE that can fulfill the requirement. The availability of this pronoun is a third lexical difference between the two languages. Thus, the syntactic variation in (3) is the result of the interaction between a general rule and three lexical differences between the two languages. The syntactic structure of noun phrases in the two languages is identical otherwise. The syntactic module of the mental grammar model in (2) contains the combinatory rules and principles. As was said above, the Minimalist Program adopts the strong hypothesis that there is no variation at all in the syntactic module and that all combinatory rules and principles are universal and innate. Simplifying a little, there is one structure building principle, Merge, that takes two constituents and combines them into a set. Move is a special case of Merge in which a subconstituent B of a constituent A is copied and then remerged at the root of A. It is hypothesized that there are universal conditions on Merge and Move. One of them is that a constituent that moves should agree morphosyntactically with the constituent that it moves to (cf. Chomsky 2001). Variation in Move arises when morphosyntactic features vary. Since, according to the Minimalist hypothesis, building a syntactic structure is economical in that operations only happen if necessary, optionality and hence syntactic variation within one specific language variety is supposed to be excluded too. If there is no variation in the syntactic module, the part of syntactic variation that cannot be reduced to the lexicon in the way sketched above for noun ellipsis should be reducible to the phonological component (PF). It is easy to show that the PF component should allow some variation and even optionality within one language variety. This variation arises as a result of the option to leave certain syntactically present constituents unpronounced under specific conditions. A good example of such intralinguistic variation is topic drop in Dutch (cf. Weerman 1989). The D-pronoun die that, those normally cannot be silent (4a). When it is fronted, as in (4b), it can optionally be silent (4c). Though die is invisible in (4c), it is interpretively present since (4c) has exactly the same interpretation as (4b). It is also syntactically present, as it blocks fronting of another constituent (4d). As is well-known, Dutch is a verb second language, so maximally one constituent can precede the finite verb in main clauses, cf. the contrast between (4e) and (4f). The right analysis of (4c) is therefore 6

7 (4g), where die is syntactically present but optionally silent at PF (indicated by the brackets). (4) About a new film: a. Ik heb *(die) gisteren gezien. I have *(that) yesterday seen I have seen it yesterday. b. Die heb ik gisteren gezien. that have I yesterday seen c. Heb ik gisteren gezien. have I yesterday seen d. * Gisteren heb ik gezien. yesterday have I seen e. Gisteren heb ik die gezien. yesterday have I that seen f. * Gisteren die heb ik gezien. yesterday that have I seen g. (Die) heb ik gisteren gezien. that have I yesterday seen A possible case of cross-linguistic syntactic variation that is reducible to PF is the following. In Dutch and its varieties we find the four variants of embedded WHquestions in (5). Sentences (5a,b) mainly occur in The Netherlands. Sentence (5c) is frequent in the southern part of the language area (in Belgium), but certainly not absent in the central and northern parts. Sentence (5d) is considered to be Standard Dutch (cf. SAND Volume I, map 16a for the geographic distribution of these variants). (5) a. Vertel niet wie of dat ze geroepen hebben. tell not who if that they called have Don t tell me who they have called. b. Vertel niet wie of ze geroepen hebben. tell not who if they called have c. Vertel niet wie dat ze geroepen hebben. tell not who that they called have d. Vertel niet wie ze geroepen hebben. tell not who they called have The data in (5) give the full range of variation in the complementizer system of this clause type in Dutch. If we had restricted our research to Standard Dutch, our analysis would be based on (5d) and we would have to conclude that Dutch obeys the so called doubly filled Comp filter (Chomsky and Lasnik 1977): the left periphery of an embedded clause in Dutch either has a complementizer or a WH-constituent, but not both. If we widen our research to capture the data in (5a-d), the analysis will look entirely different. One possibility would be the following. Suppose that all varieties of Dutch have three clause-initial syntactic positions (one Spec position and two heads). The first position hosts WH-elements, the second position hosts the interrogative complementizer of if and the third position hosts the complementizer dat that. If it is possible to leave one or two of the complementizers unpronounced, (5b-d) can all 7

