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Talmy's (1991; 2000a; 2000b) influential work on motion events provides a strong two-way typology that can examine and account for the typology of a language, but this framework is basically synchronic. It may not be equally valid to explain language change. In this paper, we apply the event integration theory and its latest development, The Macro-event Hypothesis (Li, 2020, 2023), to account for the development of the causative verb 使-shǐ- make (SHI for short) in Chinese. This study reveals that, firstly, the multi-functional behavior of SHI represents a typical case of grammaticalization, with a full verb acquiring the role of conjunction and expressing abstract meanings. Secondly, the semantic division of the causative and non-causative uses of SHI in Contemporary Chinese is the most clear-cut. Thirdly, causative SHI shows a greater level of semantic bleaching, and the construction profiles a single causal activity and has a higher degree of event integration when compared to its lexical verbal use. The constructional grammaticalization of SHI confirms that event integration is key to its development. This study verifies The Macro-event Hypothesis of a continuum of grammaticalization in language and uncovers the process of semantic gradation that takes place in Chinese. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate the prosodic realization of stress and focus in Udmurt (Uralic, Permic). According to the literature, Udmurt has fixed final stress, but also has several sets of morphosyntactic exceptions with initial stress. We report the results of two production studies. The first one targets nominals with final stress, and the second one investigates the stress properties of minimal pairs consisting of (i) indicative verbs (prs.3sg; final stress) and (ii) imperative verbs (imp.2sg/pl; initial stress). To control for the information-structural contexts, the test words are studied in contexts that elicit narrow focus either on the test word ('F' condition) or on another constituent ('non-F' condition). The results show that all four acoustic parameters surveyed in the paper – duration, intensity, fundamental frequency (f0), and first formant (F1) values – participate in stress marking in Udmurt. The results for focus marking vary by study and demonstrate that all cues except for intensity may be involved in focus marking. At the same time, we find wide interspeaker variation with respect to the acoustic cues marking stress and/or focus. Finally, we outline a preliminary Autosegmental-Metrical interpretation of our f0 results; a full account of Udmurt intonation awaits further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops Ramchand's first phase syntax theory by investigating the Mandarin directional serial verb construction. Specifically, the position of the theme argument in these constructions is investigated, and two major word order variants are identified: the VOV type and the VVO type. The former are argued to be accomplishments, whereas the latter are achievements. The analysis embraces Ramchand's spirit that three sub-eventive projections (InitP, ProcP, and ResP) exist universally as the basic building blocks in the first-phase syntax, and it proposes that the surface word order alternation and situation type shift is the consequence of the occurrence/absence of the ResP and the different insertion position of the directional morphemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to fill in a long missing piece in the paradigmatic word-formation research: a set of rival affixes whose members are differentiated in meaning. We argue that such a set can be found in English derivational adjectivalization, in the affixal rivalry between the adjectivalizing suffixes -ed and -y. Using the traditional method of doublet comparison (Aronoff 1976, 2020), we reveal that adjectives of the form Xed and those of the form Xy (X standing for the source word) differ in the scale type. Xed adjectives are closed-scale adjectives, but Xy adjectives are totally open-scale adjectives. The scale-type difference explains why Xed adjectives combine with certain degree modifiers, whereas Xy adjectives do not. Furthermore, we show that the rival affixes are doubly differentiated in the deverbal domain in terms of the said output scale type and the input base selection. In this domain, the major sources of the closed-scale -ed adjectives and the open-scale -y adjectives are result and manner verbs, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies analysing the differences in emotionality in first and second language suggest that affective content of lexical items is modulated in certain contexts. This paper investigates the differences in valence and arousal ratings for 300 early words, in both oral and written modalities, through speakers' subjective appraisal of words given by two immersion groups of Spanish late bilinguals (Chinese and European) compared with a group of native speakers. The main goal of our study is to identify the lexical areas where variability occurs, regarding to a set of affective (emotional charge and intensity), grammatical (nouns, adjectives and verbs) and semantic (concreteness) features of words. Our results show that valence is the dimension where the greatest variability is observed between native and bilinguals, although the influence of the independent factors differs considerably. Besides, arousal yields illuminating data regarding the grammatical category of words and differentiation between the groups of participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates postverbal imperative subjects (e.g., get you to school), ungrammatical in standard English but grammatical in certain contexts in dialects of Scottish and Belfast English. Henry (1995) reports that unaccusative verbs generally allow postverbal subjects in Belfast English, but in the Scottish English (ScotE) dialect considered here, only a very restricted subset of verbs allow it. Moreover, in ScotE, the preposition away can appear without an overt verb (I'll away to my bed); this also allows a postverbal subject in imperatives (away you to school). The ScotE data cast doubt on Henry's (1995) proposal that the licensor of postverbal subjects is weak agreement. The paper argues that the subjects in these constructions are actually external arguments of small clauses (of which goal PPs are taken to be a subset following, e.g., Beck & Snyder 2001). The differences between dialects are located in the structure of resultatives; Belfast English allows Case to be assigned to the subject of small clauses in resultative constructions via a functional head endowed with a causation feature, allowing them to remain in situ in imperatives. In standard English, the causation feature is directly merged onto the verb, not allowing for Case assignment and forcing raising of the subject of the small clause. The ScotE data is argued to arise from the availability of a very 'light' verb which is realized as get in some contexts and as silence in others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Persian makes extensive use of light verb constructions (LVCs) consisting of a non-verbal preverb and a semantically light verbal element. The current paper concentrates on LVCs with nominal preverbs (e.g. sedâ dâdan 'produce a sound', lit. 