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This article offers a quantitative study of the genitive and nominative/accusative plural inflections in Owun's gloss (Rushworth2) to the Rushworth Gospels in comparison with Aldred's gloss to the Lindisfarne Gospels. It focuses on three inter-paradigmatic analogical changes attested in Rushworth2: (1) the extension of genitive singular -es from the a-stems to other noun classes, (2) the spread of nominative/accusative plural -as from masculine a-stems to neuter a-stems and other declensions and (3) the extension of genitive plural -ena from the weak nouns to a-stems. The main aim of this article is to establish the scale on which these analogical changes are found in Rushworth2. The results are compared with those obtained in the study of Lindisfarne to determine the degree of similarity between the two glosses with regard to these processes and shed light on the question of whether Owun copied from Aldred or not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Polish genitive case is explored from the point of view of its proposed polysemy. We adopt the view that the genitive represents an instance of structured polysemy (Nikiforidou 1991). Like Nikiforidou, we reject the opinion that the genitive instantiates accidental homonymy or shows general single meaning. Our analysis demonstrates that several meanings we identified are intricately tied to each other. There are two prototypical meanings with their several semantic extensions, the latter departing from the former. Contrary to Nikiforidou's proposal of the genitive as a "radial category" (Lakoff 1987), we support an alternative model. In our view, structured polysemy found in the genitive is better handled by a model referred to as the "meaning chain" (Taylor 1988). Some of the meanings identified are motivated by other meanings in the chain, without directly relying on some semantic centre. Our description of the Polish genitive sheds new light on the holistic semantics of this category with allegedly only grammatical meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper proposes a constructionist analysis of two highly syncretic non-finite forms in Irish, traditionally referred to as the verbal noun (VN) and the verbal adjective (VA). The VN can fulfil the function of the infinitive, the 'present participle' in the periphrastic progressive, the argument supporting (AS) nominal and the R(eferential)-nominal. The VA can function as the passive participle in periphrastic passives/resultatives, the 'passive' adjective, the active participle (showing further syncretism with the genitive of VN) and the 'active' adjective. The basic idea is that the two syncretic forms receive a unified analysis (i.e. same structure). The VN is viewed as a kind of "elsewhere" realization of [vP[Root]] in all contexts except for [Tfin [VoiceP [vP [Root]]]]. VA spell-out is implemented when the morphosyntactic bundle carries no features that positively define the input as verbal or nominal. The height of affix attachment is indicative of the type of participle involved. Verbal passive/perfective participles and corresponding adjectives embed the external argument introducing projection (VoiceP), whereas active verbal participles and adjectives lack it. The extensive multifunctionality and syncretism in Irish seem to be closely linked to the lack of the AspP layer in the structure of non-finite verbs, nominals and adjectives as well as the lack of overt transitivizing morphology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article is a systematic, large-scale corpus study of the varying position of the Old English adnominal genitive. Particular focus is put on intertextual variation and the potential influence of Latin, which is analysed alongside such intra-linguistic factors as syntactic weight and the animacy of the referent. The model of logistic regression adopted helps address a key issue in studies on genitive placement, namely, if and how multiple variables exert combined impact on the choice of the variant. The paper highlights the importance of a bottom-to-top approach in studies of older English syntax, as global tendencies turn out to be the corollary of significantly different contributions on the level of individual texts, whose translation status (original composition or translation) is also of importance to the variation studied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Linguistics, and typology in particular, can have a bright future. We justify this optimism by discussing comparability from two angles. First, we take the opportunity presented by this special issue of Linguistic Typology to pause for a moment and make explicit some of the logical underpinnings of typological sciences, linguistics included, which we believe are worth reminding ourselves of. Second, we give a brief illustration of comparison, and particularly measurement, within modern typology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a first systematic investigation of predicative possessive constructions across Western Iranian languages. The notion of possession is conceived as a prototypical domain. It is shown that investigated languages are classified into two major areally distributed groups with respect to predicative possessive constructions: (i) "be"-verb languages, (ii) "have"-verb languages. "Have"-possessives, which originated from "action schema", are argued to have superseded the archaic "be"-possessives, which trigger a non-canonical marking of the possessor argument. However, "have"-verb languages have preserved relics of the older "be"-possessive in some neighbouring domains to possession. In addition, two languages exhibit possession split and are in transition from "be"-possession to "have"-possession: these languages demonstrate the effect of alienability/inalienability in such a split. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines prenominal von‐possessives in German and relates them to Saxon Genitives and Possessor Doublings in that language. Von‐possessives are prepositional possessives that precede determiners and are stressed. Saxon Genitives and Possessor Doublings are nominal possessives that pattern together but have properties different from von‐possessives. It is proposed that there are two left peripheral positions in the German noun phrase: Spec,DP and Spec,LPP. Nominal possessives move to Spec,DP checking the definiteness feature on D. In contrast, prepositional possessives move to the specifier of a higher Left Periphery Phrase checking a discourse feature. Despite these differences, this paper proposes that all possessive constructions have the same basic inner makeup. It is shown that non‐possessive elements can also surface in Spec,LPP. This dichotomy between nominal possessives and preposed PPs provides another argument that the nominal left periphery is more complex than usually assumed. However, it will be shown that in German the nominal left periphery is different from that of the clause. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper shows that there is a pattern in the distribution of synthetic (šēp šarrim "the king's foot") vs. analytical (kaspum ša awīlim "the boss's money") genitive constructions in Old Babylonian. The choice depends on the lexical feature of head nouns known as (in)alienability. Old Babylonian kinship and body part terms, as well as some other substantives, are "inalienable", which means they take only the synthetic construction. All other Old Babylonian nouns are "alienable", which means they admit both the synthetic and the analytical construction (kasap tamkārī and kaspum ša tamkārī "the merchants' money"). In the latter case, there is no general rule to predict the choice, yet in certain cases the two constructions display a non-random frequency distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the cognitive semantics of the typological category "possession" using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach. At the macro level, we argue that "possession" is not a unitary cognitive category for speakers, but instead represents an aggregation of diverse semantic schemas which center around three distinct conceptual anchor points: ownership, body-parts, and kinship relations. It is shown how each of these conceptual anchor points can be clearly identified using the NSM metalanguage of semantic primes and molecules. At the micro level, the paper undertakes a close examination of the cognitive semantics of English s-genitives in the frame [THIS SOMEONE'S] SOMETHING, e.g. Mary's ring, Mary's shoes, Mary's drawing, Mary's plate, Mary's train. It is argued that the wide range of use of the s-genitive can be captured in a set of five semantic schemas, which constitute a network of grammatical polysemy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The possessive construction in Mandarin is similar to English prenominal possessives except that maximality is presupposed only for cases involving inherently relational nouns. In this paper, I adopt the hypothesized split of argument and modifier genitives proposed by Partee & Borschev (2001, 2003) and argue that modifier-genitives can occur NP-internally in Mandarin possessives, whose appearance is restricted to cases with non-relational nouns. The discrepancy of the maximality presupposition observed in Mandarin can thus be captured since non-relational nouns can have a split of interpretations between argument and modifier genitives, resulting in a non-maximality reading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated the comprehension of subject-verb agreement in Turkish-German bilinguals using two tasks. The first task elicited speeded judgments to verb number violations in sentences that contained plural genitive modifiers. We addressed whether these modifiers elicited attraction errors, which have supported the use of a memory retrieval mechanism in monolingual comprehension studies. The second task examined the comprehension of a language-specific constraint of Turkish against plural-marked verbs with overt plural subjects. Bilinguals showed a reduced application of this constraint, as compared to Turkish monolinguals. Critically, both groups showed similar rates of attraction, but the bilingual group accepted ungrammatical sentences more often. We propose that the similarity in attraction rates supports the use of the same retrieval mechanism, but that bilinguals have more problems than monolinguals in the mapping of morphological to abstract agreement features during speeded comprehension, which results in increased acceptability of ungrammatical sentences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This survey is an attempt to bring together systematically all the main combinations of heads and attributes that together form the genitive constructions in Semitic. The paper demonstrates the extent of the Semitic genitive construction: in addition to its central role in the domain of the noun phrase, it is the preferred syntactic mechanism behind many phrase and clause types -- syntactic adjectives and possessives (the pronoun *d_v? with an attribute), relative clauses, complex prepositions, prepositional phrases, gerundial forms and most types of adverbial clauses. It is the most important mechanism at the phrase level. The external syntax or syntactic function of the different constructions may be accounted for by the syntactic nature of the head as the grammatical centre of the entire construction. Accordingly, an adverbial head is naturally found heading an adverbial phrase or clause. In addition, there may be other, more complex factors: the fact that genitive constructions headed by pronouns also function as syntactic or analytic adjectives has to do with the nature of the adjective as a complex form that includes a pronominal element. The functional extent of the Semitic genitive constructions, in contrast with the often-limited adnominal use in other languages, deserves to be considered as a primary feature of the syntax of common Semitic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have seen a resurgence of word‐based models of grammatical description in which implicational relations that exist between fully‐inflected wordforms can be exploited by speakers in the production of novel forms. Generally, word‐based models such as 'Word and Paradigm' (WP) have focused on describing the inflexional patterns exhibited by languages with more fusional structure, such as Latin, since they diverge most drastically from the 'morphemic ideal' in which meaning and form are in a one‐to‐one correspondence. However, consideration of the illative in Veps suggests that languages with more agglutinative inflexional structure (where sub‐word units which 'encode' particular functions can usually be clearly identified) are also consistent with a WP, rather than a morphemic or constructive, point of view. [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.)

