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In a pioneer paper, Featherston (Featherston, Sam. 2007. Data in generative grammar: The stick and the carrot. Theoretical Linguistics 33. 269–318) advocated the use of better controlled data in theoretical linguistics. Despite diverging on many aspects, most syntactic theories are now testing their hypotheses with more data than a few linguists' intuitions. I will examine the consequences of this empirical turn on two syntactic phenomena: long-distance dependencies (LDD) and ellipsis. In a series of recent experiments (Liu, Yingtong, Elodie Winckel, Anne Abeillé, Barbara Hemforth & Edward Gibson. 2022. Structural, functional and processing perspectives on linguistic islands effects. Annual Review of Linguistics 8. 495–525), most of the syntactic constraints ('island constraints') on LDD have shown less crosslinguistic variation and more cross-construction variation than previously thought. Corpus and experimental data have also shown elliptical clauses to be more flexible than expected under deletion-under-identity theories (Poppels, Till. 2022. Explaining ellipsis without identity. The Linguistic Review 39. 341–400). These are challenges for most syntactic theories, which call for taking discourse factors more seriously into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the norms of the contemporary Russian standard language, the covert first argument of the adverbial participle (AP) has to be co-referential with the first argument of its matrix verb. However, other co-reference choices are a frequent phenomenon, as numerous publications both descriptive (Rappaport 1984; Jokojama 1984) and prescriptive (Ickovič 1982; Glovinskaja 2000) testify. Since the reasons for these divergent co-reference choices have been insufficiently addressed so far, we conducted an experiment that tested the influence of linguistic and sociodemographic factors on the co-reference choices. The linguistic factors tested are sentence semantics, argument structure of the verb and linear syntactic order of adverbial participle and matrix clause. Since the adverbial participle has been subject to an intensive normativization process, we assume that the degree of the respondents' familiarity with prescriptive language rules and the degree of their exposition to texts reflecting these rules influence respondents' co-reference choices. Therefore, we also tested for sociodemographic factors reflecting these degrees, namely the status of Russian as primary or secondary language, age, gender and highest level of education attained. Our data suggest a contrast between actual language use, in which the co-referential ambiguity of APs is resolved by verb and sentence semantics and the syntactic position of the AP, and the normative rules of Russian grammaticography, which allow only for co-reference with the first argument of the matrix clause. Long-lasting exposure to highly normatized text registers show effect, as respondents with master's degree or even higher levels of education significantly prefer co-reference with the first argument of the matrix clause even in ambiguous contexts. The paper is structured as follows: The first section gives a survey of the divergent co-reference choices discussed in the literature and identifies linguistic factors hypothesized to influence a speaker's choice. Section 2 discusses possible sociolinguistic factors affecting the co-reference choice. How these two types of factors are considered in the design of our experiment as well as participant sampling is described in section 3. In section 4 we apply logistic regression to our data and discuss its results, to be followed by the conclusions in section 5. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of ellipsis, being a mismatch between form and meaning, has already proven to have consequences for our understanding of language in general, as it has helped us gain insights in other domains of the grammar. This paper focuses on one of these domains, namely the notion of Spell-Out and the theory of phases that has been developed within the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1995, The minimalist program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, Chomsky 2001, Derivation by phase. In Michael Kenstowicz (ed.), Ken Hale: A life in language, 1-52. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, and Chomsky 2005, On phases. Ms. MIT). Several authors have been tempted to tie ellipsis to Phase Theory, as ellipsis would be non-pronunciation at PF instead of pronunciation. In other words, ellipsis is the flip coin of Spell-Out, and the two differ only at PF. Although attractive, this proposal will be pointed out to run into empirical problems with regards to extraction possibilities. The data suggest that the difference between ellipsis and non-ellipsis is not simply decided at PF, but in the syntax already. At the same time, however, this paper aims to maintain the intuition behind the link between ellipsis and phases. It explores the chunks of structure that are targeted by both operations as well as their triggers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We argue against a purely semantic account of the Unique Path Constraint (Goldberg, Adele. 1991. It can't go down the chimney up: Paths and the English resultative. In Proceedings of the seventeenth annual meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 368–378.), i.e., the constraint that there can only be one result state in a single clause, and in favor of a syntactic restriction regarding event structure. We propose, following Mateu, Jaume & Víctor Acedo-Matellán. 