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Though the emergence of modality from verbs of motion is a well-attested phenomenon, the assessment of cross-linguistically valid pathways still remains a desideratum. In this paper I offer an outline of the pathway followed by the understudied Italian modal verb occorrere 'to happen; to be necessary/needed' (from Latin occurrere, originally 'to run towards, into something or someone'). Based on the analysis of two large corpora, this paper reconstructs the emergence of the impersonal constructions 'occorre + INF' and 'occorre che + SBJV' vis-à-vis the personal one ('to be needed'). The data and their analysis confirm the complexity of the pathway: in fact, the emergence of modality is strongly interlaced with the co-presence of the ancient meaning 'to happen', but also with the emergence of a deontic construction in which occorrere assumes the function of the auxiliary essere ('to be') as well as with the later evolution of another construction with negative polarity and in which occorrere is a telic metaphoric verb of motion. Though the pathway followed by Italian occorrere could be idiosyncratic in a cross-linguistic perspective, its in-depth study sheds new light on the question of how modality emerges and in particular on its source domains and their relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the English impersonal appearance construction (it seems/appears) and its relationship with the propositions over which it scopes. Attention focuses on four aspects: the presence/absence of explicit personalization via circumstantial element to me; the use of conjunctive, comparative or elided binder; the modal/temporal deicticity of the framed proposition; and the instantiation of these features across written and spoken modes of communication. These features are considered on account of prior studies assigning semantic correlates to their occurrence on the basis of qualitative analysis. The study applies log-linear analysis, a statistical technique that allows exploration of associations between two or more categorical variables, to test the degree of association between the four aspects mentioned. Three significant effects are included in the final model: a three-way interaction between mode of communication, binder choice and personalization, and two two-way associations between personalization and framed clause deicticity, and between binder choice and framed clause deicticity. The identified associations are discussed in the light of relevant literature and qualitative findings. The paper ends with concluding remarks and critical reflections on the use of log-linear analysis for the study of linguistic variation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this introduction we propose an agenda for working towards a diachronic typology of individual person markers. Rather than tracking the development of entire paradigms, our goal is to arrive at a better understanding of the diachronic pathways of those source constructions that end up as a conventionalized means of marking a particular person or person scenario, i.e. the specific (di)transitive person configuration. We discuss how this diachronic typology will need to consider certain types, or characteristics, of person markers, such as free vs. bound forms; SAP vs. 3rd person forms; or the status of person scenario markers. With respect to the source constructions and pathways, it is useful to distinguish between category-internal (e.g., person shift) and category-external (e.g., impersonal constructions) sources that give rise to person forms. We further offer a brief summary of the types of motivations that have been argued to lie behind the observed changes. Other issues of interest involve the stability vs. susceptibility for change as well as the optionality and synchronic variation of person forms, which may precede diachronic change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although a lot of research has been done on the use of pronouns to express impersonal meaning in West Germanic languages, relatively little is known about the use of other possible impersonalization strategies. This article therefore examines the agentless passive as a possible impersonalizing strategy in Afrikaans and Dutch. On the basis of corpus data, we show that the agentless passive is a productive strategy for impersonalization in both Afrikaans and Dutch –in that it is used in the entire range of impersonal contexts. However, it is more typically employed for corporate contexts and existential contexts where the subject is vague and number-neutral. Some variation in the use of the agentless passive in different genres are also seen. On the whole, however, the agentless passives behave very similarly in the two languages as an impersonalizing strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The class of English verbs of Desire in Present-Day English comprises verbs such as long or thirst, several of which are attested in