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This article employs conversation analysis to investigate the workings of the so-called ‘nominative’ particle ga in storytelling sequences in naturally occurring Japanese conversation. Drawing on prior research, it is suggested that conversational stories are a natural habitat for ga—which is routinely found in the course of stories—in story initiations, within background information, in the articulation of the key sequence of events leading to the climax, as well as in the delivery of the climax itself. The current study looks at storytellers' deployment of ga for projecting and implementing a context-dependent mapping of a NP onto a Predicate, in interaction with story-recipients. Typically produced in the form NP ga Predicate, the mapping can be said to be demonstrably directed toward evoking or invoking varying types and degrees of identification or association of the NP with the Predicate. The identification or association appears to be profoundly shaped by the local interactional context as well as having a critical impact on the development of the story-telling sequence.

Street names express the spatial materialisation of nominative discourses articulated and deployed by the powerful in their politicisation of the urban landscape with self-legitimising ideological values, political symbols and historical narratives. Using an approach grounded upon the theoretical principles of critical toponymies, this paper sets out a longitudinal perspective on the politics of street nomenclature in Hermannstadt/Sibiu (Romania). For this purpose, a dataset comprising the complete historical record of street names in Sibiu between 1829 and 2018 was constructed. The analysis focuses on capturing the ethnopolitics played out at the level of the city's street names through the dual toponymic means of naming and renaming. Subsequently turning to a cross-sectional and comparative approach, the paper then explores the spatialisation of post-communist toponymic change. The statistical analyses performed on these data reveal how the streetscape became a canvas for political authorities' attempts to inscribe and reinscribe ethnicity onto urban space.

We observe the city through a satellite image, at first glance we notice that the public space encompassed in the streets, streets, avenues, places ... etc. it organizes its, shapes its, rules it gives its a reading, it is the cause and the consequence in its creation, its growth, its modeling and its remodeling. Interested by the use of public space and especially the public place is not today’s concern, whose architects, town planners and even sociologists have raised the alarm before the loss of the notion from the public place of the contemporary city. The place is emptied of its contents, deprived of its role of major space, of the decoration, the place is only a nominative notion; this name is distributed at the whim of the news to any free place, to commemorate a hero, an event ... in all this, the place, what is it? A place, a function, a void, a form? This article aims to find out what is the most important factor making the public places of the arid cities more frequented and used more and more, means to look for how and in what way can arrived to a high intensity of the use of these places.

In the Uzbek language, the phrases describing certain features of the person in the speech activity of language owners realize the linguistic syntactic possibilities of the language among the nominative units expressing the concept of personality. In Uzbek linguistics, the syntax of a phrase has been studied in different scientific approaches, but the semantic types of a phrase have not been distinguished. Importantly, this article discusses the existence of a type that serves as a description of a person among the spiritual types that express a phrase in speech. At the same time, the article reflects the idea that the formation of phrases as a result of certain syntactic relations of words in the speech process, the syntactic connection of words in the speech process as a way of forming interactions, the formation of noun units, linguistic-syntactic patterns.

Many experiments have studied attraction errors in number agreement (e.g. ‘The key to the cabinets were rusty’). It has been noted that singular heads with plural dependents (attractors) trigger larger attraction effects than plural heads with singular attractors, and that in languages with morphological case, morphologically ambiguous attractors trigger larger effects (accusative plural forms coinciding with nominative plural were compared to unambiguous case forms). In Russian, the nominative plural forms of some nouns coincide not only with their accusative plural forms but also with the genitive singular. In one production and two comprehension experiments, such genitive singular forms were found to trigger larger attraction effects than morphologically unambiguous genitive plural forms. Accusative plural forms coinciding with the nominative plural were shown to be the most effective attractors. These results have implications for different models of attraction and for other discussions in morphology concerning ambiguity processing, different approaches to syncretism and the problem of lexical insertion.

Relying on introspection (i.e. the researcher's own intuition and judgment) has been the normal practice particularly in generative linguistics. However, especially when faced with crucial data for the development of a linguistic theory or for the right characterization of a linguistic phenomenon, it is important to rely on more scientific data. Against this background, this paper conducts two acceptability judgment tests and shows that none of the claims made in the literature as to the alternation between –key and –tolok and the alternation between the nominative and the accusative case with respect to Korean resultatives is so accurate. By methodologically relying on a number of subjects and taking into consideration both the factor of whether there is a distinct nominative-marked NP from what the main verb is predicated of and the factors of the category of the main predicate and the category of the –key/–tolok predicate, the experiment on the key-tolok alternation reveals that, generally, –key and –tolok can alternate with each other only when the –key/–tolok predicate is a verb. Meanwhile, by taking into consideration not only the factor of the category of the key-predicate but also the factor of whether the NP thematically predicated of by the key-predicate is also thematically an argument of the main verb, the experiment on the nominative-accusative alternation shows that the alternation is truly allowed only when the key-predicate is formed with an adjective plus the –ci suffix and that the use of the accusative case is the norm in co-argument key-sentences and the use of the nominative case is the norm in non-co-argument key-sentences. Through these two case studies, this paper stresses the importance of not relying purely on the researcher's own introspection in linguistic research.

