James Griffiths - Linguist - University of Tübingen

I am Junior Professor (tenure-track) of English Linguistics in the Englisches Seminar at the University of Tübingen. I received my undergraduate BA in Linguistics and Philosophy from the University of Sheffield in 2008, an MA in Linguistics from Leiden University in 2010, and a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Groningen in 2015. Prior to joining the faculty at Tübingen in October 2019, I was an instructor in English Linguistics at Utrecht University (2015-2016) and Leiden University (2019) and a postdoctoral researcher at the Zukunftskolleg Institute for Advanced Study located at the University of Konstanz (2016-2018).

I teach courses on phonology, morphology, and syntax at undergraduate and postgraduate level, with an emphasis on English. I am interested in advising theses on any subject within theoretical / generative linguistics, in particular syntax, morphology, and discourse-structure, concerning varieties of English, or concerning cross-linguistic comparisons between English and other Germanic languages and/or Turkish.

In my research, I adopt a broadly generative approach to linguistic analysis. My specialisations are, in roughly the following order: syntax, the semantics and pragmatics of information- and discourse-structure, morphology (in particular, Distributed Morphology), and prosody. To date, my two main research interests have been the distribution of various forms of parenthesis and ellipsis, within and across languages. I am also interested in dialectal variation in English, and have conducted research into syntactic phenomena that are present in some varieties of British English (such as my own) but not others.

My published work is listed by topic below, and chronologically in the [Output] section.
Comments on any uploaded material are always appreciated!

Appositives and discourse structure

In my PhD thesis, I argued that appositives should not be treated as pragmatically distinct from their host clauses: they are neither conventionally implied nor convey inherent appositivity. I suggested instead that the interaction of discourse-update mechanisms and conversational time gives the false impression that appositives inherently "impose" themselves on the discourse. This work was also presented at the Redrawing Pragmasemantic Borders conference in Groningen, and written up in an abbreviated form with Mark de Vries (U Groningen).

Griffiths, J. 2015. On appositives. Doctoral dissertation, University of Groningen. Utrecht: LOT Dissertation Series, no.389.

Griffiths, J. Appositives, two-utterance monologues, and different kinds of meaning. Paper presented at Redrawing Pragmasemantic Borders. Groningen, March 2015.

Griffiths, J. & M. de Vries. 2014. Parenthesis and presupposition in discourse. Linguistics in the Netherlands 31: 39-52.
Dialectal variation in English

Since 2015, Craig Sailor (U Tromsø) and I have been investigating prepositional object gaps (POGs), a previously unreported English phenomenon that is only observed in certain British English dialects:

Canals always have bridges across _ in the Netherlands.

The results of our preliminary investigations of this construction are reported in the work listed below. A more definitive syntactic analysis of POGs, which concludes that POGs arise from A-movement of the possessor (canals in the example above), is expected to be submitted for review in spring 2019.

Griffiths, J. & C. Sailor. 2015. Prepositional object gaps in British English. Linguistics in the Netherlands 32, 63-74.

Sailor, C. & J. Griffiths. 2017. PPs with gaps in. Paper presented at the 91st annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America. Austin, Jan 2017.

Griffiths, J & C. Sailor. PPs with gaps in. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of Linguistics Association of Great Britain, 2015. London, Sept 2015.
Ellipsis licensing via Spec-Head agreement [recent]

Marcel Den Dikken and I conducted research into verb phrase ellipsis in English and uncovered novel data from rebinding configurations and from copular inversion, locative inversion, and there-existential constructions which support the once-popular proposal — most forcefully defended in Lobeck 1995 — that certain types of ellipsis must be syntactically licensed via the establishment of an agreement relation between an ellipsis-licensing head and a phrase in its specifier. The article that presents our results is currently under review for the OUP volume The derivational timing of ellipsis.

