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First, Mattiello's core hypothesis is that the meaning of - o is essentially derogatory (35), but the lexicographic analysis is said to only focus those senses that "revolve around aggressive languages" (39): in this way, uses of the suffix that could (potentially) falsify the hypothesis were excluded since the beginning. Those that do, however, represent important contributions to our understanding of the grammar-pragmatics interface in hateful discourse and are likely to establish themselves as crucial references in this growing field of studies. Otherwise, particularly welcome aspects of the chapter are the explicit definition of aggressive discourse and distinction of different types thereof, as well as the discussion of the prosody of expressive compounds. [Extracted from the article]

This paper examines the syntactic and semantic behavior of object arguments in Moro, a Kordofanian language spoken in central Sudan. In particular, we focus on multiple object constructions (ditransitives, applicatives, and causatives) and show that these objects exhibit symmetrical syntactic behavior; e.g., any object can passivize or be realized as an object marker, and all can do so simultaneously. Moreover, we demonstrate that each object can bear any of the non-agentive roles in a verb’s semantic role inventory and that the resulting ambiguities are an entailment of symmetrical object constructions of the type found in Moro. Previous treatments of symmetrical languages have assumed a syntactic asymmetry between multiple objects and have developed theoretical analyses that treat symmetrical behaviors as departures from an asymmetrical basic organization of clausal syntax. We take a different approach: we develop a Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar account that allows a partial ordering of the argument structure (arg-st) list. The guiding idea is that languages differ with respect to the organization of their arg-st lists and their consequences for grammatical function realization: there is no privileged encoding, but there is large variation within the parameters defined by arg-st organization. This accounts directly for the symmetrical behaviors of multiple objects. We also show how this approach can be extended to account for certain asymmetrical behaviors in Moro. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The aim of this paper is to provide an analysis of the positive effect that modification has on the distribution of noun phrases in otherwise illicit environments. I focus on de nominals in French. By focusing on these nominals, whose distribution is altered by the addition of modifiers, the paper shows that modifiers can do much more than simply modify: they can change the syntactic and semantic status of a noun phrase. The licensing property of modifiers is an intriguing topic and has not been greatly discussed in the literature. I argue that modifiers can come to play the role of determiners in French as long as they are accompanied by a head de, which is the spell-out of a Cardinal head (see Lyons 1999). My proposal goes back to an old idea put forward by Damourette & Pichon (1911–1940) according to which, in modified contexts, de functions as one half of the article while the adjective functions as the other half. More generally, articles in French are seen as dual entities comprising of a specifier and a head. In the absence of the determiner les, an adjective can raise to the specifier of CardinalP. This is achieved via phrasal rather than head movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a 1982 paper in the journal Glossa, Pullum outlined a set of arguments for treating English infinitival to as a defective auxiliary verb. Twenty years later, in his entry on infinitival constructions in The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (CGEL, 2002), Huddleston argues that several distributional facts about auxiliaries fit poorly with this hypothesis. He proposes, on the basis of significant structural parallels, that to is a subordinator (complementizer). I show that Huddleston's arguments constitute a flawed analysis in CGEL's otherwise superb coverage of English descriptive grammar, and that the facts run strongly counter to his claims, often falling out independently from generalizations about auxiliaries that Huddleston overlooks. Several of these points were anticipated in Pullum's paper, but recent research on an idiosyncratic auxiliary-specific pattern of English nonrestrictive relative clause formation provides a powerful new argument in support of the auxiliary claim. In this respect, as in all others, the assignment of to to the class of auxiliaries provides the simplest and broadest account of its syntactic behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a unified syntactic account of the distribution of English have in causative constructions (e.g. John had Mary read a book) and experiencer constructions (e.g. John had the student walk out of his classroom). It is argued that have is realized in the context of an applicative head (Appl) and an event-introducer v, regardless of the type of v. Have is spelled out in the causative when Appl merges under vCAUSE, and in the experiencer construction when Appl merges under vBE. This proposal is extended to have in possessive constructions (e.g. John has a hat/a brother): have is realized in the context of vBE and Appl. The proposed account provides empirical evidence for expanding the distribution of Appl: (i) a causative can take ApplP as a complement, which was absent in Pylkkänen's (2008) typological classification, and (ii) Appl can merge above Voice, contrary to Pylkkänen's analysis in which Appl is argued to always merge below VoiceP, never above. Moreover, the proposed account supports the theoretical claim that argument structure is licensed by functional syntactic structure; in particular, it shows that the relevant functional heads are not aspectual heads, but Appl and v. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a unified analysis of adverb scope and quantifier scope phenomena in a lexicalist approach to complex predicates. I first observe that the availability of scope ambiguity for adverbs and for quantifiers always coincides for a given type of complex predicate, drawing on data from different kinds of compound verb constructions, the verbal noun-taking predicates and the nominative object construction. The challenge for a unified treatment in lexicalist frameworks comes from the fact that syntactic structures cannot be taken as the locus for representing the scope of adverbs and quantifiers, unlike in derivational frameworks where such an analysis is the most natural. Thus, a previous lexicalist analysis by Manning, Sag & lida (1999) makes use of completely different mechanisms to account for adverb scope and quantifier scope, failing to capture the close parallel between them. I remedy this problem of Manning et al.'s analysis by proposing a unified account of adverb scope and quantifier scope that crucially makes use of a slightly enriched semantic representation explicitly encoding the property of mono-/biclausality with respect to scopal phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we present a detailed new analysis of the English expressions once, twice and thrice. These, we claim, are primarily compound determinatives, analogous in many respects to expressions like someone and somewhere. The new analysis exploits the framework of the Cambridge grammar of the English language (2002) in which the morphological nature of the compound determinative category reflects a fusion of functions, typically determiner (or modifier) and head of NP. We refine the notion of fusion of functions, and show that constructions which employ fusion of functions have properties which clearly distinguish them from superficially similar constructions which employ incorporation or hybridization. The paper therefore provides further evidence for the existence of fusion of functions as a distinct syntactic configuration, and indirectly supports theoretical frameworks which treat functions and categories as distinct primitives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to a `radical orphanage' approach, non-restrictive relative clauses are not part of the syntactic representation of the sentence that contains them. It is an appealing view, and seems to capture some important properties of non-restrictive relative clauses. Focusing mainly on empirical shortcomings, this paper aims to show that the appeal of such approaches is illusory. It also outlines an empirically superior `syntactically integrated' account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the term `passive' has been systematically misapplied to a class of impersonal constructions that suppress the realization of a syntactic subject. The reclassification of these constructions highlights a typological contrast between two types of verbal diathesis and clarifies the status of putative `passives of unaccusatives' and `transitive passives' in Balto-Finnic and Balto-Slavic. Impersonal verb forms differ from passives in two key respects: they are insensitive to the argument structure of a verb and can be formed from unergatives or unaccusatives, and they may retain direct objects. As with other subjectless forms of personal verbs, there is a strong tendency to interpret the suppressed subject of an impersonal as an indefinite human agent. Hence impersonalization is often felicitous only for verbs that select human subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]