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This chapter provides further evidence that the Person Case Constraint (PCC) in Romance is not limited to clitic clusters. Previously, this has been shown for Spanish (Ormazabal & Romero 2013), but I show that, in Italian, French, and Catalan causatives, a 1st /2nd person direct object is incompatible not only with dative clitics but also with full dative arguments (see also Postal 1989; Bonet 1991). This is different from the manifestation of the PCC in ditransitive contexts where only dative clitics are ruled out. The difference follows, I argue, if ditransitives in these languages have two underlying structures so that a DP introduced by a/à can be either dative or locative, in line with broader cross-linguistic patterns (see Harley 2002; Demonte 1995; Cuervo 2003 on Spanish; Anagnostopoulou 2003; Fournier 2010 on French; Holmberg et al. 2019 on Italian, and the discussion in the introduction to this volume). For this reason, indirect object DPs marked with a/à must trigger PCC effects in causatives but not in ditransitives, as only in the former are they unambiguously dative. Further support for this claim comes from Spanish, a language which morphologically distinguishes locative vs. dative phrases in ditransitives via clitic doubling (Cuervo 2003) and which shows PCC effects with all animate direct objects (Ormazabal & Romero 2007, 2013). I show that these facts are compatible with approaches to the PCC based on intervention (Anagnostopoulou 2003, 2005 amongst others), but raise challenges for those which rely crucially on the weak/clitic status of datives (Bianchi 2006; Stegovec 2017).

This debate stems from Michal Starke’s keynote lecture at NELS 51, entitled “UM. Universal Morphology”. The video can be found at this link: https://michal.starke.ch/talks/2020-11_nels/nels_starke.mp4. In his talk, Starke sketches a nanosyntactic analysis of French irregular verbs, with the aim of showing that irregularities in French verbal paradigms (and in general) are only apparent. We asked some prominent morphologists and morpho-syntacticians to comment on and provide replies to Starke’s proposal and arguments. Subsequently, the author wrote a reply to these comments. You can find them all here. We wish to thank the NELS 51 organizing committee for allowing us to use the talk as a starting point for the debate, Michal Starke for his availability, and the linguists who agreed to engage in this interesting and fruitful exchange. This keynote debate celebrates the first year of the new Isogloss, in the hope of having more occasions to host discussions like this one.

Results from a crowdsourced audio questionnaire show that inflected infinitives in Galician are still acceptable in a broad range of contexts, different from those described for European Portuguese. Crucially, inflected infinitives with referential subjects are widely accepted only inside strong islands in Galician (complements of nouns, adjunct clauses). They are widely rejected in non-islands, notably in the complements of epistemic/factive verbs, in contrast with Portuguese and older varieties of Galician (Gondar 1978, Raposo 1987). Statistical analysis shows, however, that, in the complements of epistemic/factive (and desiderative) verbs, inflected infinitives are significantly more acceptable in instances of control, whether partial or exhaustive. In fact, there is no significant difference between these two types of control in Galician, unlike in Portuguese, where inflection is generally better in instances of partial control and is not acceptable in instances of exhaustive local subject control (Modesto 2010, Sheehan 2018). We propose an analysis of this pattern in terms of phase theory. The inflectional domain of non-finite clauses remains visible to the thematic domain of the next clause up, according to the less strict version of the Phase Impenetrability Condition (Chomsky 2001), allowing control to take place. Pronouns/or pronominal inflections in the inflectional domain of visible non-finite clauses therefore get controlled. In islands, however, material in the inflectional domain remains free/referential. Despite this basic pattern, the data are characterized by substantial interspeaker variation. Statistical analysis shows that gender, urban/rural birthplace and mother tongue are all significant factors in this variation, while age and region of birth are not. Most notably, urban-born male bilinguals with Spanish as their mother tongue consistently rate the sentences higher on the Likert scale. Overall, the results show that crowdsourcing can lead to empirically robust syntactic descriptions of minority languages which are likely to be subject to substantial sociolinguistic variation and where judgements from a single social group may be misrepresentative of the general picture. The study also highlights, however, the challenges associated with using crowd-sourced audio-questionnaires of this kind in languages of this kind and the need for statistical analysis of results to control for substantial amounts of variation.

