Search

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 examines the syntax of the indefinite pronoun nome in Eastern Abruzzese. Nome is syntactically intriguing as it appears in a subject position which is not available to other NPs. Moreover, it does not have any corresponding form in any other Italian dialect, except for Sardinian and some Marchigiano varieties. We first show that nome is a clitic subject, more precisely a weak pronoun subject in the sense of Cardinaletti and Starke (1999). Then, we draw a tentative sketch for the syntactic word patterns in EA. We argue that the properties and the behavior of nome support those views that recognize the need for specialized subject positions (Cardinaletti 1997, 2004). [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 explores the complex relationship between the meaning of predicates and the morphosyntactic expression of their arguments, as manifested in the swarm-class alternations in Czech. One way of getting at the nature of the alternations is to take a frame-semantic approach, which allows us to introduce the notion of scene as an important factor in linking relationships. It is proposed that linking patterns are organized in a network of generalized scene types, each of which represents a particular role configuration structured in such a way that one of its roles can be singled out as the vantage point from which that event type is conventionally presented in a particular diathesis; the analysis argues for the notion of viewpoint as an event-structuring concept (distinct from discourse-based topicness) that is directly reflected in certain conventionalized linking patterns. The results of the investigation show that what may appear to be hard-to-predict variations in subject selection can be treated as instances of regular linking relations. [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]

Studies of insertional code switching frequently include examples in which combinations of several words from the embedded language occur together in matrix-language clauses. In this paper, a range of such constructions are analyzed as multimorphemic lexical units. Such units are a rental yet neglected, element of grammar, which blur the distinction between syntax and lexicon. The paper identifies several types of unit in bilingual codeswitching data, including inserted plural nouns, compound nouns, adjective-noun and verb-object collocations, and idioms, and provides evidence for their widespread involvement in insertional code switching. Independent evidence for unit status comes from their frequently observed semantic noncompositionality and other semantic and morphosyntactic features. Recognition of the lexical status of these chunks may contribute to a unified theory of code switching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with gender and the role of morphology in determining the different gender values in a morphologically rich language like Greek. It provides a theoretical account of gender in generative grammar and argues in favor of an organization of grammar where an autonomous morphological module interacts, in several aspects, with syntax, a lexicon, and a feature theory that feeds the other modules. Most claims and proposals are exemplified with evidence taken from Modern Greek where data about gender have been sporadically mentioned in the past and never studied systematically. Following a feature-based approach, it is argued that gender is an intrinsic property of lexical entries, namely of noun stems and derivational affixes. Considering features to be attribute-value pairs, entries are distinguished into two types those characterized by a fully specified gender feature, that is, by a feature containing an attribute with a specific value part; and those that bear an underspecified gender feature, that is, an attribute without a value. It is proposed that the latter acquire the missing value either by some feature co-occurrence specification rules relating co-occurring features of the same lexical entry, or by another device operating outside morphology (e.g. agreement in syntax). Finally, it is shown that, without being specific to a particular process, gender is a lexical feature that actively participates in word-formation processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Definiteness has often been assumed to play a role in syntax, most notably in relation to various "definiteness effects" and case alternations (Belletti 1988; De Hoop 1992; and many others). The question whether this involves a semantic property that is relevant in syntax, or an independent syntactic representation of definiteness, remains to a large extent unanswered. This paper shows that, on the one hand, Hebrew provides independent evidence for assuming a definiteness feature in syntax; and on the other hand, this formal definiteness does not simply correlate with semantic definiteness, and there is no simple one-to-one mapping between the two kinds of definiteness. The second part of this paper focuses on the Hebrew object marker et, which appears only in front of DPs having the syntactic definiteness feature. I argue that et fulfills a requirement for structural case that Hebrew verbs cannot assign, and that this requirement is related to the representation of definiteness as a formal feature and not to any semantic properly. In this light I consider Belletti's (1988) theory of abstract partitive and show that Hebrew object marking seems to provide evidence against it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a minimalist account of the syntax of the discourse particle ʁedɪ in North Hail Arabic, a variety spoken in Saudi Arabia. It adopts standard minimalist approaches, Chomsky's (2000, 2001) Agree, Rizzi's (1997) Split CP hypothesis and Richards's (2001) Tuck-in to address the syntactic behaviour of this particle. It is argued that, endowed