Syntax-semantics interface (LF)

The final theoretical aspect related to minimalism that I will focus on in this exposé is the interface between syntax and semantics or LF (I will use the two terms interchangeably), which will constitute the most important linguistic area when it comes to my study of the subjunctive.

The notion of LF was originally put forward by May (1985) in order to account for the differences in quantifier scope, but minimalism tends to use this notion a bit more widely, in order to account for phenomena related to binding more generally, or for theta-relations, among others (Szabolsi, 2003). In this study, I will analyze the interpretative scope of the syntax-semantics interface in a bit wider sense still, claiming that the structural input that is sent to LF is also relevant when it comes to determining notions such as modality and world-relations between clauses (more on the latter will be said in 1.4). Thus, the concept of interpretable features that I introduced earlier on will also be used to encode these types of meanings.²¹

Such an approach to LF will allow me to develop a more precise formal analysis related to the generalization, outlined earlier on in 1.2, which stated that the interpretation of a given subjunctive complement is crucially dependent on its syntactic properties and, more specifically, on the size of its underlying structure, with those complements that denote more typical subjunctive semantics (i.e. intensional subjunctives) also being structurally larger than the complements which are less typical from a semantic point of view (such as those we observed earlier on in (21-22)). This generalization will be formally accounted for through the prism of feature superset-subset relations, because the interpretation of a given complement will be seen as dependent on the amount of interpretable, subjunctive-related features that it sends to LF. Thus, given that complements associated with larger structural sizes also send a greater amount of features related to the basic Subj1 CP clause structure in (23) to LF, this will explain why their meaning is more specified and more in line with the cross-linguistic semantics that we typically observe with the subjunctive mood than is the case with complements associated with more truncated structures, which only send a subset of subjunctive-related features to LF. This analysis will be developed in more detail from Chapter 3 onwards, once I focus more closely on the issue of subjunctive distribution in Slavic.

21 This is not an entirely radical proposal, because various authors have already put forward analyses that assume the existence of modality-related semantic features, including Han (1998), Kempchinsky (2009) or Krapova (1998), among others.

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Another aspect pertaining to the minimalist analysis of the syntax-semantics interface that will be relevant for my subsequent study has to do with the phase-based approach to the relation between the syntactic derivation and LF. This theoretical perspective, originally formulated in Chomsky (2001), argues that the derivation is not sent to the semantic component in one single go, but in various cyclic stages, described as phases. The phasal approach to grammar is primarily motivated by considerations related to economy, because it is argued that a lesser computational burden is placed on the interpretation if the structure is not sent to LF in a single chunk but in various cycles. The phase-based perspective also assumes a slightly more open interface between syntax and semantics, because it argues that once a given phase is interpreted, it can be sent back to the syntactic component in order to participate in further computations. However, once a phase is sent back to the derivation, its syntactic contribution is more restricted, and it cannot freely combine with other parts of the structure outside of that phase.

As for the exact syntactic functioning of phases, various different proposals have been put forward in literature following Chomsky (2001). Here I will largely stick to Chomsky’s original formulations, because they will provide sufficient explanatory adequacy in the context of my study of the subjunctive. Chomsky identified two different phasal domains within clausal structure: the vP and the CP phase. He analyzed these phases as syntactically opaque domains, which behave in accordance with the Phase Impenetrability Condition (PIC), given below:

(31) In phase α with head H, the domain of H is not accessible to operations outside α, but only H and its edge.

(Chomsky, 2001)

Thus, after the CP or the vP phase have been interpreted at LF and returned back to the derivation, they can only be accessed by an outside element through phase edges, which correspond to the head and the specifier of CP and vP projections.

