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Recent work on mood choice considers fine-grained semantic differences among desire predicates (notably, 'want' and 'hope') and their consequences for the distribution of indicative and subjunctive complement clauses. In that vein, this paper takes a close look at 'intend'. I show that cross-linguistically, 'intend' accepts nonfinite and subjunctive complements and rejects indicative complements. This fact poses difficulties for recent approaches to mood choice. Toward a solution, a broad aim of this paper is to argue that—while 'intend' is loosely in the family of desire predicates—it differs from 'want' and 'hope' in that it has a causative component, and this is relevant to its mood choice behavior, given that causative predicates also systematically reject indicative complements. More concretely, my analysis has three ingredients: (i) following related proposals in philosophy, intention reports have causally self-referential content; (ii) encoding causal self-reference requires abstraction over the complement clause's eventuality argument; and (iii) nonfinite and subjunctive clauses enable such abstraction but indicative clauses do not. Aside from causative predicates, independent support for the proposal comes from the syntax of belief-/intention-hybrid attitude predicates like 'decide' and 'convince', anankastic conditional antecedents, aspectual predicates, and memory and perception reports. Synthesizing this result with that of previous literature, the emergent generalization is that subjunctive mood occurs in attitude reports that involve either comparison or eventuality abstraction. Toward a unified theory of mood choice, I suggest that both comparison and eventuality abstraction represent departures from the clausal semantics of unembedded assertions and consequently that subjunctive mood signals such a departure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Balkan varieties of Turkic, particularly those on the periphery of the Turkic spread area in the region, such as Gagauz and West Rumelian Turkish, are commonly observed to have head-initial verb phrases. Based on a wide survey, this paper attempts a more precise description of the pattern of VP directionality across Balkan Turkic and shows that there is considerable variation in how prevalent VX order is, a pattern that turns out to be more complex than the previous descriptions suggest: Two spectrums of directionality can be discerned between XV and VX orders, contingent upon type of the dependent of the verb and dialect locale. The paper also explores the grammatical causes underlying this shift in constituent order. First, VX order seems to be dependent upon whether a clause is nominal or not. Nonfinite clauses of the nominal type have XV order across Balkan Turkic, while finite clauses and nonfinite clauses of the converbial type show differing degrees of VX order depending on type of dependent and geographical location. Second, VX order appears to be an outcome of verb movement to the left of the dependent in finite clauses and nonfinite clauses of the converbial type, rather than head parameter shift. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Alpha: Revista de Artes, Letras y Filosofía is the property of Universidad de Los Lagos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper is a reply to Bassi and Rasin (2018) on the treatment of sentences like [The gifted mathematician that you claim to be] should have solved this task without problems by Grosu and Krifka (2007), which was published in Linguistics and Philosophy. Grosu and Krifka provide an analysis of the de dicto interpretation in which the bracketed expression refers to an individual concept. Bassi and Rasin question this because equivalent expressions in Hebrew, in which the gap is rendered by a resumptive pronoun, do not exhibit the de dicto interpretation, but only the de re interpretation. We provide independent evidence that person-marked pronouns in post-copular position are incompatible with antecedents that denote individual concepts, thus explaining Bassi and Rasin's observation within Grosu and Krifka's framework. We furthermore point out two new problems for the analysis of Bassi and Rasin presented in the body of their article, which does not make use of individual concepts or of some alternative mechanism that can deal with substitutivity in opaque contexts. We also note that an alternative analysis they present in an appendix amounts to a notational variant of ours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The epistemic thesis is the thesis that a 'might' counterfactual like (1) has the same meaning as (2). (1) If Matt had gone to the parade, David might have gone to the parade. (2) Maybe, if Matt had gone to the parade, David would have gone to the parade. In this paper, I give a compositional semantics for 'might' counterfactuals that predicts the epistemic thesis. I offer a new theory of the counterfactual interpretation of the modal 'might' — the interpretation it receives in (1) — and I show that, when coupled with a plausible semantics for 'if' clauses, my theory validates the epistemic thesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper is concerned with the Polish construction introduced with the subordinating complementizer żeby. The construction is interesting for its mood properties, which have been subject of a long-standing debate in Polish linguistics. The paper explores the semantic range of the construction and illuminates its mood properties. More specifically, it argues that żeby clauses represent a subjunctive mood and as such should be distinguished from indicative and conditional constructions. This distinction is described in terms of Langacker's model of control and Givón's theory of semantic binding. It is argued that the żeby construction constitutes an intermediate category between indicative mood, which grants the speaker a high degree of control over a proposition described in the complement clause, on the one hand, and conditional mood, which situates a proposition outside the conceptualizer's dominion of control, on the other. The paper also highlights the iconic and metonymic motivation behind the distribution of żeby clauses in present-day Polish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Negation in languages is a phenomenon, which receives researchers' attention for a long period. Negation occurs on different type of clauses by which it shows to have morphological and syntactic changes over the structure of words, phrases and sentences. Verbs of imminenceare used sometimes to denote