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This chapter elaborates on two case studies in structural variation to illustrate how the comparison of closely-related grammatical systems fuels research questions on general theoretical issues. Our first case study regards subject clitics in central Romance dialects. Subject clitics have been studied extensively in the past decades, but they still raise several questions concerning the nature of null subject languages. Analogously, there is a huge literature on the selection of perfective auxiliaries – the second case history in our chapter – and, as in the case of subject clitics, lesser-known non-standard dialects display a kaleidoscope of auxiliation options, whose rationalization poses fascinating analytical challenges and yields insights into basic issues of linguistic theory. The core question raised by our case studies regards the modelling of linguistic diversity: do the above phenomena result from a finite set of discrete parameters or emerge from random language-specific options? We argue that the otherwise ‘hyperastronomical’ number of possible grammars is aptly constrained by syntactic factors, although inflectional morphology – which syntax cannot control entirely – may have a role in the realization of specific auxiliary or subject clitic forms in each dialect and for each person.

The word order in a phrase such asall John's friends, in which a universal quantifier is immediately followed by a genitive, is perfectly grammatical in Dutch but unacceptable in German. This article shows that there are three explanations for this difference between the two closely related languages. First, in German, the Saxon Genitive is a true case assigned in Spec, NP. In contrast, in Dutch and English, genitive case cannot be assigned in Spec, NP without a preposition. The Saxon Genitive in these languages is comparable to a possessive adjective that originates as the head of PossP and moves to D. Second, in a definite DP in a Germanic language, either D or Spec, DP must be occupied; if one of these positions is overtly occupied, and if genitive case has already been assigned, the movement of a genitive phrase to D or Spec, DP is unmotivated and causes ungrammaticality. Third, there is evidence that the-einflection on the universal quantifieralle‘all’ in German and Dutch has the characteristics of a determiner.*

Third-person present singular verb inflection in Early Modern English : New evidence from speech-related texts

In order to understand the characteristics of inflectional paradigms in the most systematic way possible, it will frequently be useful to draw upon the assumptions of canonical typology (Corbett 2005, 2009, Brown et al. 2013). The strategy of this approach to typology is (a) to identify the dimensions of possible cross-linguistic variation in a given phenomenon and the logical endpoints of these dimensions; and (b) to situate canonical types at the extremes of these dimensions, calibrating attested phenomena according to the degree and direction of their deviation from these canonical types. By postulating the notion of a canonical inflectional paradigm, one can describe different kinds of paradigmatic phenomena as involving different kinds of deviation from this canonical ideal. In Section 2.1, I discuss the notion of canonical inflection as originally characterized by Corbett 2009; this provides a basis for the narrower notion of a canonical inflectional paradigm, whose characteristics I discuss individually in Section 2.2 and summarize in Section 2.3. Canonical typology and canonical inflection I take the notion of canonical inflection proposed by Corbett 2009 as a starting point for defining the canonical inflectional paradigm. The characteristics that Corbett associates with canonical inflection involve both a comparison of contrasting cells belonging to the same paradigm and a comparison of corresponding cells across paradigms (of the same category). The three relevant comparisons involve (i) the morphotactics of word forms, (ii) a lexeme's expression as a stem, and (iii) the inflectional exponents of a word form's morphosyntactic properties. Consider first the comparison of cells belonging to a single paradigm. In instances of canonical inflection, the word forms realizing a paradigm's cells all have the same morphotactic structure. The declensional paradigm of Turkish adam ‘man’ in Table 2.1 exemplifies this characteristic: every word form in this paradigm has the structure [Stem – ( number ) – ( case )], where number and case are suffixal expressions of number and case and where the parentheses reflect the absence of overt number marking in the singular and the absence of overt case marking in the nominative. Besides having the same structure, all of the inflected word forms realizing a particular lexeme canonically exhibit the same stem; for example, all of the forms in Table 2.1 exhibit the stem adam .

This paper sets out to identify the categories underlying Irish verbal inflection and to explain why they have their observed morphological and semantic properties. Assuming that the semantic range of a tense is a function of the whole clause, it derives the tenses of Irish from three syntactic features. Their basic value and position in the clause, along with that of other independently justified formatives, determines the attested range of interpretations for each tense, while the way they are spelled out determines the observed morphological patterns. Since the analysis of verbal categories is based on their syntactic realization, the same explanation accounts for the paradigmatic structure of Irish conjugation and for various syntagmatic phenomena of contextual allomorphy. A language-specific investigation thus claims a broader theoretical significance as an exploration of the interconnected workings of syntax, morphology, and semantics.

