Search

To what extent do speakers decompose morphologically complex words, such as segmentable, into their morphological constituents? In this article, we argue that spelling errors in English affixes reflect morphological boundary strength and degrees of segmentability. In support of this argument, we present a case study examining the spelling of the suffixes -able/-ible, -ence/-ance, and -ment in an online resource (Tweets), in forms such as , , , and . Based on previous research on morphological productivity and boundary strength (Hay, 2002; Hay & Baayen, 2002, 2005), we hypothesized that morphological segmentability should affect the choice between vs. , vs. , and vs. . An analysis of roughly 23,000 non-standard spellings is consistent with that hypothesis, underscoring the usefulness of spelling variation as a source of evidence for morphological segmentability and for the role of morphological representations in language production and comprehension.

Japanese wh-expressions appear in various kinds of operator-variable structures, including wh-questions and sentences with universal and existential quantification. The nature of the operator-variable relation is determined by an associated particle, such as the question marker ka or the universal particle mo. Given this, it has been widely assumed since Kuroda (1965) that the wh-expressions are to be interpreted as variables bound by those quantificational particles. This paper argues against this prevailing view by proposing that these wh-expressions are operators with unspecified quantificational force. Building on an insight by Nishigauchi (1990), I argue that they must covertly move to positions that allow them to probe particles and to acquire specific quantificational forces from them. I demonstrate that this analysis captures the main properties of Japanese wh-expressions as well as the differences between them and their Chinese counterparts. Huang (1982) proposed a covert movement analysis for argument wh-phrases in Chinese, which was extended to Japanese, for example, in Lasnik & Saito (1984) and Richards (2001). But Tsai (1999) has convincingly shown that they are subject to unselective binding and are interpreted in situ as variables. If the analysis for Japanese in this paper is correct, it shows that Huang’s approach can be – and should be – maintained for wh-phrases in Japanese with some refinements.

This paper identifies a distinct serial verb construction in Mandarin Chinese: the Excessive serial verb construction. This construction exhibits formal similarity to the Resultative serial verb construction, since both of them involve adjacent unmarked verbs. Despite the similarity, the former construction differs from the latter most evidently in that it conveys an excessive meaning rather than a resultative meaning. This paper proposes that there is a syntactic difference between the two constructions. In contrast to the tight structure in the Resultative serial verb construction, which can be represented as S[vp V1 V2] le. The Excessive serial verb construction has a looser structure, which is structurally S[[vpV1] [vp V2-le]]. With respect to diagnostics of constituency, the two constructions behave in different ways. This paper further argues that correlating with a distinct structure, the Excessive serial verb construction requires obligatory topicalization of its undergoer argument, a phenomenon that is not observed in the Resultative serial verb construction. This study thus contributes to representing the interaction between the semantic properties – in particular, the function of le in the two constructions – and the syntactic properties.

In this paper, we introduce a generalization of the concept of fuzzy quantifier called fuzzy quantifiers over fuzzy domains. The development of this generalization is motivated by the impossibility to satisfactorily define the important operation of relativization for standard fuzzy quantifiers. We provide basic examples of these quantifiers and define and investigate also several semantic properties of them. Finally, we prove a theorem saying, among other things, that all these two argument fuzzy quantifiers that possess properties of extension and conservativity are relativizations of one-argument fuzzy quantifiers of this kind.

Meaning Representation (AMR) is a sentence-level meaning representation based on predicate argument structure. One of the challenges we find in AMR parsing is to capture the structure of complex sentences which expresses the relation between predicates. Knowing the core part of the sentence structure in advance may be beneficial in such a task. In this paper, we present a list of dependency patterns for English complex sentence constructions designed for AMR parsing. With a dedicated pattern matcher, all occurrences of complex sentence constructions are retrieved from an input sentence. While some of the subordinators have semantic ambiguities, we deal with this problem through training classification models on data derived from AMR and Wikipedia corpus, establishing a new baseline for future works. The developed complex sentence patterns and the corresponding AMR descriptions will be made public.

Intransitives can be classified into two subclasses: unaccusative verbs and unergative verbs. According to the Unaccusative Hypothesis, the difference between unaccusatives and unergatives lies in where the single argument is generated in the underlying syntactic structure. Subjects of unaccusative verbs are base-generated in the object position and moved to the subject positions. Subjects of unergative verbs, however, are external and thus are not resulted from arguments moving from the object position. If the Unaccusative Hypothesis is correct, a trace is left at the original place for unaccusative verbs when movement occurs but no trace for unergative verbs. Friedmann et al. (2008) used the cross-modal lexical priming paradigm to examine the Unaccusative Hypothesis but their results could only lend limited support for the Unaccusative Hypothesis. Since the argument of Mandarin unaccusative verbs can occur preverbally and postverbally, it offers us a balanced testing ground to re-examine reactivation during sentence comprehension. Results of the current study lend support for the Unaccusative Hypothesis. When the argument occurred preverbally, a V-shaped line was observed. An inverted V-shaped line was observed when the argument occurred postverbally. For unergative verbs, the line showed a decay of reactivation.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the typology of reflexives and reciprocals in English and MSA, which is a variety of standardized, literary Arabic used throughout Arab countries. It has shown that MSA morphologically encoded reflexives and reciprocals are in fact syntactically and semantically asymmetrical. It will be argued that morphologically encoded reflexives do not project an anaphor (an internal argument) syntactically and their morphological marker semantically serves as a reflexivizer, whereas morphologically encoded reciprocals do project an anaphor syntactically, realized either overtly or covertly. Concerning the distribution of such anaphor, the paper elucidates the admissible and in admissible environments. It is argued that MSA does not allow possessive reflexives, but allow possessive reciprocals such as the construct-state, whether it be a noun phrase or a locative prepositional phrase. This variation is accounted for by assuming that reciprocals occupy Spec of DP and therefore can be bound by an NP from a higher phase, whereas reflexives occupy a position lower than the D head and thus must be bound within their DP phase. Finally yet importantly, MSA override reflexives and reciprocals unlike their English counterparts, are always subject to the Principle A of the Binding Theory.