Den Dikken, M. & J. Griffiths. 2018. Ellipsis and spec-head agreement. Under review for G. Güneş & A. Lipták (eds.), The derivational timing of ellipsis (Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fragments and PF-deletion

Adopting the predominant 'silent structure' approach to fragmentary responses, Anikó Lipták (U Leiden) and I argued against Merchant's (2004) analysis of declarative fragments as targeting a distinct functional projection to their wh-counterparts. Instead, we showed that (i) island effects — which motivated Merchant's original distinction — track contrastivity, and that (ii) an analysis that invokes LF parallelism captures the relevant data in simpler manner.

Mark de Vries (U Groningen) and I also used the silent structure approach to fragmentary responses to support the hypothesis that appositive relative clauses are syntactically connected to their host clauses. Our argument, which was outlined in an LI squib, revolved around the distribution of fragment answers to which appositive relative clauses attach:

A: Whose computer did Mary use?

B: John's, which crashes all the time.

Griffiths, J. & M. de Vries. 2019. Parenthesis: syntactic integration or orphanage? A rejoinder to Ott 2016. Linguistic Inquiry 50(3): 609-629.

Griffiths, J. & A. Lipták. 2014. Contrast and island sensitivity in clausal ellipsis. Syntax 17(3): 189-234.

Griffiths, J. & M. de Vries. 2013. The syntactic integration of appositives: evidence from fragments and ellipsis. Linguistic Inquiry 44(2): 332-344.

Griffiths, J. & A. Lipták. Contrastivity in island repair: an argument for parallelism. Paper presented at Islands in Contemporary Linguistic Theory. Vitoria-Gasteiz, Nov 2011. [video!]
History of generative linguistics [recent]

I have recently put my ongoing interest in the history and development of generative linguistics to good use by contributing a short chapter on the enduring discoveries of generative syntax to an edited volume on Chomsky's legacy. This work was conducted jointly with Lisa Cheng.

Cheng, L. L.-S. & J. Griffiths. 2020. The enduring discoveries of generative syntax. To appear in T. Lohndal (ed.), Blackwell Companion to Chomsky. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
MaxElide [recent]

As part of my European Commission-funded postdoctoral project Fragments of discourse (Marie Curie COFUND), I have conducted research that shows that there exist no transderivational constraints that conspire to favour the ellipsis of larger domains over the ellipsis of smaller ones. I have demonstrated that analyses that suggest otherwise (i.e. theories which adopt a 'MaxElide' rule) both over and undergenerate elliptical utterances. I claim that so-called 'MaxElide effects' are reflexes of straightforward semantic licensing effects on ellipsis, which renders any appeal to a MaxElide rule unnecessary. This research highlights the need to distinguish between the identity conditions on clausal ellipsis (sluicing, fragments) and other forms of ellipsis (verb phrase ellipsis, nominal ellipsis, etc.)

Griffiths, J. 2019. Beyond MaxElide: An investigation of A'-movement from elided phrases. Linguistic Inquiry 50(3): 571-607.

Griffiths, J. 2019. Revisiting rebinding: An alternative to MaxElide. Nordlyd 43(1): 31-34. GLOW Short Report Proceedings.

Griffiths, J. 2017. Beyond MaxElide: A′-extraction from ellipsis sites. Paper presented at the Generative Linguistics in the Old World (GLOW) 40. Leiden, March 2017.
Parenthetical verbs

During my PhD, I explored the extent to which the discursive function of Parenthetical Verb Constructions, such as I think in 'John, I think, will be late'), is a reflection of their syntax.

I concluded that the differing functions of the PVCs in the examples below — i.e. as having an interpretative effect on the whole host clause in the first example, but only on a subconstituent in the second — arise from the fact that the two sentences fit radically different syntactic schemata.

John is, I think, going to Chicago.

John is going to I think Chicago.

I claimed that the first PVC is merely a disjunct insertion, while the second PVC is actually a reduced 'Horn-Amalgam':

John is going to I think (it is) Chicago.

