Search

In a corpus study and two acceptability experiments, we investigated whether there is a preference for null or overt subjects with ambiguous (syncretic) and exclusive (unambiguous) verbs in Brazilian Portuguese (BP). Previous literature has proposed that BP (i) is deactivating the “Avoid Pronoun Principle” and (ii) is a partially pro-drop language, whose morphosyntactic contexts for null subjects are restricted. The corpus study and the acceptability experiments show that there is an effect of person syncretism in the verbal paradigm on the relative frequency of null subjects and on the acceptability of sentences with null subjects in the first-person singular: there is a tendency to avoid ambiguity due to null subjects with ambiguous verb forms, but only in contexts with competing antecedents. These results are analyzed in the light of a general theory of anaphora resolution (ARIEL, 1990, etc.), as resulting from a calculation taking into account the accessibility of potential antecedents and the cost of the anaphoric form (ALMOR, 1996). En un estudio con base en corpus y dos experimentos de aceptabilidad, investigamos si existe una preferencia por sujetos nulos o pronominales con verbos ambiguos (sincréticos) o exclusivos (no ambiguos) en portugués brasileño (PB). En los estudios del área, se propuso (i) que se está desactivando en PB el “Principio Evite Pronombres” y (ii) que el PB es una lengua parcialmente “pro-drop”, cuyos contextos morfosintácticos para sujetos nulos se han restringido. Nuestro estudio con base en corpus y en los experimentos de aceptabilidad, comprueba que existe un efecto del sincretismo de personas en el paradigma verbal sobre la frecuencia relativa de sujetos nulos y sobre la aceptabilidad de oraciones con sujetos nulos en la primera persona del singular: existe una tendencia a evitar la ambigüedad de sujetos nulos con formas verbales ambiguas, pero solo en contextos en los que hay competición de antecedentes. Se analizan estos resultados a la luz de la teoría general de la resolución de la anáfora (Ariel 1990, etc.), como resultado de un cálculo que tiene en cuenta la accesibilidad de los antecedentes en potencia y el costo de la forma anafórica (ALMOR, 1996). Em um estudo de corpus e em dois experimentos de aceitabilidade, investigamos se existe uma preferência por sujeitos nulos ou pronominais com verbos ambíguos (sincréticos) ou exclusivos (não-ambíguos) no Português Brasileiro (PB). A literatura propõe que o PB (i) está desativando o “Princípio Evitar Pronome” e (ii) é uma língua parcialmente “pro-drop”, cujos contextos morfossintáticos para sujeitos nulos são restritos. Nosso estudo de corpus e os experimentos de aceitabilidade mostram que há um efeito do sincretismo de pessoas no paradigma verbal sobre a frequência relativa de sujeitos nulos e sobre a aceitabilidade de sentenças com sujeitos nulos na primeira pessoa do singular: há uma tendência a evitar ambiguidade para sujeitos nulos com formas verbais ambíguas, mas apenas em contextos em que há competição de antecedentes. Esses resultados são analisados à luz de uma teoria geral da resolução da anáfora (Ariel 1990, etc.), como resultado de um cálculo levando em conta a acessibilidade dos antecedentes potenciais e o custo da forma anafórica (ALMOR, 1996).

International audience

This paper investigates the position of adjectives in noun phrases in Truku Seediq, proposing that the two documented positions correspond to different semantics as well as a difference in syntax. While post-nominal adjectives, corresponding to basic word-order in Truku Seediq, may be either restrictive or descriptive, pre-nominal adjectives, seen as an innovation, are semantically restrictive. This paper also argues for a difference in syntactic structure for both kinds of adjectives, restrictive adjectives heading their own projection while descriptive adjectives are bare adjectives standing in a closer relationship to the modified noun. This paper further identifies a syntactic constraint for pre-nominal adjectival placement that applies regardless of restrictivity of the modifier, namely the presence of a possessive clitic to the right of the modified noun. Data collection is achieved through both a traditional elicitation method and an experimental task-based method. Data are further digitalized in order to ensure systematic searchability. The data thus collected are apt to support semantic analysis as well as an investigation of age-group-related variation. It is claimed that language contact with Mandarin Chinese may be one of the triggering factors for the development of a pre-nominal position for modifying adjectives in Truku Seediq.