Semantically, a predicate is not always filled in by verbs. This study aims to discover and describe the predicate category and the number of arguments each predicate has in the Indonesian language. This study's data were taken from informants and the daily newspaper 'Bali Post'. The collected data were analyzed by applying deductive and inductive approaches. The result shows that Indonesian's predicate can be filled in by verb and non-verb categories: noun, adjective, preposition, and numeral. The predicate of the Indonesian sentences can be classified into the valency-one predicate, valency-two predicate, and valency-three predicate. Besides, there are several intransitive and transitive predicates in the Indonesian language, followed by a clause. Each of those finding is explained in detail in this article.

Lexemes may be split internally, by phenomena such as suppletion, periphrasis, heteroclisis and deponency. Generalizing over these phenomena, which split a lexeme’s paradigm, we can establish a typology of the possible internal splits. There are also lexemes whose external requirements are split: they induce different agreement, for instance. Again, a typology of these splits has been proposed. The next logical step is to attempt a typology of the possible relations between internal and external splits. This is not straightforward, since we need to avoid spurious linkages. Four lines of argument are offered: (i) general plausibility: the internal-external linkage is compelling, and so other accounts require a degree of coincidence which is unlikely; (ii) overabundance: alternative inflectional forms link to different external requirements; (iii) variation in time and space: splits in inflection and in external requirements vary, while maintaining their linkage; (iv) pluralia tantum nouns: the different types of these nouns provide intriguing confirming evidence. Case studies include Asia Minor Greek, Polish, Russian, Scottish Gaelic, Sɛlɛɛ, Serbo-Croat (BCMS), Slovenian, Latin and Old Frisian. The clear instances which emerge, where an external split is demonstrably linked to an internal one, prove both surprising and significant. We discover that in split paradigms, besides overt overabundance, there may also be covertly overabundant cells. Furthermore, when external splits involve individual cells, these will not induce simple (consistent) agreement. This makes good sense, demonstrating that featural information is associated with lexemes in a natural default manner: at the lexeme level by default, unless overridden at the sub-paradigm level, unless in turn overridden at the level of individual cells.

The article presents bookish and dialect tit names in Slavic and Finno-Ugric languages. The Slavic and Finno-Ugric ornithonyms denoting the genus Parus on the whole or the great tit (Parus major L.) were taken as material for analysis. In total, data from 12 Slavic and 14 Finno-Ugric languages and their dialects were analyzed. During the research, the inner form and motivating features of the lexemes were determined, their etymology was revealed. It was found that the Slavic and Finno-Ugric tit names are based on various motivating features: its appearance and plumage color, singing, diet, habits, similarity with other birds, habitat. Herewith, the East and South Slavic bookish tit names have controversial etymology: they may have onomatopoeic or color-semantic origin. At the same time, onomatopoeic lexemes prevail in Finno-Ugric and West Slavic languages. This fact may be an argument in favour of onomatopoeic origin of the East and South Slavic tit names.

Appeal to standard set theory in (mainstream) minimalist syntax is shown to be in conflict with the goal of analyzing dependency formation, a.k.a. movement, as involving genuine constituent copies. The underlying tension is due to (the axiom of) extensionality, which—other things being equal—favors a perspective on dependencies in terms of multidominance. The above argument is developed against the backdrop of a recent exposition of minimalist syntax (Chomsky et al. in Catal J Linguist (Special Issue):229–261, 2019), which can be seen as exemplary. The resulting critical assessment should be taken as removing obstacles on the way toward proper minimalist foundations for syntactic theory.

The author examines semantic-syntactic models of predicates according to Stanislaw Karolak’s conception of semantic-based grammar. From the list of first-order bivalent predicates provided by S. Karolak, the author analyses some of them from the point of view of the number and quality of the implied argument positions. During the analysis it often turns out that more than one model refers to one form of predicate (one signifiant). This phenomenon is due to the polysemous nature of words in natural language and, therefore, to the ambiguity of uses of predicates in different contexts (more than one signifié). In order to determine the number and type of arguments semantically implied by a given predicate, the author applies the test of negation, contraposition, and paraphrase leading to a semantic decomposition and emphasises the role of the metaphor and metonymy in their interpretation.

I propose an analysis of either in either… or … sentences that relates to a broader generalization about the syntax of all focus-sensitive operators. I argue that either originates inside the disjunction phrase, c-commanding the leftmost contrastive focus. Then it is internally merged as the sister of the disjunction phrase. Either copy of either may be pronounced. When either appears higher than the sister of the disjunction phrase, bare argument ellipsis has occurred in the second disjunct. This analysis of either is consonant with the generalization that all focus-sensitive operators occupy two positions in a sentence (e.g. Cable 2007; Hirsch 2017; and Quek and Hirsch 2017). If this analysis of either is correct, then it not only indicates that either is a focus-sensitive operator, but also adds another data point to this universal generalization.