8 be derived from (5a). More concretely, we can assume that syntactic building principles operate on feature bundles rather than on morphemes, and that at PF it is decided how these bundles will be spelled out, with the possibility to not spell-out a bundle at all. This is the view adopted in frameworks that take morphology to be part of PF, not part of the lexicon (e.g., Distributed Morphology; Halle and Marantz 1993). The data in (6) suggest that complementizer spell-out is restricted by feature recoverability. Normally, the complementizer dat has to be spelled out (6a). When of is present, dat can be silent (6b). The opposite, of silent and dat pronounced, is not possible (6c). Suppose the feature bundles of dat and of are as in (6d). The features of dat are a subset of the features of of, so dat can only be left unpronounced when of is there. In the other two cases the features of dat (6a) or the interrogative feature of of (6c) would not be recoverable. 2 (6) a. Ik wist niet *(dat) hij werkte. I knew not that he worked I did not know that he was working. b. Ik vroeg of (dat) hij werkte. I asked if that he works I asked if he was working. c. Ik vroeg *(of) dat hij werkte. I asked if that he works d. dat: [finite, subordinate] of: [finite, subordinate, interrogative] Noun ellipsis, topic drop and complementizer drop are three convincing cases of apparent syntactic variation within and between language varieties that can be reduced to variation in the lexicon or at the level of PF. These are also levels where optionality can arise. Syntactic principles are constant across the relevant syntactic variants and language varieties. The recoverability requirement restricting the possibility to leave an element unpronounced is also constant across variants and varieties. The next question is whether PF-variation of the type presented in (5) is reducible to other properties of the linguistic system, or that it involves irreducible parametrization. On the basis of the SAND-data, no linguistic property could be identified so far that correlates with complementizer drop. The difference between the varieties of Dutch could therefore be captured with a parameter like Leave the complementizer unpronounced when possible yes/no. There is another possibility, however. The fact that there are quite some speakers that allow two, three or four of the variants in (5) and that many speakers seem to be insecure about the acceptability of some of the variants could also mean that all four variants are grammatically available in all varieties of Dutch. The variants that the informant claims to be absent in his dialect would then be absent not because they are ungrammatical but because they happen to be unrealized, just like a certain word can be in the mental lexicon of speakers of dialect A but not in that of speakers of dialect B. If that is the correct approach then there is no parameter at all. All the grammar provides is a general structure with a WH-position, two 2 This approach automatically captures the pattern in (5) except (5d) where both complementizers are absent in the presence of wie who. This raises interesting issues about the feature analysis of wie that I cannot go into here. 8

9 complementizer positions and a general PF rule that allows non-pronunciation up to recoverability. 4. The relation between morphosyntactic features and movement In the minimalist program (and its predecessors) it is hypothesized that there is a relation between agreement and the possibility of displacement (movement). One of the simplest examples is subject-verb agreement. In English, the finite verb agrees with the subject and this makes it possible for the subject to be fronted (7a). 3 Other constituents with which the finite verb does not agree cannot occur in this initial position (7b). In earlier stages of the theory (e.g., Chomsky 1995), agreement was taken to force movement. Agreement features of the finite verb would have to be checked by movement of the subject. Careful research into the structure of expletive constructions has shown that agreement is not the trigger of movement but a precondition for movement (e.g., Den Dikken 1995). Expletive constructions show that the subject of the clause can remain in its base position when the expletive is in the higher subject position (7c). The expletive does not agree with the finite verb and the subject does, so it cannot be the case that fronting of the subject is obligatory when it agrees with the verb. (7) a. He seems he to read a book. b. *A book seem he to read a book. c. There seems to be a man in the garden. Language varieties may differ as to the morphosyntactic features that play a role in their grammars, as we have seen in the previous section. If morphosyntactic agreement is a universal precondition for movement, we expect minor differences in morphosyntactic feature specifications to have consequences for the possibility of movement. This section describes such a case, in which the presence of gender inflection on the numeral ONE in certain dialects of Dutch makes movement internal to the nominal group (DP) possible. As was discussed in the previous section, English and Dutch show some differences in noun ellipsis constructions. While in Dutch inflection on the adjective plays a crucial role in the identification of the elided noun, in English a pronoun ONE shows up in the position of the noun to perform this role. Some dialects of Dutch spoken in Noord-Brabant and Limburg (in the south of The Netherlands) have a ONEinsertion construction which looks similar to the English one (8) (cf. SAND, Volume 1, map 80b). (8) Jij bent een raar-e (één). you are a strange.non-neuter (one) You are a strange one. However, closer examination reveals that the ONE-insertion patterns in the Dutch dialects are very different from English. The differences are given in (9). (9) (i) In English, ONE-insertion is obligatory in contexts such as (3a) and 3 In English, agreement is only visible with third person singular subjects. It is commonly assumed that agreement is abstractly present with the other members of the paradigm. 9

