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The paper examines the syntax of two unaccusative verbs in Polish – ubyć.perf/ubywać.imperf 'to disappear, to decrease' and przybyć.perf/przybywać.imperf 'to arrive, to increase' – with a view to shedding light on the structure of existential unaccusatives. The two above-mentioned verbs appear in two distinct paradigms – the disappearance/motion verb and the existential one – both of which are taken to represent subtypes of existential structure. Existential verbs are treated here as monadic predicates with a single small clause complement, whose internal structure may vary, depending on the predicate. The two existential unaccusatives analysed in the paper may select two different types of small clause complement, which are different from the small clause selected by the existential być 'to be'. Thus, Polish seems to make use of three different small clause structures in existential clauses. The paper also provides evidence that in Polish, like in English, existential unaccusatives are structurally distinct from change of state unaccusatives, and thus in the two languages there is more than one way to be structurally unaccusative. The account bears on the analysis of the genitive of negation in Polish, especially the issue of its inapplicability to existential unaccusatives versus its presence with the existential być 'to be'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the behaviors of tag questions in Chinese and proposes a unifying analysis involving empty CP/DP pro-forms and predication. It is found that there are universally two types of Tag questions – (i) the invariable type and (ii) the (modal) verbal type, which correspond to the question-types in Chinese syntax. Previous research by Culivocer (1992. English tag questions in Universal Grammar. Lingua 88. 193–226) analyzed English tag questions as a pro-IP structure that is bound by a previous sentence. However, in Chinese, two types of tag questions include both A-not-A form and particle form. Furthermore, both the two kinds of tag questions display syntactic predication between the tag and an empty subject pro. An abbreviated "yes-no question" is attached to empty CP/DP constituents in these constructions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The subject matter of this paper is the external and internal syntax of adjectival compounds based on -ble adjectives in English (e.g. vaccine-preventable, machine-readable, drug-susceptible) and passive potential adjectives in Polish (e.g. łatwopalny 'combustible', lekkostrawny 'lit. easily digestible, light', szybkozmywalny 'quickly-washable'), with special attention paid to whether the syntactic behaviour exhibited by -ble and -ny/-alny adjectives is also present in compounds headed by them. Drawing on analysis put forth by Oltra-Massuet (2013), the present research departs from Oltra-Massuet's account in that certain ble adjectives which show irregular morphology (e.g. visible, tolerable) are interpreted as high (eventive) -ble adjectives. It is shown that while synthetic -ble compounds in English inherit the syntactic features of their heads, passive potential adjectives in Polish often lose the ability to project the external argument upon being merged with a modifier to form a compound. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper discusses the occurrence, structure, and complexity of the postmodifier in the Nigerian English noun phrase (NP) showing tendencies for structural simplification. It also compares its findings with patterns in British, Ghanaian, Singaporean, Honk Kong varieties. The paper shows how variables representing syntactic function, register, and weight shed light on specific contexts where we might or might not find (1) NP with or without a postmodifier (2) a clausal or phrasal postmodifier, and (3) a simple or a complex postmodifier. In addition, the paper shows that the extent of variation among different varieties of English is dependent on variables crucial to the construction choices being investigated. For instance, in (1), a postmodifier is realised while no postmodifier is realised in (2). (1) My car which I just bought last week has been stolen, and (2) My car has been stolen.The NP in (1) is structurally complex because it realises the clausal type of post modifier, 'which I just bought last week'. Meanwhile in (2), the NP (the car) lacks a postmodifier. In other words, the occurrence viz-a-viz non-occurrence of a postmodifier contributes to the overall structural and semantic complexity of the entire noun phrases, irrespective of the syntactic positions of the NP. Quantitative analyses of 8897 NPs indicate that in Nigerian NPs, a postmodifier is more unlikely to occur (61 %) than not (39 %). Further analyses show that prepositional phrase (57 %), rather than clause (32 %) or adjective (9 %) or adverbials (2 %), is the most preferred structural postmodifier type. It is also shown that realised postmodifiers are more likely to be structured in two-to-four words (51 %) than four-words above. As for the predictive strength of variables studied, syntactic function is found to edge register in asserting influence and explaining different scenarios and contexts where we might or might not find a postmodifier, together with its structural type and weight. In other words, register, which is reputed as a significant indicator of structural variation (Biber, 2007; De Haan, Pieter. 