negation in verbal clauses in Arabic. ka:d is one of those verbs which carries the negation of the clause without using any negative particles. Saudi dialects use the verb baỌa to perform the same function. This paper discusses baỌa in verbal clauses illustrating its syntactic and semantic impact on the structure of the clauses. It requires the imperfective form of the verb to follow. Negating a clause, with the only negative particles ma: and/or la:, does not carry the negative sense because it is delivered through the use of baỌa. Thus, the negation of verbs of imminence does not require the presence of any negative particles. Otherwise, the positive meaning is delivered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a corpus-based study of the various forms and uses of clefts in Naija, the largest West-African English lexifier pidgincreole, spoken in Nigeria and its diaspora as a second language by close to 100 million speakers. The data on which this paper is based is taken from the 500,000 word ANR-NaijaSynCor corpus, consisting of 300 samples of spontaneous speech, recorded in 2017 in 13 different locations in Nigeria, from 330 different speakers of both sexes, of various ages, education levels, and geographic origins. The quantitative data is taken from a sub-section of 9,621 sentences (almost 150,000 tokens) that constitute a syntactic treebank mirroring the social and geographic sampling of the full corpus. Clefts, pseudo-clefts and reverse pseudo- clefts are examined. Four types of clefts are described: wey-clefts, bare clefts, double clefts and zero-copula clefts. The properties of those clefting patterns are represented using a UD-type annotation scheme named SUD for Surface-Syntactic Universal Dependencies. The quantitative analysis of the data and comparison with former descriptions of the language underline the massive domination of bare clefts, and the emergence, among these various patterns, of a relative pronoun nãĩ "who/which" used only with cleft constructions, while the relativiser wey is being abandoned and specialises as relative clause operator. Résumé: Cet article est une étude sur corpus des différentes formes et utilisations des clivées en naija, le plus grand pidgincreole à base lexicale anglaise d'Afrique de l'Ouest, parlé au Nigeria et dans sa diaspora comme deuxième langue par près de 100 millions de locuteurs. Les données sur lesquelles se fonde cet article proviennent du corpus ANR-NaijaSynCor de 500 000 mots, constitué de 300 échantillons de discours spontanés, enregistrés en 2017 dans 13 endroits différents au Nigeria, par 330 locuteurs des deux sexes, d'âges, de niveaux d'éducation et d'origines géographiques variés. Les données quantitatives sont tirées d'une sous-section de 9 621 phrases (près de 150 000 tokens) qui constituent un treebank reflétant l'échantillonnage social et géographique du corpus complet. L'aticle examine les clivées, pseudo-clivées et pseudo-clivées inversées. Quatre types de clivées sont décrits : les clivées en wey, les clivées nues, les double-clivées et les clivées à zéro-copule. Les propriétés de ces types de clivées sont représentées à l'aide d'un schéma d'annotation de type UD (Universal Dependencies) appelé SUD pour Surface-Syntactic Universal Dependencies. L'analyse quantitative des données et la comparaison avec les anciennes descriptions du langage soulignent la domination massive des clivées nues, et l'émergence, parmi ces différents modèles, d'un pronom relatif nãĩ "who/which" utilisé uniquement avec les constructions clivées, tandis que le wey relativisateur y est abandonné et se spécialise comme opérateur de subordonnées relatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the depictive secondary predication in the Turkish language with respect to its syntax and semantics and focuses on two issues: (i) theta role assignment and (ii) checking the case of the nominal argument as either the subject or object. This study proposes that depictive secondary predication structures include a depictive predicate whose function is to modify the subject or object argument of the main verb, and the depictive predicate is an adjunct of the main predicate, unlike resultative predicates which are complements. The study also proposes the syntactic derivation of the depictive structures to be explainable under the hybrid small clause analysis, according to which the small clause adjoins to the verb phrase (VP). The subject position of the small clause is filled with a pronominal determiner phrase (PRO), which takes the theta role of the depictive predicate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines switch reference (SR) in A'ingae, an understudied isolate language from Amazonian Ecuador. We present a theoretically informed survey of SR, identifying three distinct uses of switch reference: in clause chaining, adverbial clauses, and so-called 'bridging' clause linkage. We describe the syntactic and semantic properties of each use in detail, the first such description for A'ingae, showing that the three constructions differ in important ways. While leaving a full syntactic analysis to future work, we argue that these disparate properties preclude a syntactic account that unifies these three constructions to the exclusion of other environments without SR. Conversely, while a full semantic account is also left to future work, we suggest that a unified semantic account in terms of discourse coherence principles appears more promising. In particular, we propose that switch reference in A'ingae occurs in all and only the constructions that are semantically restricted to non-structuring coordinating coherence relations in the sense of Segmented Discourse Representation Theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of narrative is very fundamental in sharing the sense of the world. By using Labov's (1972) analysis for narratives of personal experience, this paper will attempted to analyze one of the celebrated narrative on internet named My Mom Had Only One eye, in light of the following structural elements: (1) abstract, (2) orientation, (3) evaluations, (4) narrative clauses, (5) result and (6) coda. This paper will also determine the validity of the narrative selected for analysis on the basis of Labov's model of structural analysis, hence proving the work and effectiveness of the narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a computational approach to Arabic syntax. The approach uses the Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) framework. Semantic networks and frames were used to handle computational semantics using lambda notation. This was implemented