2012. The manner/result complementarity revisited: A syntactic approach. In M. Cristina Cuervo & Yves Roberge (eds.), The end of argument structure? Syntax and semantics, 209–228. New York: Academic Press, that structurally there can only be one result predicate per clause since the little v head selects for one result predicate as its complement. In order to make our claim, we provide novel data that violate the Unique Path Constraint defined as a semantic constraint. Further, we analyze examples that at first blush pose a problem for the present account as they appear to involve two result phrases, e.g., shot him dead off the horse. We argue, however, that the second result phrase is not syntactically a result, but rather constitutes a case of what Acedo-Matellán, Víctor, Josep Ausensi, Josep Maria Fontana & Cristina Real-Puigdollers. forthcoming. Old Spanish resultatives as low depictives. In Chad L. Howe, Timothy Gupton, Margaret Renwick & Pilar Chamorro (eds.), Open romance linguistics 1. Selected papers from the 49th linguistic symposium on romance languages. Berlin: Language Science Press have called low depictives, which join the syntactic derivation through a low applicative head. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first goal of this paper is to give a description of the article-like uses of the Croatian numeral jedan 'one', the indefinite determiner neki 'some' and the demonstrative determiner taj 'this' within the theoretical framework of Cognitive Grammar. This description places these constructions along a cognitively grounded definiteness hierarchy spanning from the demonstrative determiner taj (definite) on one side to jedan (indefinite specific) and neki (indefinite non-specific) on the other side. The second goal of the paper is to give a description of the constructions combining the article-like demonstrative determiner taj with the article-like numeral jedan and the article-like indefinite determiner neki, i.e. taj jedan and taj neki, lit. 'this some/this one'. The functions and usage profiles of these constructions are carefully differentiated and, in order to explain the data obtained, a richer articulation of the cognitively grounded definiteness hierarchy is put forth. A new position is proposed, existing between definiteness and specific indefiniteness, to account for entities that are contextually defined as indefinite by taj jedan and taj neki. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews inclusory constructions and pronouns in the Mande language family and proposes a diachronic account of their development. Inclusory constructions, which are found in several Mande languages, are a type of conjunction strategy where the whole set of participants – the superset – and a subset of participants are expressed, as in Dan-Gwetaa yāā Gbȁtȍ 'Gbato and I', lit. 'we Gbato'. In a number of Southern and Southwestern Mande languages, inclusory constructions are typologically unique, as they feature a separate series of inclusory pronouns, which are used exclusively in this construction. The paper argues that these inclusory pronouns are a Southwestern Mande innovation, which spread to other Mande languages through contact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the functions of the utterance-final particle -canha in modern spoken Korean. Analyzing naturally occurring spontaneous conversational data, I argue that its basic function is to explicitly mark the speaker’s belief of shared knowledge. This study suggests that -canha functions as a very useful device in managing the information flow in spontaneous conversation by enabling speakers to constantly signal other interlocutors and build common ground. This basic information-managing function can not only be used in discourse strategies (a pre-sequence and as a verbal filler), but can also be extended to express politeness and impoliteness, theticity, and mirativity. In sum, the functions of -canha discussed in this paper suggest that it is a highly intersubjective marker, in that it explicitly indicates the speaker’s awareness of and attention to the hearer’s information status and changes therein. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to describe the behavior of Latin verbs with three arguments basically encoding the transfer of a Theme from an Agent to a Recipient: these verbs, labelled as ditransitives within the framework of linguistic typology, will be analyzed here on the basis of this theoretical approach. Across languages, the object arguments of ditransitives may be marked as the Patient of monotransitives or differently from it, giving rise to various types of alignment: the most frequent are the indirective, the secundative and the neutral alignment. In Latin, these three basic types of alignment are attested with ditransitives in the active and passive voice, although they are differently distributed across the lexicon. Moreover, some verbs allow more than one type of encoding of the relevant arguments, showing alternating alignments. I shall focus on the reasons of the distribution and alternation of the three types, with the goal of providing a point of departure for a deeper understanding of ditransitives in the Latin language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines disjunctive clauses marked with o… o ‘either… or’ in Spanish with a view to demonstrating that, in contrast to conventional analyses, o… o-clauses are actually cosubordinate: o… o-clauses are [+dependent, ‒embedded], they generally share clausal operators and they often denote an episode or a sequence of events showing some sort of continuity in space as well as participants. To this end, this paper will describe subordinate and coordinate clauses in accordance with several tests and will go on to outline the properties of o… o-clauses, focusing in particular on their similarities and differences with respect to coordinate and subordinate clauses. Finally, it will describe why o… o-clauses would be better classified as examples of clausal cosubordination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article responds to the paper "Constraining Copy Deletion," by Tue Trinh, which discussed the practice of copy deletion. It highlights a principle concerning a fundamental operation in grammar that is proposed as a hypothesis. It relates the principle to the deletion of a copy if it ends a phonological phrase (hypothesis H). It also looks at an X-fronting construction which is found in many languages and that offers a testing ground for hypothesis H. In addition, the article discusses predicate fronting in affirmative replies to yes/no-questions.