Ever since Kemble (1840), buton folcscare (Beowulf, 73a) has been thought to mean 'with the exception of the common land'. The Old English compound folcscaru is reliably attested in poetic texts in the sense 'tribe, nation'; secondarily the meaning 'province, land' may have arisen, but nowhere does the compound convey the special sense 'common land, commons'. It can be shown that a meaning in the area of 'tribe' makes sense at line 73 of Beowulf as well, but the genitive gumena refers to both folcscare and feorum. It is quite conceivable that the line provides a distant echo of ancient Germanic customs concerning limitations of royal authority as adumbrated in Tacitus' Germania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the role of the particles māl, ḥāl, ḥagg and ḥaqq in the Arabic dialects of Oman. These particles have often been described as markers of possession in Omani Arabic: however, the data presented in this article seem to indicate that these elements are employed to express a wide variety of NPinternal specifications that go well beyond the realm of linguistic possession, and that they can also be used predicatively outside the boundaries of a NP. ḥāl and ḥagg, in particular, should probably not be described as genitive markers at all. The syntactic and pragmatic contexts in which the aforementioned markers can be used will be discussed, along with the range of meanings and semantic categories they can express. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses some textual questions in Ajax leading to the following conclusions: I. 54 add ⟨τ᾽⟩ after λείας. – II. 208 the emendation ἠρεμίας ("rest", "quietude") suggested by Thiersch. – III. 405a–b the proposal κράτη / μοι to fill the lacuna. – IV. 476 defence of the line as transmitted. – V. 546 τοσόνδε to go with ϕόνον. – VI. 719 ἄνδρες, ϕίλον τι πρῶτον instead of ἄνδρες ϕίλοι, τὸ πρῶτον. – VII. 869 instead of με write γε. – VIII. 951 ⟨σὸν⟩ ἄχθος as a reference to Tecmessa's heavy burden of woe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the influence of conceptuality on the distribution of four semantically equivalent possession-marking constructions in eighteenth-century Dutch: the prestigious genitive case (which was promoted in the prescribed norm but was decreasing in productivity at the time), as well as the (relatively) novel van-construction, possessive -s and periphrastic possessive. Comparing the division of labour between these constructions in private egodocuments and texts that were produced for publication, and viewing the findings in the context of contemporary language users’ everyday lives, the article reveals and analyses a complex picture of pragmatic variation. Even in the most norm-accordant texts, the prescribed genitive is never dominant. The egodocuments, which did not adhere strictly to the norm, display not only a productive use of the genitive, but also a noticeable rarity of the conceptually oral periphrastic possessive construction. This is attributed to the writers’ schooling and their familiarity with the written norm. It is concluded that conceptuality alone was not decisive in eighteenth-century language use, but also the mediality of the communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to study the extension of genitive singular -es from the a-stems to other noun classes in the gloss to the Durham Collectar (Durham, Cathedral Library, A.iv.19). To this end a quantitative analysis of sixtyfive nouns has been carried out in contexts where they gloss a Latin genitive form. The nouns have been selected on the basis that their etymological inflection for the genitive singular is other than -es, and they consist of feminine nouns (nouns ending in -ung, nouns ending in -ness, ō-stems, i-stems), kinship r-stems and weak nouns or n-stems. The results of the analysis of the Durham Collectar are compared with those found in the Lindisfarne Gospels (London, British Library, Nero D.iv) with three main purposes: first, to determine the degree of similarity between the two glosses; second, to establish whether Durham is more conservative or not with regard to this feature, and finally, to contribute to the discussion on the question of authorship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we establish the empirical correlation that in Old English, the morphology on the quantified element is related to the morpho-syntactic status of the quantifier. While quantified DPs are always in the genitive, quantified non-DPs vary between genitive and concord based on the status of the quantifier. The quantifiers that take only genitive dependents contain uninflected particles and cannot be modified; those that occur with non-DP-size dependents in concord are inflected as adjectives and can be modified by degree words. We propose that particle-like quantifiers are in a head position but that quantifiers with adjectival properties are in a specifier position. The quantified dependents are also argued to be in different positions: all DP dependents are in the genitive and proposed to be the complement of N; in contrast, non-DP dependents are either in a specifier position (if genitive) or part of the nominal projection line (if concord). We wind up with the proposal that head-like quantifiers assign genitive case to their specifiers but adjective-like quantifiers do not. This proposal is confirmed in two related languages: most quantifiers in Old High German are of the head type and thus occur with genitive dependents, while all Old Icelandic quantifiers under investigation are adjective-like and take non-DP dependents in concord. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I discuss the constructions with the group genitive and their use in today's Swedish. The development of the s-genitive from a diachronic perspective, its degrammaticalization and the status of the s-genitive are discussed. The aim of the paper is to examine and analyse the use of the group genitive in the Swedish nominal phrases in three contexts, i. e. coordinated nominal phrases, nominal phrase with a prepositional phrase and nominal phrase with a relative clause. The group genitive's domain is above all spoken, colloquial language. The analysed material consists of authentic examples of everyday use of language from the Swedish corpus Språkbanken and a questionnaire conducted among native speakers. The study shows that the group genitive is very productive with various types of nominal phrases in Swedish, even though it is still limited to colloquial and non-formal use of language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compared to Greek genitive absolutes, Latin ablative absolutes are of two types. The first have agents that are non-coreferential with the subject of the main clause. The second have agents that are coreferential with the subject of the main clause. The first type strongly resemble Greek genitive absolutes because of their high frequency of animate subject complements and the similar way in which they articulate referential coherence. The second type, which always contains a perfect passive participle, from a comparative perspective can be seen as a paradigmatic filler, which is a Latin alternative to an anterior active participle. Their subject complements are less frequently animate and in the word order (iconically) placed close to the subject of the main clause that is also the agent of the ablative absolute. However, paradigmatic differences have only minor consequences for the preferred sentence position of the absolute constructions and their internal complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, two theories have been advocated in the syntactic literature with respect to case assignment mechanisms, and this paper tests them based on new empirical material from Russian. One theory, advocated by Woolford and others, is Inherent Case Theory (ICT), which views case as an overt reflection of a relationship between a given noun phrase and a (usually functional) head. The other theory, known as Dependent Case Theory (DCT) and advocated most recently by Baker and Bobaljik, views case as a reflection of a relationship between noun phrases in a given structural domain. In this paper, we test the two theories against the findings of two experimental studies conducted by us on eventive nominalizations in Russian. In such nominalizations, transitive / agentive subjects are marked by the instrumental, whereas objects / internal arguments are marked by the genitive. We call into question whether in these types of nominalizations, an agentive subject that is not accompanied by an internal argument that needs a case is marked by the instrumental (as predicted by ICT) or the genitive (as predicted by DCT). Having tested this in two experimental studies, we argue that only one of these theories, the ICT, can account for our empirical findings in a complete and coherent way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compounding is one of the most productive types of Livonian word formation. Compounds typically are synthetic and contain one or more modifiers, which follow the head of the compound. Most compound nouns have a singular genitive modifier. Livonian also has an important sub-group of compound nouns and adjectives, which has preserved the historical singular genitive ending *-n in modifiers. On rare occasions, the modifier can also be nominative. In such compounds, the modifier partially agrees in case with the head. An important group of Livonian compound nouns, created on the Latvian model, has declinable active present participles as modifiers. The Livonian system of compounds, just like Livonian itself, generally follows traditional Finnic compound word formation principles, but also has characteristics of compound formation typical of Latvian. Understanding the Livonian system of compounds was greatly helped by use of the Livonian written language corpus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the morphosyntax as well as the semantics of relativisation in Wobzi Khroskyabs, a Rgyalrongic language spoken in Sichuan, China. Different strategies of relativisation are presented, especially the nominalisation strategy. Wobzi Khroskyabs exhibits an innovative relativisation strategy with the genitive marker =ji, which is rarely found in other Rgyalrongic languages. Several hypotheses are put forward to account for the evolutionary pathway from genitivisation to relativisation, showing that genitive =ji probably followed an ergative pattern to enter the relativisation