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This paper discusses null objects (NOs) in Ibero-Romance. European Portuguese (EP) has both definite and indefinte NOs, but Castillian Spanish (CSpanish) only allows NOs when the antecedent is a bare plural nominal or a mass noun. The paper argues that these differences are related to the distribution of bare nominals in each language and proposes that the same underlying mechanism is at the root of indefinite and definite object drop, namely a rootless [ nP n ] proform. [ nP n ] denotes a contextually salient property, its possible interpretations being derived by general type-shifting operations. In CSpanish, the property denoted by [ nP n ] is interpreted as a restrictive modifier of the predicate and the relevant variable is bound under VP level Existential Closure. Focusing on EP, there are striking similarities between definite NOs and other types of nominal anaphora, including epithets. In particular, like epithets, NOs are subject to an Antilogophoricity Constraint. This affinity between NOs and epithets constitutes a case in favor of the idea that the NO is a base-generated nominal. The difference with respect to CSpanish lies in the possibility of interpreting the null nominal by a choice function, a function maps a property onto an entity that has the property. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For second language learners, reference remains a frequent source of error and pragmatic infelicity, even at relatively advanced levels. While most errors will be readily accommodated by the hearer, on some occasions they result in fundamental misunderstandings about what has been stated. This paper presents a case-by-case exploratory study of 22 such miscommunications and explores the discourse conditions under which such otherwise routine errors became problematic. Data are drawn from elicited narratives by 20 high-intermediate English language learners of various language backgrounds and their L1 English interlocutors. The discussion focuses on the two most prominent issues identified: the conditions under which pronoun errors triggered misunderstandings, and the contribution of pervasive over-explicitness to referent introductions being mistaken for referent tracking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article aims at investigating the pro-drop phenomenon in L2 Spanish. The phenomenon of pro-drop or null subject is a typological feature of some languages, which are characterized by an implicit subject in cases of topic continuity. More specifically, behaviour regarding subject (dis)continuity in Spanish differs from French. This paper will offer a contrastive analysis on subject realisation by French learners of L2 Spanish compared to L1 Spanish speakers. So, the goal of this pilot study is to see if a different functioning in pro-drop in the mother tongue also influences the L2. The study is based upon a written description task presented to the two groups of participants: the experimental group of French mother tongue L2 Spanish language learners and the control group of Spanish native speakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes a hitherto unnoticed semantic change process in Chinese, in which lexical (adjectival) materials develop into superlative operators, and subsequently turn into definiteness markers. Our analysis focuses on the semantic factors that underlie this meaning change trajectory. Specifically, we argue that frequent association of gradable adjectives with superlative implication leads to pragmatic strengthening in which the superlative implication conventionally enters the literal meaning. Furthermore, we show that a further change in the extension of the nominal part of superlative phrases leads to a maximality reanalysis that is compatible with the semantics of definite NPs. This paper contributes to the burgeoning field of applying truth-conditional semantics to theories of grammaticalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the distribution of a phonetically null pronoun and the clitic lo referring to a proposition as the direct object (DO) of cognition and communication verbs in Spanish. The use of this null object referring to propositions is found cross-dialectally in Spanish, and this paper argues that the completeness of the proposition constrains in crucial ways the distribution of these two propositional anaphors. The analysis of five different cases in which the DO pronoun refers to an incomplete proposition illustrates that the null object is the anaphor preferred when the proposition being referred to is incomplete, whereas the propositional pronoun lo is preferred to refer to complete propositions. Completeness of the proposition - defined here as a gradient feature and not a binary distinction - is discussed in relation to the notion of saliency or accessibility of the referent and the data analyzed in this article for propositional anaphora is discussed in relation to NP anaphora. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the referring properties of post-nominal demonstratives in Spanish with an aim to contributing to our present understanding of this marked construction. A corpus analysis is presented, where 600 cases of pre- and post-nominal demonstratives are analyzed based on their discourse anaphoric properties: direct vs. indirect anaphora. The data reveal that post-nominal demonstratives are significantly preferred in cases of indirect anaphora; that is, where no antecedent is linguistically realized in the discourse, and the reference of the demonstrative anaphor has to be inferred from the discourse or situational context. Pre-nominal demonstratives, on the other hand, show a more balanced picture sharing similar numbers in direct and indirect anaphora. However, the data also reveal that post-nominal demonstratives can be used in direct anaphoric uses, which poses a problem for a categorical distinction between pre- and postnominal demonstratives at the referential level. Since variability appears to be the nature of the phenomenon, I propose a uniform presuppositional characterization for pre- and post-nominal demonstratives that is able to account for the observed referential flexibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many languages employ articles as an expression device to mark identifiability. There are, however, other means to mark identifiability in languages. In this paper I show that one of the two sets of cross-referencing markers on the transitive verb in Hungarian serves this purpose, i.e., it represents the instruction from the speaker that he considers the referent of the object argument to be identifiable to the hearer. Next, attention is paid to four sets of Hungarian data which are seemingly at odds with this claim. These sets relate to the use of particular person distinctions, indefinite noun phrases which contain either a possessive restrictor or the interrogative pronoun melyik ‘which’, and to relative clauses. Apart from a descriptive account of the relevant data, the paper also offers a theoretical account within the framework of functional discourse grammar, where the speaker assessment of identifiability of referents is formally represented by operators which apply to the referential act, represented by the variable R at the interpersonal level. Distinctions made at the interpersonal level thus affect the choice of verbal forms in Hungarian. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to consider how the preference in the interpretation of anaphors and their distribution properties can interact and be best explained. To reach the goal, this paper presents the prominence hierarchy for computing a die, rent degree of preference when there is more than one option for anaphor interpretations. This paper also argues that the coreferential possibility between the Korean anaphor caki and its antecedent is determined by the prominence principle, which is stated in terms of the prominence hierarchy: caki must be coreferential with a more prominent antecedent only if there exists such an antecedent. Finally, this paper extends its proposal to anaphors in other languages such as English, Icelandic, Japanese, and Chinese. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a usage-based, Cognitive Grammar analysis of Place as a symbolic structure in signed languages. We suggest that many signs are better viewed as constructions in which schematic or specific formal properties are extracted from usage events alongside specific or schematic meaning. We argue that pointing signs are complex constructions composed of a pointing device and a Place, each of which are symbolic structures having form and meaning. We extend our analysis to antecedent-anaphora constructions and directional verb constructions. Finally, we discuss how the usage-based approach suggests a new way of understanding the relationship between language and gesture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a continued interest in discovering how learners of another language acquire a target language's anaphoric system. While our understanding of the issues has improved, the development of methodologies to assess the interpretation of anaphora in a learner's interlanguage has not. This paper is concerned with introducing a methodology named 'Phased Choice' to assess anaphoric reference, which more effectively tackles the issues facing anaphoric testing. The data was gathered from an experiment that focused on English and Korean learners of Chinese acquiring the Chinese reflexive ziji 'self', results showing that the Korean learners are at an advantage to their English counterparts due to the similar pragmatic strategies Korean and Chinese share. Moreover, the methodology in comparison to the literature shows its strength, dealing effectively with problems past tests faced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the occurrence of anaphoric expressions in English free adjuncts. This paper is organized as follows. It first discusses the relevant surface organizations in English free adjuncts. Section 2 describes the possible combinations of the anaphoric expressions and their antecedents in relation to the categorical heads of the free adjuncts. In section 3, a brief discussion in provided regarding the organization of a Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar, and then turn to the mechanism needed to induce structures containing free adjuncts. In the final section, it provides a description of the occurrence of the anaphoric expressions in terms of the rule system that has been proposed for free adjuncts.