This contribution is organized as follows: in section 1, I propose a formulation of the Mirror Principle (MP) based on syntactic features; the examples will be taken from Causatives and Anti-Causatives that are derived by affixes (in Russian, Czech, Polish, German, English as compared to Japanese and Chichewa) by head-to-head movement. In section 2, I review some basic facts in support of a syntactic approach to Merge of Causatives and Anti-Causatives, proposing that theta roles are also syntactic Features that merge functional affixes with their stems in a well-defined way. I first try to give some external evidence in showing that Causatives and Anti-Causatives obey a principle of thematic hierarchy early postulated in generative literature by Jackendoff (1972; 43), and later reformulated in terms of argument-structure-ordering principle by Grimshaw (1990:chapter 2). Crucial for my paper is the working hypothesis that every syntactic theory which tries to capture the data not only descriptively but also explanatively should descend from three levels of syntactic representation: a-structure where the relation between predicate and its arguments (and adjuncts) takes place, thematic structure where the theta-roles are assigned to their arguments, and event structure, which decides about the aspectual distribution and division of events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a case study in the positional properties of a complex set of clitics: the mood, pronominal, and clausal-aspect clitics in the Austronesian. language Kambera. The clitics of this language may form a cluster of maximally nine clitics. The positional properties of the clitics can be distinguished into two distinct categories: (a) the position of the clitic cluster as a whole with respect to its host, and (b) the position of the clitics within the cluster with reference to each other. The aim of this paper is to present an account of both these aspects of Kambera clitic placement. The placement of the cluster as a whole will be characterized syntactically, while the ordering of the clitics within the cluster has the characteristics of inflectional morphology. I argue that the placement of the Kambera clitics with respect to each other is the result neither of the syntactic manipulation of terminal elements of functional categories, nor of lexical word- formation rules or position-class morphology, nor is it determined by the phonological properties of the language alone. Instead, it is the result of the morpho- logical spell-out of morphosyntactic feature bundles (Anderson 1992) at the end of the syntactic derivation, at the interface between syntax and prosody: the postlexical level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One peculiarity of Korean morphosyntax is the existence of a large set of converbal suffixes. A survey of previous descriptions reveals a lack of consensus in the analysis of these converbs. Too often they have been pressed into a Eurocentric dichotomy of subordination versus coordination, leading to confusion about their typological status. Trying to correct this approach by describing the language on its own terms is therefore the main objective of our paper. We compare the morphosyntactic behavior of four selected suffixes with respect to some relevant criteria for subordination versus coordination, such as the scope of illocutionary operators, shared TAM, subject coreference, constituent order, and the development of dependent verb forms into complex predicates or adpositions. This empirical research feeds back into the theoretical discussion, as it will be shown that the Korean converbs can indeed be described using conventional typological concepts if construed appropriately. Our second objective is therefore to review the criteria involved in describing clause-linkage and to see how relevant terminology can be used more consistently. The conclusion is that the four converb types turn out to be located on a continuum between coordination and subordination, thus constituting an instantiation of syntax-semantics isomorphism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparison of adjectives (and adverbs) is a grammatical category that has passed practically unremarked upon by generations of Latin linguists. Latin grammar books (with few exceptions, cf. Kühner and Stegmann, 1955: 565- 566The Oxford Latin syntax. Volume I: The simple clause, 47. Oxford: Oxford University Press) omit entirely the question of which adjectives can be compared and which cannot. Nevertheless, the data from modern languages show that the category of comparison of adjectives (and adverbs) is actually highly limited, making it essential to address this question for Latin, too. One of the issues comprehended within the extremely complex area of (non-) gradability of adjectives is periphrastic comparison. Latin grammar books explain, based on the assertions of ancient Latin grammarians, that it applies to adjectives ending in -eus, -ius and -uus, implying, or even explicitly stating, that the reason for this type of comparison is phonetic incompatibility of the word-formative suffix with the comparative suffix. However, two facts call for reinterpretation of the matter: (i) periphrastic comparison also occurs in other adjectives for which there is no phonetic incompatibility; (ii) by contrast, some adjectives in -eus, -ius and -uus actually do have simple forms. In the light of these facts, this paper aims to map the real situation of periphrastic comparison in Latin. The employed corpus comprises all the words marked as adjectives in the Oxford Latin Dictionary (more than 10,000 items) and all their occurrences throughout the database Bibliotheca Teubneriana Latina III. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the declension of the Latin present active participle (ppa), which shows several inconsistencies: the ablative singular for instance may end in -e or in -i (sapiente, sapienti) and the genitive plural may end in -um or -ium (sapientum, sapientium). Some grammarians, notably modern ones, assume that there are syntactico-semantic considerations or circumstances, leading to ablative -e ending when verbal force is intended (such as in the ablative absolute) or substantival force, and to -i ending when there is nominal, notably adjectival force. I have investigated whether ancient, medieval and modern grammarians treat such a phenomenon. In addition, I looked for inconsistencies in the grammarian's own ppa declension from this syntactico-semantic point of view. It turns out that ancient and medieval grammarians do not formulate declension of the ppa according to its syntacticosemantic function, with the exception of the anonymous author of the Ars Ambrosiana, nor do they decline their own ppa's according to a conventional rule of this kind. This calls for other explanations regarding the declensional inconsistencies observed. Some of the ppa forms may reflect a temporary phenomenon which would have disappeared in due course through diachronic evolution and paradigm leveling. Some forms may have persisted because of their frequency and idiomatic force or because of the compelling analogy with other words and phrases. But these ppa declensional variations do not appear to conform to a syntactico-semantic rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Azerbaijani, like many other languages, has a class of negative polarity items denoting minimal measures (along dimensions such as size, length, duration, value, weight etc.), called minimizers. This paper presents an overview of this group of expressions, compares them to minimizers in the western European languages, in particular English and Dutch, identifies the various domains in which these minimizers may be used, and discusses their distribution across polarity-sensitive contexts such as negation, conditional clauses, questions, etc. The distribution we found, on the basis of both corpus data and native speaker judgments, is very similar to that of minimizers in English or Dutch, especially when differences are factored out which are due to the fact that Azerbaijani has strict negative concord, whereas English and Dutch do not. To this end, we distinguish two types of minimizers for Azerbaijani, negated minimizers preceded by heç bir ‘not one’, and minimizers preceded by bir only. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inspired by the split-CP hypothesis, different orders of the functional projections in the left periphery are proposed for Chinese. Based on previous studies, this paper proposes the following hierarchy for Chinese: AttitudeP1 > AttitudeP2 > Special QuestionP > Illocutionary ForceP > Only-focusP > Sentential. AspectP > TP. These projections host sentence final particles (SFP) or null operators. When the compared projections are both head-final, the syntactic word order reflects the relevant hierarchy; when the compared projections are not uniformly head-final, their scope interaction reflects the order. This study shows that the higher a projection, the more subjective its interpretation and the harder it can be embedded. For instance, being subject-oriented sentential aspects and only-type focus are not directly linked to the speaker's attitude and therefore, they can be embedded and be interpreted within the subordinate clause. As for the SFPs linked to illocutionary forces, some can be embedded, while others cannot. Special questions and the SFPs expressing the speaker's mood, interjection and attitude cannot be embedded at all. This fact is regarded as an indirect argument in favor of my proposal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we test the Cumulative Effect proposed by (Haegeman et al. 2014. Deconstructing the subject condition in terms of cumulative constraint violation. The Linguistic Review 31(1). 73-150). In particular, we focus on the role of factors of external syntax in the modulation of subject opacity to extraction, addressing different constraints presented in (Haegeman et al. 2014. Deconstructing the subject condition in terms of cumulative constraint violation. The Linguistic Review 31(1). 73-150). Two sets of formal acceptability judgments are presented. In the first experiment, we address the opacity of subjects from a broad point of view, in order to assess whether subject DPs are more resistant to extraction than other DPs. The results confirm that subject constituents are more opaque to extraction than object constituents. In the second experiment, we address the impact on the modulation of the Cumulative Effect of three different constraints individually: the Freezing Principle, the Inactivity Condition and the Edge Condition. We did that through the manipulation of two different factors: the position of the extraction site and the predicate type. The results do not confirm the predictions made by the Cumulative Effect, since the interaction between different factors does not appear to be additive and incremental. We discuss the implications of these results for the existing theories of subject islands and address an alternative perspective, recently proposed by (Bianchi, Valentina & Cristiano Chesi. 2014. Subject islands, reconstruction, and the flow of the computation. Linguistic Inquiry 45(4). 525-569), according to which the opacity of subjects is a function of the syntax semantics interface. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of ditransitivity is explored at the lexical, syntactic and surface levels. By focusing on several types of ditransitive sentences in Spanish it is revealed that there is a triple dissociation between these levels. First, it is shown that the availability of a ditransitive structure (syntactic level) for a certain verb does not depend on the verb being ditransitive (lexical level). Second, causative structures with dative arguments are shown to be ditransitive at the surface level, but not to have an underlying ditransitive structure. Finally, cases of unaccusative sentences with dative arguments are analysed as instances of ditransitive structures without lexical or surface ditransitivity. The paper argues that ditransitivity is at best a pre-theoretical, descriptive notion, and that ditransitive verbs in fact belong to Levin's (Papers from The Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society 35: 223-247, 1999) non-core transitives: ditransitives are just transitives compatible with taking a relation between two individuals as complement. This analysis accounts for the intralinguistic and crosslinguistic variation in the expression of the relation, both in terms of type (two DPs related by a transitive preposition or an applicative head) and number of objects realized or omitted. Although the idea that there is no syntactic ditransitivity - that is, that no single verbal head can take two complements - has been implicit in most generative work of the last two decades, it has not been directly explored. This investigation leads to the conclusion that a syntactic property, binary branching, is at the basis of the impossibility of syntactic and lexical ditransitivity. Thus, this result suggests that syntax restricts not only possible structures but possible lexical meanings as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an analysis for the use of the clitic se in transitive constructions, as in Juan se leyó un libro 'John se read a book'. It argues that se is an underspecified eventive verbal head which takes a bounded path as a complement. In the transitive construction, se first merges with a verb that provides the manner description for the event that se introduces. The direct object then serves as the path complement. This analysis of se is then extended to anticausative and inchoative uses of se, as in La comida se enfrió 'the food cooled down' and Juan se durmió 'John fell asleep'. Here, se does not merge with a verb but merges directly with an acategorial Root, and the Root provides the path complement. This study further supports the notion that scalar structure is important to understanding the relationship between argument structure, event structure, and syntactic structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a commentary on the paper "Constraining Copy Deletion," by Tue Trinh, which analyzed bare predicate fronting. It discusses the Prosodic Condition on Deletable Chains which is central to the analysis. It also explains structures that are established in SVO languages with predicate fronting. In addition, the article analyzes the paper's proposal which relates the VO/OV distinction of languages to the conditions under which predicate fronting may or may not involve copy spell-out.

