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This study examines word order variation in negative word + mas constructions in Caracas Spanish, with mas pre-posed or post-posed in relation to the negative word. We empirically analyze the effect of formal syntactic and semantic constraints, the contribution of priming and frequency, as well as several social factors on variable positioning of mas in NW + mas constructions in Spanish. Data for this study comes from the Estudio sociolinguistico de Caracas (Bentivoglio and Sedano 1993). This corpus contains half-hour interviews, conducted between 1987 and 1988 with 160 speakers of Caracas Spanish. Regarding the role of syntactic and semantic formal constraints in the variation of NW + mas constructions, the findings reveal that only polarity and the position of the NW + mas construction relative to the verb significantly constrained variation between pre-posed and post-posed NW + mas constructions. Garcia Cornejo (2008) and Gutierrez-Rexach and Gonzalez-Rivera (2012, 2014) argued that pre-posed mas only occurs with purely negative uses of these constructions. While our results are consistent with this observation, we also found that this pattern is not categorical, since pre-posed mas is used in 34.3% of affirmative sentences. In order to address variation not explained by formal analyses, we explore the role of frequency to account for the variable position of mas + NW. Frequency appears to be a factor in this variation: the most frequent NW + mas construction, with nada, showed the highest rate of post-posing and lowest rate of pre-posing. Priming did not have a significant effect, although it trends in the expected direction: in contexts with a pre-posed prime, the rate of pre-posed mas was higher (58.3%). We argue that analogical levelling with other pre-posed mas constructions has led to an increased use of pre-posed NW + mas constructions in Caracas Spanish and that the most frequent construction, nada mas, is resisting this analogical change due to its higher frequency and consequential entrenchment.

This paper studies mood distribution in the complement of Spanish assertive matrices when the matrix subject is modified by the quantifier poco/a/s . The focus of this study is solely complement clauses, and adjectival and adverbial clauses are not considered. Following , ) account that the distribution of mood in these complements is determined by the “discourse-old” information status of the propositional content of the complement, the main goal is to determine why this quantifier will in fact elicit “discourse-old” propositional contents in the complement. The hypothesis put forward in this study is that poco/a/s has inherent negative features as part of its semantics, negative features that turn assertive matrices into negation matrices. The analysis proposed here accounts for mood distribution in the complement of negation and doubt matrices in Spanish following , ) theory of information structure. Based on the relation between negation and presupposition (; ), the claim is that negation and doubt matrices take complements in subjunctive not because their propositional content expresses a proposition known to be false, but rather a proposition treated by the speaker as present—or active—in the consciousness of both speaker and audience (or a consciousness-presupposed proposition).

Complements of causative predicates such as hacer in Spanish present a problem for analyses of mood that are based on semantic or pragmatic notions of assertion. The problem results from the fact that information expressed by these complements is presented both as true and new, and yet the complement verb appears in the subjunctive mood. This makes these clauses a counterexample to analyses that claim that asserted propositions appear in the indicative. This study proposes an account of the use of mood in these complements that combines the Cognitive Grammar notion of clausal grounding (Langacker 1987, 1991, 2009) with Cristofaro's study of subordination (2003). It will be argued that the complement of causative predicates in Spanish is not independently grounded; that is, its temporal relation to the speech situation is established via the matrix predicate. Not being independently grounded, it does not have an autonomous profile (Langacker 1991, 2009). Following Langacker (1991) and Cristofaro (2003), the current study claims that for a clause to be asserted, it must have an autonomous profile. This necessary condition is not met in complements of causative predicates and consequently they cannot be asserted.

In Western Abenaki, an Eastern Algonquian language, a number of enclitic particles, as well as certain cliticized words, are stationed in second position in the clause. In simple cases, second position is the position following the first phonological word of the clause, but complexities arise in particular constructions. A clause-initial conjunction may either host an enclitic or be skipped over in figuring clitic placement. A wh -word or focused expression may be skipped over as well, with clitics then appearing well inside the clause. Two preverbs that occupy a left-peripheral position appear to receive special treatment. These effects are shown here to follow from simple assumptions about phrase structure, coupled with a clitic placement rule that states only that clitics are stationed in second position within CP or IP.