While different researchers agree that the acquisition of Russian nominal cases proceeds somewhat sequentially, there is no consensus about the exact order of case acquisition in the literature on L1 acquisition (see Ceitlin, 2000; Gvozdev, 1981, 2007; Gagarina & Voeikova, 2009). Besides, accumulated longitudinal data are sparse and disparate, coming from children of different ages, socio-economic statuses, and language acquisition backgrounds. We adopt a psycholinguistic approach to examine acquisition of Russian nominal case inflections by Russian monolingual children (2-5 years old). The goal of the study is twofold: it sets out 1) to examine at what age children learn to generalize rules of noun case usage, and 2) to identify the order of acquisition of Russian oblique case inflections. Children perform a picture-based sentence completion task in which they have to finish the sentence by naming real or non-existing objects in the pictures. Five sentence frames are constructed to bias the children’s responses towards the use of a noun form in one of the five oblique Russian cases, across three declensions plus plural forms. Data collection is in progress, but interim results show that monolingual Russian-speaking children learn to generalize morphological rules to novel nouns by the age of 2 and that nouns in the plural form are acquired later in language development compared to singular forms. Within the singular forms, 3rd declension cases, especially the instrumental case, present most difficulty. Additionally, 2-3-year-old children tend to substitute oblique cases with the nominative case forms. The results corroborate some of the previous findings and add additional insights into the acquisition of Russian case.

This article investigates the morpho-syntactic and discourse properties of preverbal constituents in Finnish, providing a new interpretation of the distinction between Subjects and Topics, as well as an explanation for the Case forms that characterize the Object realization in this language. Based on a cartographic approach to Finnish clause structure, evidence is provided for a functional ‘separation’ between the evaluation of the EPP feature and the domain of Nominative Case assignment. Specifically, a functional ‘split’ is proposed in the high IP-zone between the TP projection, where Nominative Case is checked by the sentential Subject triggering verb agreement, and the SubjP position, dedicated to the EPP requirement and hosting the Subject of predication. Based on this distinction, preverbal constituents only qualify as ‘full Subjects’ if they pass through both Spec positions. Specific consequences apply to Subject agreement and the realization of Accusative Case when these projections host different constituents (e.g., necessive, existential and passive clauses). This split account can also provide a distinction between the Subject of predication (in the IP-zone) and a Topic (in the C-domain), showing that not any preverbal constituent can be a Subject, while any constituent can be topicalized, with specific discourse functions and language-specific restrictions.

The experimental research presented in this paper reports on findings from the study of case (syntactic and morphological) in 16 Cypriot Greek adults diagnosed with Down syndrome (DS) and 17 typically developing children. We perform phonetic and phonological analyses alongside morphosyntactic and syntactic analyses on data collected from eight experimental tasks. Results reveal near-ceiling performance for both groups. Syntactically conditioned differences related to structural complexity, problematic use of tense and subject-verb agreement or bundling/DP effects, are not recorded. We establish that the greater majority of differences observed between the two groups are mainly conditioned by articulatory limitations related to the distinct physiology associated with DS, as well as minor differences in their phonological systems. A small residue of differences that are determined to be morphosyntactic in nature is also recorded; these exhibit a clear systematicity in choosing the default case value (nominative), instead of the targeted one. Given the close to ceiling performance with case, morphosyntactic inaccuracies are determined to be neither due to lack of knowledge of the case assignment mechanisms, nor lack of knowledge of inflectional paradigms, but rather a morphological discrepancy, during the Vocabulary Insertion stage.

Accusative clitic pronouns are acquired later than both nominative and reflexive pronouns in typically developing French-speaking children. However recent research suggests that not all these clitics are equally difficult, 3rd person accusative clitics (ACC3) being more problematic than 1st and 2nd person. In this study, we explored three properties which could make ACC3 complex: (1) gender marking, (2) discourse-participant independent reference, and (3) optionality in spoken French. We have created specific experiments assessing the role of each of these properties in clitic acquisition in 41 French-speaking children aged 4–8. Results show that all three properties play a role in making ACC3 complex, with the strongest influence coming from gender marking. Implications of these results are discussed in light of previous related studies.

The relation between volitive/involitive moods of Sinhala verbs and subject case marking remains unresolved in the scarce generative literature on Sinhala. Previous analyses of subject case marking in this language (Gair, 1990a,b; Inman, 1992; Beavers and Zubair, 2010, 2013) assume that non-nominative cases are lexical/inherent/quirky cases assigned by involitive verbs to the subject NP, whereas nominative case is not tied to any particular lexical semantics, and arises as the default case when the semantic conditions for all available quirky cases fail. We argue that the distinction between nominative and non-nominaive cases in Sinhala should not be characterized as one between default and lexical/inherent/quirky cases. Rather, based on previously unnoted data, we contend that (i) nominative case in Sinhala is a structural case assigned by a finite T, and (ii) A-movement in Sinhala is driven by case valuation (see Epstein and Seely, 2006; Boskovic, 2002, 2007), rather than by a universal EPP structural requirement on T (contra Gair, 1990a,b; see Chomsky, 2000, 2001).

This paper investigates the relation between the grammar and the basic notions of information structure, focusing on Korean -(n)un and (contrastive) focus. It has been claimed that -(n)un marks contrastive focus (CF) in certain contexts. However, no consensus exists on in which context(s) it can mark CF. Moreover, the very claim that -(n)un is used to mark CF itself has been sometimes questioned and refuted. The purpose of this paper is to shed light on this issue by providing a new analysis of the relation between -(n)un and (contrastive) focus. Based on a language- and theory-independent definitions of focus, contrast, and CF, and a detailed investigation of the information structure of the relevant phenomena at issue, the main claim of this paper is that -(n)un marks relationally old information and thus cannot mark (contrastive) focus, which is necessarily relationally new by definition. How it is possible for -(n)un to mark relational givenness will be discussed based on the comparison of its inherent meaning and that of the Korean nominative marker -i/ka. Also, the standard understanding of the notion of relational givenness-newness will be critically examined in the course of unveiling the nature of the relation between -(n)un and (contrastive) focus.

