DISLOCATION FOCUS CONSTRUCTION

1. (Syntax) Or, right dislocation, or, inversion, or, postposing, or afterthought (Chao 1968, Lu 1980, Tai and Hu 1991, Guo 1999). A word order phenomenon in Cantonese. Like other Chinese languages, Cantonese does not have rich morphology and its word order is relatively fixed. However, it is common to find non-canonical word order in spoken Cantonese. Compare the three sentences:
   1. keoi
      he

      maai-zo
      buy-PERF

      jat
      one

      bou
      CL1

      dinsigei
      TV

      lo
      SP

       (canonical)

      'He bought a TV.'
   2. maai-zo
      buy-PERF

      jat
      one

      bou
      CL

      dinsigei
      TV

      lo,
      SP

      keoi
      he

       (non-canonical)
   3. jat
      one

      bou
      CL

      dinsigei
      TV

      lo,
      SP

      keoi
      he

      maai-zo
      buy-PERF

       (non-canonical)
    Henceforth I will use the term dislocation focus construction (the DFC) to refer to the construction like (2) and (3). I will follow Cheung (1997) and Law (2003, 2004) in assuming that the pre-comma part contains the focus of the sentence. The DFC is exclusive to the colloquial spoken form and verbatim report of speech. The DFC is not unique to Cantonese. It has also been found in colloquial Mandarin Chinese (Lu 1980, Packard 1986, Tai and Hu 1991, a.o.). | Lawrence Y.L. Cheung, 2005
2. (Syntax) Syntactically, DFC involves three components, a sentence particle (SP), a pre-SP and post-SP part. The pre-SP part receives focus interpretation; the post-SP part represents the remnant of the sentence. DFC is derived by focalization, in which the focalized part moves to the Spec of CP to check off the [+Foc] feature (Cheung 1997, 2005, 2009; Law 2003).
    The DFC is derived from the canonical structure

   α β SP

    to a non-canonical DFC structure:

   β SP α

    Four characteristics of this construction:
   1. The stress of the sentence must lie on the dislocated part (before the Sentence Particle).
   2. The dislocated part carries the focus of the sentence. (The speaker wants to urgently tell the listener a key message).
   3. The dislocated part can be reconstructed into the original sentence without changing the meaning.
   4. The SP must appear after the dislocated part instead of occurring in the sentence-final position.
    | Cindy Wan Yee Lau, 2022

DISPERSION THEORY
(Phonology) Concerns the constraints that govern contrasts, the phonetic differences that can distinguish words in a language. Specifically it posits that there are distinctiveness constraints that favor contrasts that are more perceptually distinct over less distinct contrasts. The preference for distinct contrasts is hypothesized to follow from a preference to minimize perceptual confusion: In order to recover what a speaker is saying, a listener must identify the words in the utterance. The more confusable words are, the more likely a listener is to make errors. Because contrasts are the minimal permissible differences between words in a language, banning indistinct contrasts reduces the likelihood of misperception.
 The term dispersion refers to the separation of sounds in perceptual space that results from maximizing the perceptual distinctiveness of the contrasts between those sounds, and is adopted from Lindblom's Theory of Adaptive Dispersion, a theory of phoneme inventories according to which inventories are selected so as to maximize the perceptual differences between phonemes. These proposals follow a long tradition of explaining cross-linguistic tendencies in the phonetic and phonological form of languages in terms of a preference for perceptually distinct contrasts.  | Edward Flemming, 2017

DISPOSITIONAL CAUSATION
(Semantics) Dispositional structure:

1. y is the holder of e
2. e is a state that directly causes e′, ceteris paribus
3. e' instantiates p
4. y is disposed toward p

DISSOCIATED AGREEMENT (Syntax) 

1. [T⁰ [_v √[21,Q] v[I,Q] ] T[imp,Q] ]
2. Dissociated agreement:
   [T⁰ [_T [_v √[21,Q] v[I,Q] ] T[imp,Q] ] Agr[1pl,Q] ]

DISSOCIATED AGREEMENT PARAMETER
(Syntax) 

The Dissociated Agreement Parameter (Embick and Moyer 2021)
In dissociated agreement languages, T is expanded by an additional Agr node at PF.