with an interpretable/unvalued [TOP] feature and uninterpretable/unvalued φ- features in the sense of Pesetsky and Torrego (2007) and Bošković (2011), ʁedɪ is merged in the left periphery, spelling out the head feature of the Familiar Topic Phrase in the sense of Frascarelli and Hinterhölzl (2007), whence it probes the constituent with the matching features in situ. Hence, the argument that discourse particles link syntax to discourse and contribute to the interpretation of the associated sentence (Biberauer et al. 2014). The desirable outcome is that movement is only forced in cases of multi familiar topics. This provides a plausible explanation that movement is conceptually conceived of as a functional relation established between the probe and the goal as a record for the semantic/information-structure interpretation at the interface system. Facts drawn from cliticization, phases, and multiple familiar topics are taken as convergent evidence bearing out these assumptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Romance texts translated from Latin – especially in the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance period – are supposed to contain numerous syntactic phenomena which can be explained as direct calques from the source text. Nevertheless, scholars often refer exclusively to this phenomenon ‒ i.e. the calque itself or Latinism ‒ when talking about Latinate constructions. Hence why other interesting related phenomena which are very significant in relation to the attitude adopted by the translator towards the syntax of the Latin text still remain almost neglected. Indeed, having an all-inclusive panorama of the syntactic possibilities available to the translator with regard to the original text also requires taking into account translational solutions other than the calque – Latinism –, which is the reason for the introduction of the terms Anti-Latinism, Hyper-Latinism, and Hetero-Latinism in my paper. The present study, based on a corpus of nine different 16th-century Romance translations – Spanish, Italian, French – of Erasmus’s dialogue Uxor mempsigamos, aims to verify the extent to which Latinate syntactic strategies are actually common in the translations under analysis as well as to check whether the reason for such strategies stems from the source text itself or they occur regardless of the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extent to which context, including pragmatic processes, plays a role in understanding the meaning of words has been long debated by scholars working at the interface of pragmatics and semantics. In this paper, we consider how the meanings of bogan, lawyer and teacher are interactionally accomplished in everyday encounters amongst Australian speakers of English. Building on methodological and theoretical insights from interactional pragmatics, the dynamic model of meaning, and dialogic syntax, we propose that locally situated, occasion-specific meanings of terms such as, bogan, lawyer and teacher, may be achieved with respect to contingently-relevant trajectories of social action(s) in sequences of talk, but that participants draw from recurrent sequential practices for doing so. We analyze how speakers generate dialogic resonance through the use of recurrent syntactic frames to co-construct locally situated semantic fields encompassing different words and predicates in-situ, and how these are underpinned by common interactional process that facilitate the negotiation of locally-situated meanings. We suggest that these locally situated meanings draw from, and so are systematically afforded and constrained by aspects of abstracted lexical meanings to varying degrees, but that participants nevertheless are able to shape the meanings of those words for locally-situated purposes. In sum, we propose that what a word is taken to mean in locally situated interactions is invariably interwoven with the recurrent practices for framing those word meanings across turns of talk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses two patterns of language mixing involving verbal predicates produced by bilingual speakers, the so-called light verb construction and the so-called affixal pattern. The empirical focus of the study is on Greek-German and Cypriot Greek-English varieties, which are contrasted to the Spanish-German variety discussed in González-Vilbazo and López (2011). An analysis of the constructions is offered using the tools of Distributed Morphology and Minimalist Syntax. The paper shows that bilingual speakers have very detailed knowledge of fine properties of their two linguistic systems that become apparent in the context of building verbs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the linguistic means used to express predicative possession in the languages of the Circum-Baltic area. The domain of possession is considered here as a prototypically organized domain, where the prototype is the notion of ownership. It is shown that most languages of the area do not provide evidence of splits in their possession systems: rather, they extend the scope of use of their ownership constructions to include all other non-prototypical possessive notions. The linguistic expression of notions that belong to domains neighboring possession, namely experience, location and attribution, is also analyzed. The results show that these notions are rarely coded by means of possessive constructions: exceptions are explained by invoking semantic causes as well as language contact. A comparison of the functions fulfilled by "have"-verbs in the Indo-European languages of the area and by adessive constructions in the Finnic languages is provided, too, and their different scopes of use are explained with reference to their diachronic development and to processes of areal convergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well-known that an agent-oriented adverbial is syntactically licensed by a functional projection in which an agent is base generated. How is a completive adverbial, such as in three minutes, licensed? It has been noted that such an adverbial is licensed by either a resultative or an incremental theme in the form of a nominal that is quantified by a numeral (and a classifier in numeral classifier languages). Both licensing conditions encode a bounded scale. This paper argues that the nominal in the special form can be analyzed as an element hosted in a ResultP, and thus the two conditions are also unified syntactically. The evidence for the analysis comes from the syntactic similarities and interactions between such a nominal and the resultative in a VV resultative construction in Mandarin Chinese. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Certain numeral classifier languages allow for the combination of a classifier and a noun to represent a definite individual/entity when no numeral accompanies the classifier (Vietnamese, Bangla, Oriya, Hmong, varieties of Chinese). In many instances, such a patterning alternates with the use of a bare noun to reference definite individuals/entities, but there has been little systematic study of such alternations, and whether the "bare classifier" and "bare noun" patterns are in free variation or encode different aspects of definite reference. The current paper argues for the latter conclusion with a detailed study of the Jinyun variety of Chinese, showing that bare classifier and bare noun patterns are used to highlight different aspects of "definiteness." The bare classifier pattern dominates cases of anaphoric definite reference, bridging cross-reference, reference to salient visible entities and non-speaker kin terms and personal relations, while bare nouns are used predominantly for individuals and entities perceived to be specifically unique or directly connected to the speaker. This distribution interestingly shows strong parallels to the way that languages with more than one definite article use such elements for definite reference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a detailed corpus-based account of the formal and functional changes that be going to underwent in Late Modern English. Despite be going to’s popularity, such studies remain rare for this period, in which the construction’s grammaticalization went through a second phase. Our analysis shows that the first half of the eighteenth century witnessed a shift from intention to prediction, which originated in contexts with third person subjects. Reporting the intention of others generally involves a certain amount of guesswork, which eventually resulted in the creation of an additional, epistemic layer of prediction, reinforced by the gradual extension of be going to to express non-imminent future situations. It is argued that this shift involves an increase in subjectivity, as the emphasis gradually moved away from the grammatical subject to the speaker: what mattered was no longer the intentions of the subject, but the knowledge of the speaker about them. Attention is also drawn to parallel developments in other future markers, particularly will. Interestingly, and in spite of significant differences, each of these went through an intermediary stage that involved past tense uses with reference to a future in the past, which was already known to the speaker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical findings in Second Language Acquisition suggest that the basic structure of German declarative sentences, described in terms of topological fields, poses certain challenges to learners of German as a foreign language. The problem of multiple prefield elements, resulting in ungrammatical verb-third sentences, figures most prominently in the literature. While the so-called V2 constraint is usually treated as a purely formal feature of German syntax both in the empirical as well as in the pedagogical literature, the present paper adopts a usage-based perspective, viewing language as an inventory of form-function mappings. Basic functions of prefield elements have already been identified in research on textual grammar and information structure. This paper presents results from a pilot study with Japanese elementary learners of German as a foreign language, where the form-function mapping of German prefield elements was explicitly taught following the guidelines of an approach called Concept-Based Instruction. The findings indicate that, with a focus on the function-function mapping, it is in fact possible to explicitly teach these rather abstract regularities of German to beginning learners. The participants' language production exhibits a prefield variation pattern similar to that of L1 German speakers; at the same time the learners produce very few ungrammatical verb-third sentences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an analysis of transparent gerunds in Spanish, as in ¿Qué llegó [silbando ] Juan? 'What arrived [whistling ] Juan?', using a decomposition of Aktionsart in a series of syntactic heads. A traditional analysis of these secondary predicates as adjuncts would undermine well-established syntactic principles restricting movement and extraction. We argue that these transparent gerunds should be analyzed as syntactic constituents merged as part of the syntactic projections associated with Aktionsart. More precisely, they qualify as RhemePs - assuming Ramchand's First Phase Syntax system - thus allowing their arguments to be extracted. Well-attested differences between Spanish and English gerunds will be explained in our analysis by proposing that the Spanish gerund projects as PathP (given it carries a path preposition), whereas English gerunds are simply RhemeP (lacking any sort of preposition). