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Previous studies have demonstrated that, for adults, differences between unaccusative verbs (e.g., "fall") and unergative verbs (e.g., "dance") lead to a difference in processing. However, so far we don't know whether this effect shows up in children's processing of these verbs as well. This study measures children's processing of intransitive verbs using the Visual World Paradigm. We found that children differentiate in processing between unaccusative and unergative verbs, yet in a different way than adults do. We identify and discuss potential sources for this difference.

Previous research has found that the single argument of unaccusative verbs (such as "fall") is reactivated during sentence processing, but the argument of agentive verbs (such as "jump") is not ( and ). An open question so far was whether this difference in processing is caused by a difference in thematic roles the verbs assign, or a difference in the underlying syntactic structure. In the present study we tease apart these two potential sources. In order to achieve this, we included a set of verbs (like "sparkle") which are equal to unaccusative verbs in the thematic role they assign to their argument, but equal to agentive verbs in the syntactic status of their argument (henceforth mixed verbs). As a method we used the visual world paradigm as this enables us to measure processing of the sentences continuously. This method also allowed us to test another hypothesis, namely the hypothesis that not only the argument of unaccusative verbs is reactivated during processing, but also the argument of agentive verbs. This reactivation is expected as the result of integrating the verb and its argument into one representation. In our experiment, participants listened to sentences including one of the three types of verbs. While listening, they viewed a visual display in which one of four objects was strongly related to the argument of the verb ("wood-saw"). The gaze record showed that the eyes moved to the related object ("saw") upon presentation of the argument ("wood"). More interestingly, the eyes moved back to the related object upon presentation of the verb ("fell"). We found that looks to the related object increase only late after verb offset for unaccusative verbs, replicating the findings of previous research. We also found a rise in looks to the related object in agentive verbs, but this rise took place much earlier, starting slightly after verb onset. Finally, we found that mixed verbs pattern in processing with agentive verbs. We conclude that the argument of the verb is always reactivated, independent of verb type. In addition, the timing of integration differs per verb type and depends on the syntactic status of the argument and not on the thematic role that is assigned to the argument. (Contains 4 tables and 5 figures.)