In similar research, I concluded that the dissimilar syntactic schemata attributed to comment and report PVCs since Reinhart (1982) are unnecessary, and that the differing properties displayed by these utterances can instead be attributed to the interaction between deixis-shift and the (non-)demonstrative illocutionary force borne by the host clauses.

Bob will, I think, get the job.

He will, thought Bob to himself, get the job.

Griffiths, J. 2015. Parenthetical verb constructions, fragment answers, and constituent modification. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 33(1): 191-229.

Griffiths, J. 2015. Speaker and quote reduced parenthetical clauses. In S. Schneider, J. Glikman & M. Azanzi (eds.), Parenthetical Verbs. De Gruyter Linguistische Arbeiten 557. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter, 71-102.
Reformulative apposition

I argued in my PhD thesis and subsequent work that reformulative appositions, such as perplexes in the example below, are coordinated with their anchors (i.e. confusticates) in a regular, low manner.

Bren confusticates, i.e. perplexes, Swantje.

This conclusion opposes the 'clausal ellipsis' approach to reformulative apposition, which treats reformulative appositions as remnants in elliptical clauses. I have provided abundant evidence against this alternative approach.

Bren confusticates, i.e. ~~Bren~~ perplexes ~~Swantje~~, Swantje.

Griffiths, J. 2015. On appositives. Doctoral dissertation, University of Groningen. Utrecht: LOT Dissertation Series, no.389.

Griffiths, J. 2015. Reformulative appositions and clausal ellipsis. Lingua 165: 70-91. [pre-zombification]

Griffiths, J. Two types of apposition. Paper presented at Outside the clause. Vienna, July 2014.
Reprise fragments [recent]

As part of a collaborative enterprise between my postdoctoral project Fragments of discourse and the project Ellipsis licensing beyond syntax (hosted at U Leiden), Güliz Güneş, Anikó Lipták, and I have conducted the first cross-linguistic Minimalist investigation of reprise fragments. We show that the properties exhibited by reprise fragments can only be modelled under an 'in-situ' approach to clausal ellipsis. To account for the differing locality constraints on reprise fragments observed across languages, which offer and then defend a theory in which ellipsis is licensed by a syntactically derived question under discussion (QUD).

Griffiths, J, Güneş, G. and A. Lipták. 2017. Echo fragments. Paper presented at Workshop 6 (Approaches to Fragments and ellipsis in spoken and written English) of the 7th Biennial International Conference on the Linguistics of Contemporary English . Vigo, 09/17.

Griffiths, J, Güneş, G. and A. Lipták. 2018. A Minimalist approach to Reprise Fragments. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Deutschen Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft. Stuttgart, 03/18.
Syntactically derived QUDs [recent]

As part of my European Commission-funded postdoctoral project Fragments of discourse (Marie Curie COFUND), I developed a theory of clausal ellipsis within the broader 'silent structure' framework that accounts for the A′-movement properties of fragments without postulating that fragments themselves undergo A′-movement. In an article published in Glossa, I motivated the idea that clausal ellipsis must be licensed by a pragmatically prominent question (a QUD), which is accommodated by the listener whenever the explicitly-uttered antecedent expression is not a question. Furthermore, I claimed that this accommodation procedure is syntactically determined, meaning that an implicit question Q is only available to license clausal ellipsis in a language L if Q is syntactically well-formed in L. In short, I motivate the idea that clausal ellipsis must be derived from a syntactically derived QUD. Adopting this idea allows one to utilise a sufficiently restricted in-situ approach to clausal ellipsis, which is superior to the standard 'move-and-delete' approach in that it avoids postulating the existence of exceptional, ellipsis-driven movement and it handles the cross-linguistic distrubution of fragments in a more flexible way.

Griffiths, J. 2019. A Q-based approach to clausal ellipsis: Deriving the preposition stranding and island sensitivity generalisations without movement. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics, 4(1), 12. doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.653

Turkish ki

Güliz Güneş (U Leiden) and I have re-examined Turkish ki, a morpheme loaned from Persian that the traditional literature assumes is employed in Turkish as a finite complementiser and an introducer of appositive relative clauses.