earlier English in impersonal constructions characterised by the lack of a grammatical subject. In English, the impersonal construction decreased in frequency between 1400 and 1500, and effectively went out of use during the sixteenth century. Previous research has suggested that there is a need for a corpusbased study of not just Middle English, but also Early Modern English, in order to explore the different path(s) of development followed by individual impersonal verbs. The present article, therefore, investigates the development of the impersonal verb long (< OE langian) with the following objectives: a) to determine when long ceases to occur in impersonal constructions; b) to provide a diachronic overview of the personal syntactic patterns that came to replace impersonal constructions in Early Modern English; and c) to identify, within the framework of Construction Grammar, factors that may account for the development of long as a prepositional verb. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our goal is to explore the intersection of two bodies of literature, namely, the one on impersonal constructions with an emphasis on uno 'one', and the one on the effect of transitivity and the focus of attention on the distribution of overt vs. null pronouns, where it has been shown that overt pronominal subjects are disfavored in transitive contexts as opposed to intransitive contexts. Through a variationist analysis of the expression of uno in Barranquilla, Colombia, in the PRESSEA-BARRANQUILLA corpus, we extend this line of inquiry to this impersonal pronoun and study in detail for the first time the effect of the various components of transitivity on the distribution of overt pronouns. Specifically, various transitivity parameters put forward by Hopper and Thompson are shown to correctly predict the distribution of uno, namely, number of participants and kinesis whereas sentence polarity, aspect and individuation of the object yield mixed results meriting future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with impersonal passives in two Germanic languages, Swedish and Dutch. Impersonal passives constitute one type of impersonal construction (denoting constructions with non-canonical subjects) as described in Siewierska (2008a: 116). Formally, they consist of an overt expletive subject, such as det 'it' in Swedish and er 'there' in Dutch, combined with a passive predicate. Semantically, such passive constructions encode actions with a general reference, i.e. where no agent is specified (cf. Siewierska 1984, Engdahl 2006, Viberg 2010). The study is corpus-based and uses a bidirectional translation corpus of Swedish and Dutch to map out the specific morphosyntactic and semantic profile of the impersonal passive in both Swedish and in Dutch. The similarities and differences make these languages suitable to study from a contrastive perspective in that interesting aspects on impersonal passives are highlighted in the translation data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares the grammaticalizing human impersonal pronoun ('n) mens in Afrikaans to fully grammaticalized men and non-grammaticalized een mens in Dutch. It is shown that 'n mens and een mens can still be used lexically, unlike mens and men, and that ('n) mens and een mens are restricted to non-referential indefinite, universal-internal uses while men exhibits the whole range of (non-) referential indefinite ones. Despite the latter's presence in the earliest Afrikaans data, it is argued not to have influenced the development of ('n) mens. This pronoun and Dutch een mens are also found to have syntactic functions other than subjecthood, unlike men. The contrast is attributed to their different degrees of grammaticalization. Lastly, the Afrikaans 'man'-pronoun is shown to differ from its Dutch counterparts in relying on the second person singular for suppletion, though forms of ('n) mens are found to occasionally occur instead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines backgrounding strategies for human agents in Catalan Sign Language, that is, constructions featuring human agents that are non-referential. We identify and analyze four types of agent-backgrounding strategies: subjectless constructions, indefinite pronouns, the impersonal axis, and general nouns. Extending on previous work, we offer a description and a semantico-pragmatic analysis of each construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper offers a first systematic approach to the expression of impersonal human reference in French Sign Language (LSF). It extends and deepens a prior study carried out by the authors on the basis of a large scale discourse corpus. The description proposed here is based primarily on data elicited through a specialised questionnaire on impersonal human reference (Barberà & Cabredo Hofherr, this volume), initially developed for spoken languages and adapted for sign languages. The strategies revealed are compared with those discussed in our prior