in Prolog using Definite Clause Grammar (DCG) as a formalism for analyzing and generating syntactic structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a focus on the properties of subject-finite verb inversion and XP fronting in three relaxed V2 languages, namely Cimbrian, Ladin and Mòcheno, this paper aims to widen and refine our understanding of relaxed V2 languages, i.e. languages in which the V2 property should be understood in a technical sense as obligatory V-to-C movement, not as a simple description referring to linearisation (Benincà 2006, 2013; Ledgeway 2016). It will be shown that inversion differs across relaxed V2 languages in two ways. In a first subtype, inversion is not associated with any marked pragmatic interpretation of the lexical subject and the subject appears in an A position in the IP area: this type is instantiated by Old Italian (Benincà 2006, Poletto 2014). A second option, instantiated by the languages considered in this paper, is that the lexical subject receives a pragmatically marked interpretation which is encoded in a Functional Projection (FP) in the vP periphery (Belletti 2004, Poletto 2006). This paper confirms that V3/V4 word orders involve the presence of a double articulation for foci and wh-elements, which appear in different positions in the CP layer in relaxed V2 languages (Poletto 2002, Wolfe 2015 a,b). It also contributes to our understanding of the syntax of topics in relaxed V2 languages by showing that (i) topics can be moved to CP and (ii) the movement option is not restricted to main clauses lacking an XP in the left periphery; it also occurs in interrogative clauses (unlike in the relaxed V2 varieties considered in Walkden 2014, 2015). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mental models theory has shown that the logical connectives do not always refer to the interpretation assigned to them by standard logic. Several papers authored by its proponents clearly reveal that in the cases of the conditional and disjunction. In this paper, following a methodology of analysis akin to that of the mental models theory, I try to check whether or not the same applies to conjunction, and my conclusion is that, indeed, this last connective can be linked to any of the sixteen possible interpretations that a logical operator relating two clauses can have. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Mandarin Chinese, there exists such adverbial clause as "Li Zhen cuicuide zhale yipan huashengmi" (Li Zhen fried a dish of peanuts crispy), in which the adverbial modifies the predicate verb but semantically orients to the object. This kind adverbial clause can be formulated as "NPs+APo+De+VP+NPo=NP+VP+O and O is characterized by the adverbial". The object-oriented adverbial clause is a mismatched syntax-semantics phenomenon, with the mapping between form and meaning distorted. Many previous studies have proposed not fully identical analyses for the syntactic distribution, pragmatic motivation and constraints. However, few researches have made syntactic and semantic analyses from the perspective of event structure in the framework of formal linguistics, which leaves wide space for further study. Event structure theory is adopted in this paper to make analysis of object-oriented adverbial clauses in event semantics perspective. This paper aims to examine the syntactic structure from the perspective of event semantic structure and explore how event structure is represented in syntactic structure of object-oriented adverbial clause. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One construction that has traditionally been neglected in the typological study of clause-linkage is that built on 'let alone' (e.g., the baby can't even talk, let alone walk). The present study explores this construction in a convenience sample of 47 languages. There are languages in which 'let alone' clauses appear not only with a clause-linking device, but also with an optional standard negative marker. Moreover, there are languages in which standard negation is forbidden in the 'let alone' clause. Here it is shown that optional standard negation may be semantically empty or may have an expressive-evaluative layer of semantic interpretation. On the other hand, standard negation tends to be forbidden in 'let alone' clauses appearing with semantically monofunctional clause-linking devices. The paper further investigates whether the analysis advanced for 'let alone' clauses can be generalized to other semantically negative adverbial clauses: 'without V-ing', 'instead of V-ing', and 'before' clauses. It is demonstrated that in these latter adverbial clauses, standard negation may be forbidden or optional. Interestingly, unlike the situation with 'let alone' clauses, there are languages in which standard negation may be obligatory in the 'without V-ing', 'instead of V-ing', and 'before' clause. In this scenario, the adverbial relations are compositionally encoded by a standard negative marker together with a general marker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Supervaluationism is one of the most discussed approaches to the semantics of future tense sentences in a branching time. In this paper, we consider the criticism advanced by Malpass against Supervaluationism. This criticism relies on the fact that supervaluationists must accept as supertrue disjunctions whose disjuncts are not only supertrue—which supervaluationists are ready to acknowledge—but also not satisfiable. In order to show this, Malpass proposes a formula, FF1, which shows the existence of a satisfiable disjunction with unsatisfiable disjuncts in supervaluationist models. In reply, we show that formula FF1 cannot be expressed within a model (whether Ockhamist or supervaluationist) because it quantifies on models. It can be correctly characterised only within a meta‐model that has the resources to quantify on various models. However, once that is done, FF1 is, for the advocates of Supervaluationism, no more demanding than other disjunctions because it just generalises at the meta‐theoretical level what supervaluationists already acknowledge at the theoretical level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores textual meanings realised in the theme resources of a Vietnamese lower secondary school science textbook - Sinh há»?c 8 (Biology 8). The theoretical framework employed for analysis is Systemic Functional Linguistics. The data for analysis is ten texts selected randomly from the textbook. The units of analysis are major independent clause simplexes and hypotactic clause complexes which have a subordinate clause in initial position. The