1993. Sentence Length in Running Text. In Souter, C. & E. Atwell (), Corpus-Based Computational Linguistics, 147–161. Amsterdam: Rodopi; Schilk and Schaub, 2016) is outweighed by syntactic function. The study further attests that significant structural simplification is largely present in the postmodifier structure of the Nigerian English noun phrase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Work on coordination has been concerned with the conditions in which elements can be 'shared' between two conjuncts since at least Ross (1967). This paper aims to describe a curious case of apparently obligatory sharing, where coordinated clauses below a shared element in C - i.e. coordinated TP clauses - are required to 'share' a single initial subject unless the subject of the second clause is focused. I argue that this restriction arises from properties of cyclic linearization (Fox and Pesetsky 2005, Richards 2010). Limitations of the linearization algorithm prevent it from distinguishing DP arguments from one another (Richards 2010). What distinguishes the subjects of TPs from arguments of other clausal conjuncts is that they are both visible to the linearization algorithm on a single cycle of Spell Out. Unable to distinguish the two subjects, this algorithm linearizes them in a single position, except in cases where subject-oriented focus requires an overt subject in the second clause. The final section of the paper extend the analysis to SLF coordination (Höhle, 1983, 1990), which shows a similar restriction on overt subjects in the second conjunct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a corpus-based study of recent change in the English way-construction, drawing on data from the 1830s to the 2000s. Semantic change in the distribution of the construction is characterized by means of a distributional semantic model, which captures semantic similarity between verbs through their co-occurrence frequency with other words in the corpus. By plotting and comparing the semantic domain of the three senses of the construction at different points in time, it is found that they all have gained in semantic diversity. These findings are interpreted in terms of increases in schematicity, either of the verb slot or the motion component contributed by the construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Usage-based linguistics abounds with studies that use statistical classification models to analyze either textual corpus data or behavioral experimental data. Yet, before we can draw conclusions from statistical models of empirical data that we can feed back into cognitive linguistic theory, we need to assess whether the text-based models are cognitively plausible and whether the behavior- based models are linguistically accurate. In this paper, we review four case studies that evaluate statistical classification models of richly annotated linguistic data by explicitly comparing the performance of a corpus-based model to the behavior of native speakers. The data come from four different languages (Arabic, English, Estonian, and Russian) and pertain to both lexical as well as syntactic near-synonymy. We show that behavioral evidence is needed in order to fine tune and improve statistical models built on data from a corpus. We argue that methodological pluralism is the key for a cognitively realistic linguistic theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The empirical focus of this paper is the syntax and semantics of embedded clauses, and in particular, finite object clauses that are weak islands for extraction and incompatible with main clause phenomena (MCP). Such CPs (which subsume factive complements) have been shown to have referential properties both distributionally and in terms of their semantics (de Cuba & ÜÜröögdi, Eliminating factivity from syntax: Sentential complements in Hungarian, John Benjamins, 2009a). By analogy with proposals for the derivation of adverbial clauses (Haegeman, Main clause phenomena and intervention, Zentrum füür Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, 2009a, English Language and Linguistics 13: 385-- 408, b, The internal syntax of adverbial clauses, 2010), this paper develops a movement derivation for such referential embedded clauses. The paper updates a tradition of work on ''reduced'' or ''impoverished'' complement clauses and shows that their referential property can be made to follow from event relativization, which in turn accounts for the constraints on the syntax of their left periphery. Looking at the feature make-up of the operator enables us to make fine-grained predictions with respect to the availability of various MCP in these clauses. Pursuing insights due to Campbell (Studia Linguistica 50: 161--188, 1996), Aboh (The morphosyntax of complement-head sequences. Clause structure and word order patterns in Kwa, Oxford University Press, 2004: 84--90), it is proposed that both referential DPs and referential clauses (RCP) are derived by operator movement. The paper thus offers further evidence for the CP/DP parallelism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues for a syntactic approach to aspectuality, where semantic information about subevent structure is incorporated into the phrase marker. Such an approach would be justified only if aspectual properties present syntactic as well as semantic effects. It is the aim of the paper to present evidence of such syntactic effects. Slavic preverbs have standardly been regarded as perfectivizing (or felicity-marking) morphemes. It will he argued that pre verbs are also causative morphemes. As such, they are situated in the tipper part of a VP-layer structure, a light verb widely accepted to he reserved for CA USE. In English, the aspectual interpretation of a terminative or durative event depends on the specified or unspecified cardinality of the object (Verkuvi 1993) and aspect is calculated in a functional projection Asp.P between the two VP layers (Travis 1991). In Slavic, on the other hand, it is the presence or absence of a preverb in the upper verbal head that encodes a terminative or a durative interpretation. This contrast is explained with the relatively higher structural position of Slavic preverbs with respect to the functional projection AspP in English. Similar scope effects are den monstrated with articles in Russian, with interpretations of Polish and English imperfective sentences, and with manner adverbs in Bulgarian. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the issue of the questions embedded under predicates normally selecting for propositions like know (unselected embedded questions UEQ). This problem was handled in Adger and Quer (Adger, David & Josep Quer. 2001. The syntax and semantics of unselected embedded questions. Language 77. 107–133) and Öhl (Öhl, Peter. 2007. Unselected embedded interrogatives in German and English : S-selection as dependency formation. Linguistische Berichte 212. 403–438). Both articles notice a difference between yes/no- and wh-questions. The distribution of the latter seems to be less restricted. However data from Classical Greek shed new light on the matter. Classical Greek uses two sets of wh-items in what looks like embedded questions (h- and t-). It is shown that h-clauses do not denote questions but propositions. The selection mismatch arises with t-clauses. They denote questions and have the same distribution as yes/no-questions. Moreover Classical Greek provides new evidence in favor of 1) the sensitivity of the UEQ to the polarity of the environment, building on Giannakidou's (Giannakidou, Anastasia. 1998. Polarity sensitivity as (non) veridical dependency. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins) definition of nonveridicality; 2) the presence of a determiner on top of the UEQ as proposed in Adger and Quer (2001). The article argues nevertheless that the sensitivity is not due to the determiner, but to an operator going along with UEQs. It is shown that the determiner is a type-shifter turning the question into a proposition and thus repairing the apparent selection mismatch. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is abundant research that deals with diathesis alternations, such as the locative alternation (LA), because they can give us information about the interface between syntax and the lexicon. However, the literature dealing with the LA has frequently ignored the relation that exists between the crosslinguistically reduced set of prepositions that can occur in such construction. This paper postulates that the prepositions involved in the LA have either a locative or a possessive meaning, providing evidence from the comparison of Spanish and English, inter alia. These prepositions share a common underlying structure and are related by means of a simple derivation, following Freeze's (Language 68: 553-595, 1992) account of locative and possessive predication. This prepositional phrase will occupy the lower XP position in a construction with unaccusative properties D [V [XP]]], as developed in Zubizarreta & Oh (On the syntactic composition of manner and motion, linguistic inquiry monograph, MIT Press, 2007). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To date, studies of phrasal compounds, most of which are on Germanic languages, have been inconclusive with respect to whether the non-heads are phrases or quotations. In this paper, I present syntactic, semantic, and prosodic evidence from a typologically different language, Turkish, to distinguish between the two types. I will show that what look like equally complex constructions turn out to differ radically in complexity and in terms of their internal structure; phrases that are sensitive to syntax versus quotations which are not, and head-complement relations versus type-token relations. I further discuss the structural implications of having phrasal units within morphological units, arguing that this is a natural phenomenon within frameworks where the relation between morphology and syntax is bidirectional. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the so-inversion construction in English, as in John can speak French, and so can Ann, where the second conjunct is the construction in question. Arguing against Toda's (Linguistic Inquiry 38: 188–195, 2007) analysis, which involves ad hoc assumptions and theoretical and empirical problems, we propose the valid derivation of the so-inversion construction. Especially, we claim that the so-inversion construction allows a marked operation, amalgam head movement, which yields such sentences as Bill must be a genius and so must be Ann. An important implication of our analysis is that it is necessary to carefully distinguish between peripheral and typical examples in order to construct valid syntactic structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ontological distinction between discrete individuated objects and continuous substances, and the way this distinction is expressed in different languages has been a fertile area for examining the relation between language and thought. In this paper we combine simulations and a cross-linguistic word learning task as a way to gain insight into the nature of the learning mechanisms involved in word learning. First, we look at the effect of the different correlational structures on novel generalizations with two kinds of learning tasks implemented in neural networks--prediction and correlation. Second, we look at English- and Spanish-speaking 2-3-year-olds' novel noun generalizations, and find that count/mass syntax has a stronger effect on Spanish- than on English-speaking children's novel noun generalizations, consistent with the predicting networks. The results suggest that it is not just the correlational structure of different linguistic cues that will determine how they are learned, but the specific learning mechanism and task in which they are involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

