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Despite their apparent simplicity, the structure of DPs containing “complement” CPs (what we will call DCs) has long been obscure. One major strand of investigation has attempted to assimilate DCs to (close) nominal apposition, implying that N and CP form a structural unit that then combines with D. Danish has two kinds of DCs, a bare DC with the superficial structure [D N CP] and a prepositional DC in which the CP is encased in a PP. Exploiting clues provided by the allomorphy of the definite morpheme, we argue that the bare and prepositional DCs have very different structures, neither of which can be assimilated to apposition between N and CP. We further show that the two kinds of DC have distinct semantic and pragmatic properties. We then argue that English also has two different structures for DCs, and that they are plausibly parallel to the structures we establish for Danish. We conclude by arguing that two distinct structures give rise to the “apposition” relation: in one case it is between coarguments of D and in the other it is nonrestrictive composition.

Embick and Marantz (2008) present an analysis of the Danish definiteness alternation involving a postsyntactic rule of Local Dislocation (an operation sensitive to linear adjacency but not hierarchical structure). Examination of a fuller range of data reveals that the alternation cannot be determined strictly in terms of adjacency; rather, it depends on the structural relation between the D and the N. We propose to treat the alternation as an instance of conditioned allomorphy, the suffixal form appearing when D is sister to a minimal N, and the free article elsewhere. This alternation is, then, a case of “blocking” in the sense accepted by Embick and Marantz: the result of competition between Vocabulary items for the expression of a morpheme. Assuming that the condition for wordhood is being a complex head, we argue that the distinction between free and bound morphemes, and whether bound morphemes are prefixes or suffixes, must be encoded in the Vocabulary items spelling out the morphemes.

This article addresses a proposal by Katzir (2011) that licensors are crucially involved in definiteness and gender marking in Danish, Icelandic, and Greek. We identify several morphological patterns in Icelandic and Danish that are predicted to be impossible under Katzir’s theory and argue that these languages do not support the existence of licensors. Instead, we propose an account within the framework of Distributed Morphology, arguing that the patterns of gender and definiteness marking seen in these languages are the result of competition for insertion between well-motivated Vocabulary items. In a sense, then, we argue for a more traditional and theoretically simpler analysis of agreement in the languages.

The Danish pseudopartitive constructions differ in their possibilities of definiteness marking: the Indirect Partitive Construction (IPC) (D N1 P N2) permits N1 to bear the definite suffix, while the Direct Partitive Construction (DPC) (D N1 N2) does not; in addition, neither construction permits the prenominal definite article in the absence of a prenominal modifier. Drawing on previous work regarding the morphosyntax of definiteness marking in Danish, we use the distribution of definiteness marking as a probe to illuminate the structure of the pseudopartitive constructions. Our conclusion is that despite superficial similarities the two constructions are quite different in structure, the IPC having a lexical N head and a PP complement, and the DPC a functional n head with an NP complement, forming a single extended projection of N2. These assumptions allow us to account for a number of differences in the behavior of these constructions, shedding light on the nature of pseudopartitives as well as on the theory of extended projections.

Embick and Noyer (2001) develop an analysis of definiteness marking in Danish and Swedish employing the central assumptions of Distributed Morphology (DM) together with the syntactic operation of head movement of N to D. We expose some theoretical and empirical shortcomings of the analysis and conclude that the assumption of N-to-D movement is incompatible with the central assumptions of DM. We further show how these shortcomings are avoided by the lexicalist analysis proposed by Hankamer and Mikkelsen (2002) and compare it with an alternative DM analysis that does not rely on head movement in the syntax. We conclude that while a lexicalist or a DM analysis is viable, with interesting trade-offs, neither of the viable analyses involves any movement.

Proceedings of the Sixth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (1980), pp. 238-249