Abstract: Bei zahlreichen Gelegenheiten ließen biblische und ugaritische Schreiber aufeinanderfolgende Verse oder Halbverse mit demselben Buchstaben beginnen. Dieser Aufsatz beschäftigt sich mit diesem Phänomen, indem er Beispiele aus der biblischen und ugaritischen Literatur vorführt. Dabei werden drei Ebenen der Verfeinerung unterschieden, die eine Entwicklung der Poesie widerspiegeln. Résumé: On many occasions, Biblical and Ugaritic scribes chose to begin successive sentences or half-lines with the same letter. This paper deals with this phenomenon by presenting various examples from poetic texts of both Biblical and Ugaritic literature. By doing so, this phenomenon is divided into three levels of sophistication, which indicate a form of poetic evolution. Zusammenfassung: Les scribes ougaritiques et bibliques décident souvent de commencer les phrases successives ou demi-lignes par la même lettre alphabétique. Cet article s'intéresse à ce phénomène, en donnant plusieurs exemples tirés des textes ougaritiques et bibliques. Cette enquête permet de distinguer trois niveaux de sophistication, qui indiquent une évolution poétique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In my paper, two variants of verb classification in Adyghe, a language of the West Caucasian family, are discussed. The first variant is a purely morpho-logical classification based on the choice of person cross-referencing prefixes. The second one is a derivational classification which builds on the morphological mechanisms of reciprocalization and reflexivization. The main research question which lies behind my study is whether verbs derived by means of a derivational marker, for instance, a possibilitive one, behave in the course of other valency-changing operations differently from nonderived verbs. I will show that verb classification in Adyghe has some typologically peculiar properties, the main one being that the derivational classification distinguishes more specific classes than the purely morphological one. In other words, the fact that a verb is derived and how it is derived is crucial for its behavior. The lan-guage-specific properties of Adyghe are also typologically relevant. They show that derived verbs and derivational mechanisms are of particular relevance in verb classification and should be given more attention in linguistic work on verb classification than is currently done. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an off-line study consisting of five questionnaires in which we observed interpretational preferences for ambiguous intra-sentential pro-nouns in parallel structures in German and French. We tested the influence of information structural factors, in particular, we compared the effects of topicalizing versus focusing potential antecedents of the ambiguous pronoun. Results replicated a baseline difference between the two languages: a subject preference in German and an object preference in French (Hemforth et al. 2010). We argue that the object preference in French is due to the fact that speakers take into account an alternative nonambiguous construction. In addi-tion, we found that in both languages, topicalization enhances, but focusing reduces the accessibility of antecedents for pronouns in the same sentence. This stands in contrast with previous results showing an equal accessibility of focused and topicalized referents for pronouns in subsequent sentences (Cowles et al. 2007). We explain this difference with the different function of focus within and across sentences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on morphological evidence from modern spoken Afrikaans, this paper argues for the existence of a designated antifocus position in West Germanic, licensing the distressing of anaphoric elements under a Spec-head configuration. The head of the antifocus projection is an abstract feature (AF), controlling the distribution of main stress in the sentence. The defocusing license is tied to categorical membership, triggering scrambling movement of pronouns and definites toward the functional domain. Only if all discourse themes have their AF eliminated can maximal focus be assigned in the sentential domain. The main advantage of such a defocusing license is its violability: the structural realization of discourse functions affects contextual felicity, but not the syntactic derivability of the numeration. Unused defocusing licenses will not cancel the derivation but attract narrow focus and a deviant, rhematic interpretation of VP-internal definites at LF. In this way, word-order variation can be directly exploited by the production system to achieve refocusing effects and discourse shifts in the interpretation of arguments. The concept of violable feature checking allows us to derive the definiteness effects and the optionality of scrambling from the interaction of the licensing requirements of the antifocus feature and Cinque's (1993) stress-management rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides evidence from Spanish and Italian for the distinction between deep and surface anaphora as first proposed by Hankamer and Sag's (1976). We observe that certain verbs in Spanish and Italian allow their infinitival/clausal complements to be null. However, sentences containing them become ungrammatical when we try to extract an element that would have appeared inside the clausal complement in the non-null version, such as a clitic, a wh-phrase, etc ... or when restructuring has occurred. We propose, and provide evidence that these null clausal complements in Spanish and Italian are instances of Null Complement Anaphora, a type of deep anaphor in Hankamer and Sag's (1976) sense and not an instance of surface anaphor such as VP ellipsis in English. We claim that Null Complement Anaphors and deep anaphors in general are elements' that do not have internal structure in the syntax, and therefore cannot host a trace. They contrast with surface anaphors which do have internal structure in the syntax and can host a trace, allowing for extraction out of them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the information structure of VP-anaphora constructions in English, Spanish, and German. The goal is to provide an initial account of the syntactic and prosodic licensing mechanisms of VP-anaphora and to suggest some theoretical consequences for the syntactic representation of the different types of focus and topic. Recent studies (e.g. Rooth 1992b; Tomioka 1995; Fox 1998) have proposed that the characteristic feature of VP-anaphora constructions is that they bear contrastive focus on the remaining subject. We argue against this claim by providing evidence from prosodic and syntactic investigations of the remaining elements. Our hypothesis is that presentational focus in VP-anaphora is realized on the negative/affirmative expression and that the remaining constituent is free to take various discourse Junctions depending on the context and the type of construction in which the VP-anaphora occurs. Our main empirical argument against the above claim comes from Spanish, where the remaining constituent can never be interpreted as a contrastive focus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]