bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Body part names and grammaticalization
Authors: Suutari Toni
Published: March 2014

Toni Suutari investigates the development and grammaticalization of words that refer to body parts. An examination of Finno-Ugric words meaning ‘head’ reveals counterexamples to claims both about human egocentrism in semantic development and about the asserted unidirectionality of grammaticalization. Suutari shows that meanings of anatomical ‘head’ are often secondary. In other words, certain abstract relational expressions receive a concrete meaning as names for parts of the body and then subsequently become abstract once again. This claim has implications for grammaticalization. Suutari reviews the primary body-part names and the problems of the grammatical categorization of locative forms. The Finnish and Estonian locative expressions that include body-part names belong to two types, locatives and adpositions. Suutari shows that the metaphorical change from the meanings related to body parts to abstract meanings occurred after the grammaticalization had taken place. It is therefore argued that the concrete ‘body part’ > ‘object part’ meta­phor has no effect in these cases. The observations have broad implications for grammaticalization and categorization. They demonstrate that grammaticaliza­tion does not always involve changes from concrete to abstract or from lexical to grammatical, but grammaticalization may include stages where an abstract relational expression adopts a concrete meaning which in turn becomes grammaticalized.
Oblique mentions of human referents in Finnish conversation
Authors: Laury Ritva
Published: March 2014

On the basis of empirical evidence it has been shown that mentions of human referents manifest features of prominence on the level of both discourse and grammar. This is so because they tend to be topical and agentive and are consequently likely to appear in core grammatical roles, especially in the subject role. Nevertheless, human referents are occasionally also mentioned in oblique cases (for example, as possessors and as recipients of various types). Ritva Laury studies these oblique mentions of human refer­ents in Finnish and investigates whether human mentions are equally distributed among all the oblique cases. She further explores what their pragmatic and semantic characteristics are and whether they take on the typical discourse profile of obliques (i.e. new, unidentifiable, and unlikely to be re-mentioned), or whether they still get treated like other human referents so that they would be identi­fiable, given and further tracked. Laury also investigates the semantic features of NPs used for oblique mentions of humans in discourse. The results of her study strongly confirm the centrality of human referents in grammar and discourse. Oblique mentions in the data show features of syntactic prominence, since they are not equally distributed among all the oblique cases, but instead cluster in only a few cases, namely those which occur in constructions with grammatical rather than local meaning. Further, human referents mentioned in oblique case roles are still pragmatically and semantically strongly human in terms of being par­ticipants in speech events, in being identifiable, given, and further tracked, that is, continuous topics in discourse, and in being lexically specified as humans.
Zero person in Finnish
Authors: Laitinen Lea
Published: March 2014

Lea Laitinen’s article deals with the grammar and meaning of Fin­nish constructions containing the so-called ‘zero person’ subject. In these constructions, there is no overt subject, and the verb is in the 3rd person singular form. The meanings of the construction are investigated in conversational data, and its globally marked non-specific reference is compared to the non-specific use of personal pronouns, used as generic forms referring to humans in many languages. As crystallizations of human experience, the zero person constructions express changes of state, emotions, perceptions, or other processes that affect human beings in particular situations. Laitinen shows how this potentiality of grammar is used in interaction by the speech act participants, and how these constructions which leave the conceptualizer of the situation implicit, provide a more subjective perspective on the experience than explicit personal pronouns. This paper has implications for the understanding of impersonal use of pronouns, non-specific pronominal reference, and zero persons in languages generally.
Detection of liaison consonants in speech processing in French
Authors: Nguyen Noël , Wauquier Sophie , Lancia Leonardo , Tuller Betty
Published: March 2014

The goal of the present study is to better understand the mechanisms involved in the processing of liaison consonants by listeners in French. Previous work (Wauquier-Gravelines 1996) showed that liaison consonants are more difficult to detect than word-initial consonants in a phoneme-detection task. We examined to what extent such differences are attributable to the consonants’ phonetic properties, and we also compared the perception of liaison consonants with that of fixed word-final and word-medial consonants, as well as word-initial ones. The results suggest that liaison consonants have a specific perceptual status. Implications for both autosegmental and exemplar-based theories of liaison are discussed.
Patterns of VCV coarticulatory direction according to the DAC model
Authors: Recasens Daniel
Published: March 2014