This paper presents an account of Standard Arabic (SA) verbless copula sentences with a nominal or adjectival predicate (DP-DP and DP-AP structures) in terms of the basic notions of the Minimalist Program – Merge, Move and Agree. The proposed account posits a functional projection, nominal phrase (NomP) headed by Nom located between NP and TP. The functional head, Nom, in ways akin to C, T and v , serves as a Probe initiating an Agree relation with a nominal Goal complement which leads to valuing of nominative Case on the complement and of φ features on the Nom Probe. The initiated Probe-Goal relation observes the claims of Agree Theory in the sense that the relation holds at a distance without having to move the Goal from its base position. Further, the relation also observes the activity condition in that Nom is an active Probe by virtue of carrying uninterpretable φ features of person, number and gender, and the nominal predicate Goal is likewise active in view of its uninterpretable Case feature. It will be argued that the nominative Case in copular sentences is not a default Case but is the consequence of normal Agree. The analysis provides support for eliminating Case-driven movement and consequently eliminating the Spec head configuration requirement on Case assignment.

Taking reduced relative clauses as the basis of comparison, this study investigates Karachay–Balkar non-subject relative clauses with two different patterns. The subject in the modifier clause can bear the genitive case in the presence of agreement morphology on the head noun, or the nominative case in the absence of agreement morphology. Based on binding and adverbial placement tests, the current study suggests that (i) Karachay–Balkar relative clause patterns with genitive or nominative subjects are deficient in the absence of CP and TP; (ii) in the absence of TP, temporal interpretation is a secondary effect of AspP; (iii) the genitive subject moves into the DP domain to check the definiteness feature; (iv) the genitive pattern is preferred when the referents of the genitive construction and the head noun are shared by the speaker and the hearer; and (v) in the absence of the definiteness feature and CP/TP, the nominative case is licensed as the default case. This study shows that Karachay–Balkar relative clauses are reduced with respect to the absence of CP/TP. However, the size of the structure does not differ in genitive and nominative patterns, and the patterns are not in free variation as a syntax–semantic interface is at play.

Socrates' findings at Men. 87b2‒89a6 regarding the parts of ἄρeτή in the soul, their relationships inter se, and their several aitia is a καλὸς λόγος‒‒the nominative analogue of ὁ λόγος καλῶς λέγeσθαι. Hearing it arms Meno with the true doxa that φρόνησις should govern his bravery, quick-wittedness and σωφροσύνη, lest those attributes turn to harm. Socrates observes that the φρόνησις-governed ἀρeτή of the very small number of the best men is an intentional gift of the gods (θeίᾳ μοῖρα). Were Meno to come to possess that ἀρeτή, and exercise plenipotentiary rule over other men, he would best consider himself a vehicle of divine intention.

This paper aims to provide the contribution of the linguist Fatmir Agalliu, Professor of Albanian Language at Luigj Gurakuqi University in Shkodra and then at the Faculty of History and Philology at the University of Tirana. Fatmir Agalliu belongs to the first generation of Albanian linguists that were educated inside the country that have given important support in the study of Albanian Language. An important and big value case is also his contribution on the determination of the number of cases in Albanian Language. In the determination of the number and the classification of cases of a language, we should consider specific features of that language and we should not apply a case system of another language mechanically. There are two different aspects in Albanian declension, definite and indefinite aspect. That means that case forms are doubled. Therefore, instead of having two nominative forms, one for singular and one for plural, we have four forms in fact, two for singular (definite and indefinite) and two for plural (definite and indefinite). Fatmir Agalliu claims that by treating case as a grammatical category we need to take into consideration the form, and the content.

Summary Introduction In order to reduce outpatient-waiting delays in oncology departments, there has been development of new production processes. This study aimed to determine the impact of three different production organizations (nominative extemporaneous preparations, anticipated preparations, and non-nominative dose-banded preparations), with or without analytical control, on outpatient chemotherapy production times, in a French regional cancer center. Materials and methods For the three organizations, we measured the global and detailed production times of the preparations, during three distinct periods, and compared them. Results With an analytical control, anticipated nominative preparations and non-nominative dose-banded preparations reduced waiting delays by 29 and 19 minutes, respectively, compared to extemporaneous nominative preparations, and by 12 and 9 minutes, respectively, without analytical control. Discussion Anticipated nominative preparations and non-nominative dose standardized preparations allow reducing time dispensation, even with analytical control. Conclusion Implementing these new production processes could reduce outpatient-waiting delays in oncology departments.

The difference in the default prosodic realization of simple sentences with unergative vs. unaccusative/passive verbs (assigning early nuclear accent with unaccusative/passive verbs but late nuclear accent with unergative verbs) is often related to the syntactic distinction of their nominative arguments as starting off in different hierarchical positions. Alternative accounts try to trace this prosodic variation back to asymmetries in the semantic or pragmatic contribution of the verb to an utterance. The present article investigates the interaction of the assignment of default nuclear accent with the predictability of the verb. In an experimental study testing the acceptability of nuclear accent assignment, we confirmed that the predictability of the verb influences accentual preferences (such that highly predictable verbs are preferably not accented). However, the experiment also reveals that the unaccusativity distinction cannot be accounted for by means of pragmatic phenomena of this type: the two verb classes are associated with distinct accentual patterns in the baseline condition, that is, without the predictability manipulation. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The absolute subject refers to the subject of absolute nominative clauses in traditional grammar. It can be either nominative or accusative. Corpora data show that the number of nominatives has been decreasing, and that of accusatives, increasing over time. Absolute nominative clauses of appositive, attendant circumstance and clausal adjunct in traditional grammar correspond to the non-finite clauses of elaboration, extension and enhancement with subject in the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics. In addition, absolute subjects can also be used in non-finite clauses of projection and embedding. The relationships between absolute subjects in different non-finite clauses and the primary clauses are different in independence. The tendency to be independent can be embodied in the dimension of the absolute subjects and that of the primary clauses. From either dimension, the tendency to be independent can form a cline. The primary clause based tendency is more in line with the characteristics of absolute subjects.

