Information structure and its relation to syntax, semantics, and reference
A slightly modified introduction to my cumulative habilitation thesis Studies in information structure and reference (defended at the Charles University, Prague, in June 2022).
The elimination of formal wh-features and a theory of free wh-movement
In this paper I argue that formal wh-features can and should be dispensed with. Wh-movement is an instance of free non-feature-driven movement. The core evidence comes from (Slavic) modal existential wh-constructions, in which the landing site of wh-movement can be CP, VP, AP, AdvP, or NP. The landing site of wh-movement in particular constructions is derived from interpretable properties of those constructions, such as the Q(uestion) feature in questions.
On
free choice-like wh-based
expressions in Czech
A
corpus-based study exploring the distribution of four free choice-like
items in Czech (leckdo, ledakdo, ledaskdo, kdekdo). These items are
recognized as free choice-like because they can be used in the
so-called `indiscriminative' use of free choice items (e.g. `he's not
just anybody'). The study shows that they also share some
distributional properties with free choice items, as most of them
appear in non-episodic (generic, modal) contexts.
How to derive a relative pronoun from an interrogative one
Thursday Interdisciplinary Colloquium, Tel Aviv (online), 17 December 2020
What relative pronoun morphology reveals about relative clause typology
Linguistic Mondays at UFAL, Praha (online), 2 November 2020
What relative pronoun morphology reveals about relative clause typology
Linguistic Mondays at UFAL, Praha (online), 2 November 2020
Relativní věty uvozené výrazem jak
Jazykovědné sdružení, Praha (online), 8 October 2020
Sémantika a pragmatika slovanského slovosledu: Experimentální a korpusové perspektivy
Virtual talk at Ostrava University, 27 April 2020
Interpreting Slavic bare NPs
Presented at Leibniz-ZAS in Berlin, 5 June 2019
On wh-questions, wh-relatives, and their kin
Presented at GLOW41 in Budapest
Epistemic indefinites under epistemic modals in Czech
Formal Descriptions of Slavic Languages (FDSL) 10, Leipzig
This handout is made available here because it contains a small corpus study of Czech epistemic indefinites that didn't fit into the proceedings paper.
Variable binding and the person case constraint
Rajesh Bhatt and Radek Šimík
Meeting of the Israel Association for
Theoretical Linguistics (IATL) 25 | Beer Sheva, Israel
We characterize a restriction on clitic
clusters
(first observed by Roca 1992), which we call the Clitic Binding
Restriction: in the presence of
an indirect object clitic a direct object clitic cannot be bound. We
show that this restriction
is related to the more familiar Person Case Constraint (Bonet 1991) and
propose a unified analysis.
We also discuss some consequences for the binding theory.
Wh-words
in modal existential
constructions as non-canonical free choice items
Workshop of Free Choiceness: Facts, Models, and Problems
| ESSLLI,
Hamburg
This
work capitalizes on some similarities between free choice (and more
generally polarity sensitive) items and wh-words in modal existential
wh-constructions (Grosu 2004).
Czech
nominal attributive apposition
Workshop on Parenthesis and Sentence Amalgamation
| Groningen
A
small investigation into the properties of a particular kind of
attributive apposition in Czech. The apposition discussed involves an
invariable demonstrative pronoun `to', whose presence has both formal
and semantic consequences.
Co
dokáže co: interakce vidu a příčinných otázkových
slov v češtině
Mezinarodní setkaní mladých lingvistů 8 |
Olomouc
Why
the hell what: Remarks on the syntax and semantics
of 'why' and 'what' in Czech
Syntax AiO Meeting (SAM) 3 | Tilburg
On a puzzling interaction between Czech verbal
aspect and two causal question words, `why' and `what'.
Definiteness and articleless languages
Letní škola lingvistiky | Dačice
Motivating word order differences: Givenness and scrambling
Block seminar at the Palacký University Olomouc
Aktuální členění větné: Danost a její formální projevy
Letní škola lingvistiky | Dačice
The relation between information structure and syntax
Graduate course, winter semester | Potsdam
Issues in wh-syntax and semantics
EGG summer school 2011 | České Budějovice
Introduction to the semantics of questions
EGG summer school 2011 | České Budějovice
An annotated bibliography on modal existential constructions and existential free relatives
An updated version of the appendix from my thesis (last updated: December 2019)