?This paper provides support for the DAC model of coarticulation by showing that directionality patterns of vowel and consonant coarticulation in VCV sequences are inversely related. Thus, VCV sequences with dark [ɫ] exhibit more vowel-to-consonant anticipation than carryover, due to the salient consonant anticipatory effects blocking vowel carryover, whereas the opposite is the case for the alveolopalatals [ɲ] and [ʎ]. It is shown that differences in articulatory constraint at consonant onset and offset need to be taken into consideration in order to account for the relative salience of the anticipatory and carryover vowel effects in those VCV sequences. Manner of articulation requirements and lingual configuration characteristics determine trends in vowel coarticulatory direction in VCV sequences with relatively unconstrained dentals and alveolars. The implications of these experimental findings for predicting regularities in assimilatory processes and phonemic planning strategies are also addressed.
Disentangling stress from accent in Spanish
Authors: Ortega-Llebaria Marta , Prieto Pilar
Published: March 2014

According to Sluijter and colleagues (1996b, 1997), stress is independent from accent because it has its own phonetic cues: stressed vowels are longer and have flatter spectral tilts than their unstressed counterparts. However, Campbell and Beckman (1997) show that, for American English, these duration and spectral tilt patterns are a consequence of vowel reduction: when unreduced vowels with different levels of stress (primary and secondary stress) are compared, duration and spectral tilt do not correlate with the stress difference. This paper contributes to the above discussion by examining the stress contrast in deaccented syllables in Spanish. Since Spanish has no phonological vowel reduction, it constitutes a good test case for the above hypotheses. Moreover, this study attempts to disentangle the correlates of stress from those of accent, something which has thus far not been done in the traditional literature on Spanish stress. The results indicate that stress contrast in Spanish is maintained in deaccented contexts by differences in duration, spectral tilt, and to a lesser extent, vowel quality.
The perception of lexical stress patterns by Spanish and Catalan infants
Authors: Pons Ferran , Bosch Laura
Published: March 2014

Previous research with English-learning infants has shown that stress cues can have a powerful influence on early word segmentation. Early sensitivity to the predominant lexical stress pattern (trochaic) in the native language has been observed in English and German, two stress-timed languages (Jusczyk, Cutler & Redanz 1993; Höhle 2002). In this paper, we offer data from two syllable-timed languages: Catalan and Spanish. We report experiments aimed at studying infants’ preferential patterns and discrimination abilities for trochaic vs iambic word forms. Results indicate that neither six-month-old nor nine-month-old Catalan- and Spanish-learning infants show a preference for either stress pattern, although they are able to discriminate between them. It is argued that failure to observe a trochaic preference can be attributed to frequency factors of specific lexical stress patterns in these languages. Stress cues alone would not be sufficient for early lexical segmentation in this case.
4. Prevoicing in Dutch initial plosives: Production, perception, and word recognition
Authors: van Alphen Petra M.
Published: March 2014

Prevoicing is the presence of vocal fold vibration during the closure of initial voiced plosives (negative VOT). The presence or absence of prevoicing is generally used to describe the voicing distinction in Dutch initial plosives. However, a phonetic study showed that prevoicing is frequently absent in Dutch. This article discusses the role of prevoicing in the production and perception of Dutch plosives. Furthermore, two cross-modal priming experiments are presented that examined the effect of prevoicing variation on word recognition. Both experiments showed no difference between primes with 12, 6 or 0 periods of prevoicing, even though a third experiment indicated that listeners could discriminate these words. These results are discussed in light of another priming experiment that did show an effect of the absence of prevoicing, but only when primes had a voiceless word competitor. Phonetic detail appears to influence lexical access only when it helps to distinguish between lexical candidates.
5. Dutch regressive voicing assimilation as a 'low level phonetic process': Acoustic evidence
Authors: Jansen Wouter
Published: March 2014

