David Adger (York)
This paper examines the parallels between relative clause structures in Scottish Gaelic and Welsh. It argues that certain types of relative dependency are established not via movement, but via long distance cyclic agreement, resurrecting some old ideas about relative deletion. Both the Welsh and Gaelic data are interestingly problematic from this perspective, and the paper considers a number of theoretical avenues for reconciling the theory with the facts.
Bob Borsley (University of Essex) and Bob Morris Jones (University of Wales Aberystwyth)
In the early stages of acquisition children acquiring Welsh, like children acquiring other languages, often produce sentences with no finite element. In the case of Welsh children such sentences often look like copula sentences without the copula. Sentences of this form also occur in adult Welsh but only with the pronouns ti, ni, chi as subject. We have examples like Ti'n gadael 'You are leaving' and Ti'n barod 'You are ready'. In this talk we will look at copula-less sentences in adult Welsh. We will highlight certain restrictions on their use, especially the fact that they require an in-situ complement. Thus, *Barod ti is not possible. We will also consider how such sentences might be analysed within HPSG.
Dirk Bury (University College London)
Middle Welsh is a verb-second language, and Modern Welsh is a VSO language. In this talk I want to investigate under what conditions the change from V2 to VSO is possible. To do this, I will introduce a theory where clause structure consists of recursive VPs and where there are no abstract empty heads (see Haider 1988, Ackema et al 1993, Grimshaw 1997, Neeleman and Weerman 1999, Nash and Rouveret 1997, Epstein 1998 for related ideas and discussion). It will be shown that this theory predicts that VSO orders are only possible if movement of the verb can target an initial head, and consequently that a language can only become a VSO language if this requirement is met. This prediction then allows us to relate two changes that took place in Welsh at about the same time. In the seventeenth century (i) the expletive fe was reanalysed as a main clause complementizer, and (ii) unmarked VSO orders became available (Willis 1998). I will propose that the Modern Welsh preverbal particles can serve as the target of verb movement because they are complementizers (e.g. Hendrick 1988, Willis 1998), while the Middle Welsh preverbal particles cannot because they are agreement elements (Willis 1998) and therefore do not head an independent projection. Thus, what allowed Welsh to turn into a VSO language is the development of a system of preverbal complementizers. The crucial role of an initial head for VSO orders is underpinned by Middle Welsh negative and subordinate clauses. Negative clauses are introduced by a negation marker, and subordinate clauses by a complementizer; that is there is an initial head in both sentence types. As this theory leads as to expect, both negative and subordinate clauses are VSO.
Emyr Davies
Construct State noun phrases in Welsh are used primarily to denote possession, e.g. in ystafell Mair 'room Mair'. They have a surface order of N NP and there is a strict prohibition on determiners in front of the head. They are a feature of Celtic and other VSO languages - suggesting a correlation between clauses and DPs. These are the issues to addressed:
Bob Morris Jones (University of Wales Aberystwyth)
This study aims to establish the syntax of sentences which contain biau, e.g., Sioned biau'r Volvo coch 'the red Volvo is Sioned's, Sioned owns the Volvo coch', within an X-bar framework. It uses comparisons with other sentences, especially those which contain eisiau (noun) 'wants, needs' and angen (noun) 'need'. It also looks at movement rules, and considers a tricky problem of defining grammatical relationships.