Maria-Margarita Makri | University of the Aegean (original) (raw)

Papers by Maria-Margarita Makri

Η παρούσα μeλέτη δeίχνeι ότι οι δeίκτeς σύγκρισης πιο, πeρισσότeρο, και παραπάνω έχουν διαφορeτικ... more Η παρούσα μeλέτη δeίχνeι ότι οι δeίκτeς σύγκρισης πιο, πeρισσότeρο, και παραπάνω έχουν διαφορeτικές συντακτικές ιδιότητeς. Το πιο eισάγeι συγκρίσeις μe διαβαθμίσιμα eπίθeτα, eπιρρήματα ή κατηγορηματικά ουσιαστικά, τα πeρισσότeρο/λιγότeρο τις ίδιeς συγκρίσeις μe το πιο , καθώς και συγκρίσeις ρηματικής φράσης, τα αντίστοιχα eπίθeτα eισάγουν μόνο συγκρίσeις ονοματικής φράσης, eνώ το παραπάνω, έχοντας την ίδια κατανομή μe το αντίστοιχο τοπικό eπίρρημα, eισάγeι συγκρίσeις ονοματικών και ρηματικών φράσeων. Βασιζόμeνη στην κατανομή, τη μορφολογική ανάλυση και τη σημασία των φράσeων αυτών, η παρούσα μeλέτη καταλήγeι ότι μόνο το πιο eίναι γραμματικό μόρφημα αλλόμορφο του - τέρος και πραγματώνeι μία κeφαλή βαθμού/σύγκρισης.

This paper examines the syntax-semantics of expletive negation in Modern and Classical Greek, Lat... more This paper examines the syntax-semantics of expletive negation in Modern and Classical Greek, Latin, Spanish, French, Russian and Hebrew attitude complements. It shows that, contrary to what is standardly assumed, expletive negation is not necessarily licensed in Subjunctive complements. It is licensed by predicates allowing for more than one live doxastic alternative, it scopes above Tense, and it is in complementary distribution with epistemic modals. Based on novel data, I show that expletive negation is not semantically vacuous; I propose that it is a weak epistemic modal that marks the contextually provided ordered in terms of likelihood alternatives as equally likely.

Glossa: a journal of general linguistics

Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Greek Linguistics, 2017

Στόχος της παρούσας µελέτης είναι να δείξει, µέσα από τη µελέτη των συγκρίσεων οµοιότητας που εισ... more Στόχος της παρούσας µελέτης είναι να δείξει, µέσα από τη µελέτη των συγκρίσεων οµοιότητας που εισάγονται µε το όπως, ότι οι συγκρίσεις οµοιότητας έχουν την ίδια δοµή µε τις συγκρίσεις βαθµού. Διάφορα διαγνωστικά Ā-µετακίνησης δείχνουν ότι οι όπως-συγκριτικές είναι ελεύθερες αναφορικές όπως οι συγκριτικές προτάσεις βαθµού (Chomsky 1977). Μία πειραµατική µελέτη ακυρωσιµότητας υπονοηµάτων δείχνει ότι οι όπως-συγκριτικές είναι αµφίσηµες: δηλώνουν είδη ή βαθµούς. Κατ' αυτόν τον τρόπο αποδεικνύονται όχι µόνο συντακτικά αλλά και σηµασιολογικά παράλληλες µε τις συγκριτικές προτάσεις βαθµού· οι τελευταίες δηλώνουν οντότητες ή βαθµούς. Αυτά τα αποτελέσµατα επιβεβαιώνουν θεωρίες που αφορούν στη µορφο-σηµασιολογική σχέση τρόπου, είδους και βαθµού.

Revista di Grammatica Generativa 38

ConSOLE XXIII: Proceedings of the 23rd Conference of the Student Organisation of Linguistics in Europe (7-9 January 2015, Paris), 2016

This paper examines the syntax-semantics of expletive negation in Modern and Classical Greek, La... more This paper examines the syntax-semantics of expletive negation in Modern and Classical Greek, Latin, Spanish, French, Russian and Hebrew attitude complements. It shows that, contrary to what is standardly assumed, expletive negation is not necessarily licensed in Subjunctive complements. It is licensed by predicates allowing for more than one live doxastic alternative, it scopes above Tense, and it is in complementary distribution with epistemic modals. Based on novel data I show that expletive negation is not semantically vacuous; I propose that it is a weak epistemic modal that marks the contextually provided, ordered in terms of likelihood alternatives as equally likely.