10 (ii) (iii) (8); in Dutch dialects it is optional. This shows that ONE-insertion in these dialects does not occur for licensing reasons. In English, ONE-insertion is possible in definite and plural noun phrases and ONE can be plural itself (e.g., the green ones). In Dutch dialects, ONE-insertion is only possible in indefinite singular noun phrases. In English, ONE-insertion only occurs in noun ellipsis contexts. In southern dialects of Dutch (Noord-Brabant, Limburg) ONE-insertion is also possible when the noun is overt (10a). Such dialects also allow stranding of ONE (10b). (10) a. Je bent een raar kind (één). you are a strange kid (one) You are a very strange kid! b. Een raar kind ben je een raar kind één. a strange kid are you a strange kid one You are such a strange kid! These syntactic differences between English, Standard Dutch and Dutch dialects can be analyzed as the result of an interaction between general syntactic principles and varying morphosyntactic feature specifications. The logic of the analysis is as follows. There is no difference between English, Dutch and its dialects as to the basic syntactic structure of the nominal group. The principles that determine movement are also identical for all languages under consideration. The crucial difference between Noord- Brabant and Limburg dialects on the one hand and Standard English and Dutch on the other is that only in the dialects the numeral ONE is inflected for gender and therefore agrees with the rest of the nominal group. It is this property that makes movement in Brabant and Limburg dialects possible. Let us first establish the base structure. English, Dutch and the dialects of Dutch all allow constructions such as (11). The numeral precedes the article in this construction. Although the unmarked order of numeral and determiner is often taken to be the reverse (11c), the possibility of the order (11a,b) is not unexpected in view of the feature specification of ONE. It has convincingly been claimed that ONE is the stressed counterpart of the indefinite article a (e.g. Perlmutter 1970). Barbiers (2005) provides arguments for the following feature specifications: ONE [indefinite, singular, focus], A [indefinite, singular]. Therefore, ONE is as determinerlike as A. If there is a principle that says that determiners precede numerals, then ONE and A qualify for the first position equally well. (11) a. één zo n boek b. one such a book c. the two books Let us assume that the base structure of (11a,b) is as in (12). This base structure is also available in the relevant dialects of Dutch. Assume further that in Dutch ONEinsertion constructions, ONE occurs at the right periphery of the noun phrase as a result of movement of the nominal constituent [zo n raar kind] across ONE, as 10

11 indicated in (13). When there is noun ellipsis, the derivation is identical to (13) but the position of the noun is empty. 4 (12) [ OneP... [ One... [ ap... [ a... [ NP [ AP... ] [ N... ]]]]]] English: one such a strange kid Dutch: één zo n vreemd kind (13) [ OneP [ ap zo n raar kind] [ One één [ ap zo n raar kind]]] such a strange kid one such a strange kid (14) [ OneP [ ap n raar Ø] [ One één [ ap zo n raar Ø]]] a strange one such a strange What needs to explained now is why the movement operation in (13) and (14) is possible in the dialects of Noord-Brabant and Limburg but not in English and Standard Dutch. The relevant generalization appears to be that only dialects in which ONE agrees with the rest of the nominal group for gender allow movement across ONE. This is the case in the dialects, as the Noord-Brabant examples in (15a,b) show, but not in Standard Dutch and English. In Standard Dutch, ONE is not specified for gender but the rest of the nominal group (in particular, the noun) is, so there is no agreement. In English, as we have seen above, gender does not play a role at all in the grammatical system. (15) a. e völ kiendje een a.neut dirty kid one.neut b. en-en duigeniet een-e a.non-neut knave one.non-neut As was noted in the beginning of this section, ONE-insertion is optional in the relevant dialects of Dutch. If the analysis proposed here is on the right track, this could either mean that the movement operations in (13) and (14) are optional, or that these movement operations are obligatory and that optionality arises at PF, where it is decided to spell-out the copy in the base position or in the landing site. Under the first analysis, agreement would condition movement but it would not trigger it. Under the second analysis, agreement would be a trigger of movement. It is not clear how to chose between these two options. Even the fact that there are southern dialects which show gender agreement on ONE but do not allow the ONE-insertion construction is not conclusive, as these may be dialects in which movement across ONE is obligatory but spell-out of the higher copy is never realized. 