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This paper discusses a theory of conversion (zero derivation) in terms of phrasal spellout. In this approach, there are no zero morphemes. Instead, the ‘silent’ meaning components are pronounced cumulatively within overt morphemes. As an empirical case, we discuss adjective/verb ambiguity as in narrow. As verbs, these roots have both an inchoative and a causative sense. Following Ramchand (2008), we assume that such deadjectival causatives contain three parts: the adjective denoting a state, a change-of-state component proc, and a causative component init. Adopting a Nanosyntax approach, we propose that verbs like narrow spell out a complex node with all these abstract heads. The ambiguity between the inchoative, causative and adjective falls out as a consequence of the Superset Principle (Starke 2009), which states that a lexical entry can spell out any subtree it contains. Since both the inchoative sense and the adjective sense correspond to proper parts of the causative one, we derive these readings without the need to postulate zeroes. We show how these assumptions allow us to capture a broad range of patterns, focussing mainly on English and Czech.

The acquisition of [PART+AUX] and [AUX+PART] word order in Flanders. A descriptive, methodological and theoretical addition toMeyer & Weerman (2016) This paper presents new data on the acquisition of verb clusters in Flemish children. The data were collected by means of a sentence repetition task and the results are in line with the development path for verb clusters in Dutch children as proposed by Meyer & Weerman (2016). While Flemish children also show a development from more 2-1 orders in the youngest group to more 1-2 orders in the older group, this development seems to happen more slowly in Flemish children than in Dutch children. In spite of the fact that the results of both the Flemish and the Dutch study refute an analysis that takes the input adult language as the main factor in verb cluster formation in children, the Flemish data suggest that the higher frequency of 2-1 orders in the Flemish context could help to explain why 1-2 orders are acquired more slowly in Flemish children than Dutch children. In addition, this paper also discusses the results of a production test in Flanders that shows a high preference for 2-1 orders until the age of 7, thus questioning the type of linguistic skills that are assessed in a sentence repetition task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The association between sentential negation and tense has solid foundations in the literature. It has even been argued that sentential negative markers consist of a Tense feature (De Clercq 2018, 2020). This paper adduces the first results from a typological study and data from Bambara in support of this claim. In addition, the Bambara data also point to the morphological realisation of present or default tense, to a hierarchy for tense and to a position for sentential negation in that hierarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper provides evidence for a more articulated structure of the comparative as compared with the one in Bobaljik (2012). We propose to split up Bobaljik's cmpr head into two distinct heads, C1 and C2. Looking at Czech, Old Church Slavonic and English, we show that this proposal explains a range of facts about suppletion and allomorphy. A crucial ingredient of our analysis is the claim that adjectival roots are not a‐categorial, but spell out adjectival functional structure. Specifically, we argue that adjectival roots come in various types, differing in the amount of functional structure they spell out. In order to correctly model the competition between roots, we further introduce a Faithfulness Restriction on Cyclic Override, which allows us to dispense with the Elsewhere Principle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The goal of our paper is to provide a description of an apparent V3 pattern which is salient with some speakers of the Ghent dialect, illustrated in (1), from Vanacker (1980). Vroeger, die bakten wij vier soorten brood formerly die baked we four sorts bread “We used to bake four kinds of bread.” (Gijzenzele 0.28) (Vanacker, 1980, p. 76) In such examples, what would be an initial adverbial constituent in the root clause vroeger , (“formerly”) is separated from the finite verb by what Vanacker (1980) labels a “pleonastic” element, die, in effect leading to a superficial V3 order. At first sight, this element die is optional and it has no impact on the truth conditions of the proposition that it introduces. (2) is also acceptable in the dialect. (2) Vroeger bakten wij vier soorten brood. formerly baked we four sorts bread “We used to bake four kinds of bread.” In the first part of the paper, we will provide a description of the distribution of die. We will also compare its distribution with that of the more widely distributed resumptive adverbs dan (“then”) and daar (“there”), which are typical of the Germanic V2 languages (Salvesen, 2016). Our account will be based both on authentic data drawn from corpora and from anecdotal observations as well as on the results of elicitations with 10 native speakers of the dialect. In the second part of the paper we provide an analysis in terms of Wolfe's (2016) typology of the syntax of V2. Adopting the articulated structure of CP as elaborated in the cartographic framework, we will propose that die is an overt spell out of the head Force and as such a root complementiser. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Van Heuven and Haan's (2000, 2002) experimental work on the prosody of Dutch question types found that the prosodic signalling of interrogativity is stronger for declarative questions, less so for yes/no-questions and even less so for wh-questions. This paper shows how the sequence established on prosodic grounds (declarative questions > yes/no questions > wh questions > statements) is mirrored in the functional hierarchy in syntax. Prosody therefore provides an argument for a detailed left periphery (Rizzi 1997, 2001; Haegeman & Hill 2013). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides evidence that medial adjunct PPs in English are possible. On the basis of corpus data, it is shown that sentence-medial adjunct PPs are not unacceptable and are attested. Our corpus data also reveal a sharp asymmetry between negative and non-negative adjunct PPs. The analysis of the corpus revealed the following pattern: Non-negative adjunct PPs such as at that time resist medial position and instead tend to be postverbal; negative adjunct PPs such as at no time appear medially rather than postverbally. In the second part of the paper, we broaden the empirical domain and include negative complement PPs in the discussion. It is shown that when it comes to the licensing of question tags, English negative complement PPs, which are postverbal, pattern differently from postverbal negative adjunct PPs. That is, sentences with a postverbal negative adjunct PP pattern with negative sentences in taking a positive question tag, while sentences containing a postverbal negative argument PP pattern with affirmative sentences in taking a negative tag. To account for the observed adjunct-argument asymmetry in the licensing of question tags, we propose that clauses are typed for polarity and we explore the hypothesis that a polarity head in the left periphery of the clause is crucially involved in the licensing of sentential negation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the distributional and interpretive properties of three quantifiers such as no/nothing, SQUAT and zero. By applying syntactic tests, it illustrates that no/nothing can generate both syntactic and semantic sentential negation, on the contrary, SQUAT and zero can only produce to a semantic sentential negation. Using Beghelli's clause structure for such quantifiers, it concludes that SQUAT cannot get a cardinal, in situ, and an interpretation.

The article presents a study on the analysis of proper names that are used as common nouns in Belgian Dutch and German. It states that proper names used as common nouns (PUCs) come in three various semantic classes such as PUCs that indicate events, PUCs that indicate objects and PUCs that indicate persons. It focuses on the basic data particularly on the grammatical gender of PUCs in Belgian Dutch and German, and analyzes the possibility of a PF-deletion analysis for PUCs that will turn out to be effective for the German data, but not for the Belgian Dutch data. The study reveals that neither the PF-deletion analysis nor the empty noun analysis are applicable for Belgian Dutch PUCs and German person-denoting PUCs.