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the role played by suppletion and a selection of other morphological form-function mismatches in the paradigms of ordinal numerals in the languages of Europe and Mesoamerica. The focus is on identifying the similarities and dissimilarities of those properties which are typical of the two (macro-)regions. The paradigmatic relations of ordinals are looked at in horizontal and vertical perspective. It is argued that suppletive first is a cross-linguistically autonomous phenomenon whereas suppletive second marks an areal preference of a sizable group of languages in Europe. In addition to proper suppletion of stems, there are also combinations of suppletion and derivation. Furthermore, it is shown that in the absence of stem suppletion, certain ordinals of a paradigm may reflect construction types which differ from that of the bulk of the other members of the same paradigm and thus contribute to the heterogeneity of the paradigm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the correlation between word order and affixation as put forward in Greenberg's Universal 27 (1966) for the case of English derivational morphology. A change in word order from OV to VO took place in the Old English period. I hypothesize that the change in syntax is reflected to a certain degree in the derivational morphology of Present Day English. Data from the Penn-Parsed Corpora of Historical English reveal a change in the ratio of prefix and suffix types that hint at a possible syntactic impact on morphology. However, these data of affix types are the first findings of ongoing research that only give us a preliminary view of a possible underlying mechanism. Provided that a correlation does not account for the cause, compounds as a carrier of syntactic information to the word level are discussed as an explanation. [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]

In this paper, a brief discussion of the terminology of contact phenomena is offered. The author proposes the use of interference and convergence associated with the concept of isogrammatism in order to deal with contact situations such as the one occurring in Paraguay between Spanish and Guarani. In connection with earlier papers on the topic by other scholars and by the same author, a detailed analysis of cases illustrating the interference and convergence of Paraguayan Spanish at the syntactic level is presented Awareness of the sociohistoric conditions under which the bilingual situation in Paraguay arose underlies the analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on some results from a major sociolinguistic research project, the Oslo Speech Project (Talemålsundersøkelsen i Oslo [TA US]), carried out at the University of Oslo between 1971 and 1976. The subjects (48 in all) were divided according to sex, age, and geographic area (East vs. West). The taped interviews amounted to 24 hours and approximately 250,000 words. In the analyses, the main focus was on syntax. The reported results establish that there are clear patterns of social variation in the syntax of oral language. The syntactic stratification is not so large, however, that one can speak of social-group syntax or maintain that there are syntactic features typical for the speech of people with a certain sociocultural background. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the long-standing issues in the study of language acquisition has concerned what is "innate" and what must be "learned" Much of this debate has focused on structures at the syntax/semantics interface, dealing specifically with how children acquire the argument structure of verbs. Bantu applicative constructions present an interesting arena for exploring these issues, where different verb classes take applicative objects with different thematic properties, only some of these patterning as true syntactic objects. Sesotho has an especially interesting system, where the syntax of applicative objects is further complicated by issues of animacy, raising questions regarding how this system is learned. This paper outlines the syntactic and semantic structure of Sesotho applicatives and then examines the spontaneous use of applicative constructions in the speech of two Sesotho-speaking children between the ages of two and three. It finds that these children use the applicative with a full range of verb classes, demonstrating appropriate semantic knowledge of the construction. However, the applicative structures they use exploit only a small portion of the available syntactic space. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of this study for learnability issues and outlines areas for .further research. [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]

This paper explores the consequences of unspecified syntactic features for an analysis of Japanese light-verb constructions. In Japanese, θ-assigning nouns (verbal nouns or VNs) combine with the light verb suru `do' to form hundreds of clausal predicates. A VN can appear adjacent to suru and caseless, or be marked with accusative case. In the second instance, the VN may or may not form a constituent with one of its complements. Prior research into the syntax of these constructions has focused on (V whether tile relationship between the VN and tile Jig/it verb is derived in the lexicon or is established in the syntax, and (ii,) if the latter, whether the several construct ions involving VNs are syntactically related. The position adopted here is that VN-plus-suru combinations are syntacticc and further that the extraordinary syntactic behavior of VNs, as well as their ability to generate three superficial structures from a single underlying form, is attributable to their categorial features [N] or [V] remaining unspecified in the lexicon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper it is argued that unspecified objects in sentences such as Maria leyo anoche (= Maria read (something) last night) should be represented as null