RésuméLe présent article porte sur la structure interne des constructions causatives du français. Son argumentation se base sur deux idées essentielles : que l'interprétation de respectivement révélerait l'effet d'intervention dans les constructions bi-propositionnelles, et que la montée du quantifieur serait soumise à la minimalité et à la Condition d'impénétrabilité des phases. J'utiliserai ces deux phénomènes comme tests pour justifier d'une part la relation morpho-syntaxique entre le verbe causatif faire et le verbe causativisé, et d'autre part la dérivation de l'ordre VOS (verbe-objet-sujet) du complément de faire. Je compte démontrer que les constructions causatives du français sont analogues aux constructions ECM (Exceptional Case Marking), qui impliquent un TP défectif enchâssé; et que l'ordre VOS du complément de faire, dans la construction faire-à et dans la construction faire-par, impliquent deux dérivations différentes. Le premier est dérivé par Object Shift, tandis que le deuxième est dérivé par Smuggling.

Generalized noun phrases are expressions which play the role of verbal arguments in the same way as ordinary NPs. However proper generalized NPs cannot easily occur in all argumental positions of the verb. Two types of generalized NPs are distinguished and semantically characterized and various properties of functions they denote are studied. These properties indicate similarities and differences between ordinary NPs and generalized NPs and show that generalized NPs essentially extend the expressive power of natural languages.

This chapter presents data that challenge the prevailing assumption that as Latin evolves into French, it passes gradually from a satellite-framed language to a verb-framed language. In fact, Medieval French presents an unexpected intermediate stage, a grammar that includes a number of satellite-framed constructions that are present neither in Latin nor in Modern French (verb particles, goal-of-motion constructions, complex adjectival resultative constructions). Moreover, there is evidence that these constructions disappear abruptly during the same period. We provide a micro-parametric account for the presence of verb particles and goal-of-motion constructions in Medieval French whereby both are made possible through the presence of a null Path morpheme having the meaning of TO, which arises as early as Late Latin, as the Latin telicizing prefixes become decreasingly salient.

This paper explores a typology of overt coordination in additive numerals in a number of minority languages in South China. Among approximately 100 minority languages surveyed, 26 languages feature different coordinators for additive numerals and noun phrases. We show that these two types of coordinators are not semantically, etymologically, or morphologically related. This phenomenon presents a serious challenge to the proposal that additive numerals do not form constituents and that numeral coordination is derived from underlying nominal coordination in such languages.

This study proposes a fine-grained classification and analysis of French denominal adjectives based mainly on the semantic relationships that exist between the noun the adjective modifies (the head-noun) and the noun it is derived from. Capitalizing on previous works, it is argued that these relationships are intrinsic whenever they focus on a dimension proper to the referent of the head-noun, but they are extrinsic whenever this referent is conceived of as a participant in an event denoted either by the head or the modified noun. After a brief characterization of denominal adjectives in relation with other adjectives, the article lists the variety of meanings these adjectives exhibit in French and tries to shed light on the reasons why only some of them sound acceptable when occurring with a degree adverb or in a predicative structure. In the account sketched in the final section, denominal adjectives are dealt with in the same way as intersective adjectives.

The goal of this article is to show that adjectival resultative secondary predication was a syntactic possibility in Medieval French. From a diachronic point of view, the presence of this construction is surprising given that it is attested neither in Latin nor in Modern French. From a typological point of view, the presence of adjectival resultative secondary predicates in Old French is somewhat expected given the presence of other resultative secondary predication constructions during that period. This study takes a predominantly descriptive point of view with the aim of contributing to our knowledge of this stage of the French language and its evolution with respect to other languages.

International audience; &nbsp

International audience; no abstract

This paper addresses the contribution that corpus-based studies of syntactic variation can make to the construction, elaboration and testing of formal syntactic theories, with a particular focus on the testing dimension. In particular, I present a new empirical study of obligatory and optional asymmetric negative concord phenomena, and I show how an influential analysis for obligatory concord patterns (de Swart, 2010) can be tested using variation data through looking at the predictions that its natural probabilistic extension makes for the forms, interpretations and frequency distributions of expressions in languages in which asymmetric concord is optional. In obligatory negative concord languages like Spanish, negative indefinites, such as nadie ‘no one’, appear bare in preverbal position (i.e. in an expression like Nadie ha venido ‘No one came’), but they co-occur with the negative marker no in postverbal negative concord structures such as No he visto a nadie ‘I did not see anyone.’ (lit. ‘I did not see no one.’). Furthermore, in this language, co-occurrence between a negative marker and an n-word is either prohibited (*Nadie no ha venido), or it is obligatory (*He visto a nadie). Québec French shows a variable version of the Spanish pattern in which the negation marker optionally co-occurs with postverbal negative indefinites (J’ai (pas) vu personne ‘I saw no one’) but is prohibited with preverbal negative indefinites *Personne est pas venu (Ok: Personne est venu. ‘No one came’). I show how the predictions for Montréal French of de Swart’s analysis of Spanish can be tested (and, in this case, mostly verified) using a quantitative study of the distribution of bare and concord structures in the Montréal 84 corpus of spoken Montréal French (Thibault & Vincent, 1990) through looking at its natural extension within Boersma (1998)’s stochastic generalization of the Optimality Theory framework, which is the framework in which de Swart’s proposal is set.

