Scope alternation and type logical grammar.
Hiroyuki Uchida · OpenGrey (Institut de l'Information Scientifique et Technique) · 2008
This thesis provides an analysis of ONP scope which naturally explains the characteristic tensed-clause locality constraint. Linguistically, I argue that ONP scope is not explained by A-bar movement or A-movement. A-bar movement is different from ONP scope in terms of the locality constraints and Amovement is not flexible enough to explain scope ambiguity. Instead of reducing ONP scope to A-bar or A-movement phenomena, I argue that scope ambiguity is a result of an independent operation that allows us to merge QNPs as syntactic arguments of the local functors even though they are semantically operators. To instantiate this idea, I reformulate Hendriks' argument raising as a special rule (caned Argument Slot Raising or ASR) in a non-associative grammar NL. ASR only affects the local functor of the ONP in question. Thus, the ONP's scope is predicted to stay within the final output of this functor. For control/auxiliary/raising constructions, I extend NL by introducing an association rule that is restricted by a pair of merge modes in Moortgat's (1997) Multi-Modal grammar. This structural rule may postpon~ the saturation of NP argument slots, allowing a complex .predicate to be formed. Application of ASR to such complex predicates may switch ONP scope within each finite TP. Structural rules for A-bar movement are introduced in terms of introduction and discharge of modally marked hypothetical categories, which explains the longer distance nature of A-bar extraction in comparison to ONP scope. Finally, I explain the apparent 'exceptional scope' of indefinites in terms of their domain restriction and anaphoric dependency on other operators. This maintains the uniform locality of ONP scope. The underlying claim is that ONP scope switch mechanism itself does not involve structural ambiguity. The thesis considers the implications for natural language grammar of implementing this idea.