Adem	san-ıyor	ki	Havva	elma-yı	ye-di
Adem	believe-prog	ki	Havva	apple-acc	eat-pst
"Adem believes that Havva ate the apple."

Ali	Bey,	ki	evil	bir	adam-dır,	Mine-yi	taciz	et-ti.
Ali	Mr.	ki	married	a	man-cop	Mine-acc	harassment	make-pst
"Mr. Ali, who is a married man, harrassed Mine."

The results of a thorough syntactic and prosodic examination revealed that the assumptions of the traditional literature are false, and that ki is used in Turkish as a marker of parenthetical adjunction or coordination. This conclusion provides cross-linguistic support for idea that appositive/parenthetical elements fall into two superordinate natural classes — those that are adjoined to their hosts, and those that are coordinated with them (see Griffiths 2015 and here for more on this division).

Griffiths, J. & G. Güneş. 2014. Ki issues in Turkish: Parenthetical coordination and adjunction. In M. E. Kluck, D. Ott & M. de Vries (eds.), Parenthesis and Ellipsis: Cross-Linguistic and Theoretical Perspectives. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 173-217.

Griffiths, J. & G. Güneş. Notes on ki. Paper presented at the S-Circle's Parentheticals workshop. Santa Cruz, April 2013.

Convenor, designer & instructor; English syntax and the theory of Grammar [Wintersemester, 2020-21]
Hauptseminar. Englisches Seminar, Tübingen University

Convenor, designer & instructor; Introduction to Morphology [Wintersemester, 2020-21]
Proseminar. Englisches Seminar, Tübingen University

Convenor, designer & instructor; Introduction to English Syntax [Summersemester, 2020]
Proseminar. Englisches Seminar, Tübingen University

Convenor, designer & instructor; Introduction to Morphology [Summersemester, 2020]
Proseminar. Englisches Seminar, Tübingen University

Convenor, designer & instructor; Ellipsis & Reduced Registers [Wintersemester, 2019-20]
Hauptseminar (Kompaktkurs). Englisches Seminar, Tübingen University

Convenor, designer & instructor; Syntax I [Blocks 3&4, 2018-19]
First year undergraduate course in syntactic theory. Linguistics Department, Leiden University

Convenor & instructor; Linguistics 2: The syntax of English [Blocks 3&4, 2018-19]
First year undergraduate course in English syntax. English Department, Leiden University

Instructor; Linguistics 3: English syntax and syntactic argumentation [Blocks 1&2, 2018-19]
Second year undergraduate course in English syntax. English Department, Leiden University

Convenor, designer & instructor; Linguistics 5: English word and sentence structure [Blocks 1&2, 2018-19]
Third year undergraduate course in English morphology and syntax. English Department, Leiden University

Convenor, designer & instructor; SHE III: Ellipsis and related topics [Summersemester, 2018]
Third year undergraduate course in English grammar for English teacher-training. Linguistics Department, Konstanz University

Convenor, designer & instructor; Morphology II [Summersemester, 2018]
Second year undergraduate course in morphology. Linguistics Department, Konstanz University

Convenor, designer & instructor; Syntax II [Wintersemester, 2017-18]
Second year undergraduate course in syntactic theory. Linguistics Department, Konstanz University

Convenor, designer & instructor; Syntax III: Topics in Ellipsis [Wintersemester, 2016-17]
Master's course in syntactic theory. Linguistics Department, Konstanz University

Instructor; Prescribing and Describing English: English Linguistics 2 [Block 2/3, 2015-16]
First year undergraduate course in diachronic and synchronic English grammar. English Department, Utrecht University

Instructor; Sound lab [Block 1/3, 2015-16]
First year undergraduate course in Phonetics and Phonology. English Department, Utrecht University

Instructor; English Language and Linguistics [Block 1/3, 2015-16]
First year undergraduate minor course in English Linguistics. English Department, Utrecht University