In this introduction, we provide a general overview of the semantic and syntactic properties of pseudo-incorporation, which is intended to serve as a basis for accessing the papers in this volume. Given that pseudo-incorporation shares semantic properties with other phenomena, in particular morphosyntactic and semantic incorporation and weak referentiality (expressed by bare plurals and weak definites), we will also present the main characteristics of these phenomena. Additionally, we point out issues in the study of pseudo-incorporation that still need to be resolved, such as, for instance, the definitional debate as to what kind of empirical facts fall under the umbrella of pseudo-incorporation. We conclude by providing short summaries of each contribution to this volume.

Subject intervention in wh-questions has been reported for several Romance varieties. The case we focus on here is free relatives. In Italian/French an object free relative introduced by chi / qui is degraded if a preverbal subject intervenes, much like the corresponding wh-question. However, pronominal relatives introduced by cio che / ce que do not show a subject intervention effect. Moreover, in other languages, including English, free relatives display no subject intervention effect whatsoever. In this paper we address the following questions: (i) Why do subject intervention effects emerge in direct questions and in free relatives in Italian, French (and other Romance varieties)? (ii) Why don’t they arise in pronominal relatives? (iii) Why don’t they arise in languages like English?To answer these questions, we capitalize on the concept of Gross Minimality (Cecchetto & Donati, 2015) and on the observation that English free relatives are modeled after indirect questions.

In this chapter, we provide empirical evidence on the prosodic marking of information focus (IF) in French. We report results from an elicitation experiment and two perception experiments. Based on these experiments, we propose that phrases that resolve a question are set off by two types of intonational markers in French: they host the nuclear pitch accent (NPA) on their right edge and/or they are intonationally highlighted by an initial rise (IR). These intonational markers are very often realized conjointly but can also be applied separately thus leading to considerable variation in our elicitation data. We will propose that some of the variation can be explained by differences in the function of NPA and IR: NPA placement is sensitive to the informational/illocutionary partitioning of the content of utterances, while IRs are sensitive to different types of semantic or pragmatic salience. We also suggest that “question/answer” pairs provide a criterion to identify the IF only if the answer is congruent. Answers may, however, contribute to implicit questions resulting in different prosodic realizations.

Cet article répond à trois objectifs. Premièrement : établir un inventaire des réalisations connues de la proéminence accentuelle. Deuxièmement : présenter les avantages et les lacunes de la représentation CVCV de ces réalisations. Et troisièmement : proposer une solution aux lacunes de ladite représentation. Je montre tout d’abord que l’inventaire des manifestations de l’accent est limité par deux restrictions dont ne rend pas compte l’analyse CVCV. Cette dernière suppose une représentation propre à chaque type d’accent. Or, je signale que les différentes manifestations de la proéminence accentuelle ne forment pas des catégories typologiques strictes : elles peuvent être en distribution complémentaire, et par conséquent ne nécessitent pas de représentations séparées. À l'inverse, l'hypothèse d'une représentation commune rend compte de cette distribution complémentaire. Enfin, je propose une représentation unifiée de la proéminence qui rend compte de l’inventaire restreint de ses réalisations. Je montre que de toutes les manifestations de l’accent, seule l’aspiration n’est jamais le résultat d’une lénition. Il s’agit donc d’une primitive représentationnelle dans le sens où elle n’est pas issue d’une dérivation. See annex

This paper presents a new logical analysis of quantity comparatives (i.e. More linguists than philosophers came to the party.) within the Delineation Semantics approach to gradability and comparison (McConnell-Ginet in Comparison constructions in English. PhD thesis, University of Rochester, Rochester, 1973; Kamp in Formal semantics of natural language. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1975; Klein in Linguist Philos 4:1---45, 1980) among many others. Along with the Degree Semantics framework (Cresswell in Montague grammar. Academic Press, New York, 1976; von Stechow in J Semant 3:1---77, 1984; Kennedy in Projecting the adjective. PhD thesis. University of California, Santa Cruz, 1997, among many others) Delineation Semantics is one of the dominant logical frameworks for analyzing the meaning of gradable constituents of the adjectival syntactic category; however, there has been very little work done investigating the application of this framework to the analysis of gradability outside the adjectival domain. This state of affairs distinguishes the Delineation Semantics framework from its Degree Semantics counterpart, where such questions have been investigated in great deal since the beginning of the twenty-first century. Nevertheless, it has been observed [for example, by Doetjes (Seventeenth amsterdam colloquium. University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, 2011); van Rooij (The vagueness handbook. Springer, Dordrecht, 2011c)] that there is nothing inherently adjectival about the way that the interpretations of scalar predicates are calculated in Delineation Semantics, and therefore that there is enormous potential for this approach to shed light on the nature of gradability and comparison in the nominal and verbal domains. This paper is a first contribution to realizing this potential within a Mereological extension of a simple version of the DelS system.

