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A particular characteristic of Japanese language is that information structure is explicitly indicated by overt morphological means, i.e., marking expressions with the topic particle WA, which has attracted significant attention in the literature mainly from a pragmatic perspective. This study sheds light on the semantic effects that this particle has on the contents of sentences and proposes a categorial grammar approach to information packaging. The purpose of this study is two-fold: First, by observing minimal pairs of sentences that differ only in the use of the subject-marking particles and the presence/absence of focal accents on the particles, we identify the influences of these particles on the truth conditions of sentences, and explore proper semantic representations for subjects marked with topic and nominative particles. Then, we examine the syntactic function of this topic particle to show a type of concord with sentence-final predicates, as suggested by the term kakari-josi or concord/coherence particle used in Japanese traditional linguistics. On the basis of the results, we argue that the topic particle induces information packaging (Vallduvi 1992) as its lexical property, thereby yielding tripartite information structures following Hajicova et al. (1998), which can be automatically obtained through readings of categorial proof nets. In addition, we also focuses on sentences with sentence-internal topics, cleft-constructions and multiple topic sentences from the viewpoint of incremental processing within a categorial grammar framework.

This chapter reviews a range of previously proposed analyses of non-canonical genitive case. It includes a discussion of both syntactic and semantic approaches. Some of these approaches concentrate on Genitive of Negation only, while others contribute a unified analysis of two or three types of genitive case. Among the accounts that will be considered is Bailyn’s (Genitive of negation is obligatory. In: Browne W, Dornisch E, Kondrashova N, Zec D (eds), Annual workshop on formal approaches to Slavic linguistics: the Cornell meeting. Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications, 2007) influential configurational analysis, according to which genitive, accusative and nominative cases are assigned in distinct syntactic positions, with the Neg(ation) head being responsible for the assignment of Genitive of Negation. The chapter further reviews Harves’ (Genitive of negation and the syntax of scope. In: van Koppen M, Thrift E, van der Torre EJ, Zimmerman M (eds), Proceedings of ConSOLE 9, pp 96–110, 2002a; Unaccusative syntax in Russian. PhD dissertation, Princeton University, 2002b) configurational analysis, which is followed by a discussion of advantages and shortcomings of the configurational approach. I then turn to the Empty Quantifier approach developed by Pesetsky (Paths and categories. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, 1982). According to this account, both Partitive Genitive and Genitive of Negation are assigned by a phonologically empty quantifier. Additional analyses discussed in the chapter include Bailyn’s (The case of Q. In: Arnaudova O et al. (eds) Annual workshop on formal approaches to Slavic linguistics 12. Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications. http://www.ic.sunysb.edu/Clubs/nels/jbailyn/JFBailyn.html. 2004) unified account of genitive case, Pereltsvaig’s (Genitive of negation in Russian. In:Proceedings of IATL 13, pp 167–190, 1998; The genitive of negation and aspect in Russian. In: Rose Y, Steele J (eds), McGill working papers in linguistics 14: 111–140, 1999) approach that relates the choice of case under negation to the notion of referentiality, Neidle’s (The role of case in Russian syntax. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988) account that is based on the [Quantifying] feature and Borshev and Partee’s Perspectival Center approach to the genitive / nominative alternation under negation. The last section addresses the question of whether Genitive of Negation can be assigned to arguments of unaccusative verbs but not of unergative ones.

We compared the processing of verb-medial sentences in Basque. Syntactic analysis claims that all word orders other than SOV are derived in this language; therefore, verb medial sentences are expected to show signs of syntactic displacement and be equally complex to process. A self-paced reading task measured the processing time for each constituent of the sentences in order to analyze the processing of verb-medial SVO and OVS structures. Our data showed that sentences with verb-medial word orders were processed equally. This result suggests that both SVO and OVS sentences are indeed syntactically derived from the canonical SOV word order, shown in previous work to be easiest computationally.