In this article we offer up a particular linguistic phenomenon, quantifier-variable binding in Kannada ditransitives, as a proving ground upon which competing claims about learnability can be evaluated with respect to the relative abstractness of children’s grammatical knowledge. We first identify one aspect of syntactic representation that exhibits a range of syntactic, morphological, and semantic consequences both within and across languages, namely the hierarchical structure of ditransitive verb phrases (Barss & Lasnik 1986, Larson 1988, Harley 2002). Next we show that while the semantic consequences of this structure are parallel in English, Kannada, and Spanish, the word order and morphological reflexes of this structure diverge. Thus, although it is clear that the same structures are exhibited crosslinguistically, the evidence available to learners that would allow them to identify these structures is variable. We then turn to an examination of children learning Kannada, demonstrating that they have command of the relation between morphological form and semantic interpretation in ditransitives with respect to quantifier-variable binding. Finally, we offer a proposal on how a selective learning mechanism might succeed in identifying the appropriate structures in this domain despite the variability in surface expression.

This article proposes a novel account of noun incorporation in Northern Iroquoian. It is proposed that there is no special mechanism for noun incorporation and that this phenomenon falls out naturally from the geometry of the phrase structure under Moro’s theory of Dynamic Antisymmetry. In a nutshell, when the verbal head and the nominal head undergoMerge, they form a point of symmetric c-command,which is resolved by the nominal head moving to the specifier of the verb phrase. Further, it is proposed that, in noun incorporation constructions with a full DP double, the incorporated noun and the DP form a constituent, which is merged in theta-position. Resume: Cet article propose une nouvelle description de l’incorporation nominale dans l’iroquoien du Nord. Il est propose qu’il n’y a aucun mecanisme particulier en matiere d’incorporation nominale et que ce phenomene decoule naturellement de la geometrie de la syntaxe selon la theorie de l’Antisymetrie dynamique de Moro. En un mot, la fusion (Merge) des tetes verbale et nominale forme un point de c-commande symetrique qui se voit resoudre par le deplacement de la tete nominale au specifieur du syntagme verbal. De plus, j’avance que le nom incorpore dans les constructions ayant un sd double forme avec celui-ci un constituent qui est fusionne en position thematique.

0-theoretic analysis in the Government and Binding (GB) Theory (Chomsky 1981, 1986), they were commonly treated as optional elements attached to an intermediate or maximal projection of the head they modify. However, this treatment has been shown to be no longer tenable in the more recent Bare Phrase Structure (BPS) Theoryfor several conceptual reasons (Chomsky1995:ch. 4), which renders the status of adjuncts all the more puzzling. Recently, however, Hornstein and Nunes (2008) (henceforth HN adjuncts, on the other hand, can directly modify the event without such aid. This contrast can be seen in the Neo-Davidsonian semantic representation

This article delineates and analyzes the syntactic and semantic parameters of variation exhibited by English filler -gap constructions . It demonstrates that a detailed, fully explicit account of the observed variation is available within a framework embracing the notion ‘grammatical construction’. This account, which explicates similarities and differences among topicalization, interrogatives, relatives, exclamatives, and comparative correlatives in terms of linguistic types and hierarchical constraint inheritance, is articulated in detail within the framework of sign -based construction grammar (SBCG), a version of head -driven phrase structure grammar (HPSG) integrating key insights from Berkeley construction grammar . The results presented here stand as a challenge to any analysis incorporating transformational operations, especially proposals couched within Chomsky’s ‘Minimalist program’.

Competence-based theories of island effects play a central role in generative grammar, yet the graded nature of many syntactic islands has never been properly accounted for. Categorical syntactic accounts of island effects have persisted in spite of a wealth of data suggesting that island effects are not categorical in nature and that non-structural manipulations that leave island structures intact can radically alter judgments of island violations. We argue here, building on work by Deane, Kluender, and others, that processing factors have the potential to account for this otherwise unexplained variation in acceptability judgments.We report the results of self-paced reading experiments and controlled acceptability studies which explore the relationship between processing costs and judgments of acceptability. In each of the three self-paced reading studies, the data indicate that the processing cost of different types of island violations can be significantly reduced to a degree comparable to that of non-island filler-gap constructions by manipulating a single non-structural factor. Moreover, this reduction in processing cost is accompanied by significant improvements in acceptability. This evidence favors the hypothesis that island-violating constructions involve numerous processing pressures that aggregate to drive processing difficulty above a threshold so that a perception of unacceptability ensues. We examine the implications of these findings for the grammar of filler-gap dependencies.