In this dissertation, I will be primarily interested in the CP phase, while the vP phase will be left to the side because, as I already explained several times, the most relevant clausal area when it comes to the study of subjunctive in Slavic is the left periphery of the clause. I will be using the notion of CP phase, and its syntactic analysis in terms of PIC, in order to determine the differences in terms of structural size that can be observed between various types of complements, specifically between indicatives, on the one hand, and subjunctives, on the other,

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as well as between different types of subjunctive complements themselves. Once again, the structural contrasts that we will observe in this context will then be systematically correlated to the semantic differences that can be noted between these different complements as well.

The phasal status associated with a given embedded complement will be gauged primarily by looking at the types of binding relationships that it can establish with respect to the matrix clause. This will allow me to relate the more contemporary phasal approach to syntax with the older syntactic notion of binding domains, which was relevant within the Government and Binding framework, developed by Chomsky (1981). In this context, I will study the phasal properties associated with a given clause through the prism of the well-known conditions on the binding of (pro)nominals, given in a simplified version below:

(32) a. A: an anaphor must have an antecedent within its own binding domain.

b. B: a pronoun must have an antecedent outside its binding domain.

c. C: a referential expression cannot be bound by an antecedent.

The relevant conditions in the context of my study will be the conditions A and B. In (33-34) we can see an example of their application:

(33) a. Johni promoted himselfi.

b. * Johni thinks that himselfi should be promoted.

(34) a. * Johni promoted himi.

b. Johni thinks that hei should be promoted.

In (33) we can see that an anaphor such as himself must be bound by an antecedent clause-internally, in accordance with the Condition A, whereas in (34) we can note that a pronoun such as him must be bound clause-externally, in accordance with the Condition B.

If we apply these conditions to the area of phasehood, then we must say that an anaphor situated within a given CP phase cannot be bound by an antecedent situated outside of that phase, with the opposite being true of a pronoun. The broader generalization that can be proposed in this context is that inter-phasal binding dependencies are only compatible with anti-locality constraints, such as the condition B, whereas anti-locality constraints, such as the condition A, are typical of phase-internal binding relationships. As a result, whenever we observe

matrix-33

embedded syntactic relationships that are subject to locality constraints, this will be seen as indicative of the non-phasal status of the embedded complement in question.

Another difference that should be noted when it comes to local and anti-local binding relationships such as those in (33-34) has to do with the linguistic domain where they are established: while anaphor binding, as in (33a), should be seen as a syntactic-type relationship, pronoun binding, as in (34b), is better analyzed as established within the semantic component.

This is evidenced by the fact that, in (33a), the anaphor himself can only refer to John and cannot co-refer with any other antecedent, whereas in (34b), the pronoun him can also optionally co-refer to some other antecedent in the discourse, as shown through the grammaticality contrast below:

(35) a. * Johni promoted himselfj.

b. Johni thinks that hei/j should be promoted.

The data in (35) are best explained by saying that the anaphor should be seen as co-indexed with its antecedent within the syntactic component, so their co-reference is already determined by the time the structure reaches the interface with semantics, whereas the pronoun is co-indexed with its antecedent only in the semantic component, which is why the interpretation is more context-dependent in such cases. This will allow me to reconcile the latter type of binding relationships with the broader PIC constraint: despite the fact that anti-local binding such as the one in (35b) crosses a phase boundary, this does not violate PIC because the binding in question is not syntactic in nature (PIC being a syntactic constraint). The same observation will also apply to other cross-phasal binding relationships that we will observe in the latter parts of this dissertation.

At this point, I have outlined in a general sense the overall conceptual framework that will be relevant for the study of the Slavic subjunctive in my dissertation. Now I will move a bit closer to my subject matter by introducing some theoretical approaches that have been proposed in the literature in order to account for the nature of the subjunctive mood in particular, and the way in which the latter differs from its indicative counterpart. I will begin the following section by introducing some of the more influential analyses that were put forward in this context, placing a special focus on those theoretical approaches that will be more relevant for my study later on, and then I will discuss some of the problems and insufficiencies related to

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these analyses, which will justify the alternative approach that I will go on to introduce in my study of the Slavic subjunctive.