study. We begin with a brief review of the literature on impersonal human reference in spoken and sign languages, and a presentation of our theoretical framework for the analysis of LSF. We then elaborate on our methodology and the issues raised by the elicitation protocol adopted, from initial stages of its preparation to the representation of our data. We finally present and discuss the main strategies we highlighted for the expression of impersonal reference in LSF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses R-impersonals in Hong Kong Sign Language (HKSL). As evidenced in our questionnaire and conversation data, R-impersonals in HKSL typically make use of null forms, the non-specific indefinite determiner (i.e., onedet-path (someone)/onedet-path (anyone)), distinguished by non-manual markers), and, occasionally, the Chinese character sign human/person. HKSL does not show impersonal uses of personal pronouns (e.g., they, you) which are commonly found in spoken languages. The nominal strategies are determined by the contexts and the referential properties of the impersonal referents, and they differ in the use of space in representing the impersonal referents in subsequent discourse. R-impersonal referents encoded by onedet-path (someone)/onedet-path (anyone) are associated with an area of the upper part of the ipsilateral side of the signing space, but they can still be assigned to a specific locus if the subsequent discourse requires locative information. Impersonal referents introduced by null forms or the Chinese character sign human/person are typically not spatially anchored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates agent-backgrounding constructions in Turkish Sign Language (TİD). TİD displays many of the agent-backgrounding strategies reported in the literature that signed (and spoken) languages employ (Barberà & Cabredo Hofherr, this volume). Use of non-specific indefinite pronominals is a major strategy, and this paper is the first study that identifies these forms in TİD. Moreover, we show that TİD has ways of marking clusivity distinctions of indefinite arguments, and has a special sign that derives exclusive indefinite pronominals, other. We argue that (i) whereas lateral-high R-locus is unambiguously associated with non-specificity, non-high (lateral and central) loci are underspecified in terms of specificity; (ii) the R-locus of indefinite arguments observed in agent-backgrounding contexts in TİD consists of two spatial features [+high] and [+lateral] which express non-specificity and exclusivity. This study further shows that clusivity, usually associated with personal pronouns, must be extended to indefinite pronouns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine agent backgrounding in Italian Sign Language (LIS). Specifically, we are interested in identifying and describing the strategies used by LIS signers to reduce referentiality. On the basis of low-referential contexts (cf. questionnaire in the Introduction chapter), we recorded target sentences containing potential markers of agent backgrounding and asked three LIS native signers to provide felicity judgments on them using a 7-point scale. We discuss agent-backgrounding strategies of different types: (i) manual, (ii) non-manual, and (iii) syntactic. Overall, our study shows that the combination of raised eyebrows and mouth-corners down associated with the existential quantifier someone and the sign person makes the agent-backgrounding reading more prominent. Other strategies that can be used in LIS to reduce referentiality are free relatives, perspective shift, and null subject. We also investigate in more detail the semantic status of someone, person, and the null subject through well-established tests from the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The authors deal with a range of phenomena characterized by anomalies with respect to the mismatch between the surface realization of nominal phrases on the morphosyntactic level, i.e. the selection of cases, and their grammatical function. In connection with the subject function, traditional scholars generally regarded this kind of non-canonical relation between sentence structure and semantic interpretation as a categorial deviation and treated it under the cover terms grammatical versus logical subject. The eye-catching title of this paper makes allusions to rather dangerous, odd and sinister characters and topics in real life. On the one hand, therefore it should express the "irrational" use of well-established terms and categories. On the other hand, it may point at our attempt to group together and "telescope" different and mostly separate constructions such as nominativus pendens, genetivus partitivus, nominativus absolutus, dativus sympatheticus, furthermore subjectless sentences and emphatic exclamations, and to put them under a common denominator, which might be called - in terms of an oxymoron - "irregular regularity." Our analysis focuses on Latin and Ancient Greek