This contribution addresses the general theme of Multifunctionality and syncretism in non-finite forms. When we see a particular form in a number of different environments yielding different effects, what does it mean to say that this reflects multifunctionality rather than syncretism? As a refinement of multifunctionality the notion of 'multi-effectuality' is introduced: one element participates in different derivations, performing one and the same operation, but yields different interpretive effects depending on the environment. The analysis takes as a starting point the role of the affix -en in Dutch. The canonical view is that when attached to a verb stem, -en functions either as an infinitival marker or as a nominalizing affix. It is shown that this view cannot be maintained. The "functions" of -en are unified by analyzing it as projecting an 'eventuality expression', with different effects depending on the syntactic environment. The analysis is extended to English, focusing on the contrasts between Dutch and English infinitives and on the role of the English -ing affix in gerunds and participles. The discussion proceeds with an analysis of Frisian with its two forms of the infinitive and concludes with some reflections on the relation between syntactic and semantic categories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cole, Hermon, and Yanti (2015) present a number of far-reaching conclusions about language universals on the basis of their study of the anaphoric systems of the Austronesian languages of Indonesia. The present contribution critically assesses these conclusions. It reports a further set of data, and shows that contra to what these authors argue, the systems they discuss can be straightforwardly accounted for by a simple set of universal principles plus properties of the vocabulary of the languages involved. I conclude this article with some remarks on acquisition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do so many languages employ special means to express reflexive predicates, and why can what languages do be so diverse, although the notion of a reflexive predicate appears to be so simple? What happens in languages that don't seem to do anything special? The contributions in this special issue all focus on the various ways in which natural languages express reflexivity, and how the challenges their diversity poses can be addressed. In this contribution I present and further develop my answers to these questions, showing that except for a definition of binding no principles specific to binding need to be assumed. Sections 3-7 provide an overview of issues against which the results of current binding research are to be interpreted. I briefly address the role of phases in the theory of binding and argue that phases are relevant only indirectly namely in so far as the operations involved in the encoding of binding dependencies are themselves sensitive to phase-hood. I also relate my account to current debates about the relation between syntax and morphology (as in Distributed Morphology), showing that a too loose connection between syntax and morphology leads to severe methodological problems. Section 8, presents an explicit derivation of the need for reflexivity to be licensed, addressing questions that have been raised since that idea was first presented. Section 9 provides a summary of the approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the psycholinguistic literature it has been proposed that readers and listeners often adopt a "good-enough" processing strategy in which a "shallow" representation of an utterance driven by (top-down) extra-grammatical processes has a processing advantage over a "deep" (bottom-up) grammatically-driven representation of that same utterance. In the current contribution we claim, both on theoretical and experimental grounds, that this proposal is overly simplistic. Most importantly, in the domain of anaphora there is now an accumulating body of evidence showing that the anaphoric dependencies between (reflexive) pronominals and their antecedents are subject to an economy hierarchy. In this economy hierarchy, deriving anaphoric dependencies by deep--grammatical--operations requires less processing costs than doing so by shallow--extra-grammatical--operations. In addition, in case of ambiguity when both a shallow and a deep derivation are available to the parser, the latter is actually preferred. This, we argue, contradicts the basic assumptions of the shallow--deep dichotomy and, hence, a rethinking of the good-enough processing framework is warranted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What prevents pronominals from being locally bound? Does this a) reflect an intrinsic property of pronominals (Chomsky 1981), is it b) a relative (economy) effect, that only shows up where there is a more dedicated competitor (see from different perspectives, Safir 2004, Boeckx, Hornstein and Nunes 2007, Levinson 2000), does it c) have a semantic basis as in Schlenker (2005), or does it d) follow from general conditions on agree based chains, and reflexive predicates (Reuland 2011a)? To help resolve this issue, we investigate Khanty (Uralic, spoken in Northwest Siberia), a language that is reported to allow locally bound pronominals (Nikolaeva 1995), and assess whether it in fact does have them, and, which factors come into play when local binding obtains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is explanation, and what is there to explain in linguistics? I take the reader on a small excursion into explanation, and to puzzles in linguistics that fascinate me. For instance, we as linguists are so used to the existence of conditions on binding. Yet, in this contribution I ask readers to do a small step back and wonder why there would be conditions on binding at all. And if so, why would they have to be special? Any approach to binding will have to face the challenge of the daunting diversity of surface manifestations of binding patterns. Taking the variation between Dutch, Frisian and English as a starting point I show that our standard binding conditions don’t in fact constitute a unitary phenomenon. Rather, they result from the interplay between different factors, in part not even specific to language: properties of predicates, our general inability to handle identicals in a space with insufficient structure, properties of chains, and general economy conditions. As I show, it is on the basis of such a deconstruction of the binding conditions into component factors that the unity underlying the diversity can be uncovered, and the curious patterns we find explained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an overview on several experiments which measure the performance of language users. A study on syntax showed robust education associated differences for all experimental conditions. Another study of Low Academic Achievers (LAA) and High Academic Achievers (HAA) groups revealed that HAA participants did at ceiling in all conditions, while the LAA group were worse on one kind of quantificational sentences.

Linguistic accounts of anaphor resolution propose that a pronominal can either be resolved by a grammatical operation in logical syntax (i.e., variable binding) or through value assignment in the discourse (i.e., coreference). A consistent finding in offline studies on the interpretation of ambiguous VP-ellipses is that bound-variable dependencies have a privileged status. The online evidence, on the other hand, is almost absent. In two experiments (one questionnaire and one eye-tracking experiment) we show that the binding preference is not solely an offline phenomenon, but can be detected in real-time measures of language comprehension. Furthermore, and in contrast to an earlier claim (Frazier & Clifton 2000), the binding preference of the language processor is not restricted to elliptic structures, but emerges in ambiguous structures with the ow(y-operator as well. The implications of these results are discussed in the light of a linguistic model of anaphoric comprehension, that is, the Primitives of Binding framework (Reuland, 2001) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

String-Vacuous Head Movement in Japanese: New Evidence from Verb-Echo Answers. Consequently, the following item should be added to the references, and should be cited as the original source for the argument that Japanese has overt V-to-T-to-C movement: REFERENCES 1 Sato, Yosuke, and Shintaro Hayashi. Due to an unfortunate oversight by the authors, this contribution does not give proper credit to [1], which presents the original argument for the conclusion that Japanese has overt V-to-T-to-C movement. [Extracted from the article]

I identify a number of problematic aspects of Christiansen & Chater's (C&C's) contribution. These include their suggestion that subjacency and binding reflect non-domain-specific mechanisms; that proto-language is a "cultural product"; and that non-adaptationism requires overly rich innate structures, and is incompatible with acceptable evolutionary processes. It shows that a fully UG (Universal Grammar)-free version of the authors' neo-adaptationisrn would be incoherent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]