This thesis examines whether Expletive Negation (EN) in attitude contexts is indeed semantically ... more This thesis examines whether Expletive Negation (EN) in attitude contexts is indeed semantically vacuous and which are its licensing conditions. By examining the crosslinguistic distribution of EN, I show that EN is not dependent on the mood specification of the embedded clause contra what has been previously argued (e.g. Abels 2005, Espinal 2000, Yoon 2011) but rather it is only licensed in tensed clauses. I show that EN complements are selected by predicates that also select for questions. I present new asymmetries between EN and that complements: more specifically, I show that epistemic modals are not licensed in EN complements, an attitude with an EN-complement cannot function as a felicitous answer, matrix negation has different scope in EN and non-EN clauses and that EN can be used instead of an epistemic in counterfactuals. Based on these asymmetries and the previously established necessary condition for tense, I propose that EN is an epistemic modal. EN actually indicates that the doxastic alternatives of the attitude holder are equally probably and thus the semantics of EN complements are very similar to that of embedded questions. Even though the distributions of embedded questions and EN complements largely overlap and the two constructions can be changed without any difference in the meaning I demonstrate that their distribution is not identical and thus further investigation is necessary.

Conference Presentations by Maria-Margarita Makri

This paper examines the distribution and the semantic contribution of Expletive Negation (ΕΝ) in ... more This paper examines the distribution and the semantic contribution of Expletive Negation (ΕΝ) in attitude complements, namely of sentential negators or negative complementizers that do not reverse the polarity of a proposition.

(1) emoige ape:goreues hopo:s me: apokrinoime:n [Cl.Greek]
me.Dat forabade.Pst.Imp.2SG (so_)that NEG reply.Opt.Prs.1SG
you forbade me to give that answer. Plat. R. 339a

Previously unstudied data drawn from Classical Greek, break the so far thought link between EN and (notional) Subjunctive mood (Espinal 2000, Abels 2005, Yoon 2012, a.o.) whereas the comparative examination of Classical Greek, Modern Greek, Latin, French, Spanish, Russian and Hebrew data reveal a new correlation between EN and Tense: EN is not licensed in embedded clauses with anaphoric tense.
The examination of the semantics of the attitudes licensing EN in their complements shows that EN is licensed by predicates with existential force that presuppose or assert the existence of more than one doxastic possibility (hope, fear, doubt, ask, refuse, etc.). As the asymmetries in (2)-(4) show, EN asserts that the, previously ordered in terms of probability, doxastic alternatives are or can be equally likely:

(2) Erhete o Nikos? -Fovame pos /#mipos erhete. [Μ.Greek]
Come the Nikos? -Fear that /#lest.EN come
Is Nikos coming? -I fear that/#lest he is coming.

(3) Elegha pos/mipos chriazese voithia. [Μ.Greek]
said that/lest.EN need.2SG help.
I guessed that you need some help. /
EN: I wondered whether you need help.

(4) a. Dhen fovame pos kseri tin alithia. #Ja tin akrivia to elpizo
NEG fear that know the truth. For the preciseness it hope
I do not fear that he knows the truth. #In fact, I hope it.
b. Dhen fovame mipos kseri tin alithia. Ja tin akrivia to elpizo
NEG fear lest.EN know the truth. For the preciseness it hope
I do not fear lest he knows the truth. In fact, I hope it. [M.Greek]

The ungrammaticality of epistemic modals in EN complements, its use in counterfactuals instead of epistemic tha (will), its proposed semantic contribution and the fact that it scopes above Tense show that EN is a weak epistemic modal. This proposal also explains the largely overlapping –but not identical– distribution between Unselected Embedded Questions (Adger and Quer 2001) and EN, thus giving us an insight into the role of s-selection in sentential complementation and its limitations.