5 4 The labeling used in these structures is a mixture of the bare phrase structure labeling for the functional categories A and ONE (cf. Chomsky 1995) and a traditional categorial labeling for the lexical categories. Traditional categorial labeling is avoided here for functional categories because this would yield a structure [ NumP ONE [ DP A [...]]], which is held to be impossible by many linguists. However, as was suggested in the text, this impossibility is only an artefact of the labeling. The actual labeling should be in terms of morphosyntactic features, as this is what syntactic operations seem to refer to. If ONE and A in these structures are replaced by their feature bundles, the problem of the ordering of ONE and A disappears, as the features of ONE are a superset of the feature set of A and include the determiner feature [indefinite]. 5 If the movement operations proposed here are optional, absence of movement should yield constituents such as one a nice book. I assume that the ungrammaticality of such constituents is due to a PF spell-out requirement that can be phrased as: If two functional elements X and Y are structurally 11

12 To conclude this section, we have seen that variation in ONE-insertion constructions can be reduced to variation in the morphosyntactic feature specification of the numeral ONE in interaction with general structure building principles such as the requirement that a specifier should agree with its head. The case discussed in this section is a good illustration of Kayne s claim mentioned in the introduction that microcomparative syntax provides us with a language laboratory. If we take away the gender inflection on ONE in the Brabant and Limburg dialects, the movement option disappears and we get Standard Dutch. 5. Limits of variation: A lexical gap explained by a syntactic condition In the previous section, apparent syntactic variation, i.e word order variation in nominal groups, was reduced to lexical variation, i.e. the morphosyntactic feature specification of the elements involved in movement operations. This is a good illustration of the Minimalist hypothesis that syntactic principles are constant across language varieties, and that these principles determine the limits of language variation. In this section, we investigate the limits of variation in the form of strong reflexives. 6 It will be shown that the categorical absence of the conceivable strong reflexive form hem eigen him own is best explained by a syntactic principle. Thus, syntax explains a systematic lexical gap, in a way parallel to Hale and Keyser (1993; H&K). H&K observe that there are languages with verbs like calve, as in The cow calved, but no languages with verbs like cow, as in *The calf cowed (intended interpretation The cow gave birth to the calf. ). Their explanation is that such verbs are derived by noun incorporation into an abstract verb, and noun incorporation is possible from object position (calf is the object of the abstract verb) but not from subject position (cow is the subject of the abstract verb). Since the restrictions on incorporation are syntactic, H&K conclude that there is syntax in the lexicon. Verbs are not simplex lexical items but complex syntactic structures that obey general syntactic principles. In this way, syntax may explain systematic lexical gaps. In the case discussed here, the syntactic requirement of agreement between the first and the second morpheme of a strong reflexive is shown to categorically exclude forms such as hem eigen him own. This implies that reflexive pronouns also must have a complex syntactic structure. 7 This fits well in the hypothesis that pronouns in general are complex syntactic structures, an hypothesis that has gained some ground recently (cf. Déchaine and Wiltschko 2002 and references cited there). As is well-known, in many languages the form of the reflexive is determined by the syntactic environment of the reflexive. For example, inherently reflexive verbs in Standard Dutch require the weak reflexive zich SIG as their object, whereas reflexively used transitive verbs require the strong reflexive zichzelf SIGself. The reverse is impossible: adjacent and the features of Y (in this case: A) are a subset of the features of X (in this case, ONE) then Y remains silent. This also captures (12), where ONE and A are not structurally adjacent since SO intervenes. 6 Cf. Barbiers and Bennis (2003) for more extensive discussion. The analysis in this section is a slight reformulation of the analysis in that paper. 7 The question as to why strong reflexives need to have a complex structure and why simple pronouns like HIM and SIG cannot occur in the position of strong reflexives is not important for present purposes, but see Barbiers (2000), Reuland (2001), Barbiers and Bennis (2003), among others, for possible explanations. 12