This paper synthesizes and extends all previous accounts of filmic montage made within the broadly Metzian semiotic tradition in order to demonstrate that the semiotics of film and of verbal language share major features of their organization. Drawing on recent advances in formal and functional linguistic discourse semantics, the paper provides an analysis scheme that supports a film-as-discourse perspective along both the syntagmatic and paradigmatic axes of semiotic description. Previous approaches are shown to have been restricted to views of compositional semantics only appropriate for syntax. This has compromised their effectiveness for providing an appropriate empirical basis for investigating film. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the restriction on argument fronting in English adverbial clauses, as in "While I was revising last week, I suddenly thought of another analysis," this in contrast with the fact that Clitic Left Dislocation (CLLD) patterns are allowed in the Romance analogues. An analysis is elaborated which explores the hypothesis that adverbial clauses are derived by movement of an operator to their left periphery. Intervention effects are thus predicted in English because the movement of the operator interacts with the movement of the fronted argument. No such intervention effects will arise with Romance CLLD as the latter is independently known not to give rise to the same intervention effects. Some cross-linguistic consequences of the proposal are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with Esperanto, the only planned language system that has managed the successful transition from the status of a mere project to a full-fledged language. This is partly due to linguostructural properties, but above all to extralinguistic factors. Esperanto has found a sufficiently diverse and productive speech community which guarantees the constant and sustained dissemination of the language. This paper describes Esperanto as a planned language of the autonomous a posteriori subgroup. Its linguistic norm, which is documented in the Fundamento de Esperanto (1905), has developed steadily, and become stable. It is supervised by the Akademio de Esperanto. Self-regulation takes place in a field of tension between diversifying forces (e.g. different linguistic and cultural influences because of the speakers' native backgrounds) and unifying forces (e.g. application during international meetings, literature, and radio programs). Its productive and flexible word formation system and syntax make Esperanto a means of communication with high expressive quality and stylistic variation. The main reason for the ease of Esperanto communication, however, is its democratic character: the lack of a native speaker whose competence decides on the language standard facilitates symmetrical communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to exemplify a double-faceted approach to analysis of a short poem by Elizabeth Jennings. It begins traditionally by posing the question “what impression does the poem make and what are the linguistic means by which this impression is created?” This question, it is suggested, can have two kinds of answer, depending on whether the poem is treated as a product/object to be viewed from a distance, or as a process of reading. Section 1 of this paper considers the linguistic features which are salient when we treat the poem as an object, and which are responsible for the overall impression, at a distance. The paper continues, in section 2, by considering the traditional notion of foregrounding, demonstrating how the last sentence of the poem is multiply foregrounded. In Section 3 the paper shows that in the case of this particular poem the effect of foregrounding is best explained in terms of text as process, rather than product, that is in terms of the impressions made in the course of a reading. To do this it analyses the ways in which syntax processing, arrest and release function; how transitions from one discourse unit to another are signalled and recognized by the reader; how the reader’s expectations are constantly being defeated and undermined, through conflicting presuppositions, and through the use of non-factive and negative linguistic devices. The paper concludes with a pragmatic exploration of the nature of the final foregrounded question, showing how it represents the culmination of the doubts expressed earlier, while, paradoxically, seeming to express certainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an architecture for the mapping between syntax and phonology – in particular, that aspect of phonology that determines the linear ordering of words. We propose that linearization is restricted in two key ways. (1) the relative ordering of words is fixed at the end of each phase, or ‘‘Spell-out domain’’; and (2) ordering established in an earlier phase may not be revised or contradicted in a later phase. As a consequence, overt extraction out of a phase P may apply only if the result leaves unchanged the precedence relations established in P. We argue first that this architecture (‘‘cyclic linearization’’) gives us a means of understanding the reasons for successive-cyclic movement. We then turn our attention to more specific predictions of the proposal: in particular, the effects of Holmberg’s Generalization on Scandinavian Object Shift; and also the Inverse Holmberg Effects found in Scandinavian ‘‘Quantifier Movement’’ constructions (Rögnvaldsson (1987); Jónsson (1996); Svenonius (2000)) and in Korean scrambling configurations (Ko (2003, 2004)). The cyclic linearization proposal makes predictions that cross-cut the details of particular syntactic configurations. For example, whether an apparent case of verb fronting results from V-to-C movement or from ‘‘remnant movement’’ of a VP whose complements have been removed by other processes, the verb should still be required to precede its complements after fronting if it preceded them before fronting according to an ordering established at an earlier phase. We argue that ‘‘cross-construction’’ consistency of this sort is in fact found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The papers here represent very different analyses of Object Shift (OS), and take very different positions on the interaction of phonology and syntax, an area in which there are many unsettled