This work deals with the notion of argumentation and the way it is treated in a Bayesian perspective on reasoning and natural language interpretation. I am especially interested in the way the linguistic structure of utterances affect the way they are interpreted. Specifically, I argue that the sum of meanings conveyed by an utterance cannot be fed into such models indiscriminately and that the at-issue content of an utterance prevails in its argumentative interpretation. I support my claim by focusing on the case of the adverb only and by presenting the results of experiments which show that utterances that have similar informational contents do not behave the same way when they are argumentatively evaluated.

Patrick Caudal, Carl Vetters et Laurent Roussarie : Treating the French Imparfait as an inconsequent tense The goal of this paper is to provide a unified account of the different interpretations of the French imparfait. Capitalizing on the idea put forth in Caudal & Roussarie (2002a) that tenses should be viewed as illocutionary functions ('illocutionary viewpoints') because their aspectual, temporal and modal content reflect the speaker's attitude towards some propositional content, we will ascribe the imparfait a largely underspecified illocutionary force. In particular, we argue that the imparfait is not intrinsically related to assertion, as opposed to the passé simple. We show that such a move makes it possible to account for the entire range of interpretative effects associated with this tense. towards some propositional content, we will ascribe the imparfait a largely underspecified illocutionary force. In particular, we argue that the imparfait is not intrinsically related to assertion, as opposed to the passé simple. We show that such a move makes it possible to account for the entire range of interpretative effects associated with this tense., Caudal Patrick, Vetters Carl, Roussarie Laurent. L'imparfait, un temps inconséquent. In: Langue française, n°138, 2003. Temps et co(n)texte, sous la direction de Jacques Bres. pp. 61-74.

International audience; no abstract

International audience; no abstract

The paper presents both new data and a new analysis of the semantic and pragmatic properties of the class of absolute scalar adjectives (ex. dry, wet, straight, bent, flat, empty, full...) within an extension of a well-known logical framework for the analysis of gradable predicates: the delineation semantics framework (DelS) (see Klein, Linguist Philos 4:1-45, 1980 ; van Benthem, Pac Philos Q 63:193-203, 1982 ; van Rooij, J Semant 28:335-358, 2011b , among many others). It has been long observed that the context-sensitivity, vagueness and gradability features of absolute scalar predicates give rise to certain puzzles for their analysis within most, if not all, modern formal semantic frameworks. While there exist proposals for solving these puzzles within other major frameworks (such as the degree semantics framework), it has been argued that some of their aspects are particularly challenging for the analysis of absolute scalar predicates within the delineation approach. By combining insights into the relationship between context-sensitivity and scalarity from the DelS framework with insights into the relationship between tolerance/similarity relations and the Sorites paradox from Cobreros et al.'s ( 2012 ) Tolerant, Classical, Strict (TCS) framework, I propose a new logical system, called Delineation TCS (DelTCS), in which to set analyses of four classes of adjectival predicates. I argue that this new framework allows for an analysis of absolute scalar adjectives that answers these challenges for delineation-based frameworks, while still preserving the heart of the Klein-ian approach

Que ce soit dans la production orale spontanée, lue, ou même en lecture silencieuse, la structure prosodique est toujours présente. On ne peut produire un énoncé sans accompagner les séquences de syllabes successives encodant les morphèmes et les groupes syntaxiques de marques prosodiques qui déterminent une structure prosodique, c’est-à-dire un regroupement hiérarchique de groupes accentuels (séquence de syllabes ne comprenant qu’une seule syllabe accentuée qui n’ait pas de fonction iconique – tel que l’accent d’insistance). Pour établir que la structuration prosodique intervient dans le processus d’énonciation avant des autres structurations de l’énoncé, syntaxiques, morphologiques, informationnelles, on présente différents arguments d’ordre neurocognitif, syntaxique et prosodique. On en conclut que la structuration prosodique est la première à intervenir dans le processus de génération de l’énoncé par le locuteur. Elle est aussi la première à être décodée par l’auditeur, lui permettant ensuite l’accès aux autres structures organisant les unités de l’énoncé, et en particulier la structure syntaxique. Whether in read, silent reading or spontaneous speech, the prosodic structure is always present as an obligatory linguistic object in order to allow the listener to process the information brought by the flow of syllables and access the syntactic information contained in the sentence. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that the elaboration of the prosodic structuration necessarily present in the sentence actually precedes the elaboration of the other structures and particularly of the syntactic structure, whether in the generation process by the speaker or the perception process by the listener. Arguments favoring this conclusion are of various order and are based on the following facts:- The prosodic structure can exist without any words or any syntax whereas the opposite is not true. Syntax depends on the presence of prosody, but prosody does not depend on the presence of syntax; - The phonation process requires a flow of expiratory air flow which is segmented by phases of inspiration in the speaker respiration cycle; - The flow of syllables must be segmented in chunks in order to be processed by Delta brain waves. Delta waves synchronize the transfer of sequences of syllables stored in short-term memory; - In spontaneous speech, reformulations are always realized by retaking a complete stress group and not a selected word (except perhaps in stylistic applications); - The dynamic process of the prosodic structure generation shows that the speaker has to choose between a relation of dependence (rection) or independence (paratax) between the actual prosodic group (ip or IP in autosegmental-metrical terminology). This is done by specifying prosodic contours indicating a dependency relation towards another contour to occur in the immediate future (i.e. to “the right”). All these observations lead to a conclusion suggesting that the prosodic structure operates before the syntactic and the other structures of the sentence. The usual graphic representation and analysis of the prosodic structure obscures considerably this aspects, leading to believe that intonation acts as a supplement to syntax, to be processed by the listener (in reality only the reader) as another set of syntactic features.

