This paper discusses cases of syntactic doubling in wh-dependencies attested in dialects of Dutch, where more than one member of the same chain is spelled out. We focus on cases of non-identical doubling, in which the chain links spelled out have different forms. We demonstrate that the order of elements in a chain is fixed: the first (or syntactically higher) one is less specific that the second one. We argue that this generalization follows from partial copying, a process that copies a proper sub-constituent and remerges it higher in the structure. This naturally excludes the ungrammatical orders, as these would involve full copying plus the addition of features, in violation of the inclusiveness condition. The proposal requires pronouns to be spell-outs of phrases, and it is in combination with this hypothesis that the full set of data is accounted for in a uniform way. Advantages over alternative accounts of syntactic doubling are discussed.

In this paper we focus on the ability of Argument Supporting Nominalizations (ASNs) to realize morphological plural. We think that this aspect of their behavior is instrumental in our understanding of their properties and their syntax within one language and across languages. Our factual investigation deals with Romanian, English, German and Spanish, as well as Polish and Bulgarian ASNs. We show that the interplay between the aspectual properties – either inner or outer aspect – and the nominal/verbal characteristics, as justifying the internal structure of ASNs, allows us to characterize the ability of ASNs to accept plural marking across languages. We further argue for a flexible syntactic theory that enables us to capture the mixed properties of ASNs. We provide evidence for two parameters of variation. The first parameter is whether ASNs involve a nominalizer or not. If a nominalizer is not included, ASNs lack nominal internal properties. If a nominalizer is included, the second parameter comes into play and allows for language variation with respect to the height of attachment of the nominalizer. Specifically, a nominalizer can attach to (and thus nominalize) distinct layers of syntactic structure (VP vs. AspectP).

This paper presents three experiments that investigate the relationship between gradient and binary judgments of grammaticality. In the first two experiments, two different groups of participants judged sentences by the method of magnitude estimation and by the method of speeded grammaticality judgments in a single session. The two experiments involved identical sentence materials but they differed in the order in which the two procedures were applied. The results show a high correlation between the magnitude estimation data and the speeded grammaticality judgments data, both within a session and across the two sessions. The third experiment was a questionnaire study in which participants judged the same sentences as either grammatical or ungrammatical without time pressure. This experiment yielded results quite similar to those of the other two experiments. Thus gradient and binary judgments both provide valuable and reliable sources for linguistic theory when assessed in an experimentally controlled way. We present a model based on Signal Detection Theory which specifies how gradient grammaticality scores are mapped to binary grammaticality judgments. Finally, we compare our experimental results to existing corpus data in order to inquire into the relationship between grammaticality and frequency of usage.

In some languages, nominal case is distributed over several adnominal elements, such as demonstrative pronouns, adjectives, participles, numerals and the nominal head itself. In this article, two hypotheses concerning case distribution are compared. According to the two-part model, case assignment to DPs as a whole (determiner phrases or maximal nominal projections) in syntax is based on a different grammatical mechanism than case distribution within those DPs. According to the one-part model, case distribution within DPs and syntactic case assignment to DPs are based on the same case assignment mechanism. Relying upon case distribution data from Finnish, Estonian, Polish, Russian and Serbo-Croatian, this article argues in favor of the one-part model. Furthermore, it is suggested that the one-part case distribution mechanism interacts with two independent morphological principles, one which regulates the overt morphological realization of elements which function as case assigners and another which states that the grammar is subject to a particular type of case hierarchy.

This paper examines the use of audience-directed or inherently communicative expressions (discourse markers and interjections) in free indirect thought representations in fiction. It argues that the insights of Banfield's (1982) no-narrator approach to free indirect style can be accommodated in a relevance theoretic framework. The result is an account in which the author's act of revealing a character's thoughts communicates a guarantee of optimal relevance – a guarantee which justifies the effort which the reader invests in deriving meta-representations of those thoughts from the evidence which the author provides. However, the reward for this effort is a meta-representation of a character's thoughts which is unmediated by the thoughts of the author who is responsible for producing the text. Using examples from fiction, I show that within this framework, the use of procedurally encoded discourse markers and interjections contribute to this sense of immediacy by imposing constraints on interpretation which leave the reader with the responsibility for deriving his own interpretations of a character's thoughts and thought processes.