This study investigates how speakers of English and Korean, two typologically distinct languages, derive information from a verb and a construction to achieve sentence comprehension. In a sentence-sorting task, we manipulated verb semantics (real versus nonce) in each language. The results showed that participants from both languages were less inclined to sort sentences by a verb cue when the lexical-semantic information about a verb was obscured (i.e., nonce verb). In addition, the Korean-speaking participants were less likely affected by the verb semantics conditions than the English-speaking participants. These findings suggest the role of an argument structure construction in sentence comprehension as a co-contributor of sentence meaning, supporting the constructionist approach. The findings also imply language-specific mechanisms of sentence comprehension, contingent upon the varied impact of a verb on sentence meaning in English and Korean.

In Anyue dialect, the meaning of the word “che” is very rich. It can be used as a verb to express the meaning of “argument,” “discussion,” “tearing,” “receiving,” “cutting,” “picking,” “opening,” “buying,” and “pulling.” It can also be used as an adjective to express the meaning of “immoral,” “unreliable,” and “naughty.” This article describes the semantics and usage of “che” in Anyue dialect as well as the usage of special phrases with “che” in other areas of southwest Mandarin. Finally, this article analyzes the semantic evolution of “che” and constructs a semantic evolution diagram.

The paper studies two types of indirect (secondary) nomination: simulative and indicative ones, exemplified by extracts from English coursebooks on economics. The similative nomination is actualised through functional transfer, which is interpreted as a separate kind of metaphor termed “actional metaphor”. The analysis of indicative nomination is focused on metonymy and synecdoche (as its closely related device), which is conditioned by the same transfer principle on the basis of an essential attribute. The semantic derivates are considered in sentences representing such logic thought form as definition, which allows to reveal the metaphoric and metonymic processes in the field of English economic terminology.The research discloses the interrelations between the analysed term models and their functions as designators for target and source domains on the one hand, and cognitive metaphor types (ontological and conceptual), on the other hand. The author comes to the conclusion that both types can have either simple or complicated structure. Similarly, there are simple and complicated metonymies. These phenomena make the peculiarities of the given economic discourse when considered from the angle of semantic derivation. The tendency to the uniform secondary semiotic code in term metaphor description can be viewed as another valid peculiarity of economic discourse.With regard to the indicative secondary nomination, the main findings are as follows: the metonymic lexis is organized as a chain opposition: terms and nomens – terms – terms and common lexis – common lexis. The mechanism of forming “mixed” kinds of the indirect nomination, i.e. metaphtonymy and synecdoche-metonymy, is revealed in the course of the context analysis. This leads the author to a hypothetical argument that it is the actional metaphor that underlies these mixed types of semantic derivatives.Both types of the secondary nomination have a systemic nature: metaphor is described in other system units; metonymies have field structure and are actualised through specific oppositions.

Bacterial chemotaxis is often considered to be a textbook example of the rudimentary semiotic process. As such, it gives an excellent opportunity to better understand both semiosis and biology. Our study reviews this phenomenon in the light of up-to-date scientific knowledge to answer the most basic semiotic questions: what is the sign? What types of signs are there? What is the meaning understood on the molecular level, and by what means can it grow with time? As a case study, the bacterial chemotaxis toward glucose in E. coli species is chosen, and the semiotic framework of Charles Sanders Peirce applied. The analyses provide us with the following results: the sign, in its ultimate nature, is a general process. Bacterial chemotaxis can be understood in terms of Peircean type, symbol, and argument. The meaning on the molecular level is entirely pragmatic and, in this case, reduced to a bacterial response to glucose. A sign can grow through sign generalization, the emergence of different sign categories, the integration of these categories in functional cycles, and the introduction of contextuality. The sign of bacterial chemotaxis extends from the cell signaling pathways up to the population level. The presented results advance our knowledge of sign processing in the context of semiotic evolution.

Our hypothesis is that the past participle is a singular form in the TAM (tense-aspect-mood) linguistic system in French, in that it represents the internal time of the process on its terminal point ([R = Et]). Due to this representation of internal time, the p.p. can be related to the second argument – the patientive argument – of a direct transitive process: it is the essential element of the passive construction. Contrary to what is often written, the copula être ‘be’, is an optional element: it may serve to develop the construction in its periphrastic dimension, but it is not necessary to the passive construction itself, as the cases of the passive in the participial clause demonstrate. Moreover, the p.p. is not intrinsically resultative or processive, no more than it is active or passive: from its aspect [R = Et], it can, in interaction with different contexts, participate in the production of these different effects of meaning in discourse.

This paper aims at proposing a theoretical analysis that explains the noun incorporation process in the Tenetehára language (Tupi-Guarani). Thus, we attempt to answer the question: based on the assumptions of the Minimalist Program (cf. Chomsky, 1993, 1995), what is the formal feature responsible for motivating noun incorporation in Tenetehára? We consider two types of noun incorporation in the language under analysis, namely: (i) transitive predicates which become formally intransitive verbs as the internal argument is incorporated; and (ii) in the instances of possessive structures in internal argument positions of intransitive and transitive verbs, verbal valence is preserved, since only the possessee noun is incorporated. As for the syntax of noun incorporations, based on Baker (1988), we lay the foundation for further investigation about this morphosyntactic phenomenon within a minimalist approach (cf. Chomsky 1993, 1995). In summary, we propose that, in the Tenetehára language, the driving force responsible for the incorporation of the noun into the head of a vP is the [+non-individuated] formal feature. Este artigo tem como objetivo propor uma análise teórica que explique o processo de incorporação nominal na língua Tenetehára (Tupí-Guaraní). Assim, procuramos responder à seguinte pergunta: com base nos pressupostos do Programa Minimalista (cf. Chomsky, 1993, 1995), qual é o traço formal responsável por motivar a incorporação nominal em Tenetehára? Consideramos dois tipos de incorporação nominal na lingua em análise, a saber: (i) predicados transitivos que se tornam verbos formalmente intransitivos à medida que o argumento interno é incorporado; e (ii) instâncias de estruturas possessivas em posições de argumento interno de verbos intransitivos e transitivos, a valência verbal é preservada, uma vez que apenas o nome possuído é incorporado. Quanto à sintaxe das incorporações nominais, com base em Baker (1988), lançamos bases para futuras investigações acerca desse fenômeno morfossintático dentro de uma abordagem minimalista (cf. Chomsky, 1993, 1995). Em suma, propomos que, na língua Tenetehára, a força motriz responsável pela incorporação do nome ao núcleo de um vP é o traço formal [+não individuado].