International audience; no abstract

1. Boban Arsenijevic, Berit Gehrke & Rafael Marin: Introduction: The (De)composition of Event Predicates .- 2. Anita Mittwoch: On the Criteria for Distinguishing Accomplishments from Activities, and Two Types of Aspectual Misfits .- 3. Beth Levin & Malka Rappaport Hovav: Lexicalized Meaning and Manner/Result Complementarity .- 4. Fabienne Martin: Oriented Adverbs and Object Experiencer Psych-verbs .- 5. M. Ryan Bochnak: Two Sources of Scalarity within the Verb Phrase .- 6. Jens Fleischhauer: Interaction of Telicity and Degree Gradation in Change of State Verbs .- 7. Kyle Rawlins: On Adverbs of (Space and) Time .- 8. Oliver Bott: The Processing Domain of Aspectual Information .- 9. Evie Malaia, Ronnie B. Wilbur & Christine Weber-Fox: Event End-Point Primes the Undergoer Argument: Neurobiological Bases of Event Structure Processing

This chapter offers an overview of the advancements made in the semantic theory of events and introduces its central notions and current issues to serve as background information relevant for the contributions included in the volume. It is structured around two main axes: compositional and decompositional approaches to the semantics of event predicates. We argue that, while composition and decomposition are at times treated as two competing ways to deal with the semantics of event predicates, they can actually be seen as two sides of the same coin, as essential parts of the subatomic semantics of event predicates. Along with these two axes, we address how adverbial modification served as modification for event semantics as well as its use as diagnostics for the structural complexity or for particular properties of eventualities, such as (a)telicity or scalarity.

Some higher order functions needed in linguistic semantics are studied. Such functions take binary relations or sets and binary relations as arguments and give sets of type 〈1 〉 quantifiers as output. Formal constraints on such functions are generalisations of similar constraints holding for generalised quantifiers and “simple” functions on binary relations. Some theorems concerning such constraints, in particular (generalised) conservativity and cardinality, are proved and some relationships with (Frege) irreducible quantifiers are indicated.

International audience; no abstract

International audience; no abstract

International audience; Cet article porte sur la liaison dans un parler spontané familier. Partant du constat que, dans la parole familière, les prononciations s’écartent souvent de leur forme canonique du fait d’un taux de réduction temporelle élevé, nous faisons l’hypothèse que le nombre de liaisons réalisées se trouve diminué dans ce type de parole. Notre étude repose sur une exploration du corpus NCCFr (Nijmegen Corpus of Casual French) à partir de techniques automatiques comme l’alignement automatique. Les taux de réalisation sont mesurés pour les consonnes de liaison les plus fréquentes (/z/, /n/ et /t/) dans des sites de liaison potentielle classés selon que la liaison y est obligatoire, facultative ou interdite. Nous proposons également une étude sur les relations entre le débit de parole et la réalisation des liaisons.

This paper reports on a large-scale, statistical analysis of corpus data to support the null hypothesis that ethnic adjectives (EAs, e.g. French) are ordinary adjectives, rather than argument-saturating \nouns in disguise" (in, e.g., French agreement). In particular, EAs are argued to simply modify the noun they combine with; their special properties in inducing argument-like behavior arises from the interaction between the semantics of event nominals and that of the adjective. This work was supported by grants from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (FFI2010-15006, TIN2009-14715-C04-04 (KNOW-II), JCI-2010-08581), as well as by the European Union via the EU PASCAL2 Network of Excellence (FP7-ICT-216886) and by the Fundació ICREA.

