On the source of displacement: Two meanings of embedded CPs
Tanya Bondarenko
August 2024 

This paper provides an argument for the view that the source of displacement in attitude and speech reports is within the embedded clause (Kratzer 2006, Moulton 2009, Bogal-Allbritten 2016, Kratzer 2013, Elliott 2020a). The main empirical observation comes from Korean clauses that combine with nouns like opinion (content nouns, Cont-NPs) and clauses that combine with nouns like situation (situation nouns, Sit-NPs). I argue that embedded CPs that combine with these nouns (i) are nominal modifiers, and (ii) have distinct meanings. Taken together, these properties imply that displacement in sentences with Cont-NPs like opinion is introduced in the embedded CP. I argue that Korean has an overt exponent of the syntactic head, which I call Cont, that introduces displacement. Based on data from Buryat, English and Russian, I argue that the two meanings of embedded CPs that we observe in Korean exist in other languages too, and suggest that the cross-linguistic variation in these constructions is morphological in nature. While the syntax and semantics of constructions with Cont-NPs and Sit-NPs are uniform, languages vary in whether they have overt morphology for the Cont head inside the embedded clause. Finally, I propose an extension of my analysis to embedded clauses that combine with verbs, arguing that such clauses also vary in whether they contribute displacement.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/007469 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	Under Review
keywords:	complementation, attitude reports, intensionality, korean, russian, buryat, semantics, syntax
previous versions:	v1 [August 2023]
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