incorporated nouns in l-syntax (Hale & Keyser 1993, 2002). Specifically, the material understood as 'something' is a null bare N that incorporates into the verb 'read,' forming an endocentric compound meaning 'THING-read.' While the general idea underlying such a hypothesis is not new (Mateu 2012; Marti 2011; Zubizarreta & Oh 2007), the analysis outlined here provides the first explicit formalization of it in such a way that can account for a wide range of properties (some not yet described in the literature) that are intimately related to what can be broadly defined as 'noun incorporation constructions' cross-linguistically. Like certain types of noun incorporation constructions in other languages, unspecified object constructions have the following properties: (i) they are restricted lexically (in this case to 'activity'/'manner' verbs), (ii) the verb+unspecified object may have a conventionalized interpretation, (iii) unspecified objects are indefinite and take obligatory narrow scope with respect to all other operators, (iv) unspecified objects may be modified 'externally' by a limited set of adjectives (v) the verb+unspecified object gives rise to an atelic reading. All of these properties are shown to derive from the fact that unspecified objects are null incorporated nouns. This is desirable since the same set of properties are shared by different types of noun incorporation constructions in languages outside Romance and, to a large extent, by bare noun constructions in Spanish and other Romance languages (Espinal & McNally 2011). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to assess motion events in Ilami Kurdish through Talmy's binary typology (1985. Lexicalization patterns: Semantic structure in lexical forms. In Timothy Shopen (ed.), Language typology and lexical descriptions: Vol. 3. Grammatical categories and the lexicon, 36-149. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2000a. Toward a cognitive semantics. Vol. 1: Concept structuring system. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; 2000b. Toward a cognitive semantics. Vol. 2: Typology and process in concept structuring. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) according to which, languages could be classified as 'Satellite-framed' or 'Verb-framed'. Following Berman and Slobin's approach (1994. Relating events in narrative: A crosslinguistic developmental study. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum) in using 'The Frog Story', which paved the way for evaluating numerous languages in terms of their motion verbs, we used this elicitation tool for gathering Kurdish data. Results reveal that Ilami tends towards Satellite-framed languages as the concept of Path is often expressed by the use of satellites. As far as analysis of Path in Kurdish is taken into account, this concept has been analyzed with the help of different criteria proposed by Ibarretxe-Antuñano (2008. Path salience in motion events. In Jiansheng Gu, Elena Lieven, Nancy Budwig, Susan Ervin Tripp, Keiko Nakamura & Şeyda Özçalışkan (eds.), Crosslinguistic approaches to the psychology of language: Research in the tradition of Dan Isaac Slobin, 403-414. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum) and typologically compared with other languages too. It seems that in addition to the oral nature of Ilami and its contact with Persian language, 'the syntactic sensitivity of satellites' as a new motivation, also affects the amount of details accompanying the Path concept in this dialect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyze the communicative function of idioms and their constituents in the information structure of an utterance. Usually idioms tend to occupy the final position in a sentence, which correlates with their inherent rhematic properties. However, structural transformations such as fronting, passivization and conversion can lead to changes in their communicative status. Among such changes, we single out (a) topicalization or thematization of the fronted sentence constituent, (b) its focusing or emphatic rhematization, (c) focusing of the postponed constituent, or (d) rhematization of the sentence as a whole, etc. In spite of their lexical stability, idioms make use of the possibilities provided by German syntax. This allows them to contribute to the communicative structuring of utterances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adversative connectives such as alternatively, conversely, besides and while have lexical sources belonging to the spatial-temporal dimension. Over time, they develop different contrastive values such as opposition, correction and counterexpectation. In this paper, I analyze the semantic change of the two Italian adversative connectives anzi 'or better/rather/on the contrary' and invece 'instead', from their original temporal and spatial meanings to their contemporary meanings of oppositive, corrective and counterexpectative contrast. Focusing on these two case studies, my main goal is to identify tendencies in semantic change, and particularly, the links between the domain of spatial-temporal relations and that of contrast relations. In order to do so, the factors intervening in the development of anzi and invece are examined, with particular attention to the inferential mechanisms at work. The results of the analysis show that pragmatic context as well as lexical origins play a crucial role in the rise of different contrastive values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the labeling mechanism in Japanese and other languages that lack φ-feature agreement. It is proposed in that φ-feature sharing between the subject and T makes the labeling of finite clauses possible. It has also been assumed that Case is required for and valued through φ-feature agreement. (See, for example, .) These raise fundamental questions about the syntax of languages without φ-feature