questions. Mainstream work tends to hold that syntax is blind to phonological content, with certain exceptions, for example sometimes phonetically null elements require special syntactic licensing (Chomsky 1981), or certain syntactic rules only apply to nodes with phonetically visible features (Holmberg 2001). Basically falling within the mainstream are proposals that syntactic movement can be blocked by or driven by requirements that have phonological effect at the output, such as adjacency (Bobaljik 1995, Kidwai 1999) or rules matching prosodic structure with focus structure (Zubizarreta 1998). Such accounts generally describe movements in the syntactic terms of specifiers and feature checking and so on, and do not rely on the visibility to syntax of strictly phonological features. We can call these all Syntactic accounts. Most accounts of OS are Syntactic in these terms, for example those of Holmberg (1986), Holmberg and Platzack (1995), and Bobaljik (1995, 2002). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at focus/background structures (FBSs) from a production point of view. Based on an analysis of retellings, we demonstrate that syntax-oriented conceptions of focus are applicable to these spoken data, resulting in minimal or maximal foci (Uhmann 1991). These foci do not always come up to the predictions of the textlinguistic quaestio model (Stutterheim 1997) with respect to focus realization. According to the quaestio model we would expect that the linguistic units referring to the respective events are focused. The minimal and maximal foci have different pragmatic functions that will be characterized as perspectivation process (cf. Glatz and Stutterheim, this issue) during conceptualization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

German-speaking Switzerland can certainly be regarded as one of the liveliest and at the same time best researched dialect areas in Central Europe. It is all the more surprising that dialectometric analyses in this area have only recently been performed and none of them included an investigation into the level of syntax. In this paper we pursue two goals: First, we present digital data that has been made available in recent years on the basis of the Sprachatlas der deutschen Schweiz (SDS) and the Syntaktischer Atlas der deutschen Schweiz (SADS). Our second goal is to present dialectometric analyses performed with this data. A special focus is put on the comparison of different linguistic levels (lexis, phonology, morphology and syntax). Our methods include hierarchical cluster analyses (of the whole dataset as well as of the linguistic levels), correlations (between pairs of linguistic levels and between linguistic levels and geography) and parameter maps which allow us to draw conclusions about the distributions of innovative and conservative regions, dialect centers and transition zones. Our results show that while all four levels generally yield similar geographic patterns (dynamic areas in the North vs. conservative areas in the South, agreement of dialect and cantonal borders, high correlations with geography), syntax deviates most from the other levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the role of morphology-syntax interactions in explaining apparent parametric variation in Germanic syntax. It is argued that the Spec, TP parameter (Bures 1993; Bobaljik and Jonas 19%) is a reflex of aspects of the inflectional morphology that divide the Germanic languages into two groups, and not simply an arbitrary parameter as previously assumed. The theory of distributed morphology is adopted and leads to the following position. Complementary distribution between tense and agreement markers in a language must be taken to reflect FUSION of the functional heads in that language. This fusion is only possible if head movement in the syntax has concatenated the relevant heads in a specific configuration. The required configuration in turn follows from a derivation that precludes the licensing of Spec, TP. Thus, only languages that do not have this complementarity in their inflectional morphology may utilize the syntactic derivation that licenses the specifier of TP. [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]

The paper demonstrates that dependency-based syntax is in a strong position to produce principled and economical accounts of the syntax of constructs. The difficulty that constituency-based syntax has in this regard is that very many constructs fail to qualify as constituents. The point is evident with the box diagrams and attribute value matrices (AVMs) that some construction grammars (CxGs) use to formalize constructions; these schemata often represent fragments rather than constituents. In dependency-based syntax in contrast, constructions are catenae, whereby a catena is a chain of words linked together by dependencies. The catena is a novel but well-defined unit of syntax associated with dependency grammar (DG). The constructs of CxGs are more amenable to analyses in terms of the catenae of dependency-based syntax than to analyses in terms of the constituents of constituency-based syntax. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This explorative study focuses on grammatical taboos in German, morphosyntactic constructions which are subject to stigmatisation, as they regularly occur in standard languages. They are subjected to systematic experimental testing in a questionnaire study with gradient rating scales on two salient and two non-salient grammatical taboo phenomena of German. The study is divided into three subexperiments with different judgement types, an aesthetic judgement, a norm-oriented judgement and the sort of possibility judgement that comes closest to linguists' understanding of grammar. Included in the investigated material are also examples of ordinary gradient grammaticality: unmarked, marked and ungrammatical sentences. The empirical characteristics of grammatical taboos are compared to those ordinary cases with the finding that they are rated at the level of markedness, but differ from ordinary markedness in that they produce a different pattern of between-subject variance. In addition, we find that grammatical taboos have a particular disadvantage under the aesthetic judgement type. The paper also introduces the concept of empirical grammaticality as a necessary theoretical cornerstone