Workshops

Lectures on non-representational grammar III with Andrés Saab (University of Buenos Aires)

Lecture #3: The proposed theory confronts in interesting ways with recent proposals in the literature on the grammar of expressivity. I will discuss at least two proposals. On the one hand, I critically revise the theory of pure expressives offered in Gutzmann (2019), according to which some types of expressives involve the Agree system, more or less in the usual sense. Based on recent work by Lo Guercio and Orlando (2022), I claim that pure expressives of the fucking type can be accounted for in the model of syntactic recycling offered in these lectures. On the other hand, I discuss the theory of syntactic deviation defended in Corver (2016), according to which some sorts of expressivity require deviated use of the rules of grammar in a way such that the appraisal system gets affected, giving rise to different expressivity flavors. I show that at least for the cases for which Corver’s thesis has certain plausibility in Spanish (e.g., the binominals discussed in Lecture #2), its alternative analysis, the recycling approach, fits the empirical picture better. Yet, I conclude speculating that other types of expressive language (i.e., the so-called inclusive language in Spanish) can be analyzed using syntactic deviation, with interesting theoretical consequences.