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Department of Linguistics
University of Massachusetts Amherst, MA 01003-7130 nlacara (at) linguist (dot) umass.edu Office: South College 303 Hours: Mon & Tues 3:00–4:00 |
I am a PhD student in Linguistics at UMass Amherst. I specialize in syntax, and my research interests are in ellipsis and ellipsis-like phenomena (such as one-anaphora and comparative deletion) and, additionally, nominal structure.
- Predicate which-appositives ⁄ ⁄ ⁄ WCCFL 29 Paper (.pdf, 98.8 KiB) ⁄ WCCFL 29 Poster (.pdf, 88.5 KiB)
A lot of my work has recently focused on the syntax of the parentheticals discussed by Potts (2002). Whereas Potts' analysis assumes syntactically, semantically, and phonologically empty elements that undergo A'-movement, I argue that parenthetical relatives and as-parentheticals require surface deletion akin to, but distinct from, ellipsis.
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- Available online at eScholarship
This project aims to investigate definiteness marking as it occurs in Standard Swedish. The project grew out of work on Danish in Distributed Morphology started by Hankamer and Mikkelsen (2005) and builds on observations by several authors about the relation of the definite article and definite suffix with various aspects of the semantics of definite descriptions in Swedish. The above paper appears in Morphology at Santa Cruz (see below).
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- MA Thesis (.pdf, 309.5 KiB)
The culmination of this project is represented by my MA Thesis (defended 6 May 2010, UCSC). In this thesis I demonstrate that classical theories of verb phrase ellipsis cannot account for the ungrammaticality of cases of VPE inside of Abney-style poss-ing DPs when the antecedent is located in another sort of phrase (for example Harvey gesticulated wildly because of Sally's gesticulating wildly vs. *Harvey gesticulated wildly because of Sally's.). Since my thesis, I have been looking at the problem in a Rooth/Heim-type of focus theory of Ellipsis, which will hopefully resolve some of the remaining problems.
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- Available online at eScholarship
In addition to my research, I was also an editor for Morphology at Santa Cruz: Papers in Honor of Jorge Hankamer. This is a student-organized working papers volume that grew out of the morphology seminar (Ling 249) that Hankamer taught at UCSC in Fall 2009. The seminar itself grew out of the popular Morphology Reading Group, which Hankamer also helped develop. The volume includes revised versions of papers written for that course in addition to papers solicited from UCSC alums and associates of the department.
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One-Anaphora is not Ellipsis - A response to the notion, revived and suggested in works like Elbourne 2001 and Harley 2007, that noun phrase ellipsis is involved in the derivation of anaphoric one. I argue against this idea, using typical ellipsis diagnostics. This paper is currently being revised.
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University of Massachusetts, Amherst
| 2010-Present | PhD, Linguistics |
University of California, Santa Cruz
| 2008-2010 |
Master of Arts, Linguistics |
| 2004-2008 |
Bachelor of Arts, Linguistics |
University of York (UK)
| 2006-2007 | Visiting Student |
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