International audience; no abstract

Hausa subjunctive markers have been claimed (Wolff, 1993; Newman, 2000; Jaggar, 2001) to correspond to two functionally distinct paradigms: a true subjunctive, and a “neutral”, unspecified for tense, aspect and mood, the latter being used, inter alia, in constructions involving sequences of events. In this paper, I shall demonstrate that the deletion approach advanced by Newman (2000) is not only limited in its empirical scope, but also theoretically questionable. Building on previous work by Schuh (2003), I shall argue instead for a single category and propose a formal treatment in HPSG which crucially builds on Schuh’s notion of the subjunctive as a dependent category, modelled as an embedding (qeq) requirement in Minimal Recursion Semantics. Using asymmetric projection of TAM information, together with constructional introduction of content, the present paper derives the distribution of the Hausa subjunctive and its specific interpretation by means of constraint interaction.

In this paper we present a semantics for a little-studied and problematic class of adjectives, the so-called frequency adjectives (FAs), such as occasional and rare. FAs have been associated with three different readings, which we descriptively label the internal reading, the generic reading, and the adverbial reading, following the/nliterature (Stump 1981, Larson 1998, Zimmermann 2003, Scḧafer 2007).

This study is not about the text or the rhetorical properties of the political discourse, but rather about the way the segments of text are assembled prosodically and delivered. The analysis of two short but typical examples pertaining to two former candidates to the French presidential elections held in 2007, i.e. Segolene Royal SR and Nicolas Sarkozy NS, reveals that these leading political leaders differ in similar environment 1 in the complexity of the delivered prosodic structures; 2 in the congruence or non-congruence of prosody with syntax and 3 in the realization of continuation melodic contours. Although one would expect a style more formal for NS and more relaxed for SR considering their respective political opinions NS close to the right, SR to the left, the prosodic style used by NS appears to be closer to the spontaneous speech used in non-formal conditions, whereas SR consistently uses a very formal and conservative organization of her public speeches.

Denotations of anaphoric determiners are treated as functions from sets and relations to sets. Constraints on such denotations are studied, and shown to generalize anaphor conditions known from the study of simpler cases of nominal anaphors. In addition a generalisation of the notion of conservativity as applied to anaphoric functions is presented. Two classes of anaphoric determiners are discussed as examples: complex anaphoric determiners in English (e.g. no?except herself) and simple anaphoric determiners in Slavic languages (e.g. Polish swoj "his own")

International audience; Adopting Vallduví's partition of the background into link and tail, I provide an account for Italian data. Being links pre-focal expressions, and tails post-focal, right dislocated expressions, I claim that links are shifting topics, while tails are discourse-given material. I show that a link is not iterated in discourse as long as the topic does not shift. If a link appears to refer to the current topic, topic shift is still visible in the interpretive effects that arise. In particular, topic shift explains why a link is sometimes contrastive. A link implies an alternative set, because a shifting topic is always sorted among alternatives. Contrast derives from the possibility to evoke alternatives and from the contextual conditions that make alternatives relevant. Since a tail never evokes alternatives, trivially there is no context where it can be contrastive. I compare Italian and other languages and observe the reduced role of intonation in the linguistic marking of Italian links. I further show that the properties of tails are shared by all post-focal material, also material not commonly analyzed as right dislocated. Independent support is given by recent syntactic accounts of post-focal background, which treat it precisely as right dislocated material. #

Dans cet article nous proposons une analyse constructionnelle des phrases interrogatives en comment dotee d’une lecture rhetorique (IRC). Au plan syntaxique, la structure interrogative presente des restrictions inhabituelles dans ses proprietes d’extraction. Au plan semantique, l’IRC est une question partielle portant sur les conditions d’accessibilite a un monde ou le noyau propositionnel de l’interrogative (p) est vrai, et non sur la maniere d’un predicat de p. La presence d’indices contrefactuels contraint le champ des reponses possibles et declenche une lecture rhetorique qui vehicule l’assertion non (modalite)p. La conjonction de propositions contradictoires (p et non (modalite)p)) provoque un conflit entre le monde des attentes du locuteur et celui dans lequel p est envisagee comme vraie ; conflit qui est le support d’attitudes emotives telles que la surprise ou l’indignation. Au plan pragmatique, les IRC sont des actes de langage complexes qui associent un commitment questionnant du locuteur a une demande adressee a l’interlocuteur de se commettre au deni de p.