It is generally accepted that in comparative constructions, when the clausal element compared is the subject of the matrix clause, the personal pronoun following than can be either nominative which is usually used in formal English, where than is considered as a conjunction, or accusative which is usually used in informal English, where than is considered as a preposition. However, the data collected from the COCA corpus indicate that nominative pronouns do not tend to end a comparative construction in either formal or informal English. Based on the fundamentals of Systemic Functional Linguistics, it is improper to consider the accusative form of personal pronouns in comparative constructions as the object of than; rather they are the stressed personal pronouns. It is concluded that in comparative constructions than is always a conjunction, and the personal pronoun following than can be expanded into a finite clause. However, if the nominal group following than has no comparee in the matrix clause, it is not a comparative clause and the than-phrase is a prepositional phrase. It is further concluded that in comparative constructions than is best considered as a paratactic conjunction because comparative constructions cannot be transpositioned with the primary clauses in clause complexes.

This article surveys some leading generative ideas about agreement and case, and connects them to several universal and near-universal observations noted by typologists. It begins with the familiar fact that adjectives can agree with noun phrases in number and gender but not in person, whereas verbs can agree in person as well—depending on the structure. From there it moves to the fact that verbs typically do not agree with their objects unless they also agree with their subjects. Several possible types of agreement with objects are then identified and distinguished, and some substantive similarities between object agreement and subject agreement are noted. It is shown that both subject agreement and object agreement are sensitive to the case morphology borne by the noun phrase (dative versus accusative, ergative versus nominative) in some languages but not in others, and the implications of this result for the assignment of case are considered. In all, the discussion covers four known linguistic universals in the area of agreement and case, and proposes three new ones. These are all explained in terms of two universal properties of the agreement relation and one parameter.

This article describes verb-agreement in Bajjika, an Eastern Indo-Aryan language, and explains the pragmatic principles that determine the agreement. Bajjika has one of the most complex and indeed uncommon agreement patterns in Indo-Aryan languages. The entities encoded in the verb are person , honorific degree , spatial distance , and gender , not all equally encoded. The verb allows nominative as well as non-nominative (double) participants and non-participants to be simultaneously encoded in the paradigm. The double agreements pose severe analytical constraints as the agreement is unusually sensitive to social factors. The agreement consistently interacts with the social hierarchy that forms the foundation of the speech community. Besides, the absence of uniformity in marking person poses constraints on the predictability of agreement and its subsequent interpretation. In the process of describing Bajjika verb-agreement and the underlying principles, this study examines the relevance of Bickel et al.’s (1999) proposal for interpreting the agreement paradigms, thus providing fresh data to empirically and conceptually further understand verb-agreement and the extent to which this phenomenon can be tied to factors relevant to tenor relation. The study concludes that while face is useful in explaining Bajjika agreement paradigms, the scale of empathy proposed by Bickel et al. is irrelevant to account for data from Bajjika.

The paper provides a historical and areal investigation of the North Russian perfect, often referred to as the “ possessive perfect ”. This perfect is encoded by a periphrastic predication consisting of a copular auxiliary and a past passive participle in an invariant form; the non-prototypical subject is case-marked with an adessive-like PP while the object is assigned the nominative or, in some varieties, accusative case; contrary to several scholars there is no trace of ergativity. As to the diachrony, the paper represents a case study on the rise of non-prototypical subjects and the development from subjects to objects. The historical investigation of the perfect reveals that etymologically it is neither related to the possessive construction of the mihi est type (as has been commonly assumed before) nor to a passive. Instead, the development out of a patient-oriented resultative construction based on the copula with a predicative resultative participle is suggested. The adessive-like PP (often functioning as a new dative in East Slavic) enters this construction as an adverbial referring to a participant that is physically or mentally affected by the resultant state but develops later exclusively the meaning of the agent of the preceding action and, subsequently, acquires behavioral subject properties. The areal perspective of the investigation reveals two hotbeds of expansion. First, the early sequence of changes leading from the patient-oriented resultative construction to the impersonal perfect with a number of syntactic active properties, and encompassing such languages as Polish, all East Slavic, Baltic and Fennic languages, seems to have been influenced by Polish. Second, the later developments consisting of the incorporation of the free-dative -like adverbial into the construction, the acquisition of agent meaning, and subsequently, subject properties has been instigated by North Russian. From North Russian dialect area this construction spread to such languages as Standard Russian, Estonian, Karelian, Votian and Latvian with a decreasing degree of grammaticalization. Both areal and diachronic perspectives allow equilibrating areal and internal triggers for the described developments.

This paper makes two main contributions to our understanding of ergativity. First, it supports the claim that ergative is an inherent case, through a study of the Warlpiri lexicon: no ergative-marked subjects are derived, in accordance with Marantz’ Generalization. Second, it reanalyses syntactic ergativity in Dyirbal. It demonstrates that the language underlyingly has an ergative–nominative–accusative case system, with imperfect morphological realization of these cases. It further shows that syntactic ergativity in Dyirbal is not sensitive to the absolutive, but rather underlying nominative and accusative, regardless of morphological realization.