This paper provides a new perspective on the options available to languages for encoding directed motion events. Talmy (2000) introduces an influential two-way typology, proposing that languages adopt either verb- or satellite-framed encoding of motion events. This typology is augmented by Slobin (2004b) and Zlatev & Yangklang (2004) with a third class of equipollently-framed languages. We propose that the observed options can instead be attributed to: (i) the motion-independent morphological, lexical, and syntactic resources languages make available for encoding manner and path of motion, (ii) the role of the verb as the single clause-obligatory lexical category that can encode either manner or path, and (iii) extra-grammatical factors that yield preferences for certain options. Our approach accommodates the growing recognition that most languages straddle more than one of the previously proposed typological categories: a language may show both verb- and satellite-framed patterns, or if it allows equipollent-framing, even all three patterns. We further show that even purported verb-framed languages may not only allow but actually prefer satellite-framed patterns when appropriate contextual support is available, a situation unexpected if a two- or three-way typology is assumed. Finally, we explain the appeal of previously proposed two- and three-way typologies: they capture the encoding options predicted to be preferred once certain external factors are recognized, including complexity of expression and biases in lexical inventories.

This article discusses similar developments in the expression of negation in the histories of Egyptian-Coptic and Arabic and explores the evidence for these respective developments being related by language contact. Both Coptic and Arabic have undergone a development known as Jespersen's Cycle (JC), whereby an original negative marker is joined by some new element to form a bipartite negative construction. The original marker then becomes optional while the new element becomes the primary negator. We present the results of a corpus study of negation in late Coptic, showing that, at the time when Arabic speakers began to settle in Egypt, the bipartite negative construction still predominated. This being the case, we argue that native speakers of Coptic learning Arabic as a second language played a key role in the genesis of the Arabic bipartite negative construction. More generally, we give reasons to doubt the a priori preference for internal explanations of syntactic change over those involving contact, as well as the assumption that the two are mutually exclusive. Rather, we suggest that not only purely internal but also (partially) contact-induced change can profitably be accounted for in terms of child language acquisition leading to a change in the grammars of individual speakers.

Persian complex predicates pose an interesting challenge for theoretical linguistics since they have both word-like and phrase-like properties. For example, they can feed derivational processes, but they are also separable by the future auxiliary or the negation prefix.

Various proposals have been made in the literature to capture the nature of Persian complex predicates, among them analyses that treat them as purely phrasal or purely lexical combinations. Mixed analyses that analyze them as words by default and as phrases in the non-default case have also been suggested.

In this paper, I show that theories that rely exclusively on the classification of patterns in inheritance hierarchies cannot account for the facts in an insightful way unless they are augmented by transformations or some similar device. I then show that a lexical account together with appropriate grammar rules and an argument composition analysis of the future auxiliary has none of the shortcomings that classification-based analyses have and that it can account for both the phrasal and the word-like properties of Persian complex predicates.

It is well known that the quantity indicated by an NP affects clausal aspect if the referent of the NP participates in the event incrementally, i.e. in a part-by-part manner (e.g. She was mowing the lawn). In general, an incremental NP that indicates a closed quantity makes the overall aspect of the sentence telic and thus bounded, whereas one indicating an open quantity results in unbounded aspect (e.g. Water was dripping from the ceiling). In this paper the interplay between quantity and aspect will be called nominal aspect. It is argued that quantity may relate with time in two different ways: first, as overall quantity (which, if incremental, cumulates over time), and second, as transient quantity. The latter term refers to the quantity involved in the situation at a given point in time. It is argued that the interpretation of certain NPs evokes both kinds of quantity; e.g. in This machine pumps the waste water of the factory into the drain the object indicates a quantity that is open in the overall sense (there is no end to the waste water entering the event of pumping) but closed in the transient sense (at any point, all [relevant] waste water gets pumped into the drain). A corresponding distinction is drawn in the domain of verbal aspect, which can also be bounded or unbounded in two different ways. Overall aspect unfolds over time and, if telic, ultimately reaches its endpoint, as in She took the letter to the post office. Transient aspect is the aspectual nature of an event at any given point in time. It is understood as orthogonal to the time axis and gives a cross-section of the ongoing event. In This brush cleans the conveyor belt before it enters the machinery the overall aspect (of the ‘cleaning’) is unbounded, but the transient aspect is bounded, assuming that the brush continuously keeps the conveyor belt in a state of total cleanliness. In this paper, such oppositions are used in explaining the case marking of the Finnish object (partitive vs. ‘total object’ case marking), which reflects both quantificational and aspectual factors. It is argued that the total object can indicate a closed quantity and a bounded aspect not only in the overall sense but also in the transient sense. This distinction is then used to account for many hitherto unexplained uses of the cases.