This paper investigates the behaviour of a number of acoustic cues to phonological [voice] in Dutch word-final /ps/ sequences. It reports measurements on elicited productions of such clusters before phonologically voiced and voiceless plosives, the labial nasal /m/, the glottal consonant /h/ and lexical vowels. The results of this experiment provide evidence that regressive voice assimilation (RVA) occurs in /ps/ clusters before [+voice] plosives, contradicting claims in some of the literature that obstruent + fricative sequences are exempt from RVA. The behaviour of the individual cues to [voice] observed here also suggests that Dutch regressive voicing assimilation is a ‘low level’ coarticulatory process rather than a rule manipulating lexical phonological structure.
Answering strategies: A view from acquisition
Authors: Belletti Adriana
Published: March 2014

Different languages adopt different grammatical options - SV, VS orders, (reduced) clefts - to answer the same question on the identification of the subject. The answering strategies are detected through speakers’ grammaticality judgements and through acquisition data, specially adult L2 acquisition. The direct relevance of acquisition data in raising and help clarifying theoretical issues is meant to be among the contributions of the article. The different answering strategies, analyzed in cartographic terms as involving either the VPperipheral internal focus position or focalization in situ, are all in principle available in different languages, provided that no formal condition is violated in the interaction with other properties, the crucial one being the null-subject vs non null-subject nature of the language. The different answering strategies are in place early on in first language monolingual acquisition. Speculative hypotheses on economy and the characterization of development, are put forth on the reason(s) why a strategy should prevail over the others, in compliance with formal conditions.
Listen to the sound of salience: Multichannel syntax of Q particles
Authors: Jouitteau Mélanie
Published: March 2014

I claim that the linguistic message that realizes syntax is multichannel. The syntax-PF interface is the interface of syntax with all the sensorimotor systems available to humans, including, for oral languages, minimal vocalic productions, intonation, hand movement and body gestures. I show that the realization of syntactic structure consists of (i) segmental oral morphemes, (ii) non-segmental oral morphemes (intonation), and (iii) nonoral morphemes (segmental or not; hand movements, upper body gestures and face movements). In particular, the latter predicts the use of non-oral morphemes in oral languages, since the speakers of oral languages have it available in their sensorimotor system. I focus on the CP domain of oral languages, and show that its functional projections can be realized by either (i), (ii) and (iii). The empirical body of this article concentrates on the multichannel Q particles in French, Atlantic French and British English.
The role of the plural system in Romance
Authors: Stark Elisabeth
Published: March 2014

This paper presents a diachronic formal morphosyntactic analysis of the role of the functional projection Pl/Pl* in Romance indefinite nominals, responsible for number and the countability distinction. Reinterpreting the complex system of indefinite nominal determination in two central Romance languages, viz. French and Italian, which both feature an indefinite article and a ‘partitive article’ as a device of ‘nominal classification’ in a broad sense in contrast to Romance languages without such an element, viz. Spanish, it argues that this ‘classification system’ arose when nominal declension in Latin was partially or completely lost. The application of the latest minimalist assumptions on agreement processes in the syntax both to modern Romance languages and to (Late) Latin allows us to describe and explain the obvious differences between French, Italian and Spanish and to relate them to the interaction of gender and number marking in Romance indefinite nominals.
Imperfect systems and diachronic change
Authors: Salvi Giampaolo
Published: March 2014

Syntactic change consists of (a series of) small, local changes which are the result of chance or are brought about by the possible imperfections of the linguistic system — the impression of globality of the change is due to the sum of the individual changes which, eventually eliminating single imperfections, contribute to the formation of a more coherent system. In Modern Italian, one can identify two independent reflexive (“si”) constructions which syntactically demote the lexical subject: a passive one and an impersonal one, with quite distinct properties. Old Italian only had passive si — the impersonal construction is the result of many small changes in the rules and the domain of application of the passive construction: these changes began in the Old Italian period and lasted for at least five centuries. But this new construction, not being the result of a unitary project, continues to show signs of being imperfectly put together.
Non-lexical core-arguments in Basque, Romance and German: How (and why) Spanish syntax is shifting towards clausal headmarking and morphological cross-reference
Authors: Radatz Hans-Ingo
Published: March 2014