of core arguments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes a usage-based perspective on the partitive genitive construction in Dutch (iets moois, ‘something beautiful’), which has previously drawn scholarly attention from a theoretical perspective, due to the challenges it presents to Dutch nominal morphosyntax. We will argue that a good understanding of the construction at issue cannot circumvent the enormous variation in the expression of the genitive marker. Within the wide variation space, regular patterns can be discerned, which we uncovered by using mixed-effects logistic regression. This approach allows us to assess the precise contribution of internal factors (e.g. length of the adjective, or the type of quantifier) and external factors (e.g. regional variety, or register), as well as their interactions. This article has three objectives then: first, it wants to contribute to the description of Dutch syntax, second it aspires to advance methodological standards in grammatical investigation, and third, it makes a theoretical plea for a usage-based perspective, with full recognition of variation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the poetician Vāmana, a genitive ending can denote not only a direct relation but also an indirect relation. For example, in kamalasya kandaḥ 'the bulb of the lotus flower' the genitive ending Ṅas introduced after the word kamala denotes the indirect relation between the lotus flower and the bulb, the relation established through the intermediary of the lotus plant (kamalinī) that has a direct relation with both of them. Is such a view acceptable to Pāṇinian grammarians? Careful scrutiny of Patañjali's discussions in the Mahābhāṣya concerning what the affix matUP signifies reveals that he does not accept that a genitive ending occurs to denote an indirect relation: he considers that Aṣṭādhyāyī 2.3.50: ṣaṣṭhī śeṣe, which provides for introducing a genitive ending, has for its domain a direct relation alone. For Vāmana, on the other hand, the poetic expression kamalasya kandaḥ and the like serve to testify to the fact that a genitive ending can be used to signify an indirect relation. What is important is that Aṣṭādhyāyī 2.3.50 as it stands does not exclude this. Just as Patañjali accepts a direct relation as the domain of Aṣṭādhyāyī 2.3.50 on the basis of the usage of model speakers (śiṣṭaprayoga), so does Vāmana accept an indirect relation as its further domain on the basis of the usage of great poets (śiṣṭaprayoga). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the properties of Spanish evaluative prenominal possessives (i.e. the affective possessive preceding a proper name, the so-called "emphatic possessive", and the possessive in the Old and American Spanish doubled possessive construction) are thoroughly described, and compared with those of canonical prenominal possessives. It is mainly proposed that evaluative possessives, in contrast to canonical prenominal possessives, are not base-generated as nominal modifiers and then raise to D0, but are directly merged (mostly) within the DP domain, thus capturing the fact that affective, emphatic and doubling possessives just evaluate the relation between the possessum and the possessor, and are not interpreted as complements of the noun. In order to account for their different distribution, it is further argued that the three types of Spanish evaluative prenominal possessives are (basically) inserted in different structural positions in an split-DP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to evaluate some of the archaic endings that have been suggested for Mycenaean nominal declensions. The paper focuses on those endings that have left no clear trace in Alphabetic Greek, especially the genitive singular ending -os of the second declension and the genitive singular -ās of the first declension, but also the locative singular -ēu of the third declension. This study analyses the relevant examples according to the peculiarities of Mycenaean syntax. This allows us to consider them nominatives of rubric and to offer a more consistent image of Mycenaean nominal paradigms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the distribution of morphological case in Spanish nominalizations and shows that there is a connection between morphological case and event structure. Most nominals govern genitive case de on their internal arguments but some allow or require a different morpheme, a, reminiscent of differential object marking. I argue that the event structure of the nominalization is the crucial factor in choice of a, inasmuch as a is limited to process nominals that do not entail a change of state. The same distinction between process and changeof- state nominals is then extended to two other empirical puzzles regarding the interpretation of genitive arguments in nominalizations. I present a formal analysis assuming a syntax of events inspired by Ramchand (2008). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A reply is offered to an article on ''Vocabular Clarity and insular Scandinavian'' by Haukur Þorgeirsson, which appears within the issue. Topics discussed include analysis of Faroese noun inflection such as Faroese genitive, issues of segmentation, and how to deal with zeroes.