research has brought to light a number of significant findings of which eight stand out. First, all five types of general Themes: simple Theme, multiple Theme, clausal Theme, unmarked Theme, and marked Theme are employed in the texts. Second, of the four mood function Themes: Subject Theme, Predicator Theme, Complement Theme, and Adjunct Theme, Subject Theme takes up the largest proportion. Third, of the three mood function simple Themes: simple Subject Theme, simple Predicator Theme and simple Adjunct Theme, simple Subject Theme has the highest number. Fourth, between textual + topical Theme and interpersonal + topical Theme, textual + topical Theme predominates. Fifth, of the three mood type simple Subject Theme: simple Subject Theme in declarative clause, simple Subject Theme in imperative clause and simple Subject Theme in interrogative clause, simple Subject Theme in declarative clause accounts for the highest number. Sixth, between simple Predicator Theme and multiple Predicator Theme, simple Predicator Theme has a much higher proportion. Seventh, of the nine types of simple Adjunct Theme examined, six are found in the texts, among which spatial location Adjunct Theme takes the highest number. And Eighth, Complement Theme, multiple Adjunct Theme, textual + interpersonal + topical Theme, interpersonal + topical/Subject Theme, matter Adjunct Theme, role Adjunct Theme, and stance Adjunct Theme are not found in the texts. It is concluded that Vietnamese textbook writers have employed quite a variety of theme resources to construct textual meanings and to create coherence and continuity of their texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Boletín de Filología is the property of Universidad de Chile, Facultad de Filosofia y Humanidades and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper investigates a range of facts exhibiting reconstruction effects. We consider facts concerning anaphor binding, variable binding, quantifier scope and binding condition C in A-bar-movement structures (questions, relative clauses and topicalization) as well as VP fronting in English and Chinese. Our findings provide strong support to the copy theory of movement and identify some areas that need further refinement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies referential accessibility marking in predicative and specificational clauses, in particular the ones in which the roles of 'description' and 'variable' are realised by an indefinite NP (e.g. He is a baker vs. One of his talents is pastry). While the indefinite NP in the two clause types has been studied in detail, little is known about how the other two roles – of 'describee' and 'value' – are typically realised. This study, therefore, examines the choice of referring expressions for the items filling these roles, as an index of their retrievability and degree of accessibility. The analysis is based on 750 corpus examples from spoken and written British English. Moreover, since specificational clauses allow for the value to be either complement or subject, this study also provides insight into what may motivate the choice for one pattern or the other. Significant differences were found between describees and values, as well as between value-subjects and value-complements. These findings are interpreted as indicative of different discourse functions of the three constructions. While predicative clauses typically elaborate familiar information, specificational clauses serve a broader discourse-organising function: starting a new discourse-topic, pivoting from one topic to another, or summarising prior propositions as concluding a topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Borealis: An International Journal of Hispanic Linguistics is the property of Nordic Council for Reindeer Husbandry Research and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper investigates whether differences in grammar affect the production of discourse relations. We report the results of two story continuation experiments on speakers of two typologically unrelated languages, English and Korean, and in two different discourse genres, monologues (Experiment 1) and conversations (Experiment 2), focusing on the contrast between the explanation discourse relation and the result discourse relation. Since the grammar of clause linkage in Korean, but not English, disfavors a backward causal order (explanation relation), we predicted that Korean speakers are less likely to produce EXPLANATION continuations in MONOLOGUES than English speakers. We also predicted that this difference disappears in conversation, as questions that can be uttered in conversations are not subject to the same constraints on clause linkage in Korean. The results confirmed our predictions. The effect of language on the production of discourse relations in monologue suggests that LINGUISTIC STRUCTURES can affect speakers' discourse expectation and production, while the absence of language effect in conversation suggests that this language effect is not due to differences in the way speakers causally relate events or to conceptual or cultural differences in preferences for iconic discourse between English and Korean speakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a novel argument for the Matching Analysis of relative clauses. The argument is based on antipronominal contexts in German. Antipronominal contexts are syntactic environments that require lexical DPs and therefore bar pronouns. It is argued that the behavior of relative clauses in antipronominal contexts in German points to two conclusions. First, relative pronouns contain a phonologically invisible NP that is identical to the NP contained in the head noun. Second, the two NPs are not connected via movement. Since only the Matching Analysis takes the two NPs to be base-generated, it is concluded that the Matching Analysis represents the correct structure for relative clauses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses V3-patterns with a sentence-initial adverbial clause in Standard Dutch (StD) and West-Flemish (WF), which appear to violate the V2 restriction which normally regulates word order in these languages. V3- patterns occur in both languages; they can be interpreted as complying with the V2 constraint provided they are analyzed as the result of merging a regular root clause with V2 order with an extra-sentential adverbial clause. The paper shows that the distribution of V3-patterns is slightly wider in WF than in StD: StD requires that the root clause which combines with the extra-sentential constituent either exhibits subject-verb inversion (XP-V-S) or, in