This paper analyzes movement to the Tense domain in Russian. It demonstrates that Russian verb does not normally leave the vP, and that only internal Nominative arguments can remain in situ, while external ones obligatorily raise to [Spec; TP], as in English. Unlike in English, external subjects can be sentence-final, but this results from additional Information Structure related movement when they are in narrow focus. The paper shows that various Russian constructions have no overt material in the left periphery (‘V O’, ‘V S’ with internal Nominative arguments, etc.). Obligatory external subject raising proves that the EPP requirement in the Tense domain is definitely operative in Russian, so covert expletives are introduced in these cases. Turning to sentences with non-Nominative XPs in the left periphery, the paper demonstrates, contrary to several recent models, that such XPs never exhibit subject properties and hence cannot pass through [Spec; TP]. The paper concludes that these constructions also contain covert expletives (i.e. Russian has them wherever English has overt ones) and that only Nominative DPs can satisfy the EPP requirement in Russian. These results are interesting for the EPP typology and for the more general question of whether EPP-driven movement depends on agreement.

The present study addresses the question of whether case and verb agreement are cross linguistically equivalent during sentence processing. This question is addressed by exploring the brain mechanisms involved in processing Basque, a Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) head-final language with ergative alignment, case morphology and multiple verb agreement. Basque speakers’ ERPs were recorded during an auditory grammatical judgment task. Participants were presented with correct and incorrect sentences addressed to study ergative case and subject and object verb-agreement processing. Incorrect sentences elicited, in all cases, a P600 component, an ERP effect repeatedly reported in previous studies that explored syntactic violations similar to the present ones, although in nominative languages. The results of this study show comparable ERP responses to both subject and object agreement and indicate that specific features of agreement (number versus person) have distinct ERP correlates, at least for multiple verb agreement. In addition, the ERP signatures for the ergative case violation were comparable to the ones found by previous studies on nominative case. Overall, the present study shows that the repair and reanalysis processes involved in verb agreement and case violations are sustained by equivalent neural mechanisms across language types.

Russian nouns in nominative and accusative numerical expressions appear in three different forms, depending on the numeral: nominative singular with the numeral 1, genitive singular with the paucal numerals 2-4, and genitive plural with all other numerals. Results from an acceptability judgment task and a self-paced reading task on Russian case/number marking provide support for a theory stating that the suffix used with paucal nouns is morphologically ambiguous. The ambiguity resolution process involving this suffix leads to extra processing cost, compared to the unambiguous suffixes in other numeral contexts (the number 1, and the numbers 5+). This would account for the additional processing time observed with the paucal nouns. The status of the form occurring with the paucal numerals has long been a challenging issue in Russian linguistics, and the new results add to the growing body of literature which makes use of experimental methods to address issues of linguistic theory and analysis.

The Case Tier Hypothesis (CTH, Yip, Maling, and Jackendoff, 1987) accounts for the distribution of nominative and accusative in Finnish and Korean remarkably well, but a number of outstanding puzzles remain. We reformulate the CTH in Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky, 1993/2004), showing that the new proposal covers all the standard data and extends to several previously problematic phenomena, such as multiple nominatives and case variation in adverbials. After analyzing the core case patterns of Finnish and Korean, we go beyond these two languages and work out the general typological predictions of our proposal. This reveals what the theory admits and what it excludes, two central questions in theoretical linguistics.

Following Farrell’s analysis [Farrell, P., 2001. Functional shift as category underspecification. English Language and Linguistics 5 (1), 109–130], I submit that the most parsimonious hypothesis for stems that are ambiguous with respect to the noun/verb distinction (such as English walk, love, kill, etc.) is that they are neither nouns nor verbs but flexibles. It is generally agreed that the main functions of nouns and verbs are linguistic argument and linguistic predicate, respectively, and that the linguistic predicate/argument distinction is universal in the world’s languages. I claim that if all languages have linguistic predicates and arguments, all languages must have at least one lexical class that maps to linguistic predicate and at least one lexical class that maps to linguistic argument. There are only three possibilities as to how a lexical class can map to linguistic predicate or argument: it can map to predicate, it can map to argument, or it can map to both. These three ways correspond to verbs, nouns and flexibles, respectively. Given this inventory of lexical classes, together with the premise that all languages have at least one lexical class that maps to argument and at least one that maps to predicate, the following five logically possible language types emerge: noun/verb/flexible, noun/flexible, verb/flexible, noun/verb, and flexible. After analyzing typological evidence for each of these types, I conclude that, if the criterion of pervasiveness of the typological trait is applied, type noun/verb/flexible is by far the most common, if not the only one present among the world’s languages, with type flexible ranking next in probability. In addition, as ‘word’ has traditionally been found difficult to define [Broschart, J., 1997. Why Tongan does it differently: categorial distinctions in a language without nouns and verbs. Linguistic Typology 1 (2), 123–166; Di Sciullo, A.M., Williams, E., 1987. On the definition of word. Linguistic Inquiry Monographs, vol. 14. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA; Greenberg, J.H., 1963. Essays in Linguistics, Phoenix Books. Chicago, London], I propose the following definition for elementary word: a minimal unit of speech understood (though not necessarily used) outside context.

Many approaches to conserving and managing natural resources depend upon rules, but the existence of rules alone does not guarantee compliance. Information on rule breaking behaviour is needed for designing interventions to improve compliance. However, directly investigating rule breaking is difficult as perpetrators may not wish to identify themselves. Other disciplines have developed methods for answering sensitive questions but so far these have not been widely applied in conservation. Using rule breaking among fly fishers as a case study, we tested two methods specifically designed for collecting sensitive data (the randomised response technique (RRT) and the nominative technique), against a conventional self-complete questionnaire. RRT resulted in much higher estimates of the prevalence of rule breaking than the self-complete questionnaire, particularly for more sensitive questions. The nominative technique yielded extremely low estimates, possibly because respondents did not know enough about their friends’ rule breaking behaviour, or did not want to discuss it in a face-to-face interview. Despite requiring large sample sizes we suggest that RRT is a useful method for obtaining information about rule breaking and could be more widely used, for example in studies of poaching and illegal resource extraction.