This article deals with the ways in which non-lexical core arguments can be expressed in various languages. It tries to devise a typological hierarchy for the different types and endeavours to place Romance within this hierarchy. An analysis of Basque verbal markers as cross-reference morphemes introduces the subject with a language radically different from central IE. Using Nichols’ (1986 & 1992) typological differentiation between head-marking and dependent-marking languages as its basis, a typological sub-parameter of “clausal head-marking vs. clausal dependent-marking” is suggested which is shown to correspond to two radically different types of clausal co-reference: (1) agreement (concord) and (2) cross-reference. This terminology is then used to describe and explain an ongoing syntactic change in which Spanish object clitics have evolved into obligatory verbal markers closely resembling those of Basque. Their conventional analysis as “agreement markers” is questioned and Spanish is shown to be moving towards a clausal head-marking language in which all core-arguments of the sentence have to be expressed by verbal affixes, while nominal and pronominal argument realisations become mere appositions outside the sentence core. The traditional concept of an emerging new paradigm of “object conjugation” is rejected.
Verb types and word order in Old and Middle English non-coordinate and coordinate clauses
Authors: Bech Kristin
Published: March 2014

This paper focuses on the relation between word order, verb types and clause types in Old and Middle English, with reference to the change of English from a language with a verb-second constraint to a verb-medial language. The word order patterns dicussed are the XVS, SVX and XSV patterns, and the verb categories operated with are verbs with complement, verbs without complement, copulas and existential verbs. A distinction is made between coordinate clauses; i.e., clauses introduced by a coordinating conjunction, and non-coordinate clauses. The results show that there is a difference between the two clause types and between the word order patterns in the distribution of verbs. Furthermore, there is a clear development from Old and Middle English as regards verb distribution in the clause types and word order patterns, and this development is especially noticeable in the XVS pattern. It may thus be deduced that word order is not only determined on the basis of syntactic rules, but is also related to the information content of the sentence. Consequently, studying word order and word order change from a functional perspective is highly relevant.
From locative to durative to focalized? The English progressive and 'PROG imperfective drift'
Authors: Killie Kristin
Published: March 2014

In the present paper I test the claim of Bertinetto et al. (2000) that the English progressive has undergone ‘PROG imperfective drift’, originating as a locative construction, to develop into a durative progressive and subsequently also into a focalized progressive. I argue that it is doubtful whether the English progressive has evolved along these lines. While the construction has clearly become much more focalized, and less durative, there is no evidence of a predominantly durative stage. Instead, the English progressive shows a variety of functions all through the period under study, and the durative type is not among the most frequent types in any one period. As for origins, the many meanings or functions of the progressive in the earliest records may seem to suggest multiple origins rather than a single, locative source.
On the position of the OE quantifier eall and PDE all
Authors: Yanagi Tomohiro
Published: March 2014

This paper, through a study of the corpus of Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies, shows that the quantifier eall in Old English exhibited the same distributional properties as the quantifier all in present-day English: (i) eall can float from a nominative noun phrase (NP) it modifies; (ii) eall can float from an accusative NP when it is followed by a predicative complement; and (iii) the ‘pronoun-quantifier’ order is more frequent than the ‘quantifier-pronoun’ order. The paper also argues that the quantifier eall is base-generated as the head of the Quantifier Phrase (QP) and selects an NP as its complement. The ‘full-NP-quantifier’ order can be derived by adjoining the NP to the QP. However, this operation is not applied to an NP in the argument position, due to the ban on adjunction to arguments. Unlike NPs, pronouns are adjoined to the head of a QP, yielding the ‘pronoun-quantifier’ order more freely.
Syntactic dialectal variation in Middle English
Authors: Suárez-Gómez Cristina
Published: March 2014

ME is widely known as “par excellence, the dialectal phase of English” (Strang 1970: 224). It is therefore not at all surprising that the linguistic differences among dialects in ME have long attracted the attention of scholars. It is generally assumed that northern dialects innovate mainly due to Scandinavian influence as opposed to southern dialects, which maintain the tradition. The aim of my study is to test whether this tendency is also reflected in relativization, both in the system of relativizers used and in the position adopted by the relative clause. My study shows that the system of relativizers inherited from OE, with deictic relativizers, and the tendency towards extraposition typical of ME are associated with southern dialects, while the North shows a simplified system of relativizers as well as a marked tendency for relative clauses to be intraposed. The data for the present study have been drawn from The Helsinki Corpus of English Texts: Diachronic and Dialectal.
Particles as grammaticalized complex predicates
Authors: Los Bettelou
Published: March 2014