In the past, scalar comparatives (1), namely comparisons of the degree to which individuals rank ... more In the past, scalar comparatives (1), namely comparisons of the degree to which individuals rank on the natural scale associated with a gradable expression (Izvorski 2000), and identity comparatives (2), where the items compared are entities of any sort (not just degrees) and the issue is simply whether they are the same or different (Heim 1985), have been considered to be either two distinct constructions (Heim 1985) or constructions that are related in the sense that both involve free relatives: scalar comparatives involve degree free relatives and identity comparatives kind free relatives (Izvorski 2000).
(1) Mary is as tall as Helen. Scalar/Degree (Equality) Comparative
(2) Mary bought the same dress as Helen. Identity Comparative
The aim of this paper is to show that in fact these constructions are more closely related than has been assumed so far and that equality comparatives are a special case of identity comparatives. The crucial evidence comes from the analysis of previously unstudied Greek data, namely comparatives introduced by the manner correlative wh-item opos ‘as/however’(3)
(3) O Nikos ine idhios opos
the.D.Nom.SG Nikos.N.Nom.SG is.V.Prs.3SG same.Adj.m.Nom.SG as

o mpampas tu.
the.D.Nom.SG father.N.m.Nom.SG his.Prn.Poss.Gen.SG
Nikos is the same as his father.
I show that opos-identity comparatives involve Ā-movement and are the same construction as manner/kind free relatives. This provides empirical support to Izvorski’s (2000) assumption that as-identity comparatives involve kind free relatives and calls for further comparison of the semantics and syntax of identity and scalar comparatives. With a cancellability test, opos-free relatives are shown to be ambiguous between a degree and a kind reading, namely between scalar and identity comparatives, if they modify a scalar predicate (4).
(4) O Nikos ine psilos opos
the.D.Nom.SG Nikos.N.Nom.SG is.V.Prs.3SG tall.Adj.m.Nom.SG as

o mpampas tu.
the.D.Nom.SG father.N.m.Nom.SG his.Prn.Poss.Gen.SG
Nikos is tall as his father. / Nikos is as tall as his father.
This double interpretation of opos-clauses and their different entailments follow straightforwardly by an analysis whereby opos is a degree adverb base generated in the degree phrase and the opos-clause is merged ‘late’ in the comparative construction, as Bhatt and Pancheva (2004) proposed for scalar comparatives.
These results indicate that the similarities between equality and identity comparatives can only be explained if equality is seen as identity between two positions on a scale and scalar comparatives as a special case of identity comparatives.
References
Bhatt. R. & Pancheva, R. (2004). Late Merger of Degree Clauses. Linguistic Inquiry 35 (1): 1-45.
Heim, Irene. 1985. Notes on comparatives and related matters. Unpublished ms., University of Texas, Austin.
Izvorski, R. P. (2000). Free relatives and related matters. Dissertations available from ProQuest. Paper AAI9965537. http://repository.upenn.edu/dissertations/AAI9965537

This paper discusses the semantics of Free Relative adverbials in Modern Greek. With semantic tes... more This paper discusses the semantics of Free Relative adverbials in Modern Greek. With semantic tests (compatibility with appositives, modification by universal quantifiers, only, absolutely, inverse scope) it shows that they are definites and that they can only have a universal/Free Choice reading if they (i) are in generic contexts (ii) carry an indifference presupposition. This shows that they share the same distribution with English wh-ever relatives and they only differ in the formation of absolute adjuncts, which is expected under the assumption that Greek relative paradigm is formed by the addition of the definite determiner in the question paradigm.

Theses by Maria-Margarita Makri

This thesis examines the crosslinguistic variation and acquisition of comparative constructions a... more This thesis examines the crosslinguistic variation and acquisition of comparative constructions and proposes a fine-grained AP periphery along with an analysis of comparatives as constructions involving subtraction. More specifically, it is proposed that gradable predicates incorporate a Q head and that comparative morphology is realised in two distinct heads above the Q head: the higher comparative head (CMPR2) assigns case to the differential argument whereas the lower one (CMPR1), which is immediately above the Q head checks the case of the standard phrase. Furthermore, I provide novel evidence for two types of comparative markers, a `functional' one, which is the realisation of CMPR2 head, and a `lexical' one, which is the comparative form of the quantity word that adjoins to a positive adjective. This analysis explains morphological facts as well as variation in case assignment in Greek varieties. As far as standard phrases are concerned, I propose that there are three distinct types of standard phrases: adjunct standard phrases introduced by the phrasal standard marker, argument standard phrases comprised of the phrasal standard marker and a nominal (DP or relative clause) and exceptive phrases. Furthermore, the study of the distribution of polarity items and comparative negation in Romance comparatives as well as the acquisition of Italian comparatives suggest that negation found in comparatives is an overt realisation of the negative operator. This analysis explains a (universal) gap in the distribution of comparative negation, namely the unavailability of languages that license comparative negation but not polarity items.