agreement.Adopting proposal to divorce Case valuation from φ-feature agreement, I argue that suffixal Case and predicate inflection make phrases opaque for search, and serve to aid labeling in Japanese. The hypothesis provides explanations for the outstanding syntactic properties of the language, such as multiple subject sentences, semantically vacuous scrambling, compound verbs with specific constraints, and argument ellipsis. The analysis of argument ellipsis is based on hypothesis that elided constituents count as heads in computation. In , I extend the analysis to other phenomena, including N'-ellipsis in Japanese and object ellipsis in Chinese. I also consider the labeling of finite clauses in Malayalam, which has neither subject agreement nor suffixal nominative Case. I suggest that Case valuation, instead of φ-feature agreement, creates the configuration of feature sharing for labeling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on an analogy between discourse and syntactic trees, this paper chooses 359 Wall Street Journal articles with multiple paragraphs from the Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) Discourse Treebank, and converts each discourse tree into three additional dependency ones, at discourse, paragraph and sentence levels, with exclusively elementary discourse units of clauses, sentences and paragraphs, respectively. It empirically tests and visually presents the genre-specific "summary + details" or "inverted pyramid" structuring of news discourse. It further extends the idea of inverted pyramid structuring to the paragraph and sentence levels. It proves that the body of the report also has a similar schematic top-down installment organization with macro-propositions on top. It also visually and statistically presents the rhetorical structures at sentence level, which differ to some extent from grammatical structures. Operated in line with the compositionality criterion and hierarchy principle of RST, the converted trees provide unique analytical advantages and constitute new research prospects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores the syntax of Hittite indefinite pronouns. It is universally accepted that indefinite pronouns are preverbal. Whereas this is certainly true, the real distribution is shown to be much more complex. I particularly analyze the placement of indefinite pronouns vis-à-vis preverbs, contrastive focus, verbs and negation. I also systematically confront behavior of indefinite NP ('a man'), on the one hand, and indefinite pronouns ('someone')/indefinite pronouns + NP ('some man'), on the other, and show that they behave differently in syntactic terms contra existing accounts of Luraghi (1990) or Huggard (2014; 2015). Finally, clause second position of indefinite pronouns1 is explored. I argue that it is a post-OH phenomenon due to the analogy from relative pronouns and subordinators like kuit 'as'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are productive (- re/-e/-te, -yar/-ar) and non-productive (- V, -ke, -ka) causatives in Ainu. Non-productive causatives have traditionally been regarded as 'transitives', but proposing a revision of Tamura's model of verbal structure in Ainu, this paper argues that they can be regarded as direct causatives, though causatives in -V do not have the same derivational status and should rather be regarded as lexical causatives. A cross-dialectal comparison shows that the causative function of -ka is gradually being replaced by the productive causative -re/-e/-te which came to be used as a default causative marker of direct/indirect causation. Three of five causative morphemes originated in the verbs 'make' and 'do'; all of them have also been attested with the denominal causative function, which suggests the following general pattern for the development of causatives in Ainu: do/make>denom>dir caus>(indir caus). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We discuss the extraordinary syntax of the enclitic -(m)a: as different from other enclitics it does not cliticize to a set of words like nu, mān, etc. However, as different from -pat with its free distribution within the clause -(m)a attests a very clear tendency to be positioned after the first stressed word. To make things even more complicated, in the focusing function it attests a seemingly free position in the clause. The paradox of -(m)a is that most of the details of its aberrant syntactic behavior, save some clause internal usage which we are demonstrating for the first time, are perfectly well known, but several pieces of evidence have never been brought together. The main one is the fact that the set of words which does not host -(m)a as well as -ya is precisely the set of words which is not taken into consideration when the second position of such constituents as relative pronouns in determinate clauses, subordinators maḫḫan and kuit is determined. The paper also provides a unitary explanation of both topicalising -(m)a in the left periphery and focusing -(m)a in the preverbal position: the common feature might be the prosodic boundary to the left of both hosts triggered by information structure to the left of the host of both topicalizing -(m)a/additively focusing -ya in the left periphery and focusing -(m)a/ya preverbally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we analyze an unusual type of right dislocation in Zulu. We demonstrate that the construction in question combines A-movement of a DP out of an embedded finite CP into a matrix argument position (raising-to-object; RtO) with right dislocation of both the raised DP and the clause out of which it raises. The existence of such a construction is noteworthy for several reasons. First, the conclusion that Zulu allows A-movement out of a finite CP is at odds with standard Minimalist analyses of raising and also with the alternative analysis of RtO from finite clauses proposed in , ). Second, on our proposed analysis, RtO can take place out of a CP-complement, which is subsequently dislocated and adjoined to a maximal projection, supporting , who argue that movement from an extraposed CP happens before CP-dislocation. Our findings thus provide a strong argument for a movement analysis of CP-extraposition. We finally conclude that these constructions present a number of complications for recent analyses of right dislocation as leftward movement plus clausal ellipsis (, and Ott and de Vries ()), due to the interaction between A-movement and dislocation and the word order resulting from CP-extraposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that there are three complementizers que 'that' in French, the distinction between which is disguised by the fact that they are all phonetically realized as /k?