1. Introduction One of the most contentious issues in historical syntax at the moment is the problem of directionality, in particular its theoretical status in the debate over grammaticalization. Grammaticalization is often defined as leading from less to more grammatical (e.g. Hopper Traugott 2003), hence it is not surprising that authors who seek to question the validity of grammaticalization as a framework for theorizing on language change often bring up counterexamples which they say violate alleged directionality constraints (see e.g. several papers in Campbell 2000). [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]

Detailed discussions of the micro linguistic organization of narrative have concentrated on European languages. This paper broadens the scope of enquiry with a study of oral narratives in Tokelauan, a Polynesian language. It provides some support for the view that there are universals of' narrative pragmatics, describable in general terms as requirements for narrative texture or grounding, realized in part through tense/aspect, and for embedded evaluation. Tokelauan narratives display structural and functional similarities to those of English and Romance languages. Basic narrative clauses have distinctive syntax, and tense/aspect and word order are the mg/or means for conveying different levels of grounding. An aspectual alternation found in narrative clauses has a similar function to the historic present tense alternation characteristic of European languages. I suggest that evaluative strategies involving lexical and clausal units, such as repetition and constructed dialogue, are universal or at least widespread stylistic features of the oral narrative genre, whereas grammatical features that convey affective or evaluative meaning are highly language-specific and result in distinctive textual patterns and narrative poetics; yet these operate within a framework that is recognizably the same as that which has been observed elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although often used as diagnostic tools in discourse studies, irregular wh-questions in English, which take the form of what/how about ... ? and what/how if ... ?, have not received sufficient attention in terms of their semantic and syntactic properties. This article investigates irregular wh-questions from semantic and syntactic perspectives. Semantically, there is a topic-comment relationship between the wh-word and the rest of the sentence. Syntactically, an irregular wh-question neither displays an explicit matrix subject-predicate structure nor involves a fronted auxiliary. This article pursues three objectives. First, a descriptive overview of irregular wh-questions is provided, which shows that the complement of about in irregular wh-questions can belong to various syntactic categories. Second, the topic-comment structure of irregular wh-questions is compared with that of the topic-comment structure in declarative sentences, which reveals some semantic properties of irregular wh-questions. Third, a formal account of irregular wh-questions is formulated in the framework of Dynamic Syntax, which captures the interaction of the semantic and syntactic properties of the components of an irregular wh-question. Additionally, the present dynamic account of irregular wh-questions is contrasted with an existing dynamic account of the hanging topic construction in English, which highlights some merits of the current account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study considers L2 French and L3 English ultimate attainment among L1 Moroccan Arabic adult learners. It contrasts the acquisition of two types of wh-questions: discourse-linked and non-discourse-linked questions in root and embedded forms. The results of two acceptability judgment tasks indicate that the advanced learners in L2 French and L3 English are nativelike on d-linked wh-questions but less accurate on non-discourse-linked interrogatives. They successfully unlearn resumption as an L1 strategy to form discourse-linked questions. Therefore, contra the prediction of the Interface Hypothesis, discourse-linking is acquirable though it is a property of the syntax-discourse interface. It does not pose more learning difficulty than quantification (formal wh-feature) of narrow syntax. The study indicates that embedding and thereby the processing cognitive load are the deterministic variables, not the language domain of constructions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article two properties of the head constituent in a syntactic construction: its central property, that the head shares category features with the construction as a whole; and a property that normally follows from the first, namely that the head and the construction as a whole share their morphosyntactic properties. There are lines of evidence of several different types and from a number of different languages that support direct reference to heads in syntactic rules. This paper reviews some facts about the English genitive plural that specifically motivate the feature +HD in a condition that regulates the distribution on the daughter categories in nominal constructions.