'sound give') which license an attributively used adjective intervening between the two components of the construction. Such LVCs are idiomatically combining expressions, in the sense of Nunberg, Sag & Wasow (1994: 496). The individual components of idiomatically combining expressions have an identifiable meaning and combine in a non-arbitrary way. Thus, they are conceived as being formed compositionally. Evidence for this view can be taken from the fact that the attributively used adjectives function as internal modifiers, targeting only the nominal component of the LVC. As adjectives can also be used adverbially, two modification patterns emerge: The nominal preverb is modified by an attributive modifier, or the same adjective can be used as an adverbial modifier of the whole LVC. Two corresponding interpretation patterns arise: Attributive and adverbial modification either both result in the same, or in different interpretations. The paper makes the following claims: First, only compositionally derived LVCs license attributive modification of their nominal preverb; and second, different interpretations of the two modification patterns only result if the light verb and the preverb each license a suitable property as a target for the modifier. If, on the other hand, such a property is only licensed by the preverb, adverbial and attributive modification result in the same interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the results of two acceptability judgment experiments that examine the effect of PP remnants with mismatching correlates in the antecedent clause (either a PP, with a distinct preposition, or an NP) on the acceptability of pseudogapping as well as non-elliptical controls. Across both experiments, three novel findings emerge: First, utterances with mismatching PPs across the ellipsis clause and its antecedent were consistently degraded relative to their preposition-matched counterparts. Second, this mismatch penalty arose for elliptical and non-elliptical variants alike with only minor differences between the two. Finally, a significant portion of the mismatch penalties was explained away by the degree of semantic similarity between the thematic relations established by the mismatching prepositions with respect to the antecedent verb which was measured in a separate norming experiment. We examine the consequences of these new empirical results for current theories of pseudogapping, namely (i) the remnant-raising analysis, according to which the remnant XP is raised leftward out of the VP prior to VP ellipsis, licensed under identity with its antecedent; and (ii) the direct generation analysis, under which auxiliaries are verbal proforms that recover their referent anaphorically without the need for remnant movement or syntactic identity between the verb and its antecedent. We conclude that the data are more naturally accounted for under the direct generation approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the evidence and arguments for reconstructing a person–number agreement paradigm for the Proto-Trans-Himalayan (=Sino-Tibetan) verb, and assesses the counter-arguments which have been presented in the literature. We demonstrate the cognacy of verb agreement paradigms across the family, and show that there is no plausible subclassification of the family which would place all the attesting languages in a single branch of the family, and no case for a "Rung" branch. The agreement systems of Jinghpaw and Northern Naga and the archaic postverbal paradigms of South Central/Kuki-Chin are demonstrably cognate to those of Rgyalrongic and Kiranti, and these languages have no common ancestor more recent than PTH. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mismatching of morphosyntactic and phonological domains inside words provides a testing ground for models of the morphosyntax–phonology interface. This paper describes a pattern of morphosyntax–phonology mismatches in Muskogee. Muskogee verbs are spelled out at two phases, vP and CP, resulting in two phonological domains, which this paper models as ω-recursion. The vP phase and ωmin are mismatched: either vP-phase material is parsed outside ωmin – an undermatch – or CP-phase material is parsed inside ωmin – an overmatch. The mismatch pattern requires a parallel model of morphosyntax–phonology mapping to distinguish mismatches using gradient Align constraints, rather than categorial Match constraints. Additionally, a phase-based model must allow earlier cycles to be altered in later cycles, ruling out strict phase inalterability in phonology, while a Stratal OT analysis must send a word's first phase through the stem-level phonology, regardless of its ultimate phasal structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the cognitive mechanisms underlying eating and drinking metaphors in Mongolian and discusses complex linguistic features of some culturally unique idioms relating to id- 'eat' and uu- 'drink', which are interpreted from a sociocultural perspective, along with the help of world knowledge. Metaphorical extensions of id - and uu- fall into three subcategories: (1) agent-oriented extensions, highlighting the consumer's role in the source domain of eating and drinking; (2) patient-oriented extensions, focusing on destructive effects on the patient in the source domain; (3) extensions involving both agent and patient orientations, describing the agent's sensation and "destruction" of the patient at the same time. Based on the Mongolian Web Corpus (mnWac16) and an extensive online dictionary (mongoltoli.mn), it is found that patient-oriented extensions tend to be more connected with EAT verbs in Mongolian, denoting a range of extensions like overcoming of the patient, spending material wealth, psychological torment or destruction, corrosion caused by external factors, etc., while agent-oriented extensions are more likely to involve DRINK verbs, denoting 'smoking', receiving material wealth (e.g., earning money) and absorption of such liquids as ink or oil. Overall, id - has a broader extension than uu -, and there are some overlaps involving both agent and patient orientations in terms of living on material wealth and physical exploitation. Some common usages pertaining to metaphorical extensions of consumption verbs are found cross-linguistically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents an account of the (non-)realization of the DP shell in presuppositional clauses within a system where such clauses are uniformly DPs. It is argued that the DP shell is realized by a spanning verb (in languages like Russian) or a spanning complementizer (in languages like English). The analysis is extended to account for the distribution of complementizer drop. