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This article analyzes Russian aspectual usage in the imperative by combining Šatunovskij’s (2009) approach with Dickey’s (2018) cognitive linguistic theory of Russian aspect. It argues that the contrasting use of perfective and imperfective imperatives in mands for the completion of a single action can be explained in terms of the pragmatic mechanisms proposed by Šatunovskij (2009): perfective imperatives signal a request on the part of the speaker for the listener to make the decision to carry out the action, whereas imperfective imperatives make no such signal, because the decision has already been made. The latter occurs when the speaker knows or infers that the listener has already made the decision (or will do so if given the chance), or when the speaker has suspended the listener’s decision-making role and has gone ahead and made the decision. Various contextual uses of affirmative and negated imperatives and analyzes them in terms of the request or lack thereof for the listener to make the decision to carry out the action. The functions of the perfective and imperfective aspects in imperatives are argued to be instantiations of temporal definiteness and temporal indefiniteness (respectively). Inasmuch as this is true, Russian aspect codes alternative construals of time in non-finite usage as well as finite usage.

The relationship between the semantic function of noun phrases and the way(s) in which they are realized morphosyntactically in a clause has been a topic of intensive research in the typological literature as well as for theories concerned with the syntax–semantics interface. Considering just noun phrases that function as direct objects, it has been shown for language after language that that there is a systematic relationship between the semantic function of an object (e.g. whether it is pronominal, definite, indefinite, etc.) and its morphosyntax (e.g. whether it requires special case marking, whether it triggers agreement, whether it exhibits special distribution in terms of word order, etc.). This paper aims to contribute to the already large body of evidence documenting the relationships between form and semantic function by providing a comprehensive survey of the morphosyntax of transitive constructions in Tagalog, focussing, specifically, on the relationship between the semantic function of the theme argument and the morphosyntactic strategies by which theme arguments are realized. Contrary to what previous studies have claimed, I show that specific noun phrases are attested as direct objects of active clause in Tagalog. An exception to this is pronoun and proper name themes, which must either be oblique marked to function as a direct object or be realized as a subject. Developing and expanding upon analyses in Rackowski (2002), I propose that the differential behavior of specific themes (pronoun/proper names on the one hand versus non-pronoun/proper name specific themes on the other) follows from a clausal architecture in which there are at least two VP-external positions to which specific themes must raise – a relatively high position for pronoun and proper name themes, and a position intermediate betweenvP and VP for all other specific themes. The distribution of syntactic positions available for the theme argument is claimed to follow from a proposal in Merchant (2006), pre-figured in Jelinek & Carnie (2003) and related work, that relational hierarchies of the type familiar from typological research – in particular, the definiteness hierarchy – are directly encoded in the phrase structure.

Greek polydefinites are cases of adjectival modification where the adjective features its own definite determiner. We propose an account of the phenomenon that treats it as an instance of close apposition. Like close appositives, polydefinites in Greek instantiate multiple definite determiners, display a freedom in word order, and involve a restrictive interpretation. We propose that close apposition in Greek forms a complex DP out of two DPs which are in a sisterhood relationship through identification of the Referential roles within the DPs. This operation, semantically tantamount to set intersection, is constrained to apply only when the resulting set is not co-extensive with either initial set. This ensures the restrictive interpretation of one DP over the other. The fact that in polydefinites, it is always the DP containing the adjective that obligatorily satisfies the constraint has to do with the presence of noun ellipsis within that DP: (noun) ellipsis is known to come with a disanaphora requirement. We show that noun ellipsis is also responsible for the distribution of adjectives and adjective interpretations, as well as those discourse effects of polydefinites that have been thought of as the result of a DP-internal Focus projection. Finally, we make a proposal for the encoding of definiteness in Greek, consonant both with the existence of polydefinites in the language and with the prerequisite for set intersection among DPs: the overtly realized Greek definite determiner does not itself contribute an iota operator but preserves the denotation at the DP level. Our proposal thus deals not only with the multiple occurrence of definite determiners in a construction that picks out a single discourse referent, but also with the compositionality problem that such a situation gives rise to. In the final part we tie the cross-linguistic (un)availability of expletive determiners of the Greek type to the (un)availability of morphologically realized case.