This article focuses on the behaviour of negation and clitics in the context of French imperatives. Standard descriptions contrast positive Fais-le ! (with enclisis) with negative (Ne) le fais pas ! (with proclisis). I adopt a view of imperatives in terms of a pragmatic irrealis mood feature associated with Rizzi's (1997) exploded CP and defective/impoverished morphology which allows inflection and irrealis mood features to be checked on a single functional head. Thus, positive imperatives can check all their grammatical features before merger of any clitics, which (following Shlonsky, 2004) will therefore be enclitic. The presence of negation, when realised as a grammatical feature on an (overt or null) functional head within the clausal trunk, prevents this from happening because negation intervenes between the relevant inflection and mood features in the universal hierarchy underlying the Rizzi/Cinque exploded CP/IP. Outside cliticisation contexts, the difference has no surface impact: Viens ! vs. (Ne) viens pas ! In cliticisation contexts, in contrast, there is a surface difference: negative imperatives cannot check all their inflectional features at the point at which clitics are merged, and clitics will not therefore be enclitic. Regionally/stylistically marked forms like Fais-le pas !, in which proclisis and negation co-occur, must be deemed to have a radically different structure, with no negative feature projected within the inflectional domain. Such forms are argued to be a natural (and therefore expected) innovation within Jespersen's cycle of diachronic development.

Introduction In this chapter we give an overview of the main functions of clitics. Most clitics are straightforward function words, and so their functions are virtually the same as the functions of inflectional morphology and of fullform function words generally across languages. We will summarize the major functions, concentrating on broadly verbal properties, clausal properties (which are similar to the verbal properties), nominal properties and ‘other’ properties. We briefly illustrate the parity of function between clitics and inflections by pointing up instances of inflection which parallel the clitics we have discussed. One of the reasons why this comparison is important is because inflections are generally thought to arise in historical language change through a stage of cliticization. Although the parallels between clitics and inflections are close, there are one or two differences in patterning, too. One important class of words which often become clitics is adverbials, with meanings such as here, there, then, now, as well as still, yet, already, never , and many others. These tend not to be grammaticalized as inflections. Similarly, many languages have discourse particles which take the form of clitics. Discourse particles can be thought of as a special class of adverb which have the function of helping the speaker manage the structure of the conversation (examples are given below in Section 2.6.3). These, too, are rarely expressed by inflection. Verbal functions The functional categories associated with verbs include tense, aspect and mood marking as well as polarity (i.e., negation), in addition to agreement properties derived from pronouns, such as person, number, gender, animacy, definiteness and so on. Many languages have inflections that indicate the speaker’s attitude to the truth of a statement; for instance, whether the speaker knows a fact from personal experience, from inference or from hearsay. Some languages have different inflections on the verb depending on whether we are making a statement (declarative mood) or asking a question (interrogative mood). These categories are also often realized by clitics.

English marks the distinction between adjectives and adverbs with an adverbial suffix, whereas Dutch and German allow adjectives to be used adverbially without extra morphology. This may give rise to the idea that English, like Latin, is more specific in its classification of various types of modifiers. We propose an alternative analysis: Dutch and German draw a different dividing line, between attributive modifiers (NP-level) on the one hand, and predicative and adverbial modifiers (clause-level) on the other. To this end, they use adjectival inflection instead of derivational morphology. We describe how the adverbial systems in these three West-Germanic languages have developed and we try to explain the changes that have occurred. ispartof: Journal of Germanic Linguistics vol:22 issue:4 pages:381-402 status: published

The monumental, multi-volume comparative grammar of the Indo-European languages by Karl Brugmann (1849–1919) provided a synthesis of the first 70 years of research in a rapidly-developing academic subject, and identified areas for future investigation. Volume 2, split into three parts, covers morphology, roots and inflection, beginning with nouns and continuing with pronouns and verbs. It begins with a substantial introduction that includes bibliographic information, and then focuses in turn on each Proto-Indo-European feature and its reflexes in the earliest attested languages of each language family (Sanskrit, Avestan, Armenian, Greek, Italic, Germanic, Old Irish, Balto-Slavic). Comparisons are also made within families, for example between Gothic and Old English. Owing to its length, the original publisher bound this volume in two parts, paginated as a single sequence; in this reissue, it is divided into three parts, maintaining the same pagination.