the case of subject initial V2 clauses, that the subject has a distinguished informationstructural status such as contrastive focus/topic; WF allows V3-structures more freely, regardless of whether they display subject-verb inversion and regardless of the informational-structural status of the subject. The analysis takes as its point of departure the earlier claim that V2-languages can be symmetric in the sense that the finite verb always leaves the TP domain and occupies the highest head position in the root clause, the complementizer position C in the traditional generative analysis, or asymmetric in the sense that the position of the finite verb varies in that it occupies the C-position when the root clause exhibits subject-verb inversion or a lower TP internal tense position (T) in root clauses without inversion. The hypothesis is that V3-patterns with a sentenceinitial adverbial clause are only possible if the initial adverbial clause attains a local relation with the finite verb, and that this requires the finite verb to be in the (higher) C-position. By assuming that StD is an asymmetric V2-language while WF is a symmetric V2-language the variation with respect to the distribution of V3-patterns in these languages can be captured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents data on the argument marking system of Sumi, a Tibeto-Burman language of Nagaland, and examines the possible diachronic sources of differential A and S marking in the language. In Sumi, there is a two-way contrast for A arguments (=no vs. =ye) and a three-way contrast for S arguments (=no vs. =ye vs. unmarked). I examine the triggers of such differential marking, looking at semantic factors associated with transitivity, as well as pragmatic factors associated with information structure. In transitive clauses, =no is more commonly found on A arguments, where it marks a semantic agent, while =ye on A arguments signals a lack of agentivity. In intransitive clauses, =no on S arguments marks contrastive focus, while =ye marks a contrastive topic, or sometimes continuing reference. Based on available synchronic data from Sumi and related languages, I examine the possibility that one source for the marker =ye is an old locative marker. I also examine potential sources for the marker =no, which has cognates across the language family that function as agentives or ergatives, as well as instrumentals and ablatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kiswahili has been presumed to be an SVO language by many scholars (Polome, 1967; Myachina, 1981; Vitale, 1981; Habwe & Karanja, 2004; Jerono 2012, etc.). However, a closer analysis of the Kiswahili clause tends to discount this widely held view. What are normally referred to as subjects and objects in Kiswahili are not subjects and objects per se but they may have other functions. The real subjects and objects in Kiswahili are the incorporated subjects and incorporated objects. This paper uses clause chaining to argue for the basic word order in Kiswahili as being V(O) and not SVO. Clause chaining is the process of linking together many clauses in which it is only the main (independent) clause that is inflected for tense, aspect and mood (TAM) while all the other (i.e. dependent) clauses lack these inflections. The dependent clauses cannot stand on their own but the main (independent) clauses can. The dependent clauses rely on the independent clauses for their tense or aspect and mood markers and hence the term used to refer to them, i.e. dependent clauses. The main clause, which controls the dependent clauses is normally referred to as the controlling clause. Clause chaining, a feature which is traditionally associated with SOV languages, is also found in Kiswahili clauses, a language usually referred to as an SVO language. In this paper, clause chaining, a pragmatic principle, is used to argue for pragmatic word order in Kiswahili as well as to illustrate that Kiswahili is not an SVO language but rather it is a V(O) language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Catalan Journal of Linguistics is the property of Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

A VP, AP, or NP in a predicate can undergo a clause-internal movement in Mandarin Chinese (e.g., Ta yaomai shuqu 'He wants to buy books', Tashoude hen 'He is very thin', and Ta shibendanyi ge 'He is a fool'). The pfmoving element must be predicative, and the landing site must be lower than any functional element in the IP-domain of the clause. The paper shows that there is a formal dependency between a low functional head and the predicate in the clausal spine. The exponents of the functional head for stative predicates are different from those for non-stative predicates, and the predicative category that is attracted by the functional head carries a stativity feature. Similar predicate raising can be obligatory and can land above a subject if the latter remains in situ in some languages. Moreover, the stativity contrasts of predicates are morphologically visible in some languages. The paper severs the syntactic licensing of predicates from the syntactic licensing of other parts of a clause, arguing that while subjects need their formal features such as Case to be licensed, predicates need their stativity feature to be licensed. In both cases, licensing of an element can be achieved by either its relation to a local c–commanding functional head or the movement of an element that bears the relevant feature to the Spec of the functional head. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the distinct functions associated with the copula morpheme and their distribution across Sinitic languages. Based on fieldwork on five Sinitic languages, an empirical generalization will be presented regarding the scope and variation of copular multifunctionality. Specifically, language-specific variation is witnessed in topic and conditional marking as well as verum marking. Conversely, it is found that Sinitic languages converge on employing the copula in constructions expressing phrasal and clausal level focus. The paper further explores whether these copular constructions should receive a uniform syntax, or should be conceived of as having a set of underlaid heterogeneous structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present a novel test for diagnosing head movement across languages, based on the availability of X-stranding XP-ellipsis. As we argue, X-stranding XP-ellipsis phenomena should exist in languages where XP-ellipsis and X-movement out of XP are both available (as is the case in V-stranding VP-ellipsis in Hebrew or Portuguese, see