Dr. Simin Karimi
When
Where
Held in COMM 311
Typologically, Ossetian is a Northeastern Iranian language along with Yaghnobi and Sogdian. Ossetian speaking regions are geographically isolated from the rest of the Iranian language family, and has therefore been beyond the sphere of influence of other Iranian languages, including Persian.
Instead, it has been under the influence of the genetically diverse languages of the Caucasus, which is reflected in many aspects of its grammar (Erschler 2008). The two major dialects of the language are Iron and Digor, with Iron being the dominant one both culturally and demographically. The two dialects have low mutual intelligibility, and diverge from each other considerably in phonology, syntax, and vocabulary. This talk is based on Iron-Ossetian (IO). Almost all members of the Iranian language family exhibit wh-in situ constructions. IO, an underlyingly SOV language with highly free word order, however, has interesting properties with respect to these constructions: the wh-phrase moves obligatorily to a position adjacent to the predicate. In multi-wh-constructions, all wh-phrases stack together preverbally, with the subject outside of the cluster, and all other wh-phrases in various orders following it. Certain low-level adverbials may intervene between the lowest wh-phrase and the predicate, but other elements, including DPs and high-level adverbials, are not allowed to intervene between them. Interestingly, when there is only object wh-phrase in the sentence, the adverb cannot separate it from the predicate.
Furthermore, the focus morpheme ‘only’ may intervene between wh-phrases, but cannot separate the wh-phrases from the predicate, even if it takes scope over the verb. Moreover, clitics appear in a sentential second position in IO, and may attach to the highest wh-phrase if there is no other element preceding it. Similar to other Iranian languages, IO is rich in terms of complex predicate (CPr) constructions consisting of a non-verbal element (NVE) and a light verb (LV). Wh-constructions interact in interesting ways with the CPr in this language. Finally, some complementizers appear in the middle of the sentence, namely adjacent to the verb.
The obligatory pre-verbal appearance of wh-phrases is attested in many languages, including Basque (Hualde and Ortiz de Urbina 2003), Hungarian (Kiss 2002), Bulgarian (Grewendorf 2001, Rudin 1988), Serbo-Croatian (Rudin 1988, Boskovic 1997, 1998), among others. IO seems to pattern with these non-Iranaian languages.
In this talk, I present data relevant to wh-constructions in IO. Within the theoretical framework of Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1995 and work thereafter), I propose three distinct hypotheses to account for the data:
a. Grewendoff’s (2001) Cluster Hypothesis,
b. Multiple Specs in FocP in the left periphery,
c. FocP inside the verbal domain in addition to Multiple Specs in the left periphery.
I argue that the first two hypotheses do not account for all IO data, while the last one does. I also show that wh-movement is subject to superiority (subsumed under Minimal Link Condition (MLC)) only with respect to the subject, although even this property faces some violation. I show that this violation follows from a general pattern in this language.