Two majors patterns of core term marking are found cross-linguistically: an accusative pattern in which P is the only core syntactic role marked by a case form distinct from the quotation form of nouns or by an adposition, and an ergative pattern in which A is the only core syntactic role marked by a case form distinct from the quotation form of nouns or by an adposition. Current case terminology is adapted to the description of systems consistently following one of these two patterns, but is difficult to extend to core term marking systems characterized by alignment variations. Moreover, several minor patterns are attested, characterized by a wider use of marked case forms or adpositions, and current terminology fails to provide convenient labels for case forms or adpositions occurring in such patterns. It is argued that: (a) in languages in which nouns are inflected for case, the case form coinciding with the quotation form of nouns should be labeled in a uniform way, irrespective of the uses it may have in syntactic constructions, (b) new labels should be coined for marked case forms or adpositions used in S/A or S/P role.

Hebrew has no multiple nominative construction (MNC) of the Japanese type, contrary to the claims of three recent studies. The alleged “broad subject” in the Hebrew constructions is nothing but a left-dislocated DP. A series of arguments is presented to the effect that this DP patterns with Ā-bar phrases and displays none of the subject properties characteristic of either standard or broad subjects.

To prevent potential misuse and to enhance privacy, signatures with restricted verifiability have been recently extensively discussed in the literature. Unlike undeniable signatures and designated verifier signatures, nominative signatures restrict the ability of signature verification and confirmation to a designated verifier only. In this paper, security issues of a nominative signature scheme proposed by Huang and Wang are reconsidered. The first result obtained is that the cryptanalysis reported recently by Susilo and Mu is shown to be incompletely correct; namely, the nominator in fact cannot verify but can only screen signatures, and therefore any third party should not be convinced by the confirmation done by the nominator. The second observation is that the scheme proposed by Huang and Wang may not be as strong as originally claimed. Nevertheless, the overall result is optimistic that the security properties provided by the Huang-Wang nominative signature scheme are sufficient for most applications.

Languages appear to differ in the locality conditions that regulate nominative Case checking: a dative or ergative subject blocks nominative checking of an object in Faroese and Nez Perce, but not in Icelandic or Hindi. Languages also differ in the effect that object shift has on subject Case: object shift has no effect on subject Case in Icelandic, but causes ergative Case to appear on the subject in Nez Perce. These superficially unrelated effects follow if one violable locality constraint is added to the small set of Case faithfulness and markedness constraints within Optimality Theory. This locality constraint, Pure Domain, requires that the checking domain of a head contain only Cases checked by that head. Differences in the relative rank of Pure Domain with respect to Case faithfulness and markedness constraints produces the cross-linguistic variation noted above. This domain approach to Case locality captures the standard notion that a closer DP can interfere with the checking of a further DP, but it also captures the fact that a further DP can interfere with the checking of a closer DP, if that further DP is close enough, a situation that arises with object shift.

This article presents studies of Hindi that investigate whether responses to syntactic agreement violations vary as a function of the type and number of incorrect agreement features, using both electrophysiological (ERP) and behavioral measures. Hindi is well suited to investigation of this issue, since verbs in Hindi mark agreement with the person, number, and gender features of the nominative subject noun phrase. In an ERP study evoked responses were recorded for visually presented verbs appearing at the end of a sentence-initial adverbial clause, comparing responses in a grammatically correct condition with four grammatically incorrect conditions that mismatched the correct agreement on different dimensions (Gender, Number, Gender/Number, Person/Gender). A P600 response was elicited in all grammatically incorrect conditions. No amplitude differences were found among the Gender, Number, and combined Gender/Number violations. This suggests that the feature distance between observed and expected word forms at the morphosyntactic level does not impact ERP responses, contrasting with findings on semantic and auditory processing, and suggests that the P600 response to agreement violations is not additive based on the number of mismatching features and does not reflect top-down, predictive mechanisms. A significantly larger P600 response was elicited by the combined Person/Gender violation, and two different violations involving the Person feature were judged as more severe and recognized more quickly in the behavioral studies. This effect is attributed to the greater salience of the Person feature at multiple levels of representation.

The Japanese existential construction can be used either to assert the presence of some entity in a certain location or to indicate that something is an integral part of another. It has been noted, however, that the part–whole reading seems to disappear when the nominative NP precedes the locative PP. Contrary to the existing analyses which make appeal to some constraint on movement to derive this disambiguation effect, this paper presents an information structural account. The analysis is empirically supported by the lack of disambiguation in embedded contexts and the significant role of contextual information that encourages the ‘missing’ part–whole interpretation to re-emerge.

By using the Lagrange interpolation formula and the technology of signature of equality, a ( k, n ) threshold nominative proxy signature scheme is proposed, where an original signer delegates his (her) signing power to a proxy, who generates a nominative signature on behalf of the original signer and only k or more active verifiers in the n nominees (verifiers) nominated by the proxy signer can verify the signature signed by the proxy. If necessary, these ( k or more) active nominees (verifiers) can prove its validity to a third party. In this scheme, the secret shares are generated and encrypted by the original signer. At the same time, the ciphertexts of the secret shares are used as parts of the signature. Then, the secret shares need not be sent to the nominees (verifiers) secretly. The ordinary nominative proxy signature can be viewed as a (1, 1) threshold nominative proxy signature. The ordinary nominative proxy signature can be viewed as a special case of a ( k, n ) threshold nominative proxy signature. According to the security analysis of this paper, it is found that our scheme is secure against a proxy signing key forgery attack and existential forgery on an adaptive chosen message attack.

