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Short biography
In August 2010, I graduated from the Research Master programme in Linguistics at the University of Amsterdam, with a thesis on the cross-linguistic locus of marking of possessive NPs from a split approach to dependency. Currently, I am working on my PhD project, supervised by Prof. Dr. Kees Hengeveld and Dr. Eva van Lier, which investigates the role of split dependency as a predictor of morphosyntactic marking within a range of constituents across the world's languages. A short description can be found below.
Predication and modification within the noun phrase: a typological study
My PhD project is a typological investigation into the morphosyntactic encoding of internal constituent relations, with a strong focus on the noun phrase. Based on noun valency, i.e. the idea that nouns, like verbs, have an argument structure of their own, the study makes a core distinction between two types of constituent-internal dependencies: the relation between a bivalent predicate and its argument, called predication, and the relation between a monovalent head and its modifier, called modification. Though the distinction between arguments and modifiers, or adjuncts, of verbs is recognized in most current linguistic frameworks, the relevance of this distinction for nouns (as well as other parts of speech like adjectives) often remains unnoticed. This is unlike the theory of Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG), in which bivalent lexemes are systematically distinguished from monovalent ones. The present project follows FDG in investigating the formal differentation of the split in dependencies in a 50-language sample.
The constituent/clause types I will investigate in the project stem from three classes:
- Modification in the phrasal domain:
alienably possessed noun - (pro)nominal possessor
noun - attributive adjective
noun - relative clause - Predication in the phrasal domain:
inalienably possessed noun - (pro)nominal possessor
adposition - (pro)noun
relational adjective - (pro)noun
noun - complement clause - Predication in the clausal domain:
one-place verb - S
two-place verb - S/O
three-place verb - S/O/IO
It is hypothesized that split dependency constrains the morphosyntactic encoding of these constituent/clause types, in that constituent types maximally differing with respect to dependency configuration and syntactic domain, i.e. modification within the phrasal domain and predication within the clausal domain, only allow for a uniform treatment when predication within the phrasal domain receives this treatment.
The encoding of dependency can be of different types ( indexing, flagging, registering) and can have different locations, as captured by the well-known head/dependent marking parameter developed by Johanna Nichols. Type and location of marking correlate directly in the case of indexing, generally referred to as the distinction between cross-reference markers and agreement markers. In my project, I adopt a new diagnostic to straightforwardly distinguish both typesof markers, developed by Kees Hengeveld and inspired by Anna Siewierska (cf. my MA thesis below for the specifics).