Agenda

08 Apr 2025 11:00

Superiority – Theoretical considerations and Pilot study in Czech Corpus

Sala Sarpellon - Ca' Bembo

The lecture introduces the topic of superiority in English and demonstrates its violations in Slavic languages. Providing mainly Czech data it will demonstrate that based on the taxonomy and diagnostics of Rudin (1988), Czech ranks among the non-Multiple-WH-Fronting Languages analysed in terms of the Split CP Hypothesis. The talk then concentrates in more detail on Superiority effects as attested in Czech language corpus and in the study of acquisition. It presents statistic data comparing the frequency of a variety of attested orderings within groups of WH elements. The hierarchies discussed in the study are (a) The Function/Case Hierarchy, (b) The Category/Size Sequence and (c) The Animacy Hierarchy. The data collected and grouped according to types of WH elements show that Czech demonstrates a statistically relevant preference to keep the formal hierarchies (a/b), but no statistically relevant data are obtained for the Animacy Hierarchy. The study compares the multiple WH structures with the structures containing coordinated WHs, so as to demonstrate the unexplained restriction on Adverbial positions in the left periphery of the Czech clause.

Speaker: Lida Veselovska

Language

The event will be held in English

Organized by

Dipartimento di Studi Linguistici e Culturali Comparati, ProgettoEccellenzaDSLCC2023

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