material. Nevertheless, data from exotic languages, such as Kannada, are also considered, and they - once more - demonstrate the diversity of typologically different patterns as well as the predominant "eurocentric" attitude in the categorization of linguistic phenomena. Additionally, we discuss some features indirectly related to our main topic, such as converse verbs, the substitution of passive forms by active lexical items belonging to the same semantic field (as a type of morphological suppletion), and the change of valency or respectively semantic roles within the framework of Case grammar. However, this article only tries to fulfill the criteria of observational and descriptive adequacy within a model of ascending degrees, whereas the level of explanation will be addressed in future work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study is concerned with the contrastive analysis between the sentence and the clause level. It aims to investigate the usage of both subjectless sentences (independent clauses) and sentence-like construction (dependent clauses) in formal vs. informal language. The idea of subjectless is the focus of the analysis undertaken on selected samples, ranging from formal to informal language used in a presidential speech, a standup comedian's monologue performance, an interview with a celebrity, and an episode of a TV series. Since English is a non-pro-drop language, then the study tries to answer the following questions: (1) why can we find instances of null subject on the sentence level. (2) How would null-subject for both sentences and clauses influence communication in different contexts?. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Language: Meaning & Form / Valoda: Nozime un Forma is the property of University of Latvia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article contends that Mallarmé's use of the word "impersonnalité" at several key moments in his literary career (1866- 1898) is linked to his sophisticated understanding of how works of art build up their own aesthetic value, often considered in terms of the glorious or the sacred. Whereas Mallarmé's impersonnality has generally been either neglected as self-evident or considered as part of an auctorial strategy allowing the poet to reinforce his position in the "champ littéraire," I suggest that it also strategically engages the work's critical distribution towards its readership, bearing witness to the theoretical importance of Mallarmé's thought. Through a discussion of his early correspondence and a reading of his more mature prose, as well as of his poem "Le Pitre châtié," the article traces the evolution of Mallarmé's use of impersonality, from a prevailing poetic malediction to an ideal or idealistic, theoretical encounter of author and reader. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Studies about Language / Kalbu Studijos is the property of Studies about Language / Kalbu Studijos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article addresses the issue of Visser's Generalization (VG), holding that Subject Control verbs are incompatible with the passive, and proposes a solution based on a combination of the passive seen as smuggling and Obligatory Control seen as A-movement (Hornstein 2001, Hornstein & Polinsky 2010). The smuggling-type passive is perfectly compatible with the behavior of Object Control verbs, while also showing that in the case of passivized Subject Control constructions the crucial c-command link between the controller and PRO is not preserved, thus inducing the VG effect. This solution leads to three expectations confirmed in the literature: (a) lack of object promotion, meaning no smuggling of the infinitive and PRO out of the c-command domain of the implicit Agent, does not disturb Subject Control (van Urk 2011); (b) PRO requires c-command by its controller at LF, which holds true once the apparently problematic cases of intraposition and extraposition in Super Equi and the concept of logophoric extension from (Landau 2001, 2010) are reconsidered; (c) the smuggled constituent including the infinitive does not reconstruct to its original position. Alternative proposals are also considered to show the empirical adequacy of the presented solution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] Subjectless main clauses in Swedish were analyzed in conversational data. [•] The clauses occur in four types of contexts: comments on the situation or discourse, elaborations, final points or evaluations and brief responses. [•] Speakers use subjectless clauses when they react to something said or done in the situation, but at the same time they avoid contributing (too much) topical substance. [•] Subjectless clauses are an established conversational practice in Swedish and are used in certain types of communicative situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews the book "The Early English Impersonal Construction: An Analysis of Verbal and Constructional Meaning" by Ruth Möhlig-Falke.