13 (16) a. Jan herinnert zich/*zichzelf dat verhaal. John remembers SIG/*SIG SELF that story John remembers that story. b. Jan kent zichzelf/*zich goed. John knows SIG SELF/*SIG well John knows himself well. In the Dutch language area, we find the following reflexive systems. The strong reflexives in the table in (17) all are the equivalent of English himself in syntactic environments like (16b). (17) weak reflexive strong reflexive Frisian hem him hemzelf himself Eastern Dutch zich SIG zichzelf SIGself Central Dutch zijn eigen his own zijn eigen his own West Flemish hem him zijn zelf his self East Flemish hem him zijn eigen his own Belgian Limburg zich SIG zijn eigen his own The pronoun hem him can be the first part of a strong reflexive, and the possessive element eigen own can be the second part. Since these elements are independently avaiable in the varieties of Dutch, one might expect some dialects to have hem eigen him own as a strong reflexive, but that is never the case. Helke (1970), Pica (1987), Safir (1996) and Postma (1997), among others, propose that strong reflexives cross-linguistically are possessive nominal groups with a pronoun as the possessor and a noun derived from a body part as the nominal head. Let us assume that the structure of strong reflexives corresponds to that of possessive DPs, as in (18). The analysis of SELF as consisting of the possessive head SE and body part lf (Dutch lijf body ) was proposed in Postma (1997). (18) [ DP Spec [ D Possessive Head [ NP Body Part Head ]]] a. hem ze lf him his body b. zich ze lf SIG his body c. z n eigen his own d. z n ze lf his his body e. * hem eigen him own The explanation of the impossibility of hem eigen him own is now straightforward. As (19) shows, in non-reflexive possessive DPs the possessor obligatorily agrees with the possessive head for gender (19a,b) and number (19c,d). (19) a. Jan ze/*d r lijf John his/*her body b. Marie d r/*z n lijf 13

14 Mary her/his body c. de man z n/*d r lijf the man his/her body d. de mannen hun/*z n lijf the men their/his body Suppose that agreement between the possessor and the possessive head is a general requirement for possessive DPs. It is clear that the well-formed strong reflexives in (18a-d) satisfy this requirement. In (18a), the possessor hem him in SpecDP agrees with the possessive head ze his for the features third person, masculine, singular. The pronoun zich SIG in (18b) is underspecified for gender and number, as it can have singular, plural, masculine and feminine antecedents, but it has the feature third person in common with the possessive head. In (18c), the pronoun z n his has the features third person, masculin, singular, possessive. The element eigen own only has the feature possessive. It is compatible with the whole paradigm of possessive pronouns (m n eigen my own, je eigen your own, z n eigen his own, d r eigen her own, ons eigen our own, hun eigen their own ), so it must be underspecified for person, number and gender. Since both z n his and eigen own have a possessive feature, they satisfy the agreement requirement. In (18d), we find full agreement for all relevant features. In (18e), however, there is no agreement: hem him has the features third person, singular, masculine and eigen own only has a possessive feature. There is no feature that the two elements share, and this is what rules out hem eigen him own as a possible strong reflexive pronoun. The conclusion is that syntax determines the variation space for the form of strong reflexives. They should all involve a possessive DP structure of the type in (18). Within that structure, variation arises as a result of lexical choices: the choice between a possessive pronoun and a personal pronoun as the possessor in SpecDP, and the choice between ze his or eigen own as the possessive D-head. These lexical choices are restricted by the general syntactic requirement that the possessor and the possessive head should agree. As we have seen in the previous section, the agreement requirement is independently motivated, as it also restricts the variation in ONE-insertion constructions. Another important conclusion of this section is that the modularity of the grammar model in (2) must be called into question. Strong reflexives are stored in the lexicon, but at the same time syntax determines what qualifies as a possible strong reflexive. The explanation of the systematic impossibility of hem eigen him own supports Hale and Keyser s conclusion that there must be syntax in the lexicon. Calling the modularity of the grammar into question does not mean, however, that the distinction between lexicon and syntax should be given up entirely, as has been claimed in the framework of cognitive linguistics (e.g. Langacker 1990). In addition to being a condition on complex structures in the lexicon, the syntactic module also produces new structures that are not (yet) in the lexicon, so it can be maintained that in this respect syntax is independent from the lexicon. It should be clear that the type of questions discussed in this section can only be asked on the basis of large-scale and fine-grained comparison of closely related language varieties. To understand the impossibility of hem eigen him own, comparison with minimally different forms like zijn eigen his own and hemzelf himself is needed. Such comparison is only possible among closely related language varieties, as they share many linguistic properties. Without the SAND-database, the 14

