Séminaire de Recherche en Linguistique

On the informative and inquisitive potential of propositional attitude complements

Valentina Bianchi (University of Siena) & Mara Frascarelli (University of Roma 3)

In this talk we discuss the issue of "root-like" complement clauses
selected by certain propositional attitude (PA) verbs. Specifically, we
will show that some PA complements can license sluicing in the following
clause, cf. (1):

(1) Mary says that [somebody has been fired], but it is unclear who (=
who has been fired).

We will adopt and motivate a semantic constraint on sluicing proposed by
AnderBois 2011 in the framework of inquisitive semantics. We will then
characterize the "root-like" status of such PA complements in terms of
the discourse model by Farkas & Bruce 2010, and we will show how the
constraint, in combination with the semantics of different PA verbs,
predicts the observed distribution of sluicing.
In the final part of the talk we will discuss how our analysis of
root-like PA complements can be reconciled with two basic assumptions of
cartography, namely (a) the compositionally of cartographic structures,
and (b) the assumption that no syntactic phenomenon can be triggered, or
licensed, from outside the narrow syntactic computation (in opposition
to so-called interface-driven" approach pioneered by Fox 2000 and
Reinhart 1995/2006).