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the syntactic representation of inner aspect in Hungarian. We contribute to the extant research on inner aspectual markers by providing an analysis of entailed versus implied telicity as well as the (non)maximality effects with which telic predicates are associated. Although we focus on the grammar of Hungarian, we also draw parallels between typologically different languages like Finno-Ugric (e.g. Hungarian and Finnish) and Germanic (e.g. English) regarding their inner aspectual marking strategies, and the interaction of inner aspect and case assignment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the production of Persian–English bilingual compound verbs (BCVs) of the type [VERB+VERB]. In this type of code-switched structure, a lexical verb from the donor language English is combined with a light verb from the native language Persian. We tested the hypothesis that in Persian–English BCVs English verbs occupy the nominal slots of monolingual Persian complex predicates of the type [NOMINAL+VERB]. Two methodologies were used. A conversational-corpus analysis confirmed our predictions that Persian–English BCVs have translation-equivalent Persian compound verbs, that the English verbs denote the same action as the nominal constituents of those monolingual constructions, and that the support verbs tend to correspond in both types of compound verbs. A bilingual picture-word interference experiment provided evidence suggesting that English verbs interfere with the production of the nominal constituents of complex Persian verbs in Persian-bilingual speakers. We conclude that words from different word categories can compete for lexical access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Boye and Harder (2012) claim that the grammatical–lexical distinction has to do with discourse prominence: lexical elements can convey discursively primary (or foreground) information, whereas grammatical elements cannot (outside corrective contexts). This paper reports two experiments that test this claim. Experiment 1 was a letter detection study, in which readers were instructed to mark specific letters in the text. Experiment 2 was a text-change study, in which participants were asked to register omitted words. Experiment 2 showed a main effect of word category: readers attend more to words in lexical elements (e.g., full verbs) than to those in grammatical elements (e.g., auxiliaries). Experiment 1 showed an interaction: attention to letters in focused constituents increased more for grammatical words than for lexical words. The results suggest that the lexical–grammatical contrast does indeed guide readers' attention to words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the aspectual potential of posture verb pseudo-coordination in spoken German. In a corpus study of sitzen 'sit' and stehen 'stand', it is shown that despite a preference for activity verbs, verbs of all aspectual classes occur in the second conjunct. The posture verb imposes its durative meaning component on the second verb, thus making a progressive interpretation of the construction possible. Apart from this emergent aspectual function, German posture verb pseudo-coordination has a subjective function (conveying the speaker's beliefs about the subject referent's stance), and a discourse pragmatic function (information packaging). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the problems of English spelling is the dual representation of the so-called 'eyes'-words, rendered in discourse as -ise and -ize, both with high-frequency verbs such as modernise/modernize and rare coinages, as in burglarise/burglarize, etc. Eyes-words have historically evolved from two different language systems as two different forms with the same meaning, which have eventually come to coincide in their use in English with competing orthographic forms. The present paper first assesses the origin and development of the competition of these forms in the history of English from their introduction into English to their current configuration in British and American English; and then analyses their distribution in 13 varieties of English worldwide from the perspective of diatopic and text type variation. The study concludes, on the one hand, that the adoption of -ize in American English was an early 19th-century phenomenon while -ise spread in British English in the late 20th century; and, on the other, that the dissemination of -ize is constantly on the rise in many varieties, and the growing Americanisation of English, among others, is taken to be the most decisive element factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a corpus and experiments to mine possession relations from text. Specifically, we target alienable and control possessions and assign temporal anchors indicating when a possession relation holds between the possessor and possessee. We work with intra-sentential possessor and possessees that satisfy lexical and syntactic constraints. We experiment with traditional classifiers and neural networks to automate the task. In addition, we analyze the factors that help to determine possession existence and possession type and common errors made by the best performing classifiers. Experimental results show that determining possession existence relies on the entire sentence, whereas determining possession type primarily relies on the verb, possessor and possessee. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides new evidence in support of the hypothesis that the syntax–prosody mapping of Intonational Phrases is flexible (Hamlaoui and Szendrői 2015). In the traditional 'rigid' approaches, Intonational Phrases are taken to map onto particular syntactic projections. In contrast, in the 'flexible' approach, the Intonational Phrase corresponds to the highest projection of the verb (HVP). Accordingly, the 'flexible' approach predicts that the HVP should also determine the size of Intonational Phrases in a language where the verb height depends on the utterance type. Our evidence comes from a language of this type, Iron Ossetic (East Iranian). First, we demonstrate that verbs in Iron Ossetic occupy different functional heads in different contexts. Then, based on novel prosodic data, we show that the HVP indeed directly determines the size of Intonational Phrases in clauses with narrow foci and negative indefinites. Additionally, in wh-questions, language-specific mapping constraints come into play. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been observed that a subset of dative verbs that can express causation of possession such as cwu- 'give', ceykongha- 'offer' and cikupha- 'pay' may be found in the double accusative frame as well as in the DAT(ive)-ACC(usative) frame in Korean. These verbs contrast with transfer of possession verbs such as kennay- 'hand' and phal- 'sell' and verbs of sending and throwing, which are found in the DAT-ACC frame only. This paper presents a meaning-based account of the limited productivity of the dative/accusative alternation in Korean dative verbs. Building on Croft et al. (2001) and Levin (2004, 2008b), I argue that the semantic classes of dative verbs form an implicational hierarchy pure caused possession > transfer of possession > caused motion, which ranks verbs in terms of the degree of the compatibility with a caused possession event type. I suggest three criteria for compatibility between verb meaning and constructional meaning and show that the analysis of verb–construction pairings proposed here, when combined with an account of variation, provides a unified explanation for verb distribution patterns observed for ditransitive constructions within and across languages and the morphosyntactic expression of recipients of dative verbs in Korean. It accounts for the limited productivity of the dative/accusative alternation in dative verbs in Korean as a consequence of choosing the cut-off point at the highest end of this hierarchy, thus explaining why only the verb class that is most compatible with the caused possession event type, i.e. pure caused possession verbs, may be used ditransitively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study combines explicit (pen-and-paper) and sensitive (time-pressured) measures to gauge the impact of three instructional interventions (contextualized input with meaning-focused activities, contextualized input with word-focused activities, and decontextualized input with word-focused exercises) on the learning of 20 L2 French target verbs. Participants (N = 313, L1 = Dutch) completed a combination of explicit (form recognition, meaning recall, grammatical preference) and time-pressured sensitive tests (lexical decision, semantic relatedness, grammaticality judgment) as immediate and delayed posttests. Explicit posttests show the beneficial effects of word-focused instruction, and underline the efficiency of context for meaning-related knowledge. Sensitive posttests generally confirm the explicit results, but reveal differences between both word-focused conditions related to lexical processing and strength of knowledge. This study suggests that combining explicit and sensitive measures can provide a more complete picture about the effects of L2 vocabulary instruction and shows that contextualized and decontextualized word-focused instruction benefit vocabulary learning in a complementary way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we carried out two experimental studies to investigate whether verbal tenses, in their perspectival usages, give access to the speaker's perspective. Study 1 is an annotation study in which annotators evaluated corpus excerpts as expressing situations or narrating events in a subjective or objective way. We manipulated access to the verbal tense: half of the annotators saw the tense of the verbs, and half saw only infinitive forms of the verbs. Study 2 is a self-paced reading experiment in which we examined how native speakers of French process utterances with the Passé Simple when it is preceded by aujourd'hui (semantic incompatibility solved pragmatically by perspective-taking), hier (semantic and pragmatic compatibility) and en ce moment (semantic incompatibility which cannot be solved pragmatically). The results of Study 1 suggest that the subjective interpretation of an utterance is not triggered by its verbal tense. Study 2 questions the idea that perspective-taking is a component of speaker's subjectivity. In general, our experimental findings do not support the hypothesis that verbal tenses give access to speaker's subjectivity, a theoretical hypothesis which has never before been directly experimentally tested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the now extinct Frisian dialect of the island of Wangerooge, the naming verb heit 'to be called' had partially grammaticalized into a copular verb 'to be' competing, to some extent, with the original copula wízze 'to be'. In this paper, I discuss the development and the status of the copula heit in some detail and consider what it might tell one about the taxonomy of copular clauses (Higgins 1979). I show that the functional change from naming verb to copula initially occurred in identificational copular clauses. From there heit spread to classifi-cational and specificational copular clauses, but not to predicational ones. This development suggests a principled distinction between predicational copular clauses on the one hand and identificational copular clauses (conceived as comprising classifying, specifying, and equating ones) on the other. This does not imply, however, that heit is an identificational copula or that it selects an identificational small clause. I analyze copular heit used with an identificational small clause as a suppletive allomorph of wízze 'to be'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to develop a Cognitive Grammar-based analysis of English Copy-raising (CR) constructions such as Richard seems like he is dancing. We argue that the notion of reference-point plays a crucial role in licensing the matrix-subject of the construction. In CR, with the epistemic verbs seem and appear, the matrix-subject functions as a reference-point in relation to the pronominal copy (if a copy exists) in the embedded clause. The aboutness topicality of the matrix-subject in CR is expected, owing to its reference-point property. The epistemic CR construction is acceptable without a pronominal copy if the matrixsubject functions as a reference-point in relation to the complement clause. The same type of analysis is applied to the CR construction with perceptual resemblance (PR) verbs - sound, look, feel, and smell - leading to the conclusion that the strong dichotomy