The paper examines two questions concerning Irish non-finite clauses, i.e.: (1) the free variation between overt subjects and PRO and (2) dialectal variation. As regards the first issue, it is argued that Irish non-finite clauses represent two types, namely: clauses with PRO which exhibit anaphoric Agr in T checking PRO's null Case and non-finite clauses which exhibit non-anaphoric Agr in T checking nominative Case of the subject. The mechanism licensing overt subjects and PRO can be used to account for distinct word orders found in Northern and in Southern dialects. While the former allow overt object shift in the presence of either the overt subject or PRO, hence yielding the following orders: S+O+particle+V and PRO+O+particle+V, the latter trigger overt object shift only in the presence of PRO and never in the presence of an overt subject, hence giving rise to the following patterns: S+particle+V+O and PRO+O+particle+V. In order to account for this dialectal variation, the particle a is taken to represent a marker of transitivity in Northern dialects and hence to appear in v. Object shift is triggered by the necessity to satisfy the v's EPP-feature and subject raising from Spec, vp is triggered by the EPP-feature of T. For Southern dialects the following assumptions are made: (1) the particle a has always a Case feature to check, (2) the particle a can appear in v or in T, when it appears in v, it checks the Case of the object and when it appears in T, it checks the Case of the subject, (3) overt subjects are licensed by the particle a , which is an overt realisation of non-anaphoric Agr in T, and (4) PRO is licensed by anaphoric Agr in T. Under these assumptions, the order S+particle+V+O arises if a is in T, whereas the order PRO+O+particle+V surfaces if a occurs in v. It is further suggested that subject and object raise in Southern dialects for Case reasons, not for EPP-checking. The pattern S+O + particle + V is impossible in Southern dialects, as in order to license the overt subject a must be in Agr, whereas in order to license object shift a must appear in v. Since a cannot occupy two positions simultaneously, this order is never attested.

In this paper, we focus on a group of the Kurdish, Korean and Persian Light Verb Constructions (LVCs); consisting of a semantically light verb (LV) and a verbal noun (VN). It is argued that the LVs, capable of case marking and hosting verbal features, in combination with T function either as nominative and accusative case markers or only as nominative case markers. It is shown that the arguments of VNs can be structurally licensed via T and LV whose case assigning roles are not thematically restricted. Although these LVs as the most thematically bleached natural verbs seem very similar to v in the Minimalist Program, the way they are analyzed in this work indicates that the LVs can not support the notion of v(P) as a head above VP in a clause.

Wiltschko (2003) proposes that Halkomelem Salish possesses interpretable T features on D, and as a consequence lacks both nominative Case and a TP projection. In this reply to Wiltschko's paper, I argue instead that Salish languages have tense and Case systems which are fundamentally similar to those of English. I then discuss the consequences of these findings for a theory of cross-linguistic variation. I suggest that there will be no languages with interpretable T features on D, and that we should reject the use of parameters with which have consequences in disparate modules of the grammar.

This paper focuses on two types of multiple nominative constructions in Japanese. In addition to the subject, the nominative particle ga can mark a possessor of the subject or an adjunct. A prevalent view in the literature is that all ga-phrases are nominative NPs or DPs and are licensed in multiple specifier or adjoined positions in one particular projection (Fukui, 1986; Heycock, 1993b; Hiraiwa, 2001; Ura, 1996; among others). However, this licensing mechanism alone cannot account for some striking properties of the two constructions. I argue that a possessive ga-phrase is a nominative NP, while ga attached to an adjunct is interpreted as a focus marker. The particle ga functions as a case marker whenever it marks an NP bearing a θ-role. However, an interpretational rule also treats it as a focus marker when the constituent to which it is attached appears as the first ga-phrase in a multiple nominative construction. These assumptions account for a range of observations, some of which are new. They also explain two particular properties that are difficult to capture in the standard analysis: (i) the difference in the number of ga-phrases permitted in the two constructions; and (ii) the fixed order of ga-phrases in both constructions.

Psycholinguistic investigations of reanalysis phenomena have typically focused on revisions of phrase structure. Here, we identify a further subcomponent of syntactic reanalysis, namely the revision of case marking. This aspect of reanalysis was isolated by examining German subject–object ambiguities that require a revision towards a dative-initial order. Since dative-initial orders are potentially unmarked, no phrase structure corrections are required, but the original, preference-based nominative assignment must be revised. Experiment 1, an ERP study, revealed an N400 component for reanalysis of case marking, which contrasted with a P600 component for phrase structure revisions. The ‘reanalysis N400’ was replicated in Experiment 2, which also showed that direct lexical support for a dative-initial order leads to a reduction of the effect. Finally, in Experiment 3, direct time course measures provided by the speed-accuracy trade-off (SAT) procedure supported the case reanalysis account by showing that conditions hypothesized to involve case reanalysis (dative-initial structures) require longer computation times than their nominative-initial counterparts. Lexeme-specific support for the dative-initial reading, however, does not lead to a faster computation of the target structure, but rather increases the likelihood that the correct interpretation will be computed. We interpret these findings as evidence for the general availability of an unmarked dative–nominative word order in German, the accessibility of which may be increased by lexical information. Moreover, the data show that syntactic reanalysis is not a homogeneous process, but may rather be subdivided along several dimensions that interact in determining overall garden path strength.

Previously proposed syntactic and semantic analyses of quantifier float (Q-Float) in Japanese have failed to explain why there is a mismatch in the syntactic range of Q-Float between speakers’ judgment (nominative and accusative arguments) and discourse (absolutive arguments). This paper describes quantifier float in Japanese in terms of a mechanism of cognitive attention and claims that two conditions hold: (i) a host noun to be matched with the floated quantifier must be activated in attention, and (ii) the host should require a greater activation cost than the other potential quantifier host in order to achieve optimal processing. The former sets up a preliminary condition which predicts an acceptable range in the speaker's judgment, and the latter limits Q-Float to the range in which the processing of the sentence is optimized. The second condition above predicts not only the ergative distribution of Q-Float in discourse but also the long-observed subject-object asymmetry in sentences with scrambled Q-Float.

