By combining Collins’s (to appear) theory of implicit arguments with
Charnavel’s (2019) theory of exempt anaphora, we explain crosslinguistic
variations in the distribution of exempt anaphors.
A blog about natural language syntax, fieldwork and life.
By combining Collins’s (to appear) theory of implicit arguments with
Charnavel’s (2019) theory of exempt anaphora, we explain crosslinguistic
variations in the distribution of exempt anaphors.
This is the second of a series of blog posts showing how I think about a syntax problem when I first notice it. For the first installment, see:
How to Syntax I (the now that-Construction)
I will occasionally choose phenomena that I notice, and talk about them in an informal fashion, breaking down the process of preliminary syntactic exploration. That is, I am just thinking off the top of my head (brainstorming), with few or no revisions. Ideally, I will give myself a time period of three hours maximum to prevent polishing. The focus of the discussion will be on process. I am not trying to come up with a polished analysis.
I am very proud of both of these little squibs, which are both foundational. Erich Groat and Daniel Seely are two of the deepest thinkers about the foundations of minimalist syntax out there, and I am honored to have been able to work with them. Both of these papers follow closely on earlier results of mine, including Collins 2002 ('Eliminating Labels') and Collins and Stabler 2016 ('A Formaliation of Minimalist Syntax'). I am glad that they are finally going to see the light of day in Grohmann and Leivada's eagerly anticipated handbook.
(https://www.orbooks.com/catalog/chomsky-and-me/)
In this blog post, I review Bev Stohl’s memoir ‘Chomsky and Me’ (2023, OR Books) from my personal point of view, as a graduate student who attended the MIT Department of Linguistics from 1988 to 1993. To complement Stohl’s perspective, I describe some of my own experiences in the department, studying with Chomsky.
Here are two related abstracts that I submitted for ACAL55 with co-authors. ACAL stands for Annual Conference on African Linguistics.
They both concern the classification of Khoe-Kwadi languages (Central Khoisan). The first deals specifically with Tshila, which has not been very well classified before. The second deals with the structure of the Kalahari Khoe subgroup of Khoe-Kwadi, arguing that it should be divided into northern and southern Kalahari Khoe. The methodology of the second paper is based on the Bantu linguistics paper by Marten, Kula and Thwala 2007.
As of the posting date (November 6, 2023), neither abstract has been either accepted or rejected.
Batchelder-Schwab, Andre and Chris Collins. 2023. Classification of Tshila.
Abstract submitted to ACAL55. Abstract.
Collins, Chris and Anne-Maria Fehn. 2023. Parameters of Morphosyntactic Variation in Kalahari Khoe.
Abstract submitted to ACAL55. Abstract.
This abstract was accepted as a poster at NELS 54 (2024). Empirically, it documents differences between exempt anaphora in Greek and English. It accounts for those differences by postulating a deep connection between logophoricity and implicit arguments in the sense of Collins 2023 (forthcoming, MIT Press).
If you are unable to download the abstract, let me know.
Abstract: On implicit arguments and logophoricity