This paper proposes a novel analysis of word order in Brazilian Portuguese (BP), based on a hybrid model of EPP satisfaction. It is proposed that the subject requirement or EPP is a [uD] feature on T which can be satisfied either by DP movement or by movement of an inflected verb bearing a [D] feature in BP. This, it is claimed, offers an explanatory account of basic word order patterns in BP. External argument DPs, merged above V, are closer to T than V, meaning that they must raise to satisfy the EPP, predicting SV(O) order with transitive and unergative predicates, including transitive psych-predicates. Internal arguments are merged below V, however, and so with unaccusatives, it is movement of the verb bearing a [uD] feature which satisfies the EPP, giving rise to VS order. With copular verbs which take small clause complements, a similar affect holds, as the copular verb can satisfy the EPP. Verb movement can also satisfy the EPP in impersonal contexts, hence the fact that BP lacks overt expletives.

This book reconsiders the role of order and structure in syntax, focusing on fundamental issues such as word order and grammatical functions. The first group of papers in the collection asks what word order can tell us about syntactic structure, using evidence from V2, object shift, word order gaps and different kinds of movement. The second group of papers all address the issue of subjecthood in some way, and examine how certain subject properties vary across languages: expression of subjects, expletive subjects, quirky and locative subjects. All of the papers address in some way the tension between modelling what can vary across languages whilst improving our understanding of what might be universal to human language.

This book reconsiders the role of order and structure in syntax, focusing on fundamental issues such as word order and grammatical functions. The papers in the collection all address the issue of subjecthood and argument structure in some way, and examine how certain subject properties vary across languages: expression of subjects, expletive subjects, quirky and locative subjects. All of the papers address in some way the tension between modelling what can vary across languages whilst improving our understanding of what might be universal to human language.

We argue that in instances of what look like partial control, French shows a sensitivity to the embedded predicate rather than the matrix predicate, with PC being possible only where the embedded verb is comitative. Moreover, PRO behaves as if it is syntactically and semantically singular in these contexts in French, suggesting that French lacks 'True PC' and allows only 'Fake PC' arising from exhaustive control with a covert comitative, or some other equivalent mechanism. German, on the other hand, appears to have both Fake PC, limited to comitative contexts with non-attitude metric verbs, and True PC, observed with non-cogitative verbs where the matrix verb is an attitude predicate. As predicted, in Fake PC contexts PRO in German is syntactically and semantically singular, just as in French. In True PC contexts, however, it appears to be plural.

It is a well known observation that causative and perception verbs often resist passivisation. By comparing passivation patterns in English and Brazilian Portuguese, we argue for a phase-based analysis of this pattern. What these verbs have in common is a tendency to embed events, which are syntactically realised as verbal phases lacking any T-related projection. Making certain widely held assumptions about cyclic transfer, this means that the arguments of the embedded verb are not visible to matrix T by the time it probes. The attested patterns can be taken as evidence in favour of PIC2 (Chomsky 2001) and the claim that A-movement does not have access to phase-edge escape hatches.

This review is focussed towards the development of acetylcholinesterase enzymatic based biosensors for the quantification of trace concentrations of highly toxic pesticides via their inhibitory effect on the enzyme. Initial results were obtained using wild-type enzymes which have a broad spectrum of susceptibility to a variety of pesticides. The sensitivity and selectivity of the enzyme activity was improved by development and screening of a wide range of mutant enzymes. Optimal enzymes were then exploited within a range of sensor formats. A range of immobilisation techniques including adsorption based approaches, binding via proteins and entrapment within conducting polymers were all studied. The incorporation of stabilisers and co-factors were utilised to optimise electrode performance and stability - with both planar and microelectrode geometries being developed. Reproducible quantification of pesticides could be obtained at concentrations down to 10-17 M, representing a detection limit hitherto unavailable.