between epistemic and PR verbs is illusory. It is further demonstrated that expletive thereraising in CR is motivated by the same reference-point phenomenon. The difference between there-raising and other CR examples stems from the role of there as a setting subject. Our reference-point-based analysis predicts a metonymic interpretation of the matrix-subject, which we attribute to the connection between reference-point and metonymy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Long-distance dependencies are notoriously difficult to analyze in a formally explicit way because they involve constituents that seem to have been extracted from their canonical position in an utterance. The most widespread solution is to identify a gap at an extraction site and to communicate information about that gap to its filler, as in What_FILLERdid you see_GAP? This paper rejects the filler−gap solution and proposes a cognitive-functional alternative in which long-distance dependencies spontaneously emerge as a side effect of how grammatical constructions interact with each other for expressing different conceptualizations. The proposal is supported by a computational implementation in Fluid Construction Grammar that works for both parsing and production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tlapanec (Mè'phàà) is known for its enigmatic tonal alternation in verb forms according to person and aspect-mode categories, in addition to suppletion and other segmental alternations. In this paper, we argue that the tonal alternations observed in Tlapanec regular agentive verbs can be straightforwardly accounted for by phonology, without resorting to any extreme abstractness: the lexical tones of the prefixes and the verb stems, with underspecification and floating tones, and cross-linguistically common tone processes such as tone spreading and floating tone docking. Such a phonological (or a morpheme-based) approach is contrasted with a word-based approach, where tonal alternations are viewed as inflectional classes. We show that the phonological approach is more adequate than a word-based approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dene (Athabaskan) verbs are widely known for their complex morphophonology. The most complex patterns are associated with two conjugation markers, /s/ and /n/, which are associated with a floating H tone to their immediate left. In this paper, we provide an analysis of /θe/ and /ɲe/, the reflexes of the /s/ and /n/ conjugations in Tetsǫ́t'ıné. Whereas previous accounts of these conjugations have relied heavily on morphological conditioning, we show that, once level ordering, autosegmental phonology and metrical phonology are brought to bear on the problem, morphological conditioning is not required. Within the framework of Stratal OT, we propose the Domain Reference Hypothesis, by which phonological constraints may only refer to morphological domains and their edges. In addition, we show that in Tetsǫ́t'ıné there is a correlation between phonological opacity and morphological structure, as predicted by the Stratal OT model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Templatic morphology involves the appearance of a fixed shape on a morpheme in a specific morphological context. This paper makes two claims: the morphological context of a template is syntactically cyclic, resulting in recursive prosodic word structure, and the shape of a template results from prosodic well-formedness conditions on the internal prosodic word. Templatic morphology in Chukchansi Yokuts illustrates these claims: affixes that trigger templates transfer the root to the phonology before other material is transferred, so that the root forms a prosodic word which is internal to the whole word. Roots with one underlying vowel are augmented to meet a disyllabic minimality requirement on prosodic words; the resulting disyllable forms a light–heavy iamb, to optimally satisfy Chukchansi parsing requirements. Templatic morphology falls out from the predictable interaction of the syntax–phonology interface and general phonological properties of a language, and needs no special apparatus or diacritics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we propose a new distinction between expressive and non-expressive particle verbs in German. The basic observation for our proposal is that these two classes behave differently in the domain of particle fronting. In order to explain this difference, we will show that certain particle verbs are extreme degree expressions and that, therefore, a possible contrast across degrees makes fronting acceptable, even when the particle in isolation is non-contrastable. Our claims are supported by a rating study probing German native speakers’ intuitions about the likelihood of the occurrence of an utterance, without relying on acceptability judgments. We connect these new findings to other forms of non-information-structural fronting patterns that endow utterances with an emphatic flavor. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The variation of the two past tense auxiliaries (HAVE and BE) is a well-studied phenomenon in European languages, especially in the West Germanic varieties. So far, however, the situation in Eastern Yiddish has not been examined. This paper focuses on auxiliary selection in these Yiddish dialects based on data from the Language and Culture Archive of Ashkenazic Jewry , which were collected in the 1960s. Like most of the current works on this topic, the following analysis uses and discusses Sorace's (1993, 2000) Auxiliary Selection Hierarchy, which allows to examine the Yiddish structures in light of historical and diatopic evidence from other Germanic varieties, particularly German and Dutch. The main focus is on intransitive verbs that show a high degree of variation—state verbs, controlled and uncontrolled motional process verbs, and change-of-state verbs. However, the Auxiliary Selection Hierarchy also has weaknesses, as is demonstrated in the following. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the context of on-going research, this paper explores the pedagogical implications of contrastive analyses of multiword units in English and Spanish based on electronic corpora as a CALL resource. The main tenets of collocations from a contrastive perspective - and the points of contact and departure between both languages - are discussed prior to examining the commonest types of verb+noun combinations as a significant case of so-called 'de-lexicalized', 'light', 'empty', 'thin', 'stretched' or 'support verbs'. A qualitatively and quantitatively-oriented case study is accordingly conducted, determining the weight of dar in support verb constructions within the Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual (CREA) and of the English equivalent stretched verb constructions with give within the British National Corpus (BNC). Based on the empirical data obtained in this way, this paper provides relevant insights for more accurate translations, helping to enhance the collocational competence of L2 students, who tend to avoid constructions including empty verbs like give in favour of full-verb forms. The detailed findings in this paper come to shed light on the potential of CALL resources for improving the collocational usage of foreign-language learners, as quantitative and qualitative comparisons of collocations based on electronic corpora serve to highlight the similarities and, more importantly, the lexical and typological differences between both languages, thereby substantiating the invaluable role that corpus analysis may play for language teaching in general and for collocational knowledge and proficiency in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an experimental approach to the polysemy of the Estonian perception verb tundma 'to feel' from the perspective of the perception ➔ cognition metaphor. First, a sorting task is used to map how native speakers perceive the different senses of tundma 'to feel'. The results show that cognition-related senses of tundma form the most distinct and coherent group. This set was researched further by means of a second experiment, a conceptual feature rating task. The aim of this task was to assess if the cognition-related meanings of tundma differ from other cognition verbs of Estonian (teadma 'to know', aru saama 'to understand') in that they are metaphorically linked to physical perception. It was predicted that native speakers use characteristics tied to the physical perception in the conceptualisation of the type of knowledge expressed by tundma. However, native speakers did not rate sentences with tundma as more physical than sentences with abstract cognition verbs. This result is indicative of the nature of the semantics of tundma being more varied than was first thought. It is argued that the semantics of tundma refer to it being a verb of general proximal perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Juggling with structurally and semantically different language systems leads to constructions that differ from the typical patterns in a language. Typical patterns in the domain of motion are characterized by more verbs encoding path in French; and more verbs encoding the manner of motion in German. An increase of manner verbs in French, for instance, can be ascribed to an influence from German. The extent of typical or reversed patterns depends on interrelated factors such as speaker-related idiosyncrasies, language dominance configurations, and – arguably – the degree of language activation. Drawing on data from 154 French–German bilinguals who described motion events in different language modes, this paper combines interrelated questions on the role of language dominance, language mode manipulation and how these factors interact. Quantitative analyses on the use of motion verbs do not show the expected effects. The null results are discussed by comparing preceding studies showing contradictory findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The English auxiliary system exhibits many lexical exceptions and subregularities, and considerable dialectal variation, all of which are frequently omitted from generative analyses and discussions. This paper presents a detailed, movement-free account of the English Auxiliary System within Sign-Based Construction Grammar (Sag 2010, Michaelis 2011, Boas & Sag 2012) that utilizes techniques of lexicalist and construction-based analysis. The resulting conception of linguistic knowledge involves constraints that license hierarchical structures directly (as in context-free grammar), rather than by appeal to mappings over such structures. This allows English auxiliaries to be modeled as a class of verbs whose behavior is governed by general and class-specific constraints. Central to this account is a novel use of the feature aux , which is set both constructionally and lexically, allowing for a complex interplay between various grammatical constraints that captures a wide range of exceptional patterns, most notably the vexing distribution of unstressed do , and the fact that Ellipsis can interact with other aspects of the analysis to produce the feeding and blocking relations that are needed to generate the complex facts of EAS. The present approach, superior both descriptively and theoretically to existing transformational approaches, also serves to undermine views of the biology of language and acquisition such as Berwick et al. (2011), which are centered on mappings that manipulate hierarchical phrase structures in a structure-dependent fashion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the so-called Endo- and Exocentric Verb Typology advanced by the Danish research group TYPOlex. The typology is partly based on Talmy’s lexicalization patterns for motion verbs with some elaboration and refinement of the manner–path distinction, and it is generalized to comprise Germanic and Romance verbs (and nouns) as a whole. The Danish findings point to a relatively high lexical precision and concreteness in Germanic verbs (and Romance nouns) and a relatively high lexical abstractness and genericity in Romance verbs (and Germanic nouns). Furthermore, the paper investigates Talmy’s two semantic components ground and figure and argues that they are far more generalized in Romance (secondary) lexicalization patterns – parasynthetic derivation – than normally assumed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In French and Spanish, both parts of the causative–anticausative alternation can be formally encoded in two ways: Depending on the form of the verb, marked and unmarked causatives and marked and unmarked anticausatives can be distinguished. The goal of this paper is to verify whether causalness is a factor in the encoding and whether the two languages differ in this respect (verbs used more often as causatives than as anticausatives have a high degree of causalness, while verbs used more often as anticausatives than as causatives have a low degree of causalness). On the basis of a corpus study of 20 French and 20 Spanish verbs, it will be shown that in both languages a strong correlation between causalness and encoding exists. A high degree of causalness increases the likelihood that a verb’s anticausative is marked and the causative is unmarked, and a low degree of causalness increases the likelihood that a verb’s anticausative is unmarked and the causative is marked. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that Danish verb-second clauses have two structural instantiations and that each structure is associated with distinct information-structural properties. Information-structurally undifferentiated V2 clauses are realized as TPs, whereas information-structurally differentiated V2 clauses are CPs. The evidence for this correlation comes from the behavior of the overt VP anaphor det, which exhibits a complex, but principled, positioning pattern in V2 clauses. I develop a feature-driven analysis of V2 clauses that accounts for previously unnoticed restrictions on the initial position in declarative V2 clauses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the paradigms of certain Tigre verbs, the final stem consonant and the vocalic suffix metathesise in some configurations. In this short paper, this is analysed as a hiatus-resolving strategy. The limits and consequences of this strategy are shown to follow from the representation of verbs, in an analysis conducted within CVCV phonology and Element Theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the basis of an examination of remnant VP-topicalisation constructions, this paper argues for an order preservation analysis of Scandinavian Object Shift. Extending the empirical database, we account for the phenomena in an Optimality Theoretic framework. The paper focusses on two particular constructions in Danish and Swedish, namely particle verb constructions and causative constructions with Danish lade and Swedish låta ‘let’. It is shown how differences in the VP-internal object position give rise to mirror image sequences concerning Object Shift in connection with verb second (V°-to-I°-to-C° movement) and with remnant VP-topicalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When describing motion in space, speakers of French and German are known to show different preferences. In French, the verb typically encodes the path, whereas in German the manner in which the figure moves is mapped onto the verb. In this paper, this difference between the two languages is investigated, drawing on the data produced by forty participants. All participants are multilinguals, with German and French as their two strongest languages. They described fifty video clips in two sessions, once in monolingual and once in bilingual mode. The critical stimuli were always described in German in both language modes, the fillers in German in monolingual mode but in French in bilingual mode. The analyses of the manner and path verb uses show that, in a bilingual mode, speakers significantly converge towards the French model, that is, they reduce the preference for manner verbs and increase the proportion of path verbs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper investigates whether and how speakers track the relative frequency of different patterns of alternation in the lexicon, by investigating speakers’ behavior when they are faced with unpredictability in allomorph selection. We conducted a wug test on Seoul Korean verb paradigms, testing whether speakers can generalize reliable lexical patterns. The test was performed in two directions. In forward formation test, the pre-vocalic base and pre-consonantal non-base forms were the stimulus and response, respectively, whereas in backward formation test, the stimulus–response relation was switched. The results show patterns approximating statistical patterns in Seoul Korean verb lexicon, thus confirming the lexical frequency matching reported in many previous studies. However, contrary to the conventional assumption, the results of the backward formation test are consistent with lexical frequencies relevant for the forward formation, not backward formation. This observed asymmetry is broadly consistent with the single base hypothesis (Albright 2002a, b, 2005, 2008), in which forward, as opposed to backward formation rules play a privileged role in speakers’ morphological grammar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze genitive of negation (GN) in Lithuanian. When the verb is negated, GN is realized on an object that would otherwise be realized as accusative. We demonstrate that Lithuanian GN is a syntactic (in line with Arkadiev 2016) and morphological phenomenon in contrast to Russian GN, whose realization is influenced by semantic factors (e.g. Kagan 2013). It differs from Russian (Pesetsky 1982) in that (i) it is always assigned to a DP which would otherwise bear structural accusative regardless of its semantic properties, and (ii) it cannot affect a structural nominative DP regardless of whether it is an external or internal argument. Lithuanian GN, in this respect, is similar to Polish GN (e.g. Przepiórkowski 2000, Witkoś 2008). We offer a three-layered approach to case, arguing that GN is a reflection of structural object case, assigned in syntax, then translated to morphological genitive case at PF and, finally, realized at Vocabulary Insertion (Halle & Marantz 1993). Thus, structural object case has two morphological realizations: as genitive under negation or as accusative in the absence of negation. Lithuanian also exhibits long-distance GN (Arkadiev 2016), showing that case boundaries can cross non-finite clauses without an overt CP element, suggesting these are not phases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on Estonian verb-complement structures, which include oblique (non-canonically marked) complements marked in spatial cases. Not all approaches agree on whether canonical arguments and oblique complements have argument status of the same type, but they do mostly agree that the two types of complement markings are used by different types of verbs. First, oblique case is viewed as always indexing the original semantics of the case (direct semantics), that is osutama 'point at' selecting an allative ('onto') complement. Second, oblique case usage is seen as referring to a restricted set of syntactic relations (indirect semantics), that is Estonian allative and adessive being used for marking Experiencers. In any case, oblique complement verbs are viewed as more semantically restricted than canonical object verbs. This study tests these two hypotheses in a quantitative corpus approach. In a non-semantically extracted sample of verbs (n = 232), it compares the lexical-semantic transitivity of oblique and canonical complement verbs in order to investigate the degree to which indirect semantic effects differentiate between the two types of verbs. In addition, it outlines direct semantic effects between oblique case frames in terms of semantic roles. Finally, it investigates the way these patterns are related to the cases' individual grammaticalisation degrees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, our aim is to analyze the relationship between the development of verbal forms and verbal functions. We examine all verbal forms produced longitudinally by two French children in terms of their morphosyntactic marking of tense, aspect, mood and situation type, and compare them to their contextually interpreted meanings. We introduce the main issues relevant to the unfolding of the verbal temporal system in children's data. Our data consists in two longitudinal corpora of French speaking children aged 1;06 to 3;01. The paper focuses on: 1) the relationship between form and function within the verbal system in the earlier stage of development; 2) the children's ability to mark a displacement between speech time and event time. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This short communication is concerned with long object shift of reflexives in Swedish. Only 3rd person reflexives can shift across their antecedent. For some reason this is possible even if the antecedent is 1st or 2nd person as well, but certain requirements on the antecedent are necessary. This paper shows that neither a purely syntactic nor a purely semantic analysis can account for all the facts. Instead the best analysis seems to be one that makes use of Bonet's (1995) post-syntactic morphological processes: feature delinking, feature erasure and feature insertion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses telicity and perfectivity in Estonian. Neither of these categories corresponds exactly to the Estonian object case alternation, which is argued to reflect predicate or clause aspectual properties and not the NP-related properties of objects. The aim of this account is to accommodate the systematic compatibility of verb classes with certain clausal aspectual object case marking patterns. The paper proposes a way of understanding the interaction between verbal and clausal aspect in terms of boundedness and formalizes it in the framework of Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG). The features of verbs and case markers determine the clausal aspect from different constituents at the syntactic level of constituent structure. The information is unified at another syntactic level, functional structure. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Based on a corpus of spontaneous production data, this paper compares the word order of wh-questions in two Norwegian dialects, Kåfjord and Tromsø. While the choice of word order (V2 or non-V2) in Tromsø is dependent on information structure, the Kåfjord speakers produce considerably more non-V2 in questions with monosyllabic wh-elements. The majority of questions with multisyllabic wh-constituents, on the other hand, occurs with V2. This synchronic variation is given a diachronic analysis within a Split-CP model of clause structure and a cue-based approach to acquisition and change, where an economy principle (head preference) also plays an important role. Furthermore, an information structure drift from V2 to non-V2 is argued to cause the cue for verb movement to fall below a critical level in the input to children, the result being that V2 only survives in lexically marked cases in Kåfjord, i.e. with the verb ‘be’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The present paper deals with the construction ta og/och V ‘take and V’ in the Nordic languages. After a brief overview of pseudocoordinations of the type ‘V1 and V2’, the use and meaning of the ta-construction is discussed, with special emphasis on Modern Norwegian. It is argued that the subject of the activity expressed by V2 must normally have an agentive role, and that the construction has an intentional and initiating meaning. After having established the meaning of the modern construction, the historical development of the construction is discussed. On the basis of Old Norse examples, it is argued that the ta-construction has developed out of paratactically combined sentences where ta has been desemanticized, and has come to function as a kind of auxiliary. However, this development must, at least partly, have taken place at a very early stage. A hypothesis that the ta-construction has been borrowed from Greek is rejected. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper focuses on the interaction between raising, subject–verb inversion and agreement in Modern Hebrew. It identifies, alongside ‘standard’ (i.e., English-like) subject-to-subject raising, two additional patterns where the embedded subject appears post-verbally. In one, the raising predicate exhibits long-distance agreement with the embedded subject, while in the other, a colloquial variant, it is marked with impersonal (3sm) agreement. The choice between the three raising constructions in the language is shown to be solely dependent on properties of the embedded clause. The data are discussed and analyzed against a background of typological and theoretical work on raising. The analysis, cast in the framework of Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG), builds on research on raising, selectional locality, agreement, subjecthood and information structure, as well as verb-initial constructions in Modern Hebrew. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Although word-initial consonants are highly salient cross-linguistically, the process of initial-consonant mutation has nonetheless continued to affect them in the Celtic languages. This paper investigates the use of the mixed mutation (MM) in Breton, following the progressive particle. Like all mutation, it naturally affects the phonology, but also gives (redundant) information for morphosyntax. Mutation is generally presumed to be a regular process, but as there has been a gap in the transmission of Breton, the extent to which this phono-syntactic phenomenon is consistent across generations remains open to discussion. It has been claimed that younger speakers, being strongly French-dominant, do not use mutation correctly. We tested this examining both distribution of usage and acoustic measurements of the consonants in question. Data from original fieldwork indicate that young adults use MM in the same way as older speakers, but children attending Breton-medium schooling are less proficient. Mixed mutation is difficult to acquire, the crucial factor being sustained Breton input beyond the early teenage years. Acoustically, there is no difference in the production of MM cross-generationally. The difference between the two generations is in the use of the progressive particle itself, omitted by the older generation, but retained by younger speakers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]