/. Each complementizer has a different feature composition contingent on the selecting context (veridical/non-veridical). I draw a parallelism between wh-elements and the complementizer que 'that', and show that que 'that' has different properties sensitive to quantificational features, along the lines of Starke (2001). More precisely, que 'that' can have a "bigger" or a "smaller" feature structure (regardless of the clause structure) depending on the selecting environment it appears in (i.e. veridical, non-veridical). This property interacts with extraction phenomena under Relativized Minimality (RM) (Rizzi 2004), provided that RM is understood as a constraint on (a hierarchically organized bundle of) features rather than "structural type", and thus accounts for the difference in extraction possibilities for wh-items from the different types of que-clauses. My proposal is extended to Modern Greek. [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]

In this paper we focus on the topic of ambiguity resolution in and beyond grammar. We deal with two questions: where is ambiguity resolved (in particular, the ambiguity of expressions conveying specific forms of information packaging and common ground management), and what is the design of grammar that emerges from the study of ambiguity problems. After a review of the standard analysis of ambiguity within the Principles and Parameters model, in which ambiguous syntactic objects require different structures at syntax, we will focus on various phenomena that will support a model of grammar in which syntactic structures are mapped into information structures, which will feed both logical form and PF interfaces. In particular, we will show that scope relations between numeral quantifiers in Catalan and the interpretation of preverbal bare nominals in Brazilian Portuguese are sensitive to information structures that need to be translated into representations of meaning which are different from classical LFs in generative grammar. Only PFs are ambiguous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I provide an extended review of the monograph, focusing on issues that are connected with the experiencer puzzle. The insights presented in the book are presented chapter by chapter. The approach developed in the monograph is briefly summarized and critically evaluated as innovative and important, targeted at specialists in the generative syntax. Some drawbacks are highlighted. The theory presented in the monograph is inspiring and invites further questions and answers to be validated in cross-linguistic perspective. The analysis is well informed and constitutes an important synthesis of reflexivization patterns and their account in the generative tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the publication of The verb "be" in Ancient Greek by Charles Kahn, people have put a lot of emphasis and invested too much labor in all kinds of historico-philological analyses in order to resolve philosophical questions regarding the concept of existence in Greek thought. Useful as these analyses might be, they cannot provide us with conclusive answers to the specific philosophical questions under scrutiny, and, perhaps, it is time for us to abandon the overwhelming optimist motivating the pioneers behind these attempts. I use the Sophist as a case study. I conclude that whether the Form of Being represents existence or predication cannot be settled on speculation regarding the syntax of the verb εἶναι; absolute εἶναι need not be existential in meaning, and complemented εἶναι may be existential in meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues for the need to recognize a new order of syntactic phenomena, and for a theory of syntax capable of addressing it. Dialogic syntax encompasses the linguistic, cognitive, and interactional processes involved when speakers selectively reproduce aspects of prior utterances, and when recipients recognize the resulting parallelisms and draw inferences from them. Its most visible reflex occurs when one speaker constructs an utterance based on the immediately co-present utterance of a dialogic partner. Words, structures, and other linguistic resources invoked by the first speaker are selectively reproduced by the second. The alignment of utterances yields a pairing of patterns at varying levels of abstraction, ranging from identity of words and affixes, to parallelism of syntactic structures, to equivalence of grammatical categories and abstract features of form, meaning, and function. This mapping generates dialogic resonance, defined as the catalytic activation of affinities across utterances. The key unit of analysis is the diagraph, recognized as a higher-order, supra-sentential syntactic structure that emerges from the structural coupling of two or more utterances. Dialogic syntax goes beyond traditional linear syntax to recognize as integral to the task of syntactic analysis a new kind of structural relation that arises between otherwise independent sentences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ancient