​Projects

​Syntax and prosody in V1 languages

My dissertation addresses the derivation of verb-initial word orders from the perspective of prosody. Drawing primarily from Niuean (Polynesian) data, I argue that VOS can arise in an otherwise VSO language in order to satisfy a prosodic well-formedness constraint, which I call the Argument Condition on Phonological Phrasing (Arg-φ).  

• Paper: Clemens (2019)​
• Dissertation: Clemens (2014)​​

Jessica Coon and I replicated the Niuean study for Ch'ol (Mayan), where we find that the verb and the object form a prosodic constituent in VOS structures. We've developed a head raising account of Mayan V1 that is consistent with morpheme order in the verb stem, the distribution of preverbal arguments, and VSO/VOS alternations in Ch'ol. Recent work also addresses how focus is encoded in Ch'ol.

• Paper: Clemens and Coon (2018a)
• Paper: Clemens and Coon (2018b)
• Paper: Clemens, Coon, Rodriguez, and Vázquez Martínez (2024)

In more recent work, I address the extent to which prosodic structure can be used as a diagnostic for syntactic structure, drawing heavily from the work linked above. A new project with colleague Lee Bickmore examines the syntax and prosody of possession in Tahitian with the goal of using the prosodic realization of head-initial and head-final genitive phrases to distinguish between competing syntactic analyses. 

• Paper: Clemens (2021)
• Slides: Clemens and Bickmore (2024)

Syntactic ergativity

Looking at the Tongic Polynesian languages, Rebecca Tollan and I apply an absolutive inversion approach to case assignment to explain why Tongan (but not Niuean) display syntactic ergativity and why Tongan (but not Niuean) show true VSO~VOS alternations.

• Paper: Clemens and Tollan (2021) 

Extending our account of syntactic ergativity beyond the Polynesian languages, we developed an account of syntactic ergativity based on the grammaticalization of a processing constraint against crossing dependencies (e.g. Kuno and Robinson 1972). We propose that restrictions on the A'-movement of the ergative subject arise because such movement would cross the prior A-movement path of the absolutive object. 

• Paper: Tollan and Clemens (2022)