for empirical linguistics. Methodically, the study applies a mix of parametric and non-parametric methods of statistical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The points of convergence between syntax and semantics are numerous, highly debated, and now emerging as an important field of research. In this paper we explore the notion of an interface between syntax and semantics and how it has been characterized in linguistic theory. Several possible approaches are considered. The cornerstone of the syntax-semantics interface is the study of quantification, which has numerous empirical ramifications and associated topics. We briefly review some of the most promising prospects and developments in this dimension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors comment on the methodological flaws that obstruct progress in modern linguistics identified by Martin Stokhof and Michiel van Lambalgen in their paper "Abstractions and Idealisations: The Construction of Modern Linguistics," with emphasis on the prospects of neural syntax (NS). The kinds of motivation that drive connectionist theories like NS are considered. It identifies the tensions that threaten to arise between the NS models and adequacy conditions set by competence grammars. It cites problematic issues for NS in the area of acquisition and processing of syntax. Also noted is the role accorded to frequency in NS.

The article presents an impressive and novel assimilation of embedded clauses which are important to the appropriate distribution of Main Clause Phenomena (MCP). The author examines the uses of conditional, temporal and factive clauses where argument fronting is blocked. He analyzes an argument in linguistics that a specific class of MCP called argument fronting is limited by covert operator movement. He adds that some linguistics experts believe that complement clauses have two types, namely the non-referential and referential clause phenomena.

One version of the copy theory of movement holds that syntactic traces are full-fledged constituents which undergo a PF-deletion rule. In this paper, I propose a constraint on this rule. The constraint says that the lower copy of a chain can be phonologically deleted only if it ends an XP. I show that this constraint, conjoined with proposals that have been made concerning phrase structure (Chomsky, Bare phrase structure, 1994) and the semantics of NP in classifier languages (Chierchia, Natural Language Semantics 6: 339–405, 1998), explains a variety of facts in Dutch, German, Hebrew, Norwegian, Swedish and Vietnamese. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to compare the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic characteristics of two left-detachment constructions in French, introduced respectively by quant and en fait de. Although both have been described as topic-marking constructions, they appear to differ substantially in each of the following parameters: the characteristics of the detached constituent, its relation to the matrix clause, and its embedding possibilities. Most of these differences can be accounted for by the fact that the detached constituent in the en fait de construction is non-referential and therefore cannot fully acquire topic status, unlike the detached nominal in the quant construction, which is a prototypical topic-marking construction. More specifically, the quant and en fait de constructions are shown to differ crucially in terms of two semantic attributes of topichood: addressation and frame-setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper introduces a unit of syntax beyond the constituent called the chain . A number of mechanisms are shown to be sensitive to chains, e.g. the formation of predicates and idioms, the ellipses of gapping, pseudogapping and VP-ellipsis, and the elided material of stripping and answer fragments. The presentation is couched in a surface syntax, dependency-based framework, as opposed to a constituency-based one. While the chain can be defined in a manner consistent with constituency, doing so requires that one adopt some controversial assumptions about the nature of constituency structure. The potential of the chain concept is great; it is the tool necessary to address the manner in which semantic compositionality occurs in the syntax. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

1. Introduction This paper argues that a sideward/parallel movement analysis of so-called “Left- Peripheral Ellipsis” (LPE; Sag 1976) and Gapping constructions improves on the traditional deletion analysis in at least two important ways. First, it avoids the need to appeal to the notion of non-constituent deletion. Second, we attempt to show that directionality effects (Ross 1970 and others) can be derived without recourse to the head parameter or directionality stipulated in the application of transformational rules (which would require linear order in the narrow syntax and, further, would need to be parametrized); rather, we show that apparent directionality in LPE and Gapping constructions is a natural consequence of the interaction of Copy, Merge, PF-deletion of copies, and Cyclic Spell-Out— an effect that is derived only under a movement-based approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I explore what a purely phonological account of object shift (OS) involves and what research questions it leads to, in particular what it means for word order to be phonologically motivated and what morpho-phonological primitives are involved. I pursue the possibility that what licenses OS of full DPs in Icelandic is phonological properties, not found in other Scandinavian languages, together with overt case marking. Although the position of the object is determined phonologically, the architecture I propose, in which topic and focus play a central role, allows for an account of the semantic effect associated with OS in Icelandic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both target articles, in conformity with minimalist ideals, aim to discover to what extent syntax itself can be relieved of descriptive burden, and just how much of word order can be attributed to mechanisms of linearization at the PF interface. I point out two paradoxes the treatment of V2 gives rise to in Erteshik-Shir’s paper, and dispute the status and effectiveness of processing constraints in accounting