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David Schueler
Department of Linguistics
3125 Campbell Hall
University of California, Los Angeles
Los Angeles, CA 90095


My Dissertation: The Syntax and Semantics of Implicit Conditionals: Filling In the Antecedent


    This thesis is a study of a particular type of conditional construction, which I name the Implicit Conditional construction, or IC. An IC is a subjunctive conditional sentence which has no overt antecedent; a canonical example is John would hate Paris where the full conditional counterpart would be If he went there, John would hate Paris. The thesis proposes a syntactic analysis of the construction, and a semantic interpretation for the syntactic structure I propose.

    I focus on a particular challenge that the IC construction presents, namely that the construction is construed as a conditional, even though the overt material provides what looks like the consequent of a full conditional but lacks a correspondent to the antecedent to a full conditional.

    More specifically, I focus on cases, such as John would kick a unicorn, where the interpretation seems to require that part of the overt structure itself, a unicorn in this case, is interpreted as part of the understood antecedent. As a solution to this dilemma, I propose that for these ICs the LF, the syntactic level which feeds semantic interpretation, differs from what is obvious from the overt material, in that a covert copying operation takes place which provides two copies of the noun phrase, one in the understood antecedent and the other in the understood consequent.

    In addition to these basic issues, there are other problems which arise in specific cases of ICs. In some cases these are already predicted by the theory I propose for the basic readings; in other cases I propose extensions to capture the data. However, these extensions follow naturally from commonly assumed constraints on syntactic derivations, and I suggest that they have positive implications for linguistic theory as a whole.

Papers and Handouts

In reverse chronological order, all in .pdf format:

‘World Variable Binding and Beta Binding’ 2006. To appear in Proceedings of NELS 38.
 A proposal about the nature of possible world-denoting pronouns in syntactic positions, and their effect on the possible de re and
de dicto readings available in embedded clauses.

‘Comparative Superlatives in Relative Clauses’ 2005. in Proceedings of the 29th Annual Penn Linguistics Colloquium.
A proposal for the best way to analyze the combination of the comparative reading of a superlative with a relative clause

‘Attitude Predicates, Locality, and NPI Licensing’ 2005. Ms. UCLA
A proposal for how to deal with the fact that some attitude predicates block licensing of an NPI by higher negation, but others don't

‘Extended-Projection, Categorization, and the English Morpheme -Ing’ 2005. in Proceedings of WECOL 2004.
A proposal for a way of characterizing the three main types of gerunds in English (Acc-ing, Poss-ing, Ing-of) according to the {F}-level or “shell level” which the morpheme -ing attaches to

‘NPIs in a New Kind of Adversative Predicate’ 2005. Handout for a talk given at the LSA 2005 Annual Meeting
A study of complex predicates, which are not clearly attitude predicates, which license NPIs

‘Overt QR, Economy, and Ellipsis’ 2005. Ms. UCLA
A study of the implications of Kayne's (1998) theory of all overt quantifier movement for the theory of VP-ellipsis in general, and the parallelism facts noticed in Fox's work on economy in particular

‘Presuppositional Predicates and Sentential Subject Extraposition’ 2004. in Chand, Vineeta, Ann Kelleher, Angelo J. Rodriguez, and Benjamin Schmeiser, eds. Proceedings of WCCFL 23. Cascadilla Press. 703-716.
An account, using subjacency, of the phenomenon that a sentential subject in a copular sentence cannot undergo extraposition if the predicate is definite:
*It is the disaster that Mary can't come to the party.