This paper argues that, with syntax defined as progressive projection of semantic representations along the left-to-right dimension provided by the sequence of words (Cann, Kempson & Marten 2005), explanations for local and (multiple) nonlocal scrambling of NPs in Japanese and Korean follow from general principles of tree growth, allowing differences between the languages while nevertheless retaining an integrated account of scrambling itself. This formalism is similar to the parsing mechanism of Miyamoto (2002), but goes further in using this as the base grammar formalism, with all concepts of movement replaced by progressive articulation of structural underspecification and tree growth starting from the left periphery. The account extends the analysis of Japanese scrambling of Cann et al. to encompass multiple long-distance scrambling, capturing both the attendant relative locality restriction on the constituents moved, and interaction of this restriction with scope-construal effects. Scope-construal variability is expressible as interaction between individual lexical specifications for the two languages and general constraints on scope construal; and the relative locality constraint on the construal of the expressions involved in multiple long-distance scrambling is an immediate consequence of the general dynamics of the framework. The resulting account extends Hawkins' (2004) program of defining grammars relative to performance considerations.

In Prosodic Phonology, domains for the application of phonological patterns are commonly modeled as a Prosodic Hierarchy. The theory predicts, among other things, that (i) prosodic domains cluster on a single universal set of domains (‘Clustering’), and (ii) no level of prosodic structure is skipped in the building of prosodic structure unless this is required by independently motivated higher ranking principles or constraints (‘Strict Succession’). In this paper, we demonstrate that if, as is standardly done, evidence is limited to lexically general phonological processes, some languages systematically violate the Strict Succession Prediction, evidencing no prosodic word domain, and some languages systematically violate the Clustering Prediction, evidencing more than one domain between the phonological phrase and the foot. We substantiate these claims by in-depth studies of phonological rule domains in Vietnamese (Austroasiatic) and Limbu (Sino-Tibetan). As an alternative to the Prosodic Hierarchy framework, we advocate a heuristic for cross-linguistic comparison in which prosodic domains are conceived of as language-particular, intrinsic and highly specific properties of individual phonological rules or constraints. This allows us to explore empirically the actual degree of variation to be encountered across prosodic systems. It turns out that the ‘word’ has no privileged or universal status in phonology, but only emerges through frequent reference of sound patterns to a given construction type in a given language.

It is well known that Australian languages make heavy use of nominal juxtaposition in a wide variety of functions, but there is little discussion in the theoretical literature of how such juxtapositions should be analysed. We discuss a range of data from Australian languages illustrating how multiple nominals share a single grammatical function within the clause. We argue that such constructions should be treated syntactically as set-valued grammatical functions in Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG). Sets as values for functions are well-established in LFG and are used in the representation of adjuncts, and also in the representation of coordination. In many Australian languages, coordination is expressed asyndetically, that is, by nominal juxtaposition with no overt coordinator at all. We argue that the syntactic similarity of all juxtaposed constructions (ranging from coordination through a number of more appositional relations) motivates an analysis in which they are treated similarly in the syntax, but suitably distinguished in the semantics. We show how this can be achieved within LFG, providing a unified treatment of the syntax of juxtaposition in Australian languages and showing how the interface to the semantics can be quite straightforwardly defined in the modular LFG approach.

This paper examines the German action nouns derived with the suffix -ung which have acquired an additional sense denoting either the result of the action (e.g. Veröffentlichung ‘publishing (action)’+‘publication (object)’, or a concrete referent connected with the action in some other way, e.g. Bewachung ‘guarding (action)’+‘group of people who guard’. The phenomenon is analysed as a (non-prototypical) type of polysemy; a monosemic approach fails to explain the cases in which the referent of the additional senses of the nouns is established and/or idiosyncratic. The action nouns acquire extra senses as a way of ensuring economy in the morphological system as this avoids the need for large numbers of derivational affixes, each with an individual function. An unexpected implication of the findings is that the nouns studied – abstract nouns which acquire a second, often concrete sense – move against the accepted direction of semantic change, in which items with a specific sense acquire a more general sense.

Neutralization in Korean involves a large number of oppositions, and affects a significant portion of the lexicon. Nonetheless, it induces remarkably little homophony. These highly divergent facts are argued herein to be related. The present findings suggest a reconsideration of the role that ‘functional load’ (Martinet 1952, Hockett 1967) plays in patterns of sound change.