We investigate the development of word order in German children’s spontaneous production of complement clauses. From soon after their second birthday, young German children use both verb-final complements with complementizers and verb-second complements without complementizers. By their third birthday they use both kinds of complement clauses with a variety of complement-taking verbs. Early in development, however, verb-final complements and verb-second complements are used with separate sets of complement-taking verbs, and they are used with separate sets of item-specific main-clause phrases. For example, initially phrases such as ‘I want to see’ were used exclusively with verb-final complements, whereas phrases such as ‘do you see’ and ‘you have to say’ were used exclusively with verb-second complements. Only later in development— when specific complement-taking verbs were used with both verb-second and verb-final complements, with a greater variety of main-clause phrases, and when specific main-clause phrases were used with both verb-second and verb-final complements—was there evidence for structural links between these various, item-based, complement-clause constructions.

The English NPN construction, exemplified by construction after construction, is productive with five prepositions—by, for, to, after, and upon—with a variety of meanings, including succession, juxtaposition, and comparison; it also has numerous idiomatic cases. This mixture of regularity and idiosyncrasy lends itself to an account in the spirit of construction grammar, in which the lexicon includes specified syntactic structures matched with meanings. The internal syntactic structure of NPN violates standard principles of phrase structure, and the required identity of the two nouns (in most cases) presents descriptive difficulties. Furthermore, when NPN appears in NP positions, it can take normal NP complements and modifiers, and it has quantificational semantics despite the absence of a lexical quantifier. These peculiarities collectively present interesting challenges to linguistic theory. The best hope lies in a theory of grammar that (i) recognizes meaningful constructions as theoretical entities; (ii) recognizes a continuum of regularity between words and rules; and (iii) recognizes the autonomy of syntax from semantics and vice versa.

I argue that syntactic phrase structure encodes three major asymmetries. The first represents the asymmetry between mothers and daughters that is called dominance, i.e. syntactic hierarchy. The second is the selectional asymmetry between sisters, which is translated into precedence in the phonological component. The third, called 'behindance', is an alternative for dominance, and represents parataxis. Parenthesis, coordination and apposition are analyzed on the basis of behindance. In our derivational model of grammar it is defined as a special type of inclusion that blocks c-command. It follows that parenthetic material can neither move toward the matrix, nor be bound by a constituent from the matrix. The syntactic asymmetry between first and second conjuncts is established theoretically and empirically in a new way.

In this descriptive report we outline the structural pattern of exclamative clauses in Paduan. Because of the close similarity between exclamative and interrogative clauses in this language, we begin by developing a number of tests which allow us to distinguish these two clause types. We then present the range of exclamative structures. A variety of factors interact to mark a clause as an exclamative, yielding a quite complex array of facts. We view this work as the basis for future study in the syntax and semantics of exclamatives.

The present report attempts to formulate an appropriate linguistic generalization for the occurrence of inhibited periodic eyeblinking by fluent ASL signers. There are three components to our investigation. In the first component, Observation, we take several signing sources, transcribe significant nonmanuals, and analyze where eyeblinks occur with respect to the signed signal and other nonmanuals. In the second component, Prediction, we formulate a generalization concerning the possible locations of eyeblinks and test this generalization by making predictions on a sample of signing. In the third component, Confirmation, we reconsider Baker and Padden’s observation that signers do not blink after the conditional clause before a question, provide data to the contrary, and provide a possible explanation of why they were led to the conclusion they reached. Overall, we show that signers’ eyeblinks are sensitive to syntactic structure, from which Intonational Phrases may be derived. These findings help to establish how intonational information, carried by pitch in spoken languages, can be provided in a signed language.