The aim of this paper is to provide a descriptive panorama of the different approaches to verbal impersonality in the Spanish grammatical tradition, from very primitive testimonials of the Latin-Romance scholastic grammar to the end of the Spanish "Siglo de Oro". Once the specific phenomena of verbal impersonality are collected and interpreted, results about the linguistic conception underlying the analyzed grammars will be generated. It is particularly interesting to know how an adequate terminology was being the semantic and morphosyntatic maps of language was studied in-depth. At the same time, the difficulties of some grammarians to establish a Latin independent grammatical model are confirmed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a contrastive study of the human impersonal pronouns man in Swedish and men in Dutch. Both impersonal pronouns are etymologically derived from man 'human being' and they more or less have the same meaning. However, there are important differences in the usage of these pronouns. In this study, the similarities and differences between Swedish man and Dutch men are studied in a Dutch-Swedish parallel corpus. Analysing a parallel corpus has the advantage of allowing one to both study the distribution of man and men in original texts and to contrast the use of these pronouns with their translations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the pronominalization of the patient in reflexive passives and reflexive impersonals in Peninsular Spanish. It is commonly agreed that only human patients can pronominalize in these contexts in Standard Peninsular Spanish. However, some varieties show full pronominalization of non-human patients. This paper aims to describe the geographical distribution of this pronominalization in Peninsular Spanish, together with the evolution of this phenomenon. Dialectal data allow describing the evolution of linguistic phenomena by means of investigating their geographical spreading in different contexts. The data contained in this paper show that the pronominalization of the patient in reflexive indefinite agent constructions (namely, reflexive passives and reflexive impersonals) is related to the animacy hierarchy, connecting this phenomenon with the more general category of agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I explore the hypothesis that constructions -- here understood primarily as the dependencies of Word Grammar -- can undergo systematic change, sometimes partly due to the effects of the grammaticalization of a lexical item or class of lexical items. I argue that the development of will as a future tense marker in English involves the development of a new construction where two separate syntactic items are associated with a single event in the semantics. I also look at the loss of the impersonal construction in English, where it has been argued that the change is driven by an increase in the schematicity of the Transitive Construction, as well as having been argued that dative experiencers have been reclassified as subjects. I observe that it has also been noted that dative experiencers could function as subjects in earlier varieties of English, and suggest that this is an example of category strengthening. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper discusses the semantic constraints on impersonal passives in several languages, including German and Dutch. Corpus data support earlier assumptions that the situation denoted by impersonal passives is a homogeneous (e.g. atelic) event. Telic (or unaccusative) verb lexemes can be used in the impersonal passive if they are forced into event-structural homogeneity. I will attempt to derive this event-structural restriction from the referential demotion of the subject argument. In this view, the telicity restriction is not a strict independent constraint but rather an epiphenomenon of the referential non-individuation of the argument undergoing a change of state. Another widely acknowledged claim is that impersonal passives in some languages including German, Dutch, and Icelandic are restricted to human (or animate) agents. I will show that this condition turns out to be too restrictive for Dutch and German, once real discourse data are considered. In order to capture the cross-linguistic variation, I will draw upon notions related to proto-agentivity instead of animacy. In my analysis, both constraints on impersonal passives are tied to the meaning of the demoted argument. The event-structural telicity restriction is a consequence of its demoted referential properties, animacy is an effect of its proto-agent properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Die Welt von Gestern, Stefan Zweig's posthumous autobiography, presents two particularities in its semantic and pragmatic aspects. On the one hand, the semantic core of the text is not the 'I' of the author, narrator and main character, as Philippe Lejeune's classic definition prescribes, but the 'world' in which he lives. This is the reason why some critics have described it either as an 'impersonal' or as a 'super-personal' autobiography. On the other hand, the 'world' Zweig projects in the text is quite different from that same world described by historians, so there is a lack of correspondence between the signs and their designata, that is to say, a problem of referentiality. This is the reason why it can thus be considered a very 'personal' autobiography. There are two apparent contradictions: how can an autobiography be 'super-personal'?, and how can it be considered 'super-personal' in the narrative of the 'I', and, at the same time, very 'personal' in the description of the 'world'? The contradictions are not so