Separation events differ in lexicalisation patterns (Talmy 2000) and in argument realisation (Levin and Rappaport Hovav 2005) cross-linguistically. There are different types of separation events. “Cutting” and “breaking” events involve a non-reversible change in object integrity and have been systematically researched cross-linguistically in recent times (Guerssel et al 1985; Bohnemeyer 2008; Majid et al. 2008; Schaefer and Egbokhare 2012). In this paper, some of the generalisations that have been made concerning CUT and BREAK verbs are tested based on data from Tafi, a Ghana-Togo Mountain language. I investigate the morpho-syntactic properties of Tafi CUT and BREAK verbs in relation to a suggested generalisation by Guerssel et al. that BREAK verbs have a transitive/intransitive argument structure and participate in the causative/inchoative alternation; while CUT verbs are transitive and they are not expected to occur without their external argument. The types of events referred to by the CUT and BREAK verbs and the combinatorial capacity of the individual verbs are also explored. Based on an analysis of stimulus-elicitations and spontaneous language performances recorded in the field, I show that the Tafi verb bhui ‘cut’ can be used in an intransitive/resultative construction in which the theme, the internal argument, occurs as the subject. Drawing on the behaviour of bhui ‘cut’ I interrogate the explanations that have been offered in the literature with respect to such deviations from the generalisation. I argue that the verb argument alternation potential of a verb depends on the verb semantics as well as the type of (internal) argument it collocates with. Moreover, I explore the semantic interpretations of the verb when it combines with non-typical objects such as ‘water’. I show that such patterns and collocations such as ‘the water cut’ = ‘the water stopped running’, ‘cut a village’ = ‘establish a village’ are areal in nature (cf. Huttar et al. 2007).

The present paper argues that ECM subjects undergo A-movement to Spec of ForceP in the subordinate clause, but not to the matrix object position, in Japanese ECM constructions where a complementizer is required for the embedded clause. ECM subjects are argued to move to Spec of ForceP, accessible to the matrix predicate, while a topic fills the lower TopP. It is suggested that an ECM subject appears in ForceP on the grounds that it enters into ϕ-feature agreement with the Force head, and that the Case feature of the ECM subject is valued as accusative by the matrix verb. It is further shown that when a major subject construction, where both major subject and thematic subject are marked with nominative case, is embedded under the ECM verb, the major subject rather than the thematic subject of the embedded predicate is raised to Spec of ForceP to serve as an ECM argument.

Bale (2007) proposes that agentive intransitives differ semantically from agentive transitives, in that while the agent of a transitive is introduced by a functional projection and composes with its verb via Event Identification (Kratzer 1996), intransitives lexically encode their agent arguments and compose with them via Function Application. This is based on the availability of agentless repetitive presuppositions with again, with transitives permitting a repetitive presupposition excluding the agent while intransitives do not. In this paper, we challenge Bale’s claim and show that typically intransitive verbs like dance and bark, which do not usually allow agentless presuppositions, permit agentless presuppositions when they appear with an optional internal argument. To account for this, we propose that verbal roots possess an underspecified thematic role argument, along with individual and event arguments. Combined with a conservative syntax for introducing agents via VoiceP (Kratzer 1996), the analysis captures the dependence of agentless presuppositions on the presence of an internal argument without recourse to any distinction between transitive and intransitive eventive verb roots. The analysis contributes a new theory of roots lying between two theoretical poles, one that argues that roots take internal arguments (e.g., Harley 2014) and one that severs internal arguments syntactically and semantically from the verb (e.g., Schein 1993; Borer 2003, 2005).

While the Swedish negator inte may be doubled in a final clause-external position, in both standard Swedish and dialects, many dialects also allow a final, clause-internal particle (e, i or ai) in negated clauses. FNPs occur in a coherent area around the Baltic Sea, and in contrast with doubling negation, they are possible both after both inte and aldrig ‘never’. FNPs are also used in questions and exclamations, contexts that disallow doubling negation. These particles may have developed from the former Swedish negator ej or from the common inte. An argument for the former alternative is that other dialectal phenomena that spread from central Sweden during the late Middle Ages have approximately the same geographic distribution. In the final section of the paper, some typological consequences and implications are discussed. Furthermore, it is argued that syntactic studies of non-standard varieties may reveal new insights of typological relevance.

