Séminaire SynSem

(Joint work with Cory Bill, Imke Driemel and Tamar Makharoblidze)

Resumé:
Mitrović and Sauerland (2014, 2016) claim that across languages DP-conjunction decomposes into [[XP1 MU] [J [XP2 MU]]]. Languages vary wrt. which of the J or MU-particles are pronounced. Our study focuses on Georgian, a language that shows triadic exponence of J and MU. The aim of this work is to test Mitrović and Sauerland’s (2014, 2016) account by investigating the comprehension of conjunctive expressions by Georgian-speaking children (28 children; 3;9-5;10, M = 4;9). Our results show that (i) J-MU expressions are more difficult to comprehend than J expressions, (ii) J-MU expressions are more difficult to comprehend than MU expressions. (i) and (ii) go against the account by Mitrović and Sauerland (2014, 2016) which predicted the opposite pattern, i.e., that J and MU expressions should be harder to comprehend for children relative to J-MU expressions. In addition, (ii) shows that existing accounts of J-MU expressions in languages like Hungarian (Brasoveanu and Szabolcsi 2013, Szabolcsi 2015, a.o.) which posit a silent J- particle in MU expressions cannot extend to Georgian. We propose an alternative account of conjunctive expressions in Georgian that captures our results, as well as additional data we elicited with adult Georgian speakers.