for (un)grammaticalities in various word order patterns. I discuss the relation of Fox and Pesetsky’s cyclic linearization algorithm to ‘tucking in’ as well as to the ‘Attract Closest’ property of movement. Qualms are raised regarding several apparently stipulative and / or conceptually unattractive properties of the linearization mechanism, and ostensible violations of order preservation are examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a speculative account of the acquisition of syntactic word class categories by children, based on a notionally founded theory of categories. Categories are differentiated by (non-)possession of simplex semantic features which may combine in varying degrees of complexity. While less complex categories are universal, more complex combinations, such as that characterising adjectives, are not necessarily so. Markedness, or relative accessibility, correlates with relative complexity of representation. With respect to word classes as such, the child's ‘initial state’ is assumed to be undifferentiated, with the first categorisation being based on referentiality. And evolving systems are constrained by a minimality requirement on change of representation which ensures that acquisition of marked categories is late. Initial syntactic structure and its development are built on the basis of the perceived subcategorisation requirements of the emerging word classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unlike previous studies which generally seem to focus more on Hausa metaphorical expressions, this study investigates a wide range of uses of ίdὸ 'eye' in its constructional metonymy patterns in the language by exploring corpus data that contain over 300 eye-related expressions. We observe that some constructional metonymies maintain a set of fixed words and syntax in activating conceptual shifts and producing eye metonymies while others have semi-fixed patterns and produce the same metonymies. Lexical items like tsόkάlế, kὰn, ὰ, dὰ, and bὰsίrὰ among others are constant constituents in the constructional metonymies in which they appear. In the metonymic chaining, the basic mapping of eye metonymies occurs via the part for part relation under E-metonymies and the sub- for supercategory relation under C-metonymies. We also observe that E→E→C coding has the highest chained metonymic structure in the creation of the eye metonymies. Both attributive and predicative colligates motivate metonymic senses in the language. Finally, our analysis reveals that the eye is metonymically conceptualized and semantically extended to various target domains and produces metonymic conceptualizations that make the eye stand for vision, desire, envy, control, attention, perception, person, meeting, brain, intelligence, and so on. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout its history, the hope has always been cherished that typology is holistic, and holism entails that there is systematic co-variation not only within levels or modules of grammar but also between them. Accordingly, numerous claims have been made that phonology does not vary across languages independently of morphology and syntax, and vice versa. The variables that are allegedly interrelated pertain to segment inventories, the shapes of syllables, morphemes, and words, phonological or morphonological rules, tones and accents, and rhythmic or prosodic patterns on the one hand and to analytic or (poly-)synthetic grammar, Separatist or cumulative morphological exponence, the complexity of grammatical units, and their linear order on the other. These claims are cataloguedin this paper. To substantiate them and to accommodate those that are found valid in theories of the Interface between phonology, morphology, and syntax remain as tasks for the future. [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]

There is increasing awareness of the large degree of crosslinguistic diversity involved in the structural realization of information packaging (or information structure). Whereas English and many Germanic languages primarily exploit intonation for informational purposes, in other languages, like Catalan, syntax plays the primary role in the realization of information packaging and intonation is reduced to a secondary role. In yet another group of languages the primary structural correlate is morphology. This paper provides a contrastive analysis of the structural properties of information packaging in a number of languages. It also contains a discussion of some basic issues concerning information packaging and identifies a set of information-packaging primitives that are applied to the crosslingulstic facts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors discuss responses to their paper about the inclusion of interactive language use within the remit of grammars. Topics covered include the debate over split utterances, factors influencing linguistic creativity, and differentiating between ambiguity and underspecification. Also mentioned are Dynamic Syntax (DS) procedures, the development and change of child or adult grammars in interaction with other agents, and the viability of DS as a grammar formalism.

The article presents the report of the 43rd annual meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE) held in Vilnius, Lithuania on September 2-5, 2010. Attendance at the conference is discussed. Topics of the general programs of the conference are given including syntax, grammaticalization and sociolinguistics. Workshops held at the conference on topics including morphology, cognitive linguistics and the Baltic languages. The value of the structure of the conference combining the general programs with specific workshops is considered. The organization of the event is praised.

Based on data from French, Japanese and Korean, this article lays out an approach to wh-questions' intervention effects that questions the very existence of this phenomenon. It is assumed that the property that makes all the ''interveners'' into one natural class is their anti-given nature. Taking into account wh-questions' syntax, phonology and information structure, it is shown that although the three investigated languages vary with respect to what forces wh-fronting in the presence of an anti-given item, prosodic structure always plays a central part. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]