15 impossibility of hem eigen him own probably would even have gone unnoticed, and if noticed, it probably would have been taken to be an accidental lexical gap. 6. Limits on chains In the previous sections the syntactic Spec-Head configuration was the focus of discussion, and it was argued that the agreement condition on this configuration determines the limits of variation in ONE-insertion constructions and strong reflexive forms. In this section, we will focus on another configuration, syntactic chains, and in particular, doubling of Wh-pronouns in syntactic chains. 8 There is an extensive literature on Wh-doubling (cf. Lutz et al for a recent overview and references), but not on Wh-doubling in Dutch, because it has been tacitly assumed that Dutch does not have it. SAND Volume 1 reveals, however, that many dialects of Dutch do have it, and the relatively unstructured geographic distribution of the phenomenon suggests that it belongs to colloquial Dutch rather than to specific dialectal areas (cf. SAND Volume 1, maps 91a,b). We also discovered a related construction in the SAND-data which involves a combination of a Wh-word and a relative pronoun (cf. SAND Volume 1, map 92a). This construction sheds some new light on the analysis of Whdoubling constructions. Here again, the large-scale microcomparative syntactic research carried out in the SAND-project proofs its value. It corrects tacit empirical claims, reveals a number of hitherto undiscovered variants, and, by its completeness, enables us to understand some general properties of Wh-doubling and how these restrict possible variation. Wh-doubling involves dependency chains. In dependency chains, a constituent has moved from its original position in the clause to a position higher up. It has been argued extensively and convincingly in generative grammar that surface orders like (20a) are the result of a two step movement operation (e.g. Chomsky 1981). First, the fronted constituent moves from its original position close to the selecting verb to the initial position of the embedded clause, next it moves to the initial position of the main clause. This yields the dependency chain depicted in (20b). (20) a. Wie denk je dat ik in de stad ontmoet heb? who think you that I in the city met have Who do you think I met in the city? b. [ CP Wie denk je [ CP wie dat ik in in de stad wie ontmoet heb]] who think you who that I in the city who met have Many language varieties allow spell-out of more than one position in such a dependency chain. In the varieties of Dutch, we find the variants in (20). Cases like (21a,b), involving two Wh-words are known from the literature, e.g. on German (cf. Lutz et al. 2000). The variants in (21c,d) involve a Wh-word and a relative pronoun and have not been observed before. (21) a. Wie denk je wie ik in de stad ontmoet heb? who think you who I in the city met have b. Wat denk je wie ik in de stad ontmoet heb? what think you who I in the city met have c. Wie denk je die ik in de stad ontmoet heb? 8 This section is based on Barbiers, Koeneman and Lekakou (in press). 15

16 who think you REL I in the city met have 9 d. Wat denk je die ik in de stad ontmoet heb? what think you REL I in the city met have As in the case studies discussed above, there are clear restrictions on this doubling in dependency chains. The reverse of the order of spelled out copies in (21b-d) is ungrammatical in all Dutch dialects investigated (22). It could be suggested that the sentences in (22b,c) are ungrammatical because they do not yield questions. However, if that were the case we would expect these variants to be possible in long relative clauses, which they are not. (22) a. *Wie denk je wat ik in de stad ontmoet heb? who think you what I in the city met have b. * Die denk je wie ik in de stad ontmoet heb? REL think you who I in the city met have 10 c. *Die denk je wat ik in de stad ontmoet heb? what think you REL I in the city met have This observation may be extended to other types of dependency chains, such as the ones that we find in southern Dutch subject doubling constructions (cf. SAND Volume 1, maps 52-60). 11 Here the generalization is that a strong subject pronoun may be preceded by another strong (23a) or a weak subject pronoun (23b), but a weak subject pronoun cannot be preceded by a strong subject pronoun (23c) (cf. SAND Volume 1, chapter 3, and Nuyts 1995). (23) a. Zij heeft zij daar niks mee te maken. she.strong has she.strong there nothing with to do She has got nothing to do with it. b. Ze heeft zij daar niks mee te maken she.weak has she.strong there nothing with to do c. *Zij heeft ze daar niets mee te maken. she.strong has she.weak there nothing with to do A final extension involves doubling in verb chains, as in (24a). The reverse is again impossible (24b). (24) a. Jan doet de kamer reinigen. John does the room clean John is cleaning the room. b. *Jan reinigt de kamer doen. John cleans the room do 9 The abbreviation REL is for relative pronoun. Dutch relative D-pronouns agree with their antecedent in gender and number. In the doubling constructions under consideration there is no antecedent. Importantly, the claim is not that the examples in (21c,d) are relative clauses 10 The abbreviation REL is for relative pronoun. Dutch relative D-pronouns agree with their antecedent in gender and number. In the doubling constructions under consideration there is no antecedent. Importantly, the claim is not that the examples in (20c,d) are relative clauses 11 Cf. Haegeman (1990), Van Craenenboeck and Van Koppen (2001, in press) for analyses of subject doubling. 16