In this paper, we propose that movement of a stative subevent of a structurally complex event to a discourse-related position at the edge of the verb phrase is the fundamental characteristics of passive constructions. This assumption is supported not only by the semantics of passives but also by the fact that it provides a natural account of many of their syntactic properties some of which are left unaccounted for in previous approaches. More generally we give a principled explanation, based on the availability of a consequent state reading, of why some predicates do not form good passives. Psycholinguistic data provide further arguments to support our hypothesis.1

1. Introduction: Syntax and semantics of spatial P (by Asbury, Anna) 2. Part I. The general architecture of spatial PPs 3. The fine structure of spatial expressions (by Kracht, Marcus) 4. Projections of P (by Svenonius, Peter) 5. Priorities in the production of prepositions (by Zwarts, Joost) 6. The grammar of complex particle phrases in English (by Cappelle, Bert) 7. Part II. Expressions of directionality 8. The correspondence between directionality and transitivity (by Lestrade, Sander) 9. Pragmatic factors and variation in the expression of spatial goals: The case of into vs. in (by Nikitina, Tatiana) 10. Complex PPs in Italian (by Folli, Raffaella) 11. On the l-syntax of directionality/resultativity: The case of Germanic preverbs (by Mateu, Jaume) 12. Part III. Locative PPs 13. The distribution and interpretation of adjunct locative PPs (by Tomioka, Naoko) 14. Aspect inside PLACE PPs (by Tortora, Christina) 15. Part IV. Silent Ps 16. The place of PLACE in Persian (by Pantcheva, Marina) 17. Why are they different? An exploration of Hebrew locative PPs (by Botwinik-Rotem, Irena) 18. Silent prepositions: Evidence from free relatives (by Caponigro, Ivano) 19. Part V. Grammaticalisation 20. The grammaticalization of prepositional markers in Igbo: The example of the verb root -nye 'give' (by Uchechukwu, Chinedu) 21. Index of languages, dialects, and language families 22. Index of authors 23. Index of subjects

With respect to their semantic and syntactic behaviour, Slavic verbal prefixes fall into at least two groups. Internal prefixes are locative Ps that constitute a result state subevent, and events described by internally prefixed verbs are telic. External prefixes, on the other hand, are generated outside the VP and function as adverbial modifiers (Czech) or perfectivity markers (Russian). An apparent counter-example to this distinction comes from Czech, which shows an asymmetry between source and goal prefixes: only the former but not the latter are compatible with measure phrases. On grounds of such examples, Filip (2003) argues that only goal prefixes derive telic predicates, whereas source prefixes form atelic predicates. However, both prefixes display internal diagnostics and VPs containing either behave like telic predicates with respect to telicity tests. I propose an alternative account for the asymmetry, claiming that it results from different monotonicity properties of the particular result states. With source Ps the result state is topologically open and thus compatible with further modification by measure phrases, whereas a result state with a closed topology (with goal Ps) is not.

Patterns in the Semantics of Generic Sentences.- Intensional Subjects and Indirect Contextual Anchoring.- Temporal Orientation in Conditionals.- On the Temporal Syntax of Non-Root Modals.- How to Say Ought in Foreign: The Composition of Weak Necessity Modals.- On the Temporal Function of Modal Verbs.- The English Perfect and the Metaphysics of Events.- Tense and Modality in Nominals.- Time With and Without Tense.- The English Konjunktiv II.- Phasing in Modals: Phases and the Epistemic/Root Distinction.

My objective in this paper is to integrate scalar exclamatives into an HPSG grammar of French. First, a procedure to sort out scalar exclamatives from declaratives and interrogatives is proposed. Then, the main semantic and dialogical properties of exclamatives are presented: veridicity, ego-evidentiality, illocutionary double life and scalarity. Finally, assuming Ginzburg & Sag 2000, the exclamative clause type is defined.

Cet article discute du statut des complements prepositionnels. L’auteur defend la these que, dans le cas des complements prepositionnels du verbe, il n’y a pas desemantisation de la preposition, et propose une combinatoire qui depasse la dichotomie « complements argumentaux » / « circonstants » en distinguant differents degres d’intrication entre le verbe et le complement prepositionnel. Partant d’une etude du verbe tirer associe a la preposition sur, l’auteur met en evidence des configurations regulieres permettant de calculer le statut du complement prepositionnel dans la proposition.

International audience; no abstract

The paper discusses circumstances under which locative prepositional phrases (PPs) can act as a constituting part of a directed motion event. It will be shown that there is a division of labour among different elements in a sentence to express the Path of a directed motion event and this labour can be distributed in various ways not only among different languages, as discussed in Talmy (1985) and subsequent work, but also among different constructions that are not always associated with particular types of verbs or particular types of Ps., Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung, Vol 11 (2007): Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 11

L'objectif de ce papier est double: - presenter les caracteristiques syntactico-semantiques et prosodiques d'un type de constructions tres frequemment utilisees a l'oral, a savoir le couplage de propositions sans marque segmentale (Je suis venue sur Toulouse j'avais environ deux ans); - voir si la realisation prosodique associee aux deux propositions couplees peut servir d'indice pour determiner quelles relations de dependance existent entre elles. L'analyse proposee s'appuie sur l'etude d'une dizaine de constructions qui ont ete extraites du corpus ACSYNT.

