I'm writing to let you all know that the third meeting of the Morphology & Syntax Workshop for the Spring 2025 quarter will be taking place this Friday, May 16th, from 12:30 to 2:30 PM Chicago time in Wieboldt 103 or online (link here). We will have our very own Jaehong Shim presenting material from his second qualifying paper; title and abstract follow:
Is There String-Vacuous Verb Raising in Khalkha Mongolian? An Experimental Investigation
Unlike head-initial languages, verb movement is hard to detect in head-final languages through the lens of relative order between verbs and other elements: regardless of verb raising, the verb always occupies the linearly final position. In this study, I investigated the scope interpretation between negation and the universal quantifier in Khalkha Mongolian. My finding suggests that verbs undergo V-to-C movement in the language. Building on Han et al.’s (2007) experimental investigation on verb raising in Korean, I conducted a Truth-Value Judgment Task (TVJT, Crain and Thornton 1998) using negative sentences with universally quantified arguments. The results show that both neg > ∀ and ∀ > neg readings are readily available regardless of the position of the universal quantifier. This observation indicates that the negation on the verb is at least higher than the TP domain and is able to c-command both universally quantified subjects and objects in the language, giving rise to the neg > ∀ reading. As for the ∀ > neg reading*,* it emerges from the neg > ∀ reading via the entailment relationship.
As always, reach out with any comments/suggestions/concerns, and take a look at the rest of this quarter's schedule (and more!) at our website (link here).