Pragmatic rules in public communication to a large extent ‘dictate’ formalised communication behaviour. Explicit rules are formulated in seemingly non-binding instructions or in strict laws stating what is not permitted in public discourse and providing punishments for violating the norms. The reasons 14why some contents and some signs become inexpressible differ from society to society, from one social group to another, and from individual to individual.The paper problematizes the concept of civility that is more than just politeness, making a distinction between true and false civility, and analyses formulaic expressions with varying degrees of illocutionary force, but with the same perlocutionary effect – humiliating the Other and expressing hate, incivility and impoliteness (Lane 2017). The point is that civility starts and ends with us as well, just because of our own behaviour management.

This paper pursues a formal analysis of the idea that affirmative answers to Yes/No questions correspond to a sort of propositional deixis whereby the relevant proposition is pointed at. The empirical case involves an analysis of the deictic particle na in Greek and a comparison of its syntax with that of the affirmative particle nai. It is shown that both involve an extra head which in the case of the deictic particle is uniformly externalised as the pointing gesture. It is argued that gestural externalisation of syntactic structure should be considered on a par with phonetic externalisation (not only in sign languages). The grammar of the affirmative particle gives us also an account of the observed facts about Greek whereby both the truth and the polarity answering system appear to coexist.

Since \citet{HooperThompson1973}, many researchers have pursued the insight that V2 is licensed by assertion. H\&T categorise predicates depending on whether their complement can be asserted: e.g. communication verbs (\emph{say}) permit the assertion of their complement, in contrast to factives (\emph{be happy}). \citet{Simons2007} proposes distinguishing between embedded propositions that do or do not constitute the Main Point of Utterance (MPU) -- a sharpening of the notion of assertion: in question/response-sequences, the proposition answering the question is the MPU. Given this definition/diagnostic for assertion, factives \emph{can}, given the appropriate discourse context, embed MPU and thus should allow embedded V2 (EV2). This paper presents two experiments testing whether factives can embed MPU and whether MPU licenses EV2 in Swedish. The results support both \citegen{Simons2007} contention that factives can embed MPU, while providing new evidence that MPU does not correlate with EV2.} &nbsp

In our paper, we investigate a set of pronominal forms that have lost their referential meaning and might at first sight be analyzed as expletives. First, we discuss the case of Finnish, which, though a pro-drop language, displays an element \textit{sitä} with expletive function; and the case of Dominican Spanish, another pro-drop language which seems to have an expletive \textit{ello} but in which, unlike Finnish, the expletive conveys a speaker-related meaning. In addition, we also examine the case of Vietnamese, a radical pro-drop language which also seems to deploy an expletive \textit{nó} with discourse value, and the case of the Flemish element \textit{tet}, which has lost its referential value and also has a discourse function. From these data it emerges that independently of the satisfaction of formal EPP-requirements, some languages can employ expletive or expletive-like elements for discourse-related reasons in those contexts where regular expletives are required in languages like English. The data discussed here lead to a more complex picture of the nature of expletives and their function in the grammar.

As in Nyvad et al. (2017), we will explore a particular derivation of (embedded) V2, in terms of a cP/CP-distinction, which may be seen as a version of the CP-recursion analysis (de Haan & Weerman 1986; Vikner 1995 and many others). e idea is that because embedded V2 clauses do not allow extraction, whereas other types of CP-recursion clauses do (Christensen et al. 2013a; 2013b; Christensen & Nyvad 2014), CP-recursion in embedded V2 is assumed to be fundamentally di erent from other kinds of CP-recursion, in that main clause V2 and embedded V2 involve a CP (“big CP”), whereas other clausal projections above IP are instances of cP (“little cP”). As in Nyvad et al. (2017), we will explore a particular derivation of (embedded) V2, in terms of a cP/CP-distinction, which may be seen as a version of the CP-recursion analysis (de Haan & Weerman 1986; Vikner 1995 and many others). e idea is that because embedded V2 clauses do not allow extraction, whereas other types of CP-recursion clauses do (Christensen et al. 2013a; 2013b; Christensen & Nyvad 2014), CP-recursion in embedded V2 is assumed to be fundamentally di erent from other kinds of CP-recursion, in that main clause V2 and embedded V2 involve a CP (“big CP”), whereas other clausal projections above IP are instances of cP (“little cP”).

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