It is generally considered at least since Moens and Steedman (1988) that eventualities should be decomposed into sub-eventualities or ‘stages’ (cf. also Parsons, 1990; Smith, 1991; Kamp & Reyle, 1993). Formal models of situation structure seldom pay attention to the ontological status of stages. They are generally content with ascribing some simple mereological structure to reified situations (if they follow Davidson, 1967, and Bach, 1986) or with representing them in terms of sequences of instants or more abstract indices (cf. e.g., Partee, 1973; Verkuyl, 1993). Pustejovsky (1995) and de Swart (1998) are notable exceptions to this general trend. However, I will suggest here that neither of these two theories can account for phenomena pertaining to what I call stage salience—intuitively, the varying ability of stages to be made ‘visible’ in particular syntactic and semantic contexts. The type of treatment advocated by de Swart is based on the idea that the aspectual contribution of tenses only involves aspectual type shifts, and not aspectual viewpoints, contra e.g., Guillaume (1929) and Smith (1991). Informally, viewpoints operators (unlike aspectual type shift operators) are not just mapping functions between situation types, but rather focus operators (cf. Smith, 1991), which render some parts of a situation structure semantically visible. I will argue that a proper theory of aspect should involve both types of operators. I will show in addition that viewpoint phenomena require non-mereological relations between stages, going against a position defended in Pustejovsky (1995). But before moving to the study of stage salience, I will first propose a formal treatment of situation structure and tense aspectual semantics incorporating the notions of aspectual focus and viewpoint.

Introduction Most current formal theories of discourse incorporate some insight concerning the contribution of aspect to discourse structure, and many draw upon Hans Kamp’s analysis of the aspectual contribution of tenses, as well as Vlach’s notion of tenses as aspect-shift operators (cf. Vlach 1981). Thus, Kamp & Rohrer (1983) argue that the French imparfait acts as a ‘stativizer’, mapping non-stative event types onto stative ones. Moens & Steedman (1988), Kamp & Reyle (1993) as well as Asher (1993), Lascarides & Asher (1993), de Swart (1998) defended or developed related views, amounting to treating tenses as aspect-shift operators. Another, concurrent view on the aspectual contribution of tenses can be found in early works on aspect in Romance languages (e.g., Guillaume 1929), and has been recently revived in the formal community by Smith (1991). It consists in treating the aspectual contribution of tenses in terms of viewpoint, expressing the speaker’s perspective on the course of events. It does not reduces the aspectual content of tenses to aspect-shift or coercion operators ; they are not content with changing the internal structure of events, they add information of a new kind to it. Assuming that a viewpoint approach to aspectual semantics should be favoured (see Caudal 2000 for arguments supporting this position), the main goal of our paper will be to treat tenses as illocutionary viewpoint functions constraining rhetorical relations, and thereby interacting with discourse structure. It will appear that the illocutionary force of tenses is strongly connected with their aspectuo-temporal content. Our formal analysis will be couched within the SDRT framework ((Segmented Discourse Representation Theory, cf. Asher 1993, 1999, Asher & Lascarides 1994, 1998, 2001, Lascarides & Asher 1993). In SDRT, discourse constituents (formerly propositional content, labelled by terms K) are labelled by terms called π, to which rhetorical relations (which pertain to discourse structure) are applied. Under this new communicative perspective, the π labels are to be viewed as speech act referents and rhetorical relations as relational speech act functions (cf. Asher & Lascarides 2001).

L'auteur reprend le debat concernant le rapport entre constituants prosodiques et structure syntaxique de surface applique a la prosodie du francais. Elle met en contraste des predictions de segmentation obtenues par differents modeles a consistance et les donnees de son corpus (corpus lu). Cela l'amene a formuler un modele original de la structure prosodique fonde sur deux postulats : 1) les constituants prosodiques sont determines en surface par differentes informations d'ordre linguistique et extralinguistique, 2) des contraintes syntaxiques, semantiques et phonologiques - notamment rythmiques - interviennent en parallele dans la linearisation des enonces. En s'appuyant sur le cas de l'accentuation des phrases dans l'usage reel en francais, l'auteur etudie l'ecart entre organisation prosodique et rythmique d'un enonce et son organisation syntaxique. Elle remarque ainsi que les principes rythmiques et prosodiques d'un enonce interagissent continuellement dans la construction des structures de surface