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Interrogative left Branch Extraction in Serbian/Croatian
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Interrogative left Branch Extraction in Serbian/Croatian* larisa Ziatic 1. Introduction It is well known that most Slavic languages violate Ross's (1967) Left Branch Constraint (LBC), devised to disallow English constructions like the following, in which wh-determiners, possessors, and adjectives are fronted out of Npl (1) a. *Whosei did you read [NP ti book]? b. *Whichi did you read [NP ti book]? c. *What kindidid you read [NP ti a book]? However, as Ross also observed, other languages with rich inflectional morphology, including Slavic languages, allow extraction of this kind, yielding a discontinuous constituent pattern. For instance, the Serbian/Croatian (SC) sentences below, corresponding to the English sentences in (1), are all grammatical.2 (2) a. Ciju si citao knjigu? whose AUX read book *I would like to thank Stephen Wechsler for his comments on an earlier draft of this paper. I also thank Steven Franks and two anonymous reviewers, whose insightful comments and suggestions led to substantial changes to the paper. All omissions are, of course, my own responsibility. 1 In the examples, a trace-like notation is used for expository purposes only. 2 The following abbreviations are used throughout the paper: F=feminine, M=masculine, N=neuter, SG=singular, PL=plural, NOM=nominative, GEN= genitive, ACC=accusative, DAT=dative, INST=instrumental, CL=clitic, AUX= auxiliary clitic, REFL=reflexive clitic, NLOC=Non local feature, LOC=local feature, SYNSEM=syntax-semantics feature Steven Franks, Vrinda Chidambaram, and Brian Joseph, eds. A Linguist's Linguist: Studies in South Slavic Linguistics in Honor of E. Wa yles Browne. Bloomington, IN: Siavica, 46587 . 466 LARISA ZLATIC (2) b. Koju si citao knjigu? which AUX read book c. Kakvu si citao knjigu? what-kind AUX read book Not only can NP-internal elements be fronted in these languages, but also left branch elements of any phrasal category can, such as adjectival phrases, as in (3a), adverbial phrases, as in (3b), and prepositional phrases, as in (3c). (3) a. VeomaJKoliko; je Jovan [AP t; visok]. very/ how-much AUX John tallNoMMsG 'John is very tall.'/'How tall is John?' b. VeomaJKoliko; se oni [AdvP t; cesto] vidaju kod very/ how-much REFL they often see at "Znaka pitanja". Znak Pitanja 'They see each other very often at Znak Pitanja.'/ 'How often do they see each other at Znak Pitanja?' c. PravoJ Kako; je usao [pp t; u [NP kucu]]. straight/how AUX enter in house 'He entered straight into the house.'/'How did he enter into the house?' Accounting for the split constituents shown above has been a challenge for many linguists working in both derivational (e.g., Corver 1990, 1992, Progovac and Franks 1994, Kennedy and Merchant 2000, Rappaport 2000, Basic 2004, Boskovic 2005, Franks 2007) and non-derivational frameworks (e.g., Zlatic 1997a, Penn 1999, Muller 2004, Bender 2008). In this paper, I offer a non-derivational approach to interrogative left-branch extraction (LBE) in Sc. I discuss LBE of interrogative modifiers out the noun phrase (as in (2) above) and also LBE out of other phrasal categories, exemplified in (3) above. I also discuss fronting of non-interrogative attributive modifiers, pointing out the differences between the two. A descriptive generalization involving left-branch extraction is that only specifiers and adjuncts can be extracted from the dominating [44.220.251.57] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 13:08 GMT) INTERROGATI VE LEFT BRANCH EXTRACTION IN SERBIAN/CROATIAN 467 phrase. In capturing this generalization, I employ constraints imposed on lexical items rather than extraction rules. Because fronted interrogatives can extract out of embedded clauses, I treat left-branch fronting as an instance of unbounded filler-gap dependencies. Following Miller and Sag (1997), Bouma et al. (2001), and Davidson (2004), I employ a traceless, constraint-based approach to LBE. As a comparison, I review some derivational approaches to this phenomenon, such as those in Corver 1990, 1992, Kennedy and Merchant 2000, Boskovic 2005, which link the availability of LBE in Slavic to the absence of the functional category D(eterminer) in the noun phrase. According to these researchers, a lack of a DP layer in the noun phrase in articleless Slavic languages is what licenses fronting of left branch constituents. However, considering that languages with articles , claimed to have a DP projection, such as Dutch, German, Norwegian , and Swedish, also allow left branch extraction out of the noun phrase, a direct correlation between the existence of a DP and attributive LBE cannot be maintained. This is further supported by examples such as (3...