Non-finite forms constitute an important component of the verbal system of Indo-Aryan (IA) languages. On the one hand, some of them, such as e.g., converbs, have already received proper attention in historical linguistics and typological literature, with regard to Old Indo-Aryan (OIA), Middle Indo-Aryan (MIA) and New Indo-Aryan (NIA) (cf. Tikkanen 1987; Peterson 1998; Subbarao 2012 among others). Other forms, such as participles, have usually been analysed in the wider context of reorganisation of a finite verbal system which led to alignment change (for recent discussion see Dahl and Stroński 2016). On the other hand, adverbial participles or infinitives have so far been under-studied (cf. Sigorski 2005), particularly within early NIA. This period in the history of IA languages witnessed several important morphosyntactic developments and still requires in-depth study, particularly due to the lack of well-edited corpora. The aim of the present paper is to partly fill this gap by highlighting major trends in the development of constructions based on various non-finite forms in early NIA. We focus on main argument marking in converbal chain constructions and its interplay with the animacy hierarchy. We demonstrate a relative stability of differential case marking (DCM), focusing mainly on conditions on differential subject marking (DSM) and differential object marking (DOM). In addition, we compare converbal chain constructions with participial absolute constructions (AC). Finally, in order to give a holistic view of converbal constructions, we verify the type of linking instantiated by them, focusing on three scopal parameters in converbal constructions (Tense, Illocutionary Force and Negation) and using the apparatus of Role and Reference Grammar and Multivariate Analysis.

The article deals with encoding Source arguments of the predicate ‘take’ in the languages of Europe and identifies factors involved in Differential Source Marking. Animacy turns out to play the crucial role in this respect: while the encoding of animate Sources is rather homogeneous, inanimate Sources are encoded in different ways depending on the localization. The encoding of animate source can coincide with that of one of the two (or both) basic localizations: IN or ON or be different from it. Differential Marking of animate Sources is attested in Central Europe and implies recipient-like vs. ablative-like alternation where the encoding depends on whether something is taken for good or not and whether some extra force is applied or not. Differential Marking of inanimate Sources occurs in quite a number of European languages with different localizations; it is not always symmetrical to Differential Translocation Marking and can depend on the topicality on the argument or its semantic type.

This paper investigates two instances of alignment change, both of which resulted from reanalysis of a nominalized embedded clause type, in which the external argument was marked with genitive case and the internal argument was focused. We show that a subject marked with genitive case in the early development of Austronesian languages became ergative-marked when object relative clauses in cleft constructions were reanalyzed as transitive root clauses. In contrast to this, the genitive case in Old Japanese nominalized clauses, marking an external argument, was extended to mark all subjects. This occurred after adnominal clauses were reanalyzed as root clauses. Japanese underwent one more step in order for genitive to be reanalyzed as nominative: the reanalysis of impersonal psych transitive constructions as intransitives. With these two case studies of Austronesian and Japanese, we show that reanalysis of nominalization goes in either direction, ergative or accusative, depending on the syntactic conditions involved in the reanalysis.

Movima (isolate, Bolivia) has two focus constructions that superficially look very similar. One is a simple clause with a noun in predicate position and a verb placed inside the argument phrase. Its pragmatically marked status stems from the inversion of the prototypical association of lexical and pragmatic categories. In the other construction, the predicative noun is additionally preceded by a free pronoun. This construction is a cleft, the pronoun and noun together constituting an equational matrix clause. The two constructions also differ in function: the simple clause with a nominal predicate is a simple predication, while the cleft is a specificational sentence.

This article deals with the syntax and semantics of Old English Try verbs within the framework of verb classes and alternations and the theory of Role and Reference Grammar. The analysis focuses on class membership and includes meaning components and argument realization (linking in simplex and complex constructions and alternations). The inventory of verbs under analysis comprises (ge)cneordlǣcan, (ge)fandian, fundian, hīgian, onginnan and (ge)tilian. The main conclusion is that the class of Old English Try verbs is syntactically and semantically consistent, even though evidence for the nominalisation alternation has been found for hīgian only.

This paper discusses the role of cognitive factors in language change; specifically, it investigates the potential impact of argument ambiguity avoidance on the emergence of one of the most well-studied syntactic alternations in English, viz. the dative alternation (We gave them cake vs We gave cake to them). Linking this development to other major changes in the history of English like the loss of case marking, I propose that morphological as well as semantic-pragmatic ambiguity between prototypical agents (subjects) and prototypical recipients (indirect objects) in ditransitive clauses plausibly gave a processing advantage to patterns with higher cue reliability such as prepositional marking, but also fixed clause-level (SVO) order. The main hypotheses are tested through a quantitative analysis of ditransitives in a corpus of Middle English, which (i) confirms that the spread of the PP-construction is impacted by argument ambiguity and (ii) demonstrates that this change reflects a complex restructuring of disambiguation strategies.

Nivacle, a Mataco-Mataguayan language of the South American Chaco, exhibits right branching syntax often involving determiners. The determiners express visibility, proximity, existence, have temporal implications, and mark abstract referents and nominalized clauses. This paper proposes that headless relative clauses arose by using determiners in grammatical nominalization via an amalgam source construction, while a certain complement clause structure may have arisen by using a determiner as a cataphoric pronoun before a co-referent clause. As background for the historical argument, we first introduce the determiners and predicating versus referring expressions. We then discuss the role of the determiners in grammatical nominalization to create headless relatives, and then the complement clause structure headed by ka=. Employing comparative Mataguayan data, we propose historical scenarios that may have yielded the two constructions.