This paper argues that English phrasal verbs represent a grammaticalization, from Phrase to Head, of a complex predicate construction. Predicates and the particles of phrasal verbs share a number of striking quirks: syntactically, both may appear with “unselected objects” and, semantically, both may form idioms of which the meaning cannot be predicted from its separate parts. Particles cannot be analyzed as predicates synchronically, however, because they allow two word orders: V – NP – particle and V – particle – NP, whereas predicates only allow the first of these, and not the second; furthermore, the particle appears to “bleach” much more easily than predicates, probably because the prototypical predicates, adjectives, express properties, whereas particles (prepositions) express paths. EModE marks a significant point in the development of the particle verb system in that the verbs participating in the combination are no longer restricted to ‘light’ verbs but include deadjectival and denominal verbs, unergatives, and ‘manner-of-motion’ verbs.
Politeness in the history of English
Authors: Jucker Andreas H.
Published: March 2014

Politeness in English has often been seen as a development from a positive politeness culture to a negative politeness culture. Several case studies provide evidence for such a development. A first case study offers an analysis of the use of pronominal terms of address in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and in Shakespeare’s plays. By Shakespeare’s time the pronoun you had increasingly become a marker of deference associated with negative politeness, while thou had become a marker of positive (im)politeness and strong emotions. The development of speech acts such as apologies and directives provide further evidence for an emergent negative politeness culture. However, evidence from Early English correspondence and from the current blurring of the line between private and public life indicates that there are also tendencies towards increased positive politeness, which strongly suggests that these developments are domain and genre specific.
Latin loanwords of the early modern period: How often did French act as an intermediary?
Authors: Durkin Philip
Published: March 2014

This paper examines borrowing into English from Latin and from French during the early modern period (EModE), based on documentation from the third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary now in progress (OED3). It looks in particular at dual borrowings from Latin and French, and also at cases of semantic influence from French on words borrowed from Latin, in order to assess whether such words make any significant difference to the overall picture of borrowing in the period. It also looks, albeit very tentatively, at some of the possibilities for further use of the very detailed information which can be extracted from the etymologies in OED3.
Middle English word geography: Methodology and applications illustrated
Authors: Linares María José Carrillo , Anes Edurne Garrido
Published: March 2014

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate two things: first, the methodology employed for the study of Middle English lexical dialectal material; and second, the possibility of carrying out some practical applications related to the geographical distributions of lexical items. For the methodology, we focus on the importance of undertaking a cumulative analysis, based on the collection of as much data as possible and from as many sources as we may find for any item. It is essential for the analysis of the data to be aware of the textual histories of the manuscript sources as well. As a practical application of the results obtained from our analysis, we propose to explore the possibility of redefining the localisation of a manuscript by using the lexical material. Localisation according to lexical material might not always agree with localisation according to orthographic criteria, but even if the lexical choices can be conditioned by different factors, the global study of the lexical information together with the phono-graphological features might help to localise some texts more precisely.
Dynamic dialectology and social networks
Authors: Ogura Mieko , Wang William S-Y.
Published: March 2014

This paper examines how different structures of social networks affect linguistic selection type of change or functionally biased change, and game type of change or socially biased change, based on simulation and historical data from English. We show that the weaker the functional or social bias, the greater the effects of different network structures on diffusion processes of change. We also show that the weaker the functional or social bias, the more probabilistic the learner becomes, and the stronger the functional or social bias, the more categorical the learner becomes. Furthermore, we discuss that there is little increase in diffusion time with the increase in population size in a small-world and scale-free networks.
How much syntactic reconstruction is possible?
Authors: Pires Acrisio , Thomason Sarah G.
Published: March 2014

This paper explores ways to synthesize methods from generative linguistics and historical linguistics to develop explanatory criteria that need to be satisfied by different attempts to carry out syntactic reconstruction. It addresses various questions such as (i) the need to define exactly what it means to reconstruct a language; (ii) characterizing the formal entities that count as the basic elements in the analysis of the empirical evidence for syntactic reconstruction, and whether the units of analysis and the elements that need to be reconstructed are formal entities of the same kind; (iii) whether it is possible to establish general principles for reconstructing syntax; (iv) to which extent the methodology adopted for the reconstruction of other properties of a linguistic system can be applied successfully to the reconstruction of syntax; and (v) identifying methodological criteria to assess the success of a syntactic reconstruction, and devise empirical tests for the reconstruction model.
Competitive Indo-European syntax
Authors: Lühr Rosemarie
Published: March 2014