Goldberg and references cited there). This has the effect that if a language has XP-ellipsis but lacks X-stranding XP-ellipsis, X-movement out of XP must be lacking in the language. We show the application of this test in the nominal domain, for the particular case of Spanish, one of the languages for which N-raising out of the NP has been proposed in the literature (Bosque and Picallo ). Spanish indeed has productive instances of NP-ellipsis, but lacks N-stranding NP-ellipsis. Carefully ruling out other reasons for the lack of N-standing NP-ellipsis, the paper shows that it can only be due to the lack of N-movement out of NP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on the results of a corpus-based study that deals with a hitherto neglected kind of formal asymmetry between active and passive clauses involving two-place prepositional verbs like agree. These contrasts are found in the context of two satisfied conditions: a) The preposition in question is omissible, which holds for agree in present-day British English as in They agreed (on/upon/to/with) the proposal. b) Unlike active uses, passivization of relevant prepositional options necessarily results in preposition stranding as in The proposal has been agreed on/upon/to/with. It is shown that - in both passive and active clauses - stranded prepositions tend to be omitted more often than non-stranded ones. Unlike the passive, the active provides only a restricted range of contexts compatible with the potential use of stranded prepositions. What is more, these environments are relatively infrequent with most verbs. This is what largely explains the active-passive asymmetries with the verbs explored in this paper. Crucially, however, stranded prepositions can in several cases be demonstrated to be more strongly avoided in the passive than the active, thus mirroring their cross-linguistic distribution (see e. g. Maling and Zaenen 1985; Truswell 2009). The voice contrast is found to be independent of diachronic changes resulting in either the loss or the acquisition of the prepositions involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In research on intra-sentential pronominal anaphora resolution in null subject languages, it has been argued that null pronouns tend to be biased towards subject antecedents, whereas overt pronouns tend to prefer object antecedents, as predicted by Carminati's 'Position of the Antecedent Hypothesis'. However, these studies have mainly focused on only one of the two possible clause orders (main-subordinate or subordinate-main), which have not been overtly contrasted. This paper investigates the effects of clause order on the interpretation of third-person subject pronouns in globally ambiguous intra-sentential contexts by 49 native speakers of Spanish. The results of an acceptability judgment task explicitly comparing both clause orders indicate that relative clause order is a key factor affecting the interpretation of pronouns: while a preference of overt pronouns for object antecedents holds across clause orders, null pronouns show a bias towards subject antecedents only in subordinate-main sequences. These findings refine the Position of the Antecedent Hypothesis predictions by restricting them to subordinate-main complex sentences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to describe the available strategies for coding purpose relations in Mbya, focusing on their semantico-pragmatic distribution. According to Dooley, Mbya Guarani presents two main different strategies involved in the coding of purpose relations: aguã nominalizations and vy-dependent clauses, and among the latter a motion-cum-purpose (MCP) construction subtype is included. These strategies differ in regard to the semantic class of the main verb, referential continuity between the dependent and the main unit, and the fact that the dependent form can be negated independently from the main clause—thus, establishing different degrees of integration within the main unit in each case—, but overlap in same-subject contexts that involve a directed motion verb. However, according to our data, speakers do not use these constructions interchangeably, whereas aguã nominalizations portray an intended hypothetical outcome of the event or state-of-affair (hereafter SoA) expressed in the matrix clause; vy-dependent clauses and motion-cum-purpose constructions consistently trigger a result interpretation, entailing that the intended SoA was successfully accomplished. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I sketch the CP layer in main and embedded clauses in the history of English. The Modern English main clause is not as easily expandable as the Old English one, but the reverse is true in the subordinate clause, where Modern English has a more flexible embedded CP than Old English. I focus on the developments of the embedded CP. It has been claimed that Old English lacks an embedded split CP and therefore lacks embedded V2 and a host of other embedded root phenomena. I show this to be true for complements to both assertive and non-assertive verbs. In contrast, the Modern English matrix verb has an effect on the strength of the C-position. Assertive verbs in Modern English allow main clause phenomena in subordinate clauses whereas non-assertives typically do not. The main point of the paper is to chronicle the changes that 'stretch' the embedded clause and the changing role of main verbs. It is descriptive rather than explanatory, e.g., in terms of changes in phase-head status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper proposes a new type of control configuration: perspectival control. This involves control of a non-argument PRO that combines with a directive modal operator in the Mood domain. This PRO encodes the individual to whom the public commitments associated with the modal are anchored, and its presence can be detected in the syntax through a subject obviation effect. The empirical focus of the paper are Slovenian directive clauses (imperatives and subjunctives), but the analysis is shown to also have implications for analyses of other languages, as well as theories of directive clauses and the representation of discourse-related information in the syntax. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sets forth a proposal for deriving the emphatic particle Ved. áha from an obsolete present form of the verb ā́ha ‘says’. The suggested verbal origin accounts for unusual syntactic features of the particle, most notably the synchronically unmotivated accentuation of the verb in a main clause containing áha. This paper sets forth a proposal for deriving the emphatic particle Ved. áha from an obsolete present form of the verb ā́ha ‘says’. The suggested verbal origin accounts for unusual syntactic features of the particle, most notably the synchronically unmotivated accentuation of the verb in a main clause containing áha. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Albanian speakers and learners using the roman grammar terminology are facing a conceptual discrepancy and difficulty in translating the word 'clause' in their native language, considering its Anglo-Saxon terminology origin. In fact, the only word holding the meaning of the sentence in Albanian syntax is the word Fjalia, and consecutively there a Simple, Extended and Composed Sentence. Till here things are similar and very clear, but the troubles of the students begin when they meet the word 'clause', which is formally bigger than the English phrase or French Syntagma, but smaller than the Sentence, as described above. Both clause and sentence have the common feature of having within it a lexical verb, which meets the required criteria for being a syntactic category bigger than phrase. But one of them is called clause, even though the clause must be a part of a sentence in the same time, because clause cannot stay alone and doesn't end by an orthographic stop point, as the sentence does. On the other hand a Simple sentence my have only one lexical verb, together with the subject, and the Extended sentence may have only one lexical verb in the function of the predicater, plus at least one of other sentence elements, whereas a Sentence must have more than one lexical verb, which means it must consist of two or more clauses, or otherwise called it must be composed, either compound or complex. Mathematically said, we must deal with two clauses in order to call it a sentence, even though the sentence may consist of one lexical verb in Simple and Extended sentences, but this is not the case with the clause. Therefore, there are difficulties of translation because of their common semantic meaning on the one hand and their different orthographic and syntactical use on the other hand. How to translate the word Clause which is something in the source language that doesn't exist even as a phenomenon in the target language?! We may invent a name according to the way of use, but it cannot be equivalent for the native language of the foreigner. We may paraphrase it and explain with other words, but not with a specific one, even though there have been some attempts, like "sifjali', or "fjalizë", but this is not good enough. Or we may just borrow the word and naturalize it phonetically as Klauzë, but even then we cannot naturalize it semantically? What to do then? This is in fact the challenge of this paper, hoping to succeed, but not necessarily. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Alpha: Revista de Artes, Letras y Filosofía is the property of Universidad de Los Lagos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

How is the (in)-dependence (or finiteness) of a clause identified in a language that has no tense, case, or agreement morphology, such as Chinese? This paper investigates the control verb construction and the generic sentential subject construction, bringing to light the special forms and interpretations of the subjects of the dependent clauses in the constructions. The special properties are not found in the subjects of independent clauses. Therefore, contrasts between dependent and independent clauses are attestable in the language. The paper also proposes a derived predication analysis of the interpretation patterns of embedded empty subjects of the language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper analyzes the mood alternation between Spanish conditional clauses introduced by the particle si ‘if’, on the one hand, and by conditional conjunctions such as a condición de que ‘on the condition that’, con tal de que ‘provided that’ and siempre y cuando ‘as long as’, on the other hand. Situated within the theoretical perspective of Cognitive Grammar, the paper argues that the conceptual content of the linguistic unit that introduces the conditional clause determines mood choice. In particular, it is claimed that the indicative mood in si-clauses reflects the conceptualizer’s reasoning about the causal relation between two events. By contrast, the occurrence of the subjunctive mood in other conditional clauses is analyzed as a natural effect of the condition expressed by the conditional conjunction. The analysis further shows that the mood alternation can be explained by the concept of dominion. The particle si introduces a clause that is located within the conceptualizer’s epistemic dominion, whereas other conditional conjunctions introduce clauses that are located outside the dominion of effective control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existence of an asseverative function for the particle kî in Biblical Hebrew has been frequently debated due to the fact that this use of kî would occur in matrix clauses, while kî generally forms subordinate clauses of one kind or another (temporal or causal clauses, for example). In practice, discussions of asseverative kî have focused on attestations of the particle that are unusual or not clearly subordinate. In this paper, I reanalyse these exceptional uses of kî as examples in which kî acts as a nominalizer in a matrix clause, forming a construction that in other languages is often termed stand-alone nominalization. This analysis extends a model for nominalization in Biblical Hebrew that I have applied to 'ăšer in an earlier paper, a typological model that derives from a recent, wide-ranging study of nominalization in non-Western languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Borealis: An International Journal of Hispanic Linguistics is the property of Nordic Council for Reindeer Husbandry Research and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Quoted clauses in which an intention is declared are cross-linguistically known to develop into clauses that directly ascribe an intention to their subjects, and further into clauses that express the imminence of an event. In Khalkha Mongolian, several quotative constructions based on the quotative verb ge- have come to ascribe intention and then developed further semantic extensions: (i) The pattern -x ge-, featuring a fossilized Middle Mongol future-referring participial suffix, is used in a group of constructions that cover the semantic space between future time reference, intention (initially of the current speaker), and imminence. (ii) Quotational clauses ending in a particular tense-aspect-evidentiality