A widely accepted assumption in both the syntactic and semantic literature is that copulas lack semantic content. A consequent question is how to explain the existence in certain languages of two copular verbs that give rise to different interpretations. Such is the case in numerous languages of the Dene family (formerly known as Athapaskan). We explain this situation with the hypothesis that the copulas realize an underlying three-copula system differing in argument structure. Differences between the interpretations of copular clauses in these languages originate in the compositional semantics of these structures, not in any lexical semantic differences.This hypothesis successfully predicts the distributional differences between the surface forms of the Dene copulas, such as their compatibility with adjuncts of time and intentionality, interactions with accusative case, and semanticlifetime effects.

The goal of this article is to diagnose a verbal construction which has made it to common use in Austrian German and is typically unknown to many speakers of Federal German who have not been exposed to Austrian German. This construction is based on the verbgehen(‘go’) conjoined by a particle and the reflexive. An argument for its analysis as a degree-based sufficiency construction is developed, which is constructed by extending existing approaches in the literature onenoughconstructions and suggesting a meaning of the construction at hand, which is presuppositional in multiple respects. The results of diachronic corpus searches as well as the significance of the results of this work for the space of possibilities of the semantic change of motion verbs are discussed.

Valence dictionaries are very often specialized works for advanced readers which present how particular linguistic units combine with its subordinates. The article is a critical analysis of a dictionary entry for the lexical unit of reward contained in A Valency Dictionary of English, a Corpus-Based Analysis of the Complementation Patterns of English Verbs, Nouns and Adjectives [2004]. A complementary proposal regarding the predicate-argument structure and its annotation system will be provided based on the theoretical model proposed by S. Karolak [1984; 2002] called Semantic Syntax (SS) and more specifically its extended model called explicative syntax [Kiklewicz et al. 2010; 2019]. The research findings demonstrate the need for coordinated international projects that should integrate both the syntactic as well as the semantic levels in order to gradually meet the objective of an integrated language description encompassing both the grammar and the lexicon.

This study takes a force-theoretic approach to Mandarin V1-V2resultative constructions. Unlike event-based analyses that hold a causing event accountable for a result state, this study attributes a result state to a specific entity involved in the relevant causing event. In this way, V1-V2resultative construction (RC) sentences have the interpretation that through a causing action, one entity relevant to the action caused a change of state to another entity; this causal influence is reconceptualized as a force from the former entity, characterizing the situation change concerning the latter entity. Following Copley and Harley (2015), this conceptual reanalysis is represented structurally, successfully deriving V1-V2RC sentences. V2and the internal argument DP specify the property of a resultant situation and its holder, defining the force; the external argument DP tells about this force's source; V1modifies this force, indicating the causing action through which this force is realized.

Contains fulltext : 247424.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) We used a multi-method approach to investigate how children avoid (or retreat from) argument structure overgeneralisation errors (e.g., *You giggled me). Experiment 1 investigated how semantic and statistical constraints (preemption and entrenchment) influence children’s and adults' judgments of the grammatical acceptability of 120 verbs in transitive and intransitive sentences. Experiment 2 used syntactic priming to elicit overgeneralisation errors from children (aged 5-6) to investigate whether the same constraints operate in production. For judgments, the data showed effects of preemption, entrenchment, and semantics for all ages. For production, only an effect of preemption was observed, and only for transitivisation errors with intransitive-only verbs (e.g., *The man laughed the girl). We conclude that preemption, entrenchment, and semantic effects are real, but are obscured by particular features of the present production task. 41 p.

Let R be a Cohen-Macaulay local ring of dimension d with canonical module ωR. In this article we extend Auslander-Reiten duality theorem to certain R-algebras. As a consequence of our argument, we ...

Based on a new reconstruction of Proto-Basque, and regular sound correspondences between this Proto-Basque and Proto-Indo-European as standardly reconstructed, Blevins (2018) argues that Proto-Basque and Proto-Indo-European have a common ancestor that pre-dates the two proto-languages. Part of this argument is based on proposed Proto-Indo-European/Proto-Basque cognate sets that include basic vocabulary items. In this study we offer statistical support for Blevins’ conclusions by using a Monte Carlo simulation that allows us to estimate the probability that the proposed lexical correspondences could have arisen by chance. The method makes use of phonotactic language models to generate possible words in a pair of languages, and then attempts to discover consistent correspondences between the words, producing a list of possible “cognates”. The method differs from some previous approaches by considering matches between all segments in the word pairs. By running such a simulation a large number of times, we can estimate the probability that two languages with the given phonotactics could have produced the number of cognate pairs observed in the actual data. The method is independently assessed by comparing wordlists from 100 pairs of languages, related and unrelated, where relations are known. Our conclusion is that the proposed correspondences are unlikely to have arisen by chance, supporting a distant relationship between Proto-Basque as reconstructed by Blevins (2018) and Proto-Indo-European.

This paper proposes that morphological causatives in Korean are formed through the causative head, Caus(e), selecting for an element of category Voice as its complement. Under the proposed view, various properties of the causative in Korean are examined and accounted for. Specifically, it is claimed that the limited productivity of morphological causatives and the ungrammaticality of morphological double causatives in Korean are due to the listedness of the causative allomorphs, and that the mono-predicational properties of the causative with respect to coordination and the scope of a degree adverb are attributed to the coordinate structure constraint and an adverb hierarchy, respectively. It is also shown that the bi-predicational properties of the causative with respect to the Condition B effect as well as the scopes of a manner adverb and the adverbial for ‘again’ can be successfully captured under the proposed approach. The discussion shows that the causative alternation in Korean can be best analyzed when it is viewed to be due to causativization that takes place in the syntax, which may extend to the causative alternation in other languages.