In many languages a set of adjectives are characterized by their 'past/passive' participial morphology. Lexicalist and syntactic approaches to word formation converge on the claim that such adjectives can be derived from verbal inputs with no external argument but never from verbal inputs with an external argument. That is, there are 'adjectival passives' but no 'adjectival antipassives' marked with the same morphology. I argue that a sub-class of adjectives marked with the 'past/passive' participial morpheme -do in Spanish, labeled participios activos in descriptive grammars, should be treated as adjectival antipassives in precisely this sense. I propose that Spanish has an Asp head that (i) is spelled out with 'past/passive' participial morphology and (ii) selects an unergative verbal input creating a state/property whose argument corresponds to the external argument of that verbal source. If on the right track, the proposal supports the existence of a typology of adjectivizing heads that are spelled out uniformly with 'past/passive' participial morphology but must be distinguished in terms of selectional and semantic properties (Bruening 2014, Word formation is syntactic: Adjectival passives in English. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 32. 363-422; Embick 2004, On the structure of resultative participles in English. Linguistic Inquiry 35. 355-392). It differs from previous approaches in claiming that such a typology must include root-derived adjectives, as well as 'active (=unergative)' and 'passive' deverbal adjectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We used free association and verbal fluency tasks to investigate verbargument constructions (VACs) and the ways in which their processing is sensitive to statistical patterns of usage (verb type-token frequency distribution, VAC-verb contingency, verb-VAC semantic prototypicality). In experiment 1, 285 native speakers of English generated the first word that came to mind to fill the V slot in 40 sparse VAC frames such as ‘he ____ across the. . . .', ‘it ____ of the. . . .', etc. In experiment 2, 40 English speakers generated as many verbs that fit each frame as they could think of in a minute. For each VAC, we compared the results from the experiments with corpus analyses of verb selection preferences in 100 million words of usage and with the semantic network structure of the verbs in these VACs. For both experiments, multiple regression analyses predicting the frequencies of verb types generated for each VAC show independent contributions of (i) verb frequency in the VAC, (ii) VAC-verb contingency and (iii) verb prototypicality in terms of centrality within the VAC semantic network. VAC processing involves rich associations, tuned by verb type and token frequencies and their contingencies of usage, which interface syntax, lexis and semantics. We consider the implications for the mental representation of VACs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study deals with a particular group of predicates called "predi-cates/verbs of relevance" or "predicates/verbs of indifference" in the literature. Its purpose is to investigate to what extent verbs of this particular group present common structural properties. It therefore seeks to establish the structural mani-festations of synonymy. These structural manifestations are not to be found in argument-function mapping à la Levin (1993), but rather in polarity, decategorial-ization and sentence structure. Corpus data reveal that syntax, semantics and pragmatics interact in particular ways in the field of relevance. This interaction appears to be grounded in pragmatic constraints arising from the principle of relevance (Sperber and Wilson 1986). The basic idea is that, as relevance is pre-supposed in human communication and need not be expressed, verbs of rele-vance are more likely to be used with negative than with positive polarity. Used with positive polarity, they tend to occur in sentence forms that present them as strongly presupposed. Used with negative polarity, they are more likely to occur in the focal area of the sentence. As statements about relevance express speaker's points of view, relevance verbs are also markers of intersubjectivity and are there-fore subject to grammaticalization phenomena, such as the omission of prepo-sitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

English irrealis modality is usually captured by syntactic structures that often exclude overt complementizers that and for and include indicative or infinitival morphology. The Spanish equivalents to English structures of irrealis modality, however, typically require the overt subordinate marker que ('that') followed by a [+finite] subordinate verb. These syntactic differences between English and Spanish produce asymmetrical surface structures caused by functional categories (FCs). The primary goal of this study is to examine the role of FCs, and more specifically, complementizers (CPs), in the syntactic development of L1 English speakers with L2 Spanish. The results of our data suggest that L1 CP properties (i.e. CP = Ø) persisted in learners' interlanguage (IL) systems, following the work of Schwartz & Sprouse (1996). As a result, learners at all levels of instruction intuitively perceived English-like [-overt] CP structures as more grammatical than their [+overt] CP counterparts, even at advanced levels of acquisition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In relative clause extraposition (RCE) in English, a noun is modified by a non-adjacent RC, resulting in a discontinuous dependency, as in: arrived here yesterday . Although discourse focus is known to influence the choice of RCE over truth-conditionally equivalent sentences with canonical structure (Rochemont and Culicover, English focus constructions and the theory of grammar, Cambridge University Press, 1990; Takami, A functional constraint on Extraposition from NP, John Benjamins, 1999), Hawkins (Efficiency and complexity in grammars, Oxford University Press, 2004) and Wasow (Postverbal behavior, CSLI Publications, 2002) have