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Colloquium: Claire Halpert
December 4, 2015, 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Linguistics colloquium: Claire Halpert, University of Minnesota
“Raising Hell”
In this talk, I investigate cross-linguistic patterns that arise in raising-to-subject constructions. Current theories of raising-to-subject are built around the English pattern shown below, where (1) and (2) are grammatical but (3) is not:
(1) It seems that Sipho has made jeqe.
(2) Sipho seems to have made jeqe.
(3) *Sipho seems that has made jeqe.
Certain varieties of Zulu, by contrast, show nearly the opposite pattern to English, a situation that is incompatible with current theoretical accounts. I propose a unified account for the derivation of hyper-raising and standard raising. I argue that the presence or absence of these constructions in a given language can be determined by independent properties of CP and TP in the language, including: 1) whether CPs or infinitival phrases are phi-goals in the language and 2) the presence of an EPP effect on T and (and how it can be satisfied). I show that variation in these factors can capture the different raising profiles found in Zulu, Makhuwa, and English, and Uyghur.