The Genitive of Negation (Gen Neg) in Russian involves alternation of Genitive with Nominative or Accusative under conditions which have been debated for many decades. What gives the construction its name is that Gen Neg occurs only under sentential negation; other allegedly crucial factors include topic–focus structure, unaccusativity, perspectival structure, the lexical semantics of the verb, and the referential status of the NP. Here we focus on Subject Gen Neg sentences, which on our account (following Babby and many Russian scholars) are normally Existential sentences. We address the problem raised by certain Gen Neg sentences with the copula byt’ and referential subjects which appear to be negations of Locative rather than Existential sentences. We review why Babby exempted some sentences with byt’ from his analysis, and present challenges raised by the two present tense forms of the verb. These problems lead to a re-examination of the distinction between Existential and Locative sentences, and of the distinction between sentential and constituent negation. We identify three distinct approaches to these issues, exploring their strengths and weaknesses. We do not argue conclusively for one approach but identify open questions which we believe need answers before the issues can be resolved.

This paper deals with the differences in the early acquisition of verb constructions by two L1 Russian-speaking and two L1 English-speaking children and compares the emergence of finite and non-finite verb forms in the first six months of early verb production. As an analysis of the early verb forms will show, large language-specific differences exist with regard to the amount of finite vs. non-finite verb forms in the children's early productions although children acquiring either language display a preference for infinitival and/or other non-finite verb forms for a short period of time. Given the notable differences between Russian and English with regard to the richness of the inflectional system and the predominantly synthetic versus the predominantly analytical nature of Russian versus English verb constructions, the paper aims to show to what extent language-specific properties including the frequency of linguistic elements may contribute to the acquisition of different verbal constructions.

The nominal inflections in the Balkan languages are to a great extent replaced by prepositions. In Macedonian, Bulgarian and Megleno-Romanian there are only vestiges of the declensions – dative (Dat) and accusative (Acc) forms of personal pronouns and Acc forms of masculine proper names, though, in some dialects, Acc forms for common nouns have been preserved and Dat relationships are represented by distinct Dat forms preceded by a preposition. There are also vocative (Voc) forms of proper names and a short list of other nouns.1 In Romanian and Aromanian there are distinct Dat forms for all nouns and Dat and Acc forms for personal pronouns. In Albanian both nouns and personal pronouns have three distinct oblique case forms – Dat, Acc and ablative (Abl), though with nouns the Acc forms are often equivalent to the nominative (Nom) ones, while the Abl ones are equivalent to the Dat ones.

1. OUTLINE In some languages (e.g., Georgian, Hindi, Samoan, Nepali, etc.), where the ergative system coexists with the accusative one, the alternation between ergativity and accusativity is determined by aspectuality (cf. DeLancey 1981, Dixon 1994, and Ura 2000). In this paper, I will explore the syntactic mechanism of the aspectually conditioned split-ergativity and try to explicate the parameter settings which distinguish the languages with the aspectually conditioned split-ergativity from the ergative languages with no such split and from the accusative languages in general. For the purpose of giving a coherent explanation to some syntactic phenomena found in the languages mentioned above, I will make a Minimalist approach under Chomsky’s (1995, 2000) theory of feature-checking, by refining and updating Ura’s (2000) hypothesis about the parametric syntax of the ergative system, according to which ergative languages have the parameter that enables the logical subject, basegenerated at the Spec of v, to participate in a checking relation directly with v (cf. Massam 2001 for a very similar idea (for some other variations of this idea, see the papers by Carnie, Legate, Massam, Spreng, and Tsedryk in this volume)), which gives rise to a situation where the logical, underlying subject (SUBJ) and the logical, underlying object (OBJ) have their Cases associated with v and Infl, respectively (that is, SUBJ in the ergative system is marked as accusative (= ergative) just like OBJ in the accusative system, and OBJ in the ergative system is marked as nominative (= absolutive) just like SUBJ in the accusative system). Under this hypothesis, SUBJ in the ergative system can move to the Spec of Infl (due to the EPP) after being marked as ergative as a result of its checking of v’s nominal feature, and OBJ in situ can associate its Case with Infl by Agree thanks to SUBJ’s displacement from the Spec of v to the Spec of Infl. This gives rise to a situation where SUBJ and OBJ in the ergative system occupy the same surface positions as their corresponding positions in the accusative system in spite of the difference in their Case forms. Because both SUBJ and OBJ in the languages with the aspectually conditioned split-ergativity show the same syntactic behaviours with respect to their grammatical functions regardless of whether the clause involving them is in the ergative system or in the accusative system, the above hypothesis enables us to give a consistent