DISTAL DEMONSTRATIVE
(Grammar) Many languages, such as English and Chinese, make a two-way distinction between demonstratives. Typically, one set of demonstratives is proximal, indicating objects close to the speaker (English this), and the other series is distal, indicating objects further removed from the speaker (English that).
 Other languages, like Nandi, Hawaiian, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Armenian, Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian, Georgian, Basque, Korean, Japanese, Ukrainian and Sri Lankan Tamil make a three-way distinction (Kordic 2002). Typically there is a distinction between proximal or first person (objects near to the speaker), medial or second person (Manosso 2011) (objects near to the addressee), and distal or third person (objects far from both). | Wikipedia, 2022

DISTINCTNESS CONDITION

1. (Sociolinguistics) Kiparsky (1982) argues, from assorted diachronic evidence, that languages are functionally constrained not to obliterate surface evidence of essential morphological categories. He proposes a distinctness condition, which operates as a "... blocking of rules in environments in which their free application would wipe out morphological distinctions on the surface". Hence the phonology is prevented from creating dysfunctional ambiguity, or stated positively, it is required to preserve semantic distinctions. | Gregory R. Guy, 1996
2. (Sociolinguistics) The idea of structural "vectors", dynamic principles that say not only where the language is, but also where it is going, has also been advanced in morphology and syntax.
    Kiparsky's proposal is that there is a general principle, the Distinctness Condition (DC), that defends morphological categories from erosion by language change:

   There is a tendency for semantically relevant information to be retained in surface structure. ... It characteristically originates as a blocking of rules in environments in which their free application would wipe out morphological distinctions on the surface. (Kiparsky 1982)

    The DC thus makes predictions about the future course of linguistic change. Whenever a strongly functional morphological category is threatened by some other change, that change will be blocked. In other words, the DC spells out certain types of change that are prohibited, presumably on universal ground. If this is true, it would clearly have to constrain synchrony as well as diachrony. | Gregory R. Guy, 1996
3. (Syntax) When a subtree is spelled out, if any pair of nodes in that tree cannot be distinguished from each other and are in an asymmetric c-command relation, the derivation crashes. The new condition on linearization is given here:

   Distinctness
   If linearization statement < α, α > is generated, the derivation crashes.

    This condition rejects trees in which two nodes that are both of type α are to be linearized in the same Spell-Out domain, and are in an asymmetric c-command relation (so that a linearization statement relating them is generated. | Norvin Richards, 2010
4. (Syntax) Norvin Richards (2010) observes that a "number of phenomena in different languages seem to be constrained by a ban on multiple objects of the same type that are too close together". For example, English sluicing is allowed to involve two remnants, but is impossible if both remnants are DPs:
   1. a. I know everyone danced with someone, but I don't know [_DP who] [_PP with whom].
      b. * I know everyone insulted someone, but I don't know [_DP who] [_DP whom].
    Richards views this ban as a distinctness condition on linearization statements, applying at the syntax-phonology interface. | Stanislao Zompì, 2015
5. (Syntax) This condition is based on Kayne's (1994) Linear Correspondence Axiom. In particular, Richards (2010) assumes that one of the tasks of the grammar is to establish a linear order betweeon the terminal nodes of the sentence at least by the point of Spell-Out, and that this linear order is determined by properties of the tree. Kayne's theory establishes a set of linearization statements < α, β >, such that α asymmetrically c-commands β, and such linearization statements are taken to determine that α must precede β.

   1.            TP
                 /\
                /  \
               /    \
              DP    T′
             John   /\
                   /  \
                  /    \
                 T     vP
                will    /\
                       /  \
                      /    \
                    v-V    VP
                    dance
      

    In the tree in (1), for example, the grammar constructs linearization statements like < DP (John), T (will) >, < T (will), v-V (dance) >, and so forth.
    However, Richards (2010) assumes that linearization statements are limited to node labels. Let us consider the linearization of a tree in (2):

   2.            XP
                 /\
                /  \
               /    \
              DP    X′
             John   /\
                   /  \
                  /    \
                 X      DP
                       Mary
      

    If a tree like the one in (2) is sent to PF, the linearization algorithm will generate the linearization statement < DP, DP >, since the DP Mary asymmetrically c-commands the DP John. Crucially, linearization process is unable to make reference to any of the richer information that would distinguish these DPs from each other; the linearization statement cannot say, for example, < DP (Mary), DP (John) >, or < DP-in-specifier-of-X, DP-complement-of-X >. Since the linearization statement < DP, DP > is uninterpretable, such a structure will be rejected at PF or SM interface. Thus, Distinctness effectively bans structures in which different syntactic objects with the same label in an asymmetric c-command relation occupy the same Spell-Out domain. | Masashi Totsuka, 2014
6. (Phonology) We should ask why the branching tree occurs at all: why is it necessary to specify features in this way? In The Sound Pattern of Russian (1959), Halle makes an argument on behalf of branching trees—the first such argument we have found in the literature. He argues that phonological features must be ordered into a hierarchy because this is the only way to ensure that segments are kept properly distinct, as defined in the DC:

   Distinctness Condition (Halle 1959)
   Segment-type /A/ will be said to be different from segment-type /B/, if and only if at least one feature which is phonemic in both, has a different value in /A/ than in /B/; i.e. plus in the former and minus in the latter, or vice versa.

    This formulation is designed to disallow contrasts involving a zero value of a feature. | B. Elan Dresher and Daniel Currie Hall, 2020

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