Indo-European languages, such as early Vedic or (Homeric) Greek, are usually considered to be characterized by a high degree of lability. According to the communis opinio, they had a considerable number of labile verbs or verbal forms that could be labile, cf. rudrā॔ r̥tásya sádaneṣu vāvr̥dhuḥ 'Rudras have grown [intransitive] in the residences of the truth' ~ índram ukthā॔ni vāvr̥dhuḥ 'The hymns have increased [transitive] Indra'. This paper offers a general overview of the Vedic verbal forms for which labile patterning is attested. I will argue that, for most of these forms, the secondary character of lability can be demonstrated. Thus, for many labile forms with middle inflection (in particular, forms belonging to the present system), labile patterning results from the polyfunctionality of the middle diathesis (self-beneficent / anticausative). The secondary transitive usages of some fundamentally intransitive verbs such as puṣyati 'prospers; makes prosper' originates from the syntactic re-analysis of content accusative constructions of the type 'X prospers (in) Y'→'X makes Y prosper'. I will further demonstrate that, within the Old Indo-Aryan period, we observe the decline of the labile type. Already in the second most ancient Vedic text, the Atharvaveda, we find very few labile forms. Thus, most of the active perfects which show labile syntax in the Rgveda are either attested in intransitive usages only, or in transitive usages only, or do not occur at all. I will also discuss the main mechanisms of the loss of labile pattern in Old Indo-Aryan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Historic German Valency Dictionary should not be only a synchronic description of the valency of a selection of Old High German, Middle High German and Early Hew High German verbs, but also illustrate the history of valency (diachronic) of these verbs within a semantic field. This paper gives an overview of the previous research undertaken in the field of the history of valency. Based on a case study, it develops a method to illustrate the history of valency by the comparison of synchronic historic cross-sections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The syntax of auxiliaries has given rise to much discussion in the generative literature (Akmajian and Wasow 1975; Emonds 1978; Akmajian et al. 1979; Pollock 1989; Chomsky 1993; Lasnik 1995b; Roberts 1998; Bjorkman 2011; Rouveret 2012). This paper explores the distribution of non-finite auxiliaries in Standard English, in particular the issue as to whether such auxiliaries raise for inflectional purposes or remain in their base positions and have their inflections lowered onto them. It is shown that auxiliary distribution is not determined by auxiliary type (passive, copular, progressive etc.) as the lowering accounts predict, but by the morphological form that the auxiliary takes. In particular, the auxiliaries be/been and being exhibit significantly different distributional properties across ellipsis, fronting and existential constructions in English that are difficult to capture under an affix lowering model, and lend themselves more easily to an auxiliary raising account. I therefore offer a syntactic account of auxiliary inflections which employs the theoretical uniformity of an Agree-based approach, with the empirical advantages that an auxiliary raising analysis affords. The auxiliary raising system that will be proposed essentially harkens back to Chomsky's (1993) and Lasnik's (1995b) approach to the auxiliary system, though with the utilisation of Bošković's (2007) notion of foot-driven movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the phonetics and phonology of initial peaks and final falls in wh-questions produced by speakers of the variety of Spanish spoken in the Castile-La Mancha (Manchego) region of Spain. The acoustic analysis is based on speech data for nine speakers, and the goal is to identify how utterance-initial and utterance-final F 0 gestures relate to broader issues in intonational phonology and the prosodic signaling of wh-questions. The findings for left periphery constituents provide evidence for a H tone at the utterance boundary for all speakers, although the exact autosegmental representation cannot be provided due to variability in peak alignment patterns. The findings for right periphery constituents indicate two distinct speaker groups based on nuclear syllable and posttonic gestures. Specifically, the continuum of final falls is motivated by contrasting bitonal nuclear pitch accent configurations: H + L* vs. ¡L + H*. The boundary L% specification is argued for all speakers in spite of seemingly divergent posttonic gestures. The experimental findings speak to cross-linguistic issues such as prominence marking in wh-question intonation, the syntax-prosody interface in wh-questions, and the internal structure of pitch accent configurations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a recent paper, Zeijlstra (2012) argues that the theory of agreement should be revised so that the direction of valuation would always be downward: the element that contributes the value (e.g. in the case of predicate-argument agreement in φ-features, the nominal) would be required to c-command the element that receives its value derivatively (e.g. the verb or tense/aspect/mood marker) - rather than the other way around, as standardly assumed. In this short reply, I wish to demonstrate that Zeijlstra's proposal is unsuitable as a theory of φ-agreement (i.e., of morpho-phonologically overt co-variance in φ-features between a finite verb or a tense/aspect/mood marker and a nominal argument). I survey two empirical domains, from Tsez and Basque, demonstrating this point; I then briefly discuss the consequences of these facts for the empirical domains that Zeijlstra examines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]