if we realise that there is a connection between the 'I' and the 'world', because it is not possible to explain the first without the latter, if we assume that the identity of certain individuals is constructed more with their impersonal relations (objects, ideas, work) than with their interpersonal relations. The construction of the 'world' is the way to Zweig to reveal his personal 'I'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses impersonal constructions in spoken Estonian. The impersonal constructions found in two spoken corpora differing in levels of formality are examined and classified according to five readings of the implicit argument: universal, vague and specific existential, corporate and a future-hypothetical reading. The analysis focuses on the implicit impersonal actor referent, investigating differences in its interpretation as well as overt expressions of the implicit argument. We account for the diverse readings of the implicit actor as being derived through pragmatic means. The impersonal construction is taken to bear a unified semantics, which specifies only that the implicit argument has the default semantic features of human, plural, and actor. The argument receives its full interpretation through pragmatics and the surrounding discourse context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early English impersonals have been the subject of numerous studies, and many systems of classification have been proposed, as well as theories on their evolution into personal constructions. Jespersen's (1927) theory of reanalysis of the preposed dative experiencer into a nominative subject (from þam cynge licodon peran to the king liked pears) has been defended and rejected in roughly equal measure since it was first published. The present study will contrast Jespersen's theory with that of Allen (1995), testing both against data on necessity verbs such as þurfan, need, behove and mister. A 4.1 million-word corpus is used which includes the Helsinki Corpus plus a random selection of texts from the Dictionary of Old English Corpus, the Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse, the Lampeter Corpus and the Corpus of Early English Correspondence Sampler. Findings suggest that while reanalysis does account for the evolution of some lexemes, others require the examination of linguistic features that fall outside the scope of this kind of syntactic change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that in the context of the copular complement construction ( est possible que ‘is possible that’ for example), French possesses two impersonal constructions respectively introduced by il ‘it’ and ça ( c') ‘this’. This analysis runs counter to most syntactic accounts which structurally distinguish impersonals ( il) from dislocated ( ça) constructions. Two arguments are proposed in defense of the two impersonals analysis. First, following the Cognitive Linguistics tradition, it shows that il should not be considered a meaningless dummy but a referential (albeit general) expression. Secondly, a comparison with ceci ‘this’, a pronoun with an unquestionable cataphoric sense, reveals that ça cannot be considered a cataphoric pronoun, and that its meaning within the context of the copular complement construction is very close to il's. Consequently, the syntactic competition between these two pronouns reflects their conceptual overlap, and their distribution in discourse is motivated by their semantic differences. Beyond its relevance to the understanding of the il/ça distribution, the analysis presented in this paper not only argues in favor of a broader account of impersonals than syntactic accounts generally advocate, but also provides a way of constraining the kinds of constructions which receive the impersonal label. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has recently been claimed (Hazout ) that the English expletives it and there do not differ in their theta-properties. This paper argues that Dutch het and er do differ: all instances of het bear a (quasi-)theta-role; no instance of er does. Evidence comes from an analysis of expletive selection in constructions with seem-type verbs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses impersonal null-subjects in Icelandic and elsewhere. Despite the fact that the interpretation of Icelandic impersonal null-subjects obeys restrictions similar to those observed for overt impersonal subject pronouns in various languages, they cannot be analyzed as lexical pronouns, deleted in PF. Rather, it is argued, impersonal null-subjects are constructed in syntax, by combination (merger) of abstract features. In general, it seems that pronouns, silent and overt, are PF representations of complex syntactic structures, rather than tokens for discrete terminal nodes. In addition, the paper discusses the cross-linguistic distribution and typology of impersonal null-subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses evidence that reinforces previous proposals (Barbosa 1995, 2000, Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou 1998, Pollock 1997, Kato 1999) that there is no EPP feature driven subject movement to pre-verbal position in the Romance consistent Null Subject Languages (NSL). The paper argues that this property distinguishes European Portuguese (EP), a consistent NSL, not only from the non-NSLs (French or English) but also from a closely related partial pro-drop language such as Brazilian Portuguese (BP). In line with a long tradition of research on the topic, the absence of EPP feature driven XP movement to Spec-TP is attributed to properties of “rich” agreement morphology. The paper develops an analysis of this phenomenon within