This study focuses on the grammaticalization of the Polish locative-existential construction featuring the negative use of the verb have (nie ma 'doesn't have'). The construction is compared to its analogs in other languages, where the possessive verb can appear in both affirmative and negative uses. It is proposed that the negative form of the construction is not a mere coincidental peculiarity, but is a characteristic shared with a number of other constructions, which suggests that negation plays a more significant role in the development of the locative-existential construction as well as other grammatical forms. It is argued that negation serves to make a developing construction more salient, thus contributing to its priming, repeated use, and entrenchment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Linguistic Research / Dilbilim Arastirmalari Dergisi is the property of Bogazici University Press 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.)

Copyright of Russian Linguistics is the property of Springer Nature 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.)

Copyright of Bohemistyka is the property of Instytut Filologii Slowianskiej Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu 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.)

Examples of case interchange in Greek papyri are often used to illustrate the start of dative case syncretism in Greek (Humbert 1930; Browning 1983; Horrocks 2010). On the other hand, case interchange can be caused by Egyptian scribes having difficulties with the Greek case system (Clarysse 1993; Vierros 2012). In this article, I combine quantitative analysis of the dative and genitive case interchanges in Greek documentary papyri with a qualitative examination of the social and linguistic contexts of the interchanges. This shows that whereas the usage of the dative instead of the genitive pronoun as adnominal possessor may be explained by indirect bilingual interference and scribal confusion, the replacement of the dative by the genitive as a third argument of a verb may have been caused by interference from the Greek spoken language in the writing of less educated scribes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study seeks to contribute to two sparsely examined areas of World Englishes research by (i) quantitatively evaluating two potential linguistic epicenters in Asia (Indian and Singapore English) while (ii) investigating the English genitive alternation in a cross-varietal perspective. In a corpus-based bottom-up approach, we evaluate 4,200 interchangeable genitive cases of written English from Great Britain, Hong Kong, India, the Philippines, Singapore and Sri Lanka, as represented in the International Corpus of English. We use a new method called MuPDARF, a multifactorial deviation analysis based on random forest classifications, to evaluate to what extent and with which factors the Asian varieties differ from British English in their genitive choices. Results show conspicuous differences between British English and the Asian varieties and validate the potential epicenter status of Indian English for South Asia, but not unanimously that of Singapore English for Southeast Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on qualitative self-report data from a mixed-methods study which investigated Grade 5 and 6 (n = 274), 11–12-year-old, Irish-medium (IM) immersion students’ improvement in linguistic accuracy in response to an explicit-inductive approach to form-focused instruction (FFI). A series of typographically enhanced PowerPoint slides were designed to explicitly draw students’ attention to the genitive case in Irish over a four-week period. Students engaged in collaborative meta-talk with teacher and peers to construct rule-based knowledge and they recorded their findings in a reflective language journal. Qualitative data were gathered with a sub-sample of 56 students selected from 4 of the 12 schools that participated in the larger study. Student feedback indicates the potential effectiveness of an explicit-inductive approach to improve student language awareness and grammatical accuracy in immersion education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The preservation of length in the West Slavic and South-West Slavic genitive-locative dual in *-ū is unexpected and to date unexplained. BCS rùkū 'handsGEN.PL' is likely to continue a trisyllabic preform. At the same time, Indo-Iranian and Greek offer strong evidence for PIE o-stem and ā-stem archetypes that should have yielded late Proto-Slavic and OCS *-oju (thus, OCS *rokoju), rather than *-u. The actually attested OCS form is roku. The present study seeks to provide a unified account of these two problems. The development of some of the PIE dual endings in other daughter traditions, including Greek and its dialects, is also addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In spite of the early, pioneering work of Genette (1970) in the field of the syntax of metaphor, most of the research on metaphor in cognitive semantics has focused, for the most part, on everyday, conventional metaphors and ignored the syntax of metaphor. However, some useful recent work has been done by Mac Cormac (1990), Stockwell (1992) and Goatley (1997). Following the research line proposed by Goatley (1997) we will deepen the investigation of a syntactic pattern that we noticed to be quite productive among active, literary metaphors. Thus, the present study is intended to find out how one of the syntactic resources available for metaphor, namely the Noun 1 OF Noun 2 (N1 OF N2) structure can affect the interpretation or semantics of metaphor. The data source is the novel "Enduring Love" by Ian Mac Ewan that came out in 1997 at the Vintage Publishing House, London. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Genitive in Early Romani involved three morphemes: a first one, called Layer I, marking oblique case, gender and number of the inflected noun, a second one, known as Layer II, marking genitive case, and a third one marking obligatory agreement in gender, number and case with its head. This structure gave the genitive a morphosyntactic status between noun and adjective. In Piedmont and France Piedmontese Sinti we find some derivatives originating from these genitive forms, es. France Piedmont Sinti tudéskero, pl. tudéskere 'milkman', from tud 'milk'. In both varieties, the word formation process creates a word whose meaning is 'the one of x', es. the milkman is 'the one of the milk'. These derivatives are the outcome of a change that led an inflectional morphemic sequence to become a derivational morpheme. The change has two different outcomes in the two varieties. In both, Layer I and II have been reanalysed in a single morpheme carrying derivational meaning, but, while in France Piedmontese Sinti, the paradigm is formed by the sequence -esker- 'derivational morpheme' + 'number/inherent gender morpheme' (es. tud-esker-o, pl. tud-esker-e) and a productive derivational pattern, namely [[x]N -esker-]N 'the one of x' can be observed, in Piedmont Piedmontese Sinti we find a conservative paradigm in which the derivational morpheme still shows agreement in gender and number with the source noun, and an innovative paradigm in which this agreement is reduced to the number. The changes giving rise to these derivatives could be an instance of degrammaticalization: in conjunction with the obsolescence of nominal case marking, some genitives, probably in their adjectival function, remained in the language and were gradually reanalysed as derivatives. The instances seem to concord with some aspects of Norde's description of deinflectionalization, and, in this framework, paradigmaticity appears to be the parameter that better highlights the differences between the derivational processes in the two varieties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses possessive adjectives in Polish (derived from nouns and used to mark possession), their structure and functional scope as well as diachrony, and contrasts them with similar formations in Swedish. Adjectives derived from names and surnames are a marginal phenomenon in the Scandinavian languages and as such absent from most grammatical descriptions; their scope of use is limited. However, a comparison with Polish allows a new perspective on these adjectives in Polish as an alternative possessiva structure. The analysis is based on corpora search of Polish and Swedish texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we introduce the effect of “constructional contamination”. In constructional contamination, a subset of the instances of a target construction deviate in their realization, due to a superficial resemblance they share with instances of a contaminating construction. We claim that this contaminating effect bears testimony to the hypothesis that language users do not always execute a full parse while interpreting and producing sentences. Instead, they may rely on what has been called “shallow parsing”, i. e., chunking the utterances into large, unanalyzed exemplars that may extend across constituent borders. We propose several measures to quantify constructional contamination in corpus data. To evaluate these measures, the Dutch partitive genitive is taken under scrutiny as a target construction of constructional contamination. In this case study, it is shown that neighboring constructions play a crucial role in determining the presence or absence of the -s suffix among instances of the partitive genitive. The different measures themselves, however, are not construction- specific, and can readily be used to track constructional contamination in other case studies as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to discuss some counterexamples to the Strong Case Contiguity Hypothesis ( scch) argued for by Caha (2009, 2013) from West Nordic, which were absent from Caha's sample of languages. The languages to be discussed are Old Norse, Modern Icelandic and Modern Faroese. These three languages show a great deal of syncretism between dative and accusative to the exclusion of genitive, which also fulfill Caha's criteria for systematic syncretism. This pattern is not predicted to be possible under Caha's theory. Under closer inspection, however, the data from West Nordic turns out to be compatible with a weaker version of Case Contiguity. Syncretism between accusative and dative appear in a variety of contexts whereas syncretism between accusative and genitive to the exclusion of dative occurs only in a highly restricted context and should be considered accidental under Caha's criteria. Syncretism thus appears to target continuous regions on a slightly different case hierarchy. Hence although scch is wrong a weaker version is still feasible. I also propose a draft of a feature-based account for the observed variation in case hierarchies, providing a restrictive medium between scch and an unrestricted variation in hierarchies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the syntax and semantics of possessive constructions at the phrasal level in Turkish, namely, genitive-possessive constructions (GP), possessive free genitives (PFG) and possessive compounds (PC). Semantically, the constructions fall into two types based on the argument–modifier relation of the possessor to the possessee ( Partee and Borschev, 2003 ). Genitives in GPs are argumental, while the ones in PFGs are modifiers. PCs also pattern with GPs in that the non-head is a non-referential argument. The relation established between the two nouns in GPs and PCs relies on the lexical properties of the head noun. The relation modifier genitives form with the head in PFGs, on the other hand, is pragmatically defined. At the level of morpho-syntax, the argument modifier split is signaled by the presence or absence of the morpheme POSS, which surfaces only in GPs and PCs. We argue that POSS is a valency marker indicating the introduction of an argument to an NP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We trace the diachronic development of the preposition se in inner Asia Minor Greek from its use to mark a range of spatial functions to its ultimate loss and replacement by zero. We propose that, before spreading to all syntactic and semantic contexts, zero-marking was contextually-dependent on the presence/absence of a prenominal genitive modifying the head noun of Ground-encoding NPs and on the presence/absence of Region-encoding postpositions. We attribute these developments to an informational load relief strategy aimed at producing more economical utterances, as well as to language contact with Turkish, which favored structural convergence on the adpositional level between the two languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to argue for the Agree-less plus single cycle approach, advocated recently by Hornstein (2009), according to which long-distance dependency is captured by regular movement plus the mechanism of which copy is pronounced. Based upon Lasnik's (1999) observation that the "raising to object" involved in the ECMconstruction is optional, it is demonstrated that this can be best captured under this approach by assuming (i) that either the top (in the higher Spec- VP) or the bottom copy (in the embedded Spec-TP) of the A-chain involved is pronounceable and (ii) that the activation for LF interpretation such as binding and scope correlates with which copy is pronounced. It is further demonstrated that the same mechanism of pronunciation and LF interpretation also captures similar properties found in the Japanese ECM construction. The article also addresses the question how it is possible for the top copy of an A-chain to be active for LF interpretation even though the chain involves string-vacuous movement, following Abe and Hornstein's (2012) mechanism of chain production. It is demonstrated that the revised mechanism of pronunciation and LF interpretation is well supported by the phenomenon of nominative-genitive conversion in Japanese. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore the language production process by eliciting subject-verb agreement errors. Participants were asked to create complete sentences from sentence beginnings such as The elf's/elves' house with the tiny window/windows and The statue in the elf's/elves' gardens. These are subject noun phrases containing a head noun and controller of agreement (statue), and two nonheads, a "local noun" (window(s)/garden(s)), and a possessor noun (elf's/elves'). Past research has shown that a plural nonhead noun (an "attractor") within a subject noun phrase triggers the production of verb agreement errors, and further, that the nearer the attractor to the head noun, the greater the interference. This effect can be interpreted in terms of relative hierarchical distance from the head noun, or via a processing window account, which claims that during production, there is a window in which the head and modifying material may be co-active, and an attractor must be active at the same time as the head to give rise to errors. Using possessors attached at different heights within the same window, we are able to empirically distinguish these accounts. Possessors also allow us to explore two additional issues. First, case marking of local nouns has been shown to reduce agreement errors in languages with "rich" inflectional systems, and we explore whether English speakers attend to case. Secondly, formal syntactic analyses differ regarding the structural position of the possessive marker, and we distinguish them empirically with the relative magnitude of errors produced by possessors and local nouns. Our results show that, across the board, plural possessors are significantly less disruptive to the agreement process than plural local nouns. Proximity to the head noun matters: a possessor directly modifying the head noun induce a significant number of errors, but a possessor within a modifying prepositional phrase did not, though the local noun did. These findings suggest that proximity to a head noun is independent of a "processing window" effect. They also support a noun phrase-internal, case-like analysis of the structural position of the possessive ending and show that even speakers of inflectionally impoverished languages like English are sensitive to morphophonological case-like marking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the facts of Bulgarian western dialects in Albania like (Vide) maika ni nasha with two postpositive possessive forms simultaneously (short and long). Examples are a testament to the emergence of the gathering (transitional) stage between forms of Old Bulgarian mati nasha and Modern Bulgarian - maika ni. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]