This paper deals with a parallelism between sentences and noun phrases in Classical Arabic. The parallelism in question concerns the distribution of the number feature on the verb in the verb subject (VS) sequence and the (in-)definiteness feature on nouns in the N+NP sequence, the so-called semitic construct state (CS). In both cases, the verb and the head noun do not carry number and (in-)definiteness features respectively. Previous syntactic analyses have treated these two problems as two separate phenomena, thus denying any parallelism between the two constructions. This paper argues that this parallelism is genuine and is due to the verb in the VS sequence being historically a nominal element in a CS relation with the subject.

Pesetsky and Torrego (Pesetsky, D., Torrego, E., 2001. T-to-C movement: causes and consequences. In: Kenstowicz, M. (Ed.), Ken Hale: A Life in Language. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA) argue that in English T on D is [−interpretable] and this has the effect of structural case assignment. I propose that in Halkomelem Salish T on D is [+interpretable]. This proposal accounts for several properties of Halkomelem: i) nouns can bear tense marking, which manipulates the temporal interpretation of nouns, ii) there is no TP and iii) there is no nominative case. The value of interpretability of a given feature can thus be viewed as an important locus of parametrization.

This paper examines the status of syntactic rules, such as they are given in formal frameworks, by discussing the case assignment to the Russian semipredicatives sam (‘self’) and odin (‘alone’) when they occur with the infinitive. The paper focuses in particular on the appearance of these semipredicates in the dative case, the so-called ‘second dative’. It is argued that formal approaches to the second dative suffer from a number of shortcomings which can all be contributed to the fact that they do not take the semantics of the relevant expressions (dative, nominative, infinitive, lexical meaning of sam and odin) into consideration in the linguistic analysis. The negligence of semantics leads to (i) the use of non-motivated rules and notions, (ii) circularity in the explanation, (iii) arbitrariness in the distinction of linguistic data, and, in some cases (iv) wrong predictions. In this paper it is shown that an analysis that proceeds from the semantic (or conceptual) basis of morphological case adds a deeper level of explanation and understanding to formal analyses of the second dative. By discussing the different contexts in which the second dative occurs, it is shown that the syntactic combination of the second dative and the infinitive expresses that there is a force directed at the realization of the infinitive situation by the participant expressed by odin or sam. The nominative occurs if the idea of assigning a situation is absent, and the subject of the infinitive (which is associated with the participant expressed by the semipredicative) and the infinitive situation, are conceptualized as manifestations of the same scene.

The processing of verbs and differences in the availability of verbs and nouns has recently become a topic of interest among psycholinguists, researchers into language acquisition and aphasiologists. The present paper provides a detailed review of the literature during the last decade devoted to verb/noun differences and verb processing in aphasia patients. The first part of the review discusses three topics. The first is the relationship between verb/noun deficits and diagnostic categories such as Broca's aphasia and anomia. The second discusses studies that assume that verb/noun differences are lexical and evaluate the evidence concerning the level(s) on current models of lexical processing at which verb/noun differences might occur. The third deals with studies that argue that verb/noun differences derive from semantic differences and are reducible to imageability effects or to loss of functional or perceptual features. The second part of the paper discusses the literature devoted to verbs. It contains a short tutorial on arguments, stucture of verbs and their structural realization (syntactic subcategorization) and provides a critical account of the studies that relate verb deficits to their argument structure. Finally, studies devoted to verb semantics are discussed.

A series of four visual-visual priming experiments investigates the role of bound stem allomorphs in the representation and processing of Finnish case inflected nouns. Niemi et al. (1994) and Laine et al. (1994) argue that Finnish nouns are parsed into stem and affix in reception and that the bound stem allomorphs have separate (visual) lexical representations. Recently Järvikivi and Niemi (in press) have provided converging evidence for their claim based on a series of lexical decision experiments with Finnish stem allomorphs. The results from the present series of four follow-up experiments reported here showed that (isolated) bound stem allomorphs primed the recognition of the corresponding monomorphemic nouns significantly compared both to phonologically unrelated pseudowords and to phonologically minimally different pseudowords. Furthermore, not only did both phonologically transparent and opaque case inflected nouns prime the corresponding nominative singulars, but also there was no difference in priming between the two. The results are well in accordance and corroborate the hypotheses drawn from the earlier investigations. Moreover, they further indicate that bound stem allomorphs have representations on a purely formal level only, i.e., they serve as indices of and entering points to morphological/morphosyntactic information.

In German, oblique Cases (dative and genitive) require morphological licensing while structural Cases (nominative and accusative) do not. This difference can be captured by assuming that in German, NPs bearing oblique Case have an extra structural layer Kase phrase (KP) which is missing in NPs bearing structural Case. Focusing on dative NPs, we will show that the postulation of such a phrase-structural difference between oblique and structural case allows for a unified explanation of a wide array of facts both from the domain of grammar and from the domain of language comprehension. First, with regard to grammar, several asymmetries between dative NPs and nominative/accusative NPs follow if the former but not the latter are included within a KP-shell, including asymmetries with respect to function changing operations, clausal licensing, binding and topic drop, among others. Corroborating evidence for our analysis of dative Case in German will be provided by a comparison with data from English and Dutch. Second, when combined with certain independent assumptions about the human sentence parsing mechanism, the postulation of a KP for datives helps explain several recent experimental findings with respect to on-line sentence understanding, including the facts that dative case is dispreferred in situations of local syntactic ambiguity and that dative case may erroneously override structural case during sentence comprehension but not vice versa.