the Agree based framework of Chomsky (2000, 2001, 2005) as modified in Pesetsky & Torrego (2004a, b) . In the analysis proposed here, pro is a minimally specified nominal whose unvalued φ-features are valued in the course of the derivation. Another consequence of this paper concerns partial pro-drop. The analysis of pro proposed here for the consistent NSLs doesn’t apply to the null subject in BP. In fact, our conclusion that subjects raise in BP may be seen as indirect confirmation of Holmberg’s findings regarding null subjects in Finnish where there is clear evidence for raising. Consequently, the null subject found in the consistent NSLs is of a different kind from that found in partial pro-drop languages, such as BP or Finnish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses properties characteristic of partial null-subject languages, that is languages which allow null subjects but under more restricted conditions than consistent null-subject languages. Three such languages are compared: Brazilian Portuguese, Finnish, and Marathi. It is demonstrated that they have indefinite null subjects, in particular, a null counterpart of English generic one, but allow definite 3rd person null subjects only when controlled from a higher clause, while consistent null-subject languages do not allow null ‘one’, but do allow definite 3rd person null subjects without a controlling antecedent. A theory is proposed to explain this difference between the two types, with elements from Holmberg (2005) , Frascarelli (2007) , and Roberts (2007) . The structural difference is that consistent null-subject languages have an unvalued D-feature in T which is absent from partial null-subject languages. The relation between a null subject embedded in a finite clause and its controller is discussed in some detail. There is some degree of variation between the three languages, yet the relation in all three of them is different from obligatory control and from non-obligatory control, as familiar from non-finite clauses, and also different from the antecedence relation found in consistent null-subject languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Polish and Russian are partial pro-drop languages with different patterns of subject realization: whereas pronominal subjects are more commonly elided in Polish, they are more commonly overt in Russian. This suggests an approach to modeling ellipsis that begins with the parameter baseline subject realization with the values overt and elided. Once a language has been thus parameterized (overt for Russian, elided for Polish), the rules for determining when to override that baseline decision must be formulated. At least four types of factors influence the realization decision for subjects in Russian and Polish: syntactic constraints; the semantic and stylistic nuances of the utterance; and two pragmatic constraints – the necessity of avoiding ambiguity and the preference for avoiding redundancy. While many theoretical approaches would stop at the point of making such generalizations, the approach taken here, which follows the theory of Ontological Semantics, necessitates that all of the proposed constraints be associated with heuristics sufficient to provide a non-native speaker or intelligent agent with a robust, practical knowledge of ellipsis usage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is an empirical, corpus-based analysis of the functions of seem with different complementation structures and in impersonal constructions as well as in combinations with an experiencer. The focus is on describing how evidentiality (e.g. inferencing/observation or hearsay evidence) interacts with degrees of certainty or factivity of the construction. Other features are subjectivity and intersubjectivity (shared or non-shared information). Translations from English into Swedish have been used to get a more fine-grained picture of the degree of certainty expressed by seem and its relationship to the type of evidence. The different constructions with seem and their functions are explained in a grammaticalization perspective. Seem conforms to a number of principles such as layering and divergence (Hopper). Seem to is the most grammaticalized form and can be regarded as an evidential marker which is similar to the modal auxiliaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Eesti Rakenduslingvistika Ühingu Aastaraamat is the property of Eesti Rakenduslingvistika Uhing (ERU) / Estonian Association for Applied Linguistics and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Polish has a large number of constructions which have been referred to as impersonal because they lack a canonical subject. I discuss syntactic, morphological and lexical properties of these constructions in turn and argue that they can be classified into four distinct types: constructions with optionally unexpressed pronominal subjects, morpholexically derived constructions with obligatorily unexpressed syntactic subjects, genuinely subjectless constructions formed with defective verbs and passivised intransitive predicates, and constructions with overt non-agreeing subjects. I offer LFG-type analyses of the first three categories of construction. I identify subjects for two of them at the argument structure and functional structure levels of representation, and confirm only one type of construction as truly subjectless at all levels of syntactic representation of the predicate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on grammatical constructions that attenuate or eliminate the expression of agency in Russian, using the frameworks of Radical Construction Grammar and Cognitive Grammar. Emphasis is on the organization of these