proposed in addition that RCE should be preferred when the relative clause is long (or ‘heavy’) relative to the VP because such structures are processed more efficiently in comprehension and production. The current study tested this hypothesis based on Hawkins' (Efficiency and complexity in grammars, Oxford University Press, 2004) domain minimization principles. In an acceptability judgment task, canonical sentences were rated significantly higher than extraposition sentences when the RC was light, but this difference disappeared when the RC was heavy. In a self-paced reading task, extraposition sentences were read significantly faster than canonical sentences when the RC was heavy, but there was no difference when the RC was light. In an analysis of RCE in the ICE-GB corpus, extraposed RCs were significantly longer than the VP on average, whereas canonical RCs were significantly shorter, and the proportion of sentences with extraposition decreased as the ratio of VP-to-RC length increased. These findings support Hawkins' (Efficiency and complexity in grammars, Oxford University Press, 2004) domain minimization principles and help explain why a discontinuous dependency is allowed and sometimes preferred even in a language with relatively fixed word order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the question of the syntactic functional relations between English auxiliaries and the verbal elements that follow them. There are two basic types of analysis: either the auxiliary is the head and the VP is the complement, or the “main verb” is the head and the auxiliary is a feature-bearing modifier. It is argued here that there is no single correct analysis for all English auxiliaries: some ( do, have, will/shall, would) are feature-bearers while others are argument-taking predicates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the exemplar theories which are independently developing in phonetics and in syntax, and argues that they jointly make some predictions that neither does alone. One of these predictions is explored in the context of two sound changes which occurred in the history of New Zealand English. We show that both of these phonetic changes were affected by phrase-level factors. The raising of /ae/ was more advanced in the word hand when it referred to a limb, than when used in phrases such as give a hand or lend a hand. And the centralization of the // vowel was more advanced in utterances of give involving abstract themes (give a chance), than when it had a meaning of transfer of possession (give a pen). We argue that existence of such effects lends support both to the idea (from syntactic exemplar theory) that phrases are stored, and the idea (from phonetic exemplar theory) that lexical representations are phonetically detailed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that subject auxiliary inversion in English (SAI) provides an example of a syntactic generalization that is strongly motivated by a family of closely related functions. Recognition of the functional properties of each subconstruction associated with SAI allows us to predict many seemingly arbitrary properties of SAI: e.g., its (partial) restriction to appear in main clauses, the fact that the inversion only involves the first auxiliary, and the fact that its use in comparatives is more limited. The dominant feature of SAI, being nonpositive, is also argued to motivate the syntactic form of SAI. It is suggested that attention to the rich data inherent in language and to findings in categorization research simultaneously serves to reinforce and benefit our understanding of both language and categorization more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many linguists have observed the emergence of the nonstandard English construction instantiated by the following sentence: “Now the problem is // is that nobody’s going to invade anybody else’s boundaries”. In this pattern (which we will refer to as ISIS), a clausal complement is preceded by two finite forms of the copula, the first of which is typically prosodically prominent and followed by a major intonational break. While Massam (1999), among others, views ISIS as a variant of Pseudocleft, we see two problems with this approach. First, there are distributional and discourse-pragmatic properties that distinguish ISIS from Pseudocleft, including the referential status of the subject NP and the topic-focus articulation of the clause. We will argue that ISIS, rather than being an instance of the Pseudocleft pattern, is a syntactic amalgam that is closely related to an appositive pattern that we will refer to as Hypotactic Apposition, e. g., That’s the real problem is that you never really know. Second, the Massam analysis fails to explain why a speaker would select ISIS over a simpler and more compositional alternative construction, which we will refer to as Simplex: The problem is // there’s nothing else to buy. Using prosodically labeled data from the Switchboard corpus, we show that this choice involves optimization: Simplex has prosodic defects that ISIS repairs. In Simplex tokens the copula is typically followed by a break, creating misalignment of prosodic and syntactic phrases (Croft 1995; Watson and Gibson 2003); it is also typically prosodically prominent, although function words otherwise receive prominence only by deflection of accent from a discourse-old complement (Ladd 1995). While the Simplex copula performs double duty (as focus marker and as VP head) ISIS allocates these functions to the two respective copulas. Nevertheless, ISIS is far rarer than Simplex. If we view ISIS as a repair strategy, rather than a mere overgeneralization of the Pseudocleft pattern, this fact makes sense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The phenomenon of that -deletion in English has traditionally been taken to be one of the prime examples of syntactic free variation: it has implicitly been assumed that the language arbitrarily allows predicates to embed their propositional complements with the complementizer that (as that -clauses), or without it (as bare