entangledbank: wh garden path

- (

entangledbank) wrote,
@ 2004-09-01 23:54:00

wh garden path
An interesting example in the comments in

latin of a garden path from wh-fronting: the commenter writes 'Verres was a former official whom the Sicilian people hired Cicero to prosecute for embezzlement.'

As far as I can tell, this is not only grammatical but natural. The simplest thing is just to front the pronoun. Pied-piping is relatively costly and moves you up a register (I have to say 'for whom', 'pictures of whom', whereas direct object 'who(m)' depends on register). The pied-piped alternative here is particularly marked: you have to front an entire VP, 'to prosecute whom the Sicilian people hired Cicero'. And dammit, there's an adjunct, and it just doesn't fit anywhere else, so you have to pied-pipe the goddam adjunct! 'to prosecute whom for embezzlement the Sicilian people hired Cicero'.

So the most natural grammatical way of saying it is a garden path: 'a former official whom the Sicilian people hired...'.

Afterthought. I suppose if 'to prosecute [him]' is an adjunct itself, to 'hired', that'd be some sort of barrier to extraction.

(Post a new comment)

	hisjesus 2004-09-01 04:22 pm UTC (link)
	"I wish I was a blue whale" or "I wish I were a blue whale"? I thought only you would know.. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	entangledbank 2004-09-01 04:35 pm UTC (link)
	whatever feels best... seriously (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	hisjesus 2004-09-01 05:04 pm UTC (link)
	really? I thought it was important. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

q_pheevr
2004-09-02 09:39 am UTC (link)

The sorts of people to whom it is important will tell you that it has to be I wish I were a blue whale. entangledbank, on the other hand, is a committed descriptivist, and will tell you that it is quite meaningless—indeed, contradictory—to say that the grammatical rules of a language ever require fluent speakers of that language to do anything they would not naturally do.

The thing to keep in mind is that if it were really ungrammatical, nobody would ever need to tell you not to say it. For example, (some) prescriptivists will also tell you not to begin a sentence with and or but, even though there are times when it is perfectly natural to do so. But nobody will ever tell you not to begin a sentence with the word ago. The difference is that the grammar of English (the one that lives inside your head, and not in a book) allows the former but prevents the latter; the prescriptivists are trying to impose additional restrictions that don't belong to the grammar itself.

Of course, there are times when it is a good idea, for reasons of self-preservation, to go along with what the prescriptivists want....

(Reply to this)(Parent)

	foxfour 2004-09-01 06:22 pm UTC (link)
	i could not parse that quote at all, for the record, and even when i read your explanation, it struck me as totally unnatural. (Reply to this)(Thread)

q_pheevr
2004-09-02 09:17 am UTC (link)

Funny how reactions differ; I didn't find it at all unnatural or even particularly difficult to parse. I can see the garden path there, but I don't feel particularly tempted to wander down it.

The island thing is interesting. I get different judgments for extractions from purpose clauses depending on whether their implicit subjects are controlled by the subject or the object of the main clause:

Who(m)_i did the Sicilians_j hire Cicero_k [PRO_k to prosecute t_i]?
*?Who(m)_i did the Sicilians_j fire Cicero_k [PRO_j to appease t_i]?

Upon the reflection that had time to happen while I was typing all those <sub> tags, I think maybe what's going on is that [PRO to prosecute t] is acting like an argument of hire, just as it would be an argument of, say, persuade.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	entangledbank 2004-09-02 11:50 am UTC (link)
	My idiolect is particularly leaky with respect to extraction from adjuncts. Yes there's always something a bit yukky about them, but I've never seen an example where my reaction is of blank ungrammaticality. I have no idea what that says about our mental storages. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	foxfour 2004-09-02 07:06 pm UTC (link)
	...aaaand of course, my judgments differ - both 1. and 2. seem perfectly grammatical. but i have just had a syntax class today, and am suffering from some syntactician's syndrome, so my judgments may be off. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	lallabelle 2004-09-01 07:30 pm UTC (link)
	God I love wh-move and stuff like that. By the way, at the RNC Bush said that the effort in Iraq was a "catastrophic success". The man's theta role assignments never cease to amuse me! (Reply to this)(Thread)

	lallabelle 2004-09-01 07:31 pm UTC (link)
	Er, maybe it wasn't the RNC, but he did say it recently. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	q_pheevr 2004-09-02 12:43 pm UTC (link)
	Is a catastrophic success like a Pyrrhic victory? 'Cause if it is, then maybe that boy's more honest than I thought. (Reply to this)(Parent)

Mini Sitemap:

Username:		Create an Account Forgot your login? Login w/ OpenID
Password:
	Remember Me
	English • Español • Deutsch • Русский…