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Ksenia Ershova
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Journal Articles
Diagnosing Clause Structure in a Polysynthetic Language: Wh -Agreement and Parasitic Gaps in West Circassian
UnavailablePublisher: Journals Gateway
Linguistic Inquiry (2021) 52 (1): 1–38.
Published: 01 January 2021
Abstract
View articletitled, Diagnosing Clause Structure in a Polysynthetic Language: Wh -Agreement and Parasitic Gaps in West Circassian
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for article titled, Diagnosing Clause Structure in a Polysynthetic Language: Wh -Agreement and Parasitic Gaps in West Circassian
This article identifies and tests a novel diagnostic for clause structure in West Circassian, a polysynthetic language with ergative alignment. The diagnostic concerns an unusual construction involving multiple wh -agreement in relative clauses. I argue that wh -agreement morphology uniformly tracks agreement with a wh -trace, and sentences with more than one instance of wh -agreement are surface manifestations of a parasitic gap dependency. Once multiple wh -agreement is understood in this theoretically familiar light, it can be used as a powerful tool for diagnosing asymmetries between various constituents in the West Circassian clause. By appealing to well-known constraints on parasitic gap licensing, the article demonstrates that the absolutive DP raises to a position c-commanding other clausemate DPs, and applied objects may undergo optional scrambling to a position above the ergative agent.