snippets
Issue 44 - March 2023

Contents
1. Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine. Can parasitic scope-taking movement be pronounced?
2. Sampson Korsah, Augustina Pokua Owusu, and Comfort Ahenkorah. On unexpected
exceptions to prosodic vacuity and verbal resumption in Akan.
3. Brian Rabern and Patrick Todd. A puzzle about scope for restricted deontic modals.

Can parasitic scope-taking movement be pronounced?
Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine · National University of Singapore
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/snip-2023-044-erle

Considerations of semantic interpretation have motivated LF structures that involve movement ofan expression β to a position that ends up being located in between another expression α that ismoved and α ’s corresponding λ -binder, as in (1). Barker (2007) describes β as taking “parasiticscope” in such configurations.
(1) Parasitic scope:
LF: U V _ 2 _ 1 [ ... C1 ... C2 ... ]orU V _2 _ 1 [ ... C 2 ... C 1 ... ]Here I note that in prior work that has argued for parasitic scope-taking LFs, β is not pronounced in
the hypothesized, parasitic scope-taking position (except for a couple potential exceptions, below).
I first survey prominent examples of constructions for which parasitic scope taking has beenargued to be required. In (2)-(4), the semantics of the expression in bold requires a two-placepredicate denotation for its sister, which parasitic scope makes possible. Similar analyses exist forreflexive anaphors (Lechner 2012) and NP-internal only (Sharvit 2015). In all of these cases, theproposed movement taking parasitic scope is covert.
(2) Relative superlatives:(Heim 1999)

Amy is angriest at [Bea]F .
LF: Bea -est _ 2 _1 [ Amy is C 2 -angry at C1 ](3) Comparatives with phrasal standards:(Bhatt and Takahashi 2007, 2011)

Cara is taller than Dana.
LF: Cara [-er than Dana] _ 2 _ 1 [ C 1 is C 2 -tall ](4) Sentence-internal same and different:(Barker 2007)

Everyone read the same book.
LF: everyone same _2 _1 [ C1 read [the C 2 book] ]Kennedy and Stanley (2008, 2009) present an analysis for NP-internal average that involves overt
movement of the containing NP taking parasitic scope, but their analysis can also be recast asinvolving (covert) parasitic scope-taking of average alone, as in Barker and Shan 2014:146.
The semantics of certain adjuncts also motivate parasitic scope (5), as they require a derived
two-place predicate sister. Examples include adjuncts with multiple parasitic gaps (Nissenbaum
2000a,b), the ** cumulative operator (Sauerland 1998, Beck 2000, Beck and Sauerland 2000), andon average (Kennedy and Stanley 2008, 2009).
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(5) Movement taking parasitic scope, motivated by adjunct:
LF: U V [ adjunct [ _2 _ 1 [ ... C1 ... C 2 ... ]]] or U V [ adjunct [ _ 2 _1 [ ... C2 ... C 1 ... ]]]Note that in contrast to the examples above, adjuncts with multiple parasitic gaps can be licensed
by two overlapping, overt movement chains: see e.g., Nissenbaum 2000b:117, exx. 42a, 43a andDavis 2020:224, ex. 53. However, following these works, the configuration in (5) then holds at anintermediate vP edge, so β is again not pronounced there. In summary, in the many constructions
that arguably necessitate parasitic scope in English, the critical β movement step in (1)/(5) is notpronounced there.
Potential counterexamples to this generalization are attested, but — perhaps notably — in otherlanguages. For instance, as the editors note, Aihara (2009) and Hallman (2016) analyze examples
where superlative morphemes (Japanese ichiban and Syrian Arabic aktar šey, respectively) are
separated from their associated degree predicates, as involving overt equivalents of Heim’s (2)above. However, as Aihara notes (p. 352, note 6), there is a potential, alternative account where
the superlative morpheme does not take parasitic scope and is instead a focus-sensitive operator.
Further work is necessary to determine which approach is most appropriate.
If such analyses involving overt movements taking parasitic scope are maintained, we must
consider the intriguing possibility that the availability of overt parasitic scope-taking movement
is subject to cross-linguistic variation. One possibility, building on a question from a reviewer,
may be to relate this to independent variation in the pronunciation of multiple specifiers. Noticethat in the parasitic scope configurations in (1-5) above, α and β form multiple specifiers of asingle phrase. Richards (1997) and Pesetsky (2000) propose that multiple wh-phrases may move
to form multiple specifiers of CP, but languages vary in how such structures are pronounced at
PF: only the outermost specifier can be pronounced there in English, whereas multiple specifiers
can be pronounced simultaneously in Bulgarian-type languages. If the proposed “pronunciationrule” extends to all phrases with multiple specifiers, regardless of whether they involve parasitic
scope, the observation that β is not pronounced in the configurations in (1-5) in English above isexplained, as it is an inner specifier of a multiple specifier configuration.

References
Aihara, Masahiko. 2009. The scope of -est: Evidence from Japanese. Natural Language Semantics
17:341–367.
Barker, Chris. 2007. Parasitic scope. Linguistics and Philosophy 30:407–444.
Barker, Chris, and Chung-Chieh Shan. 2014. Continuations and Natural Language. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Beck, Sigrid. 2000. Star operators – Episode 1: Defense of the double star. University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers in Linguistics 23:1–23.
Beck, Sigrid, and Uli Sauerland. 2000. Cumulation is needed: A reply to Winter (2000). NaturalLanguage Semantics 8:349–371.
Bhatt, Rajesh, and Shoichi Takahashi. 2007. Direct comparisons: Resurrecting the direct analysisof phrasal comparatives. In Proceedings of the 17th Semantics and Linguistic Theory Conference(SALT 17), ed. Tova Friedman and Masayuki Gibson, 19–36.
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Bhatt, Rajesh, and Shoichi Takahashi. 2011. Reduced and unreduced phrasal comparatives. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 29:581–620.
Davis, Colin. 2020. The Linear Limitations of Syntactic Derivations. Doctoral Dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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Heim, Irene. 1999. Notes on superlatives. Ms., Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Kennedy, Christopher, and Jason Stanley. 2008. What an average semantics needs. In Proceedingsof the 18th Semantics and Linguistic Theory Conference (SALT 18), ed. Tova Friedman andSatoshi Ito, 465–482.
Kennedy, Christopher, and Jason Stanley. 2009. On ‘average’. Mind 118:583–646.
Lechner, Winfred. 2012. Towards a theory of transparent reflexivization. Ms., University ofAthens.
Nissenbaum, Jon. 2000a. Covert movement and parasitic gaps. In Proceedings of the 30th Annual
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Sauerland, Uli. 1998. Plurals, derived predicates, and reciprocals. In The Interpretive Tract, ed.
Uli Sauerland and Orin Percus, 177–204. Camrbide, MA: MIT Working Papers in Linguistics.
Sharvit, Yael. 2015. The onliest NP: Non-definite definites. In Proceedings of the 32nd West
Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL 32), ed. Ulrike Steindl, Thomas Borer, Huilin
Fang, Alfredo García Pardo, Peter Guekguezian, Brian Hsu, Charlie O’Hara, and Iris ChuoyingOuyang, 171–190. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.

Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine
mitcho@nus.edu.sg
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
National University of Singapore
Block AS5, 7 Arts Link
Singapore 117570

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