The definite article in many European languages has its origin in a demonstrative or a pronoun. The development into a definite article is a typical case of grammaticalization. In this article I will demonstrate that this kind of grammaticalization, like all kinds of grammaticalization, can be explained as a case of reduction through reanalysis at acquisition. In addition to the prenominal definite article shared with other Germanic languages, the Scandinavian languages also have a postposed definite article. In Old Norse the postnominal definite article is a clitic merged as a head in D, while in its modern descendent Norwegian it is an inflectional suffix checking a grammatical feature in the Infl domain, expressing definiteness within the DP according to general principles of agreement. Thus, so-called ‘double definiteness’ (den gamle hesten‘the old horse.def’) has become possible as an agreement phenomenon. In Old Norse, the clitic cannot trigger definiteness agreement. This change from a clitic to an inflectional suffix is obviously a case of grammaticalization, but it has wider implications than just the change of morphosyntactic status. ON is shown to have had two projections in the D domain (þau in stóru skip‘those the large ships’). Later the independent definite articleinnwas lost and replaced by the demonstrativeþann>den. As a result (or cause?) its projection was lost, and the postposed article was left without a free-word counterpart. This, combined with phonological reduction and semantic bleaching, reduced it to an inflectional suffix.

The Danish pseudopartitive constructions differ in their possibilities of definiteness marking: the Indirect Partitive Construction (IPC) (D N1 P N2) permits N1 to bear the definite suffix, while the Direct Partitive Construction (DPC) (D N1 N2) does not; in addition, neither construction permits the prenominal definite article in the absence of a prenominal modifier. Drawing on previous work regarding the morphosyntax of definiteness marking in Danish, we use the distribution of definiteness marking as a probe to illuminate the structure of the pseudopartitive constructions. Our conclusion is that despite superficial similarities the two constructions are quite different in structure, the IPC having a lexical N head and a PP complement, and the DPC a functional n head with an NP complement, forming a single extended projection of N2. These assumptions allow us to account for a number of differences in the behavior of these constructions, shedding light on the nature of pseudopartitives as well as on the theory of extended projections.

This paper suggests an analysis of Modern Hebrew noun phrases in the framework of HPSG. It focuses on the peculiar properties of the definite article, including the requirement for definiteness agreement among various elements in the noun phrase, definiteness inheritance in construct-state nominals, the fact that the article does not combine with constructs and the similarities between construct-state nouns and adjectives. Central to our analysis is the assumption that the Hebrew definite article is an affix, rather than a clitic or a stand-alone word. Several arguments, from all levels of linguistic representation, are provided to justify this claim. Adopting the lexical hypothesis, we conclude that the article combines with nominals in the lexicon, and is no longer available for syntactic processes. This leads to an analysis of noun phrases as NPs, rather than as DPs; we show that such a view is compatible with accepted criteria for headedness. We provide an HPSG analysis that covers the above mentioned phenomena, correctly predicting the location of the definite article in constructs, accounting for definiteness agreement and definiteness inheritance constraints, and yielding similar structures for the two major ways of expressing genitive relations in Hebrew.

In the present article the problem of the position of the adjectives in the noun phrase in Modern Greek is addressed. Rather than starting from their alleged ‘asymmetrical’ distribution, according to which postnominal adjectives are only allowed in indefinite DPs, I concentrate on the possible interpretations that the adjective can have relative to the noun. The differences between prenominal and apparently postnominal adjectives in indefinite DPs suggest a predicative reading of the latter. This semantic account motivates a corresponding syntactic one, according to which the noun moving upwards to a head DEF, formally distinct from D, enters a predicative relationship with the AP generated uniquely prenominally. Such a movement is precluded in definite DPs, because the DEF position is occupied by the definite article. In this way, a number of differences observed between definite and indefinite NPs, as far as ‘postnominal’ adjectives are concerned, are seen as consequences of their predicative nature and the way this interacts with the definiteness/indefiniteness of what serves as their subject.

The terms definite and indefinite, when used in relation to NPs, can be handled in two different ways. One can treat definiteness as a formal (syntactico-morphological) category and make use of the syntactic features [±definite], as in Chomsky (1965). One can also go into the question of how definite and indefinite NPs are used, i.e. the question of when and why a (formally) definite NP is preferred to an indefinite one, or vice versa. If we take the latter approach, we are investigating definiteness as a semantico-pragmatic category.

I. In a recent article in this journal, Allerton (1978) calls into question the status of a transformational rule - usually called Dative Movement - which relates sentences like: (1) (a) Jim gave a present to Margaret. (b) Jim bought a drink for Margaret. to sentences where the prepositions to/for are not present, and where Margaret immediately follows the verb: (2) (a) Jim gave Margaret a present. (b) Jim bought Margaret a drink.His argument is based in particular on the observation of those construtions involving the preposition for.