In the following article I will analyse the different constructions of embedded object clauses in the older Indo-European languages. In quite a lot of modern Indo-European languages the standard realisation of the sentential object clause is a finite subordinate clause introduced by a complementizer corresponding to the English conjunction that. In contrast, in some of the older Indo-European languages, this construction is only rarely attested, e.g., in Vedic, and a variety of structures without that-complementizer are used instead (“that-clause competitors”). By cross-linguistic comparison I will reconstruct that two object clause constructions were part of the Proto-Indo-European syntactic structure and that one of them, the explicative clause, can be considered as the predecessor of the modern finite that-object clauses. Furthermore I will show how the relational element of the explicative clause, a wh-operator corresponding to English which, could change to a complementizer element like that.
Principles of syntactic reconstruction and "morphology as paleosyntax": The case of some Indo-European secondary verbal formations
Authors: Balles Irene
Published: March 2014

The problem of syntactic reconstruction is addressed from the point of view of an Indo-Europeanist. After a short overview over the approaches to syntactic reconstruction in the field of Indo-European linguistics in the last 50 years, the article focuses on the “morphology-as-paleosyntax-method”. This approach assumes that by going backwards on the grammaticalization path from attested synthetic formations one can at least sometimes arrive at the unattested analytic formations underlying the synthetic ones. This is exemplified by way of some Indo-European secondary tense formations for which an analytic origin has been discussed. Unfortunately the idea has some serious drawbacks so that it cannot be made as plausible as one would wish. On the other hand it may be hoped that future research will yield more and resilient results also in the field of Proto-Indo-European syntax.
Prepositionless genitive and N+N compounding in (Old) French and Italian
Authors: Delfitto Denis , Paradisi Paola
Published: March 2014

In this contribution, we examine four cases of prepositionless genitive assignment:
(a) certain alleged cases of N+N composition in Modern Italian that respond
positively to important diagnostics for syntactic behavior; (b) the so-called Juxtaposition
Genitive widely attested in Old French; (c) the relatively less appreciated
presence of some peculiar forms of Juxtaposition Genitive in Old Italian, attested
until the end of the 14th century and partially still surviving in certain Central and
Southern Italian dialects; (d) the so-called genitive compounds in West-Frisian.
By exploiting Kayne’s insights on the syntax of possessive constructions, we
challenge the traditional view that the loss of synthetic genitive morphology
necessarily leads to modalities of prepositional genitive assignment in the
transition from (Late) Latin to Romance. The hypotheses formulated here are
potentially relevant for a general theory of genitive assignment and for the study
of the interface between syntax and morphology.
Acoustic correlates of phonological microvariations
Authors: Grimaldi Mirko
Published: March 2014

Recent field researches in a small area of Southern Salento by means of an
appropriate questionnaire, acoustic analysis and statistic treatment of the data have
pointed out the existence of micro-parametric metaphonetic processes never noticed
before. These processes cause the raising of the stressed mid vowels /E/ and /O/ to
the counterpart mid-high vowels [e] and [o], when followed by the unstressed high
vowels -i and -u. In order to incorporate coherently phonetics in phonological
analysis (within an autosegmental phonological framework), we tried to extract the
phonetic out of the phonological properties. The results suggest that the phonological
microvariation is mastered by the interplay of acoustic-articulatory, and
probably perceptive features of the stressed and unstressed vocalism involved in the
processes, supporting a research perspective in which distinctive features have and
important role not only in articulatory actions, but also in all intermediate representations,
and, furthermore, in perceptive processes.
Main stress in Italian nonce nouns
Authors: Krämer Martin
Published: March 2014