1. Advances in Comparative Germanic Syntax (by Alexiadou, Artemis) 2. Part I. Cartography and the left periphery 3. On a (wh-)moved Topic in Italian, compared to Germanic (by Cardinaletti, Anna) 4. C-agreement or something close to it: Some thoughts on the 'alls-construction' (by Putnam, Michael T.) 5. Uncharted territory?: Towards a non-cartographic account of Germanic syntax (by Zwart, C. Jan-Wouter) 6. Bootstrapping verb movement and the clausal architecture of German (and other languages) (by Fanselow, Gisbert) 7. A conjunction conspiracy at the West Germanic left periphery (by Velde, John R. te) 8. Part II. Word order and movement 9. Reconsidering odd coordination in German (by Kasai, Hironobu) 10. The syntax and semantics of the temporal anaphor "then" in Old and Middle English (by Trips, Carola) 11. Jespersen's Cycle and the issue of prosodic 'weakness' (by Noel Aziz Hanna, Patrizia) 12. Holmberg's Generalization: Blocking and push up (by Broekhuis, Hans) 13. Part III. Thematic relations and NP realization 14. The No Case Generalization (by Sigurdsson, Halldor Armann) 15. The new impersonal as a true passive (by Jonsson, Johannes Gisli) 16. Anaphoric distribution in the prepositional phrase: Similarities between Norwegian and English (by Lederer, Jenny) 17. Part IV. Finiteness and modality 18. Experiencers with (un)willingness: A raising analysis of German 'Wollen' (by Gergel, Remus) 19. Finiteness: The haves and the have-nots (by Eide, Kristin Melum) 20. Index of subjects & languages

We argue that the distribution of definiteness marking in Scandinavian DPs is best accounted for by a lexical rule converting Ns to Ds, and not by syntactic head movement. The proposed lexical rule, together with the assumption that lexical expressions can block equivalent phrasal expressions, is shown to account for the core facts about definiteness marking distribution in Danish, and is extended to Swedish and Norwegian. In addition, some previously mysterious facts about definiteness marking in DPs containing relative clauses are explained.

The goal of the present research was to investigate the extent to which acoustic cues other than the silent gap corresponding to closure duration might figure in the discrimination of geminate and non-geminate voiceless stops. The method, adapted from earlier studies on duration cues, was to create two sets of stimuli with the length of the silent interval varying incrementally between that of a non-geminate and that of a geminate. One set was made by artificially lengthening the silent interval of an original non-geminate in 10 ms steps up to the length of a geminate, and the other set was made by shortening an original geminate in the same manner. Starting with recorded minimal word pairs with geminate and non-geminate stops in Turkish and Bengali, sets of stimuli were constructed as described above. These stimuli were presented to native speakers of the respective languages in a word identification task, and the results were charted to see whether the identification curves were the same for the original geminates as for the original non-geminates. The result was that the curves did differ, the original geminates being identified as geminates slightly more frequently than original non-geminates at closure durations between 120 and 160 ms. The difference was statistically significant for at least some points on the curve. However, in contrast to earlier studies on consonant duration contrasts, the displacements found were less than 10 ms on the time axis, and the region of significant difference between the identification curves confined entirely to a segment of the time continuum in which no naturally occurring stimuli are found. Our conclusion is that in actual speech recognition there is no evidence that cues other than closure duration play a role in the discrimination of geminate and non-geminate stops in these languages.

In current phonological theory, geminate consonants are distinguished from non-geminates by a difference in units on the timing tier in an autosegmental representation, other features being the same; and while there are geminates of three kinds according to how they arise (tautomorphemic, concatenated, and derived by total assimilation), the representation of all three on the timing tier is the same. The present paper investigates two questions: what exactly is the acoustic difference between geminate and non-geminate consonants (focusing on voiceless stops); and are there acoustic differences between geminates derived from different sources phonologically. We examined two unrelated languages, Bengali and Turkish, and found that the single overriding cue distinguishing geminate from non-geminate stops is the duration of the closure. In Bengali, we examined geminate stops derived from the three different sources and found no significant difference in closure duration. Thus the autosegmental representation of the difference between geminate and non-geminate consonants in terms of a timing difference is vindicated, and we have an acoustic correlate for the timing measure. As a secondary result, we have shown that total assimilation leading to the formation of a geminate constitutes an instance of neutralization that is phonetically complete.

It is generally assumed in informal descriptions that what distinguishes geminate from nongeminate consonants is duration of articulation. This has not, however, been demonstrated instrumentally, nor are informal descriptions precise about what should be measured. To study the acoustic features of geminates, we investigated geminate stops in Turkish, comparing geminate and nongeminate stop consonants in similar environments. We measured the duration from the beginning of the preceding vowel to the beginning of the consonant closure, the pause duration from the end of the preceding vowel to the beginning of the following consonant, the duration of consonant closure, and the ratio of the rms energy at the onset of the consonant to that of the following vowel. The only significant difference was the duration of the pause. To investigate the perceptual salience of this feature, we took 20 minimal pairs of geminates and nongeminates, cross spliced the pause, and presented a randomized set of words to native speakers of Turkish, who wrote down what they heard. The pause was found to be a significant cue in discriminating between geminate and nongeminate consonants.