This paper examines alternations in demonstrative ordering in Kikuyu, a Bantu language spoken primarily in Kenya. An interesting effect is found: direct objects may not have prenominal demonstratives in transitive constructions, but may have prenominal demonstratives in a number of ditransitive constructions. I argue that this alternation is tied to Case. It is shown that these alternations can be accounted for using a theory of dependent Case in which Case has a licensing function. In Kikuyu, direct objects and subjects are too distant in the structure for the former to be assigned Case, and therefore the N head of the direct object must be adjacent to the verbal complex at the surface in order to be licensed (Levin 2015). However, the presence of a medial argument allows direct objects to be assigned Case since the two are sufficiently local, thus obviating the requirement for N-V adjacency.

This paper investigates the principles that govern subject marking in Awing (Grassfields Bantu). We observe that the subject marker (SM) that doubles the subject is sometimes obligatory, sometimes optional and sometimes prohibited. We argue that it is the referentiality of the subject that controls the distribution of the SM in Awing, rather than factors such as its morpho-syntactic features or its information structural status, which have been identified to govern argument doubling in a number of other languages with a similar phenomenon. The empirical evidence leads us to conclude that the SM is a pronominal element in Awing rather than an agreement marker. When it occurs, it functions as the argument of the verb and the associated subject NP is base-generated in the left periphery of the clause; when it is absent, the NP is the verbal argument. Awing thus qualifies as a pronominal argument language in the sense of Jelinek (1984); Bresnan and Mchombo (1987); Baker (1996).

In this paper I offer a syntactic approach to the formation of complex denominal verbs in Latin. Two basic types of prefixed locative denominal verbs can be distinguished in this language: location ones “agglutinate” a PP expressing location, whereas locatum ones contain a noun expressing the locatum object. Assuming a syntactic distinction between Incorporation and Conflation in denominal verb formation, I claim that prefixed location verbs are formed via Incorporation (i.e. Internal Merge), whereas prefixed locatum verbs are formed via Conflation (i.e. External Merge). Unprefixed locative verbs can only be interpreted as locatum predicates, but unlike prefixed locatum verbs, they are analyzed as involving a possessive relation and as being formed via incorporation. The present approach also provides an explanation of why Romance locatum verbs, unlike location ones, are not necessarily prefixed. It is also claimed that unprefixed and prefixed locatum verbs in Romance are formed via incorporation rather than via conflation, its reason being related to the typological shift from the presence of a typical conflation pattern in satellite-framed Latin to a lack of it in verb-framed Romance languages. Finally, I show that Latin prefixed denominal verbs and prefixed deadjectival ones are all telic and project a ResultP in syntax. In contrast, this projection can be argued to be absent from unprefixed denominal and deadjectival verbs.

Noun incorporation is commonly thought to avoid the weak compositionality of compounds because it involves conjunction of an argument noun with the incorporating verb. However, it is weakly compositional in two ways. First, the noun’s entity argument needs to be bound or saturated, but previous accounts fail to adequately ensure that it is. Second, non-arguments are often incorporated in many languages, and their thematic role is available for contextual selection.We show that these two weaknesses are actually linked. We focus on the Kiowa language, which generally bars objects from incorporation but allows non-arguments. We show that a mediating relation is required to semantically link the noun to the verb. Absent a relation, the noun’s entity argument is not saturated, and the entire expression is uninterpretable. The mediating relation for non-objects also assigns it a thematic role instead of a postposition. Speakers can choose this role freely, subject to independent constraints from the pragmatics, syntax, and semantics.Objects in Kiowa are in fact allowed to incorporate in certain environments, but we show that these all independently involve a mediating relation. The mediating relation for objects quantifies over the noun and links the noun+verb construction to the rest of the clause. The head that introduces this relation re-categorizes the verb in the syntactic derivation. Essentially, we demonstrate two distinct mechanisms for noun incorporation.Having derived the distribution of Kiowa, we apply the same relations to derive constraints on English complex verbs and synthetic compounds, which exhibit most of the same constraints as Kiowa noun incorporation. We also look at languages with routine object incorporation, and show how the transitivity of the verb depends on whether the "Equation missing" head introducing the external argument assigns case to the re-categorized verb.

Modal verbs, as one of modality devices, play an important role in academic writing and argument. To gain insights into the use of modal verbs in academic writing of Thai EFL students, the in-depth analysis of 15 discussion essays written by the third-year English majors at one public university in Thailand was carried out. It focused specifically on the nine core modal verbs (can, could, may, might, will, would, shall, should and must) and examined their frequencies and semantic functions. The data analysis employed Sketch Engine, a corpus concordance, and drew on categories of semantic functions. The analysis revealed that can, will, may and should were the top four frequently favored items, respectively while must, could, would and might were found to be exceptionally underused. As for semantic functions, the most dominant meaning was “possibility” expressed by can. The results indicate that Thai students’ academic writing skills need to be significantly improved, particularly their ability to use modal verbs strategically in their essays. The curriculum design for academic writing needs to emphasize both syntactic structure and semantic functions of modal verbs and encompass activities urging students to practice using these modals systematically and purposefully.

In the explanations of logical laws and inference rules of the mature version of Begriffsschrift in Grundgesetze, Frege uses the predicate “… is the True.” Scholars like Greimann maintain that this predicate is a metalinguistic truth-predicate for Frege. This paper examines an argument for this claim that is based on the “nominal reading” of Frege’s conception of sentences—the claim that for Frege a sentence “$ p $” is equivalent to a nonsentential phrase like “the truth-value of the thought that $ p $.” In particular, this paper attempts to establish two points concerning this argument based on the nominal reading. First, the argument implies a claim about the nature of assertion which Frege repeatedly denies in his mature works. Secondly, the nominal reading on which the argument depends is false. A sentence “$ p $” is not equivalent to a nonsentential phrase like “the truth-value of the thought that $ p $” for Frege. Our discussion will lead to an important lesson about Frege’s conception of sentences and of assertion.