This book represents some of the work carried out in the period 2002–2007 by the group working on the project ‘Null Subjects and the Structure of Parametric Theory’, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Great Britain (Grant No. APN14458). The group consisted of Theresa Biberauer, Anders Holmberg, Chris Johns, Ian Roberts, Michelle Sheehan and David Willis. The central goal of that project was to investigate and, if possible, refine the notion of parameter of Universal Grammar (UG), as it has been understood in generative theory since roughly 1980, by looking carefully at the phenomena associated with one of the best-known and most widely discussed examples of a parameter: the Null Subject Parameter (NSP). This volume brings together a number of articles focusing on the nature of null subjects in a range of languages; Biberauer (2008b) is a sister volume arising from the same project, which focuses more on parameter theory than on null subjects, while Holmberg (2009) focuses on partial null-subject languages. In this Introduction, we would like to set the chapters in context. Accordingly, we first discuss the phenomena from English and various Romance languages which originally motivated the postulation of the NSP. Next, we summarise the main kinds of null-subject system that have been identified in the comparative-syntax literature. We complete Section 1 by summarising the two principal approaches to the analysis of null subjects, whose classical exponents are Rizzi (1986a) and Borer (1986).

THE UTO-AZTECAN TRIBES OF all the stocks on the North American Continent, that which I call the Uto-Aztecan merits the closest study, on account of its wide extension and the high development of some., of its members. Tribes speaking its dialects were found from the Isthmus of Panama to the banks of the Columbia river, and from the coast of the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico. The relationship of these numerous bands is unquestionable, although many of them have freely adopted words from other stocks. This, however, will not surprise us if we recall that most of the Aryac languages of the old world owe about one third of their radicals to non-Aryac sources. The principal members of this stock are the Utes, Shoshonees and Comanches in the north, various tribes in Sonora, Chihuahua, Sinaloa and Durango in the center, and the Nahuas or Aztecs in the south. It is not to be understood that the one of these derived its idioms from the other, but rather that at some remote epoch all three were offshoots from some one ancestral stem. This was at a period before the grammatical forms of the tongue had reached full development, and probably when it was in a stage of isolation, with tendencies to suffix agglutination and incorporation. Since then the stages of growth which the several dialects have reached have been various. The one which far outstripped all others was the Nahuatl, which arrived at clear and harmonious sounds, fixed forms, and even some recognizable traces of inflection, though always retaining its incorporative character.

Introduction Same-turn self-repair is the process by which speakers stop an utterance in progress and then abort, recast or redo that utterance. While same-turn self-repair has become a topic of great interest in the past decade, very little has been written on the question of where within a word speakers tend to initiate repair (the main exceptions being Schegloff 1979 and Jasperson 1998). And, to our knowledge, no work has been done on this question from a cross-linguistic perspective. The goal of this paper is twofold: First, we explore existing proposals regarding where in words speakers initiate repair (what we will call the “site” of initiation) using data from our seven languages; and, second, we present and explain site of initiation data from those seven languages. Our findings suggest that there is a great deal of cross-linguistic variation with respect to favored sites of initiation but that most of the variation can be accounted for by a few simple interactional factors. This paper is the first study we are aware of which considers word length in explanations of self-repair data. The current study is part of a larger project that has as its goal an understanding of the universal principles of self-repair and their language-specific manifestations. Prior studies have shown that the linguistic resources available to speakers of different languages shape the specific methods by which repair is accomplished (Fox et al . 1996; Wouk 2005; Fincke 1999; Egbert 2002; Sidnell 2007c; Karkainnen et al ., 2007).

T his was a bad and disappointing season, marked with little novelty worth commemorating.—Donizetti's “Gemma di Vergy,” and Signor Mercadante's “Elena da Feltre,” were new to our Italian stage. Neither produced the slightest sensation. The latter had been more fortunate in an English dress, owing to the remarkable acting and singing of Miss Adelaide Kemble. And here, seeing that a young English lady, in spite of the disadvantages of a translated version, and of comrades unused to Italian music, could gain a success for an unknown opera in London—which an Italian prima donna , in all the plenitude of promise and power—I mean Madame Frezzolini—was unable to do—a word or two are not misplaced, in a chronicle of great singers, regarding another great interpreter. Such was Miss Adelaide Kemble: a musical artist in right of resolution, rather than liberal nature. Her voice, originally limited, had been moulded, rendered flexible, and extended in compass, by study and incessant practice, till it became capable of every inflexion, of every possible brilliancy.—More honest singing than its owner's I have never heard,—add to this, command of four languages and four styles of music, and poetical aspiration borne out by intellectual culture, by habitual commerce with all that is most refined and most thoughtful;—and the result could only be what it was—the greatest English singer (though not the best of this century), a poetical and thoughtful artist, whose name will never be lost so long as the art of dramatic singing is spoken of.