suffix (including -n) and subordinated by a linking converb ge-ž/ge-ed are often systematically ambiguous between quotation and their purposive, causal and concessive extensions. Noun phrases with similar properties additionally allow for (dedicational-)benefactive and (allocational-)functive uses. (iii) The pattern -n ge-, which in other Central Mongolic varieties resembles -x ge-, conveys the speaker's disbelief and anger about an actor's willful deeds when used in echo questions marked by -n=AA. Based on conversational corpus data, this paper tries to provide a comprehensive picture of Khalkha Mongolian constructions in which the speaker's awareness of the subject's speech or thoughts is reinterpreted as attributing intentions and their derived notions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that Mandarin bei passives can be licensed by accomplishment events. It is observed that certain gapless bei passives have neither a syntactic gap nor an indefinite and hence cannot be accounted for by the A'-movement analysis or the binding analysis. This paper shows that if the complement clause of a bei passive denotes an accomplishment event, the bei passive can be licensed even if it is gapless or doesn't contain an indefinite. It is further suggested that such passives, just like other types of bei passives, have an operator-variable structure in the complement clause. In these gapless bei passives an empty operator Op binds the embedded tense and abstracts over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents a comparative study of the texts called "editorials" from English and Punjabi newspapers published in India in the light of Systemic Functional concept of "Thematic Progression" and considerations for genre and coherence. "Thematic progression" refers to the way a text moves forward by creating links or breaks in the way information at the "Theme" position is presented in each subsequent clause. Daneš defines thematic progression as "the choice and ordering of utterance themes, their mutual concatenation and hierarchy, as well as their relationship to the hyper-themes of the superior text units (such as paragraph, chapter...), to the whole text and to the situation" 1974:114). While this paper draws on the work and categories introduced by Daneš and some later researchers (Xu 1982; Huang 1985; Hu 1994; Zu 1995; McCabe 1999; Hawes 2001; Li 2009; Dubois 2009), it introduces the concept of "chunked progression", which Danešian model and the work by others does not account for, suggesting that the whole text cannot progress as an entity and therefore coherence in texts does not rely solely on the number of theme choices in a text. As new themes come into focus and progress, the progression type may remain the same or vary but the focus of information changes leading to chunks of information which have their own progression different from or similar to other chunks. These chunks are a useful tool in predicting the focus and coherence of a text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the morphological make-up of the converbial ending - mAdAn in Turkish adverbial clauses denoting temporal antecedence (beforeclauses) and negative manner (without-clauses). In clauses denoting temporal antecedence, the converbial ending is optionally followed by the postposition önce 'before'. The argument presented in the paper is that the converbial ending -mAdAn contains a negative marker -mA only in clauses where it is not followed by önce, while when the postposition follows, it contains the homophonous nominalizing suffix instead. Evidence for the claim comes on the one hand from the fact that -mAdAn önce clauses do not license negative polarity items (but -mAdAn clauses do), and on the other, from the fact that - mAdAn önce clauses allow an addition of a negation marker to the converb (but -mAdAn clauses do not). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Linguistic Research 35(2), 275-304. This paper investigates the clausal nature of Korean Right-Dislocation Constructions (RDCs) and reconsiders recent extant (non-)uniform analyses of RDCs. Since Korean is a pro-drop language, most of the literature on Korean RDCs assumes the preverbal empty category as pro or a trace out of movement in the constructions. However, recent literature has shown that null arguments can also be derived via argument ellipsis (e.g. Sakamoto 2016). The paper identifies the categorial statuses of preverbal empty categories and demonstrates similarities and differences between gapped and gapless RDCs that Ko (2016) and Ahn and Cho (2016, 2017) do not observe. It argues that a non-uniform analysis is most compatible to account for the distribution of empty categories of RDCs. The proposed analysis receives support form novel evidence based on (non-)parallelisms between RDCs and fragment answers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues (a) that the bı̌ comparative construction in Mandarin Chinese is a form of clausal comparative and (b) that Mandarin Chinese lacks abstraction over degree variables. Beck et al. (2004) propose that languages may vary in whether or not they allow for abstraction over degree variables through movement. In previous work, comparatives with clausal standards have been uniformly analyzed cross-linguistically as involving A‾-movement of a degree operator, and are thereby predicted to not occur in languages without degree abstraction. The paper shows that clausal comparison without degree abstraction is not only theoretically possible but attested, contributing to the cross-linguistic typology of degree constructions. Along the way, I detail the syntactic derivation of bı̌ comparatives and the obligatory ellipsis operation (comparative deletion) in their derivation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines disjunctive clauses marked with o… o ‘either… or’ in Spanish with a view to demonstrating that, in contrast to conventional analyses, o… o-clauses are actually cosubordinate: o… o-clauses are [+dependent, ‒embedded], they generally share clausal operators and they often denote an episode or a sequence of events showing some sort of continuity in space as well as participants. To this end, this paper will describe subordinate and coordinate clauses in accordance with several tests and will go on to outline the properties of o… o-clauses, focusing in particular on their similarities and differences with respect to coordinate and subordinate clauses. Finally, it will describe why o… o-clauses would be better classified as examples of clausal cosubordination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]