This paper reports on the results of a detailed empirical study of word order correlations, based on a sample of 625 languages. The primary result is a determination of exactly what pairs of elements correlate in order with the verb and object. Some pairs of elements that have been claimed to correlate in order with the verb and object do not in fact exhibit any correlation. I argue against the Head-Dependent Theory (HDT), according to which the correlations reflect a tendency towards consistent ordering of heads and dependents. I offer an alternative account, the Branching Direction Theory (BDT), based on consistent ordering of phrasal and nonphrasal elements. According to the BDT, the word order correlations reflect a tendency for languages to be consistently right-branching or consistently left-branching.*

Most Mayan languages are 'basically' predicate-initial, but various phrases occur before the predicate when they are focussed or topicalized. This paper assumes the framework of Chomsky 1986 and presents a phrase-structural analysis of topic and focus for three Mayan languages (Tzotzil, Jakaltek, Tz'utujil). Three distinct entities are distinguished: the focus and two types of topic, termed here 'internal' and 'external'. Each is argued to occupy a distinct structural position. At the heart of the analysis is an account of intonational phrasing and the distribution of several intonational phrase clitics in Tzotzil and Jakaltek. An algorithm is proposed for deriving intonational phrase structure from surface structure. Syntactic evidence further supports the phrase-structural differences established on prosodic grounds.

Two curious phenomena which have to this point been treated separately in the literature are seen to be consequences of the same general interpretive mechanism. We propose that the theory of focus not only accounts for the 'definiteness restriction' with respect to material extraposed from NP, but also contributes crucially to an explanation for the variable acceptability of sentences containing extractions from extraposed PPs.

X-bar theory is widely regarded as a substantive theory of phrase structure properties in natural languages. In this paper we will demonstrate that a formalization of its content reveals very little substance in its claims. We state and discuss six conditions that encapsulate the claims of X-bar theory: LEXICALITY—each nonterminal is a projection of a preterminal; SUCCESSION—each X n + 1 dominates an X n for all n ≥ 0; UNIFORMITY—all maximal projections have the same bar-level; MAXIMALITY—all nonheads are maximal projections; CENTRALITY—the start symbol is a maximal projection; and OPTIONALITY—all and only nonheads are optional. We then consider recent proposals to 'eliminate' base components from transformational grammars and to reinterpret X-bar theory as a set of universal constraints holding for all languages at D-structure, arguing that this strategy fails. We show that, as constraints on phrase-structure rule systems, the X-bar conditions have hardly any effect on the descriptive power of grammars, and that the principles with the most chance of making some descriptive difference are the least adhered to in practice. Finally, we reconstruct X-bar theory in a way that makes no reference to the notion of bar-level but instead makes the notion 'head of the central one.

Most linguists who have investigated linguistic categories from a universal viewpoint have accepted the existence of two basic parts of speech, NOUN and VERB. Other categories are found to be only inconsistently represented; thus ADJECTIVE is manifested in many languages as a class of stative verb. Furthermore, individual languages often have intermediate categories such as GERUND, which cannot be unambiguously assigned to a single category. We suggest here that the basic categories N and V are to be viewed as universal lexicalizations of the prototypical discourse functions of 'discourse-manipulable participant' and 'reported event', respectively. We find that the grammars of languages tend to label the categories N and V with morpho-syntactic markers which are iconically characteristic of these categories to the degree that a given instance of N or V approaches its prototypical function. In other words, the closer a form is to signaling this prime function, the more the language tends to recognize its function through morphemes typical of the category-e.g. deictic markers for N, tense markers for V. We conclude by suggesting that categoriality itself is another fundamental property of grammars which may be directly derived from discourse function.*

Simplification in structure, and also confluence between the local-language structure and the prestige-language structure, are usually predicted in language death as in pidginization. For a dying Scottish Gaelic dialect, speakers representing a broad proficiency continuum were tested in the two most excessively complex morphological structures the dialect offers, the noun plural and the gerund. The forms supplied by the semi-speakers at the bottom of the proficiency continuum show considerable simplification, as expected, but very much less than in 'classical' pidginization; confluence with English is also quite limited. Marked functional differences between this dying dialect and the typical pidgin are invoked to account for the difference in outcome.*

The author measured hearing impaired students' reception of language presented via five modes: oral, aural, manual, oral-aural and simultaneous manual and oral. The study utilized a within-subjects design stimulus sentences controlled for length, phrase structure, syntax, vocabulary level and visemic content. Participants were 53 females and 53 males between 90 and 225 months of age ([inline-graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="01i"/] = 175) with HTLs between 67 and 113 dB (ANSI) ([inline-graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="02i"/] = 97.7). Each received 12 sentences via each mode. With a maximum score of 57, the simultaneous manual and oral ([inline-graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="03i"/] = 33.2) and manual ([inline-graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="04i"/] = 31.5) modes received the highest ratings. Results are discussed in the context of several theories of cognitive processing and selective attention.