In Italian, main stress can be found on any of the last three syllables of a word.
There is general consent that this is due to lexical stress. The analyses on default
stress assignment diverge. Authors disagree on whether the language is quantitysensitive
or not and on whether default stress falls on the second- or third-last
syllable. In this paper, I present data from a nonce word test conducted with native
speakers that show that speakers face the same dilemma as linguists do when
analysing the system. They divide into three groups, speakers who consistently
stress the third-last syllable, speakers who consistently stress the second-last
syllable and those who show variation with an even split between the two options.
All speakers consistently stress penultimate heavy syllables. Intra-speaker variation
is analysed in the framework of Optimality Theory as ad hoc rankings of
unranked constraints.
Negative concord as feature sharing
Authors: Kuno Masakazu
Published: March 2014

This paper takes up the long-standing questions on the nature of negative concord
items (NCIs) in Southern Romance, with special reference to Italian. NCIs in Italian
present two riddles for the theory of syntax and semantics, viz., the preverbal-
postverbal asymmetry and the apparent semantic ambiguity. To untangle the
NCI puzzle, this paper attempts to look into the internal structure of NCIs in Italian
through their counterparts in Hungarian. The proposal will be framed under the
assumption à la Pesetsky and Torrego (2007) that Agree should be viewed as a
feature-sharing operation and feature interpretability and values should be separated
from each other, Contra Chomsky (2001, 2004).
Appositive sentences and the structure(s) of coordination
Authors: Matos Gabriela
Published: March 2014

Coordination is not a unitary phenomenon: as far as binding and scope of external
elements are concerned, appositive coordinate sentences may differ from their nonappositive
integrated counterparts in the same way as appositive relatives differ
from restrictive relatives, suggesting that different configurations are involved in
appositive vs. non-appositive sentences. The Set-Merge (Kayne 1994) and Pair
Merge (Munn 1992) proposals for dealing with coordination, although relevant, are
not enough to distinguish appositive from non-appositive sentences. The crucial
distinguishing property of appositives is their parenthetical status: they are adjuncts
affected by a feature specifying their parenthetical nature. This allows the computational
system, which operates bottom up and according to an Earliness Condition
(Pesetsky 1989, Chomsky 2001), to interpret them as autonomous CP phases, to be
transferred to the Interface components before the phases they are inserted in, thus
preventing c-command effects from external elements at SEM.
Cleaving the interactions between sluicing and P-stranding
Authors: Rodrigues Cilene , Nevins Andrew , Vicente Luis
Published: March 2014

Merchant (2001) proposes that preposition stranding under sluicing is allowed only
in those languages that also allow P-stranding in regular wh- questions. Spanish and
Brazilian Portuguese (BP) seem to falsify this generalization, as both are non-Pstranding
languages that allow P-stranding under sluicing. Our claim is that, despite
initial appearances, Spanish and BP do not constitute counterexamples to
Merchant’s generalization. We propose that there are two sources of sluicing in
Romance: wh-movement plus IP-deletion (Merchant 2001), and clefting plus IP
deletion (Merchant 1998), the latter being the underlying source for P-stranding
sluicing. The apparent P-stranding effect follows from the fact that, as opposed to
regular interrogatives, clefts in BP and Spanish do not involve P-stranding at all. We
reinforce this conclusion by showing that, in those cases where a cleft base is
independently banned, P-stranding under sluicing becomes impossible too.
Null Expletives and Case: The View from Romance
Authors: Alboiu Gabriela
Published: March 2014

This chapter focuses on lexical subjects in non-finite domains and, following Chomsky (2006, 2008), provides an account of structural Case reliant on the phase head. I argue that agreement, understood as uninterpretable phi-features (i.e., uφ), is not compulsory for either Case licensing or for obtaining a Case value. Nonetheless, I show that the presence of uφ on the probing domain will ensure a Nominative value, while its absence will constrain the DP to an Accusative value. I propose that a null expletive checking the EPP feature will trigger Nominative subjects whenever (C)-T lacks uφ, specifically, in non-finite domains, such as infinitives and gerunds. I offer evidence for expletive pro as a UG primitive from Romanian binding facts and provide an analysis of Case valuation in this language. Lastly, I discuss micro-parametric variation in subject lexicalization within null expletive languages.
Correlativization and Degree Quantification in Spanish
Authors: Gutiérrez-Rexach Javier
Published: March 2014