constructions in larger networks of related personal and impersonal constructions, with impersonal constructions as peripheral members of the system. More specifically, we compare the role of the dative case in impersonal constructions containing a finite verb and an infinitive and demonstrate that there are two such constructions, which has implications for the concepts of main verb-hood and agentivity. This type of nuanced analysis takes into account factors such as case semantics and relationships among constructions in assessing how agency is assigned or avoided in Russian impersonal constructions, hence makes it possible to tease apart the differences between two impersonal constructions that appear identical in structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existentials have been associated with the functions of asserting existence of an entity, setting a scene, presentation of new discourse entities, as well as listing. They are structures whose meaning is connected to discourse. Although the construction has been widely studied, some of the functions it performs, such as the impersonalising function have remained largely unexplored. This paper takes impersonalisation as a functional concept, in the sense of agent removal from a scene, shows how existentials in European Portuguese are also impersonal constructions, and describes them within the framework of construction grammar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper discusses the notion ‘impersonal’ in the light of Finnish and current functionally oriented research on Finnish grammar. The constructions discussed exhibit one or several of the properties associated with impersonals. Many of them involve a human participant. Investigation of actual language use shows that the human participant is often interpreted as a speech act participant. Thus, paradoxically, impersonal constructions are closely intertwined with the expression of person in Finnish. At least the following properties seem to be involved in various treatments of impersonal constructions: (i) lack of grammatical person opposition; (ii) lack of an Agent or other primary argument in the argument structure; (iii) non-subject-like (oblique) coding of primary argument; and (iv) identity of primary argument is left open. There seems to be no one single property that impersonal constructions share. This underlines the fact that the notion of ‘impersonal’ is not a coherent concept but rather a set of features. Thus, impersonality may be a useful conceptual tool for cross-linguistic comparison because it directs the analysts’ attention to phenomena that may share some properties, but it does not seem to be a necessary notion in the description of individual languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an overview of the syntax and semantics of Romance clitic impersonal constructions (CL-ICs), as present in the grammars of Spanish and Italian, within the framework of the Minimalist Program. Syntactically, these structures are characterised by the presence of the clitic se/si, which is analysed as a 0-person clitic, along with other person clitics in Romance, and heads a functional projection in the temporal domain immediately above T(ense). The syntactic properties of CL-ICs can be accounted for with reference to the complex agreement operations involving the clitic se/si, the empty category in subject position (a null generic pronoun: G-pro), the object argument in transitive contexts, and the features of the heads T and v. The interpretation of CL-ICs crucially relies on the presence of G-pro in the specifier position of vP: it introduces a variable that can be bound by an existential or a universal quantifier, which accounts for the variable quantificational force of CL-ICs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including one by Anna Kibort on lexical-functional grammar and another by Amaya Mendikoetxea on impersonal constructions.

This paper contributes to an ongoing debate on the syntactic status of oblique subject-like NPs in the `impersonal' construction (of the type me-thinks) in Old Germanic. The debate is caused by the lack of canonical subject case marking in such NPs. It has been argued that these NPs are syntactic objects, but we provide evidence for their subject status, as in Modern Icelandic and Faroese. Thus, we argue that the syntactic status of the oblique subject-like NPs has not changed at all from object status to subject status, contra standard claims in the literature. Our evidence stems from Old Icelandic, but the analysis has implications for the other old Germanic languages as well. However, a change from non-canonical to canonical subject case marking (`Nominative Sickness') has affected all the Germanic languages to a varying degree. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Argues that subjectless tagged sentences (STS) pose a problem for grammatical approaches based on movement and empty categories and that STS receive a revealing analysis as part of a finely articulated family of tagged sentence constructions when viewed within a nonderivational, constructional, multiple-inheritance-based approach. Descriptive variants of the STS construction; Maximal subconstructions.

Explores the use of the different impersonalizing strategies in Early Modern English as represented in the Helsinki Corpus. Comparison and contrast between impersonal passives and impersonal constructions; Analysis of the use of agentless passives with impersonalizing functions; Significance of implied indefinite agents.

An introduction is given for the April 2, 2009 issue of "Studia Linguistica," highlighting its feature articles on null subject language features.