Cebuano, Filipino, and Isamal are classified as Austronesian languages that are spoken in the Philippines. This paper deals with the comparative ergative and accusative structures of the aforementioned languages with focus on the syntactic relations and processes. The varieties of these languages are the ones used in Samal Island, Davao, Philippines. Aimed at the structural configurations, the verb phrase (VP) and the tense phrase (TP) are analytically scrutinized as the cartographic projections of the lexical information encoded in the argument structures and the thematic structures of the verbs. With the employment of the Minimalist Program in the analysis, the computation includes the movement, checking of features, and assignment of theta roles within the structures of the three languages. Findings include the (1) similarity of structural relations and processes in the VP and the TP of the three languages, (2) movement of the verb from the VP to the TP, and (3) merger of the verb complements occur in the VP that ensures the local assignment of theta roles and the checking of cases.

Philosophers interested in the theoretical consequences of predictive processing often assume that predictive processing is an inferentialist and representationalist theory of cognition. More specifically, they assume that predictive processing revolves around approximated Bayesian inferences drawn by inverting a generative model. Generative models, in turn, are said to be structural representations: representational vehicles that represent their targets by being structurally similar to them. Here, I challenge this assumption, claiming that, at present, it lacks an adequate justification. I examine the only argument offered to establish that generative models are structural representations, and argue that it does not substantiate the desired conclusion. Having so done, I consider a number of alternative arguments aimed at showing that the relevant structural similarity obtains, and argue that all these arguments are unconvincing for a variety of reasons. I then conclude the paper by briefly highlighting three themes that might be relevant for further investigation on the matter.

Implicit causality (IC) biases, the tendency of certain verbs to elicit re-mention of either the first-mentioned noun phrase (NP1) or the second-mentioned noun phrase (NP2) from the previous clause, are important in psycholinguistic research. Understanding IC verbs and the source of their biases in signed as well as spoken languages helps elucidate whether these phenomena are language general or specific to the spoken modality. As the first of its kind, this study investigates IC biases in American Sign Language (ASL) and provides IC bias norms for over 200 verbs, facilitating future psycholinguistic studies of ASL and comparisons of spoken versus signed languages. We investigated whether native ASL signers continued sentences with IC verbs (e.g., ASL equivalents of ‘Lisa annoys Maya because…’) by mentioning NP1 (i.e., Lisa) or NP2 (i.e., Maya). We found a tendency towards more NP2-biased verbs. Previous work has found that a verb’s thematic roles predict bias direction: stimulus-experiencer verbs (e.g., ‘annoy’), where the first argument is the stimulus (causing annoyance) and the second argument is the experiencer (experiencing annoyance), elicit more NP1 continuations. Verbs with experiencer-stimulus thematic roles (e.g., ‘love’) elicit more NP2 continuations. We probed whether the trend towards more NP2-biased verbs was related to an existing claim that stimulus-experiencer verbs do not exist in sign languages. We found that stimulus-experiencer structure, while permitted, is infrequent, impacting the IC bias distribution in ASL. Nevertheless, thematic roles predict IC bias in ASL, suggesting that the thematic role-IC bias relationship is stable across languages as well as modalities.

The main purpose of this paper is to identify the novel type of Korean definiteness marker. Especially I show that Korean KU which originated from the morphological demonstrative ‘that’, instantiates a solid pattern of distribution of definiteness marker. Mainly focusing on the semantico-pragmatic role of KU, the proposal comprises three main parts: (i) Given that Korean employs distinct devices teased apart into uniqueness (i.e. referential use) and familiarity (i.e. anaphoric use) in its definiteness system, I show that the effect of referential use in argument saturating function is achieved by the covert “determiner” in bare nouns, whereas anaphoric use in argument non-saturating function is achieved by the overt KU; (ii) The semantic contribution of KU is analyzed as a domain restrictor (DDR; Etxeberria & Giannakidou 2010) which supplies an indexical property as an argument (Schwarz 2009, 2013; Jenks 2018); (iii) I further show that the DDR operator is present in the syntax, falling out from the standard D position as an adjunctive modifier in a lower DP layer. The contribution of my work is that the proposed account allows us to widen our view of cross-linguistic variation to cases where the prerequisite of definiteness is based on the dissociation of meaning (i.e. the semantic role of D as encoding familiarity) and form (i.e. the syntactic role of D as an argument-building function).

The analysis of basic clause structures shows that clauses in Bahasa Siladang consist of verbal and non-verbal predication. The non-verbal predicate can be filled by an adjective, noun, numeral or prepositional phrase. The analysis of the argument structure shows that the intransitive predicate requires one NP argument as the only argument functioning as the grammatical subject, which can be an agent or a patient. Meanwhile, the transitive verb predicate requires two or more arguments. The presence of these arguments in the predicate in transitive sentences is mandatory. The conclusion from the analysis of the grammatical behavior in syntactic construction is that SL is a language which has a grammatical alignment system which gives the same treatment to A and S, and a different treatment to P. It can be categorized as an accusative language, marking the direct object of transitive verbs, making them different from the subject of both transitive and intransitive verbs. Keywords: clause structure, argument structure, syntactic typology