clauses). Different researchers, however, have demonstrated that the complementizer CANNOT be deleted under certain classes of predicates. In this article, I show that the distribution of that -deletion across the different predicate classes is determined by a single semantic property, which I call “truth claim”: that -deletion is possible under predicates which semantically entail that a cognitive agent (most often their subject) has made an epistemic claim concerning the truth of the proposition denoted by the embedded clause. In some cases, that -deletion is also possible under predicates which pragmatically approximate the meanings of real truth claim predicates. This pattern is explained on the basis of semantic compatibility. I suggest that that -clauses and bare clauses have different meanings: that -clauses denote propositions, but bare clauses denote what I call “asserted propositions.” Only truth claim predicates, and those predicates which can be pragmatically used as such, are compatible with asserted propositions. Consequently, only they are capable of embedding bare clauses. To account for the impossibility of that -deletion in non-complement positions, the above semantic theory is supplemented with a complexity-based, adjacency-type constraint on the pronunciation of the bare clause. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most of the previous approaches to English agreement phenomena have relied upon only one component of the grammar (e.g. either syntax, or semantics, or pragmatics). This article argues that interrelationships among different grammatical components play crucial roles in such phenomena (cf. Kathol 1999 and Hudson 1999). The article proposes that, contrary to traditional wisdom, English determiner--noun agreement is morpho-syntactic,whereas subject--verb and pronoun--antecedent agreement are reflections of index agreement (cf. Pollard and Sag 1994). The present hybrid analysis of English agreement shows the importance of the interaction of different components of the grammar in accounting for English agreement phenomena. In particular, once we allow morphology to tightly interact with the system of syntax, semantics, or even pragmatics, we could provide a solution to some puzzling English agreement phenomena. This allows a more principled theory of English agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I discuss the semantics and syntax of a phenomenon often called "lexical subordination" and here called "conflation," in which a VP with a single verb expresses both an activity and a result predication, although only the former is licensed by the verb's permanent lexical entry. Alongside standard cases such as resultatives and particle verbs, I discuss what I call "event-path structures" in English and German. In these, an activity is argued to conflate with a predication expressing a (sometimes metaphoric) "path" of the activity. These little-known data challenge many argument-structure theories because the path expressions sometimes disallow the linking of the verb's normal object. They require a theory where the lexical verb does not contribute arguments in conflation structures, a conclusion motivated empirically. I present a theory of syntax -- semantics mapping which relies on VP shells with meaningful light verbs which constrain the interpretations of their specifiers and complements. Conflation is treated as compounding of a verb root to one of the light verbs. This accounts simply for the argument-structural patterns of resultatives and event-path structures. None of the argumentation appeals to operations at a lexical-semantic level between conceptual structure and syntax. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Implicit type shifting, or coercion, appears to indicate a modular grammatical architecture, in which the process of semantic composition may add meanings absent from the syntax in order to ensure that certain operators, e.g., the progressive, receive suitable arguments (Jackendoff 1997, De Swart 1998). I will argue that coercion phenomena actually provide strong support for a sign-based model of grammar, in which rules of morphosyntactic combination can shift the designations of content words with which they combine. On this account, enriched composition is a by-product of the ordinary referring behavior of constructions. Thus, for example, the constraint which requires semantic concord between the syntactic sisters in the string a bottle is also what underlies the coerced interpretation found in a beer. If this concord constraint is stated for a rule of morphosyntactic combination, we capture an important generalization: a single combinatory mechanism, the construction, is responsible for both coerced and compositional meanings. Since both type-selecting constructions (e.g., the French Imparfait) and type-shifting constructions (e.g., English progressive aspect) require semantic concord between syntactic sisters, we account for the fact that constructions of both types perform coercion. Coercion data suggest that aspectual sensitivity is not merely a property of formally differentiated past tenses, as in French and Latin, but a general property of tense constructions, including the English present and past tenses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the gender features of the English language. Significance of gender in syntactic feature checking; Analysis of the role of gender features in the syntax of reflexives in English; Investigation of formal gender features in small clauses in English.

This article seeks to explore the question regarding the possibilities of ideas crossing the Atlantic westbound. There are relatively few linguists in America who distinguish between the study of English and the study of natural language in general. Hence, this article attempts to point out how useful a comparison and combination of approaches coming from different areas may be for the study of semantics in its relationships to the syntactic structure of natural language, if this comparison is connected with a deeper understanding of the other's approach.