This article develops an analysis of the syntactic and semantic properties of Spanish degree-correlative constructions. A movement analysis for the construction is defended, along the lines of recent proposals on correlatives cross-linguistically. At the semantic level, the wh-form is claimed to behave as an unselective operator heading a tripartite quantificational structure on degrees. Several empirical properties are claimed to follow from this characterization.
Antisymmetry and the Typology of Relative Clauses: Morphological Evidence from Romance
Authors: Martín Juan
Published: March 2014

Spanish relative clauses show two different syntactic structures. The first is derived by NP-raising, and the relative clause is selected by a determiner (Kayne 1994). The second is a matching structure and involves operator movement as in the traditional analysis of relative clauses. This latter structure also respects antisymmetry, since a non-overt determiner selects the relative clause in the complement position of a Determiner Phrase, and the head of the relative clause in the Specifier. The operator in this structure may be a Determiner Phrase or a Noun Phrase. While prepositionless relative clauses with que ‘that’ employ a non overt operator, relative clauses with prepositional operators show an allomorphic variation in the case of DP-operators, since the determiner is overt. Relative clauses with coordinated heads, relative clauses with the same preposition selecting the head and the operator, and (anti)reconstruction effects further support this analysis.
The Domain of Palatalization in Romanian
Authors: Vogel Irene , Spinu Laura
Published: March 2014

In Romanian, word final /-i/ is usually not pronounced as a vowel, but rather as a type of glide, or palatal property associated with the preceding segment. While this palatalization or “desyllabification” has been assumed to apply at the right edge of a word, we demonstrate that the word boundary does not provide the appropriate context. Instead, we propose that the phenomenon applies within a phonological constituent located in the prosodic hierarchy between the Phonological Word and the Phonological Phrase – the Composite Group, a revised form of the Clitic Group. Our analysis accounts for both enclitics and proclitics, which must be excluded from the PW of the associated root since the PW is the domain for stress assignment. The analysis in terms of the Composite Group accounts for the different domains of palatalization and stress assignment while avoiding the introduction of recursion (recursive PWs) into phonological structure.
Rhotic Metathesis Asymmetries in Romance: Formalizing the Effects of Articulation and Perception on Sound Change
Authors: Russell Eric Louis , Bradley Travis G.
Published: March 2014

Blevins & Garrett (1998, 2004) argue that rhotic metathesis occurs when listeners reinterpret an elongated [low F3] feature in a non-historical position. However, not all cases are amenable to this account, as no single phonetic property unifies the class of rhotics. We examine two cases involving intrasyllabic rhotic metathesis: rightward movement of /ʁ/ in French and leftward movement of /ɾ/ in Spanish. In Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky 1993), we formalize diachronic metathesis in terms of separate production and perception grammars, which account for the source of variance and the selection of innovative underlying forms, respectively. In production, gestural alignment constraints favor complete overlap of adjacent rhotic and vowel gestures, whose linear ordering is thereby rendered indeterminate. The output of the production grammar serves as input to the perception grammar, which maps surface forms to underlying forms in accordance with attested patterns of the language.
The Left Edge in the Spanish Clausal Structure
Authors: Zubizarreta María Luisa
Published: March 2014

This paper reexamines several ideas and empirical data uncovered during the last decade regarding the left-edge part of the clause in Standard Spanish in the light of what is also known about other closely related languages, such as Italian and Caribbean Spanish. Two facts about Standard Spanish are identified as being intimately related to its rich agreement paradigm: the availability of the VSO order and the “subject inversion” phenomenon in informational questions. A particular formalism is proposed which allows us to identify the left-most edge in the I-domain (above Tense) as the projection of “rich” agreement (phi-P) and as the locus of the EPP feature.
Cues to contrastive focus in Romanian
Authors: Manolescu Alis , Olson Daniel , Ortega-Llebaria Marta
Published: March 2014

In this study we measured patterns of pitch alignment, pitch range and duration in relation to broad and contrastive focus in Romanian. In declarative sentences with broad focus, speakers place a pitch accent on each lexically stressed syllable with peaks that become progressively lower towards the end of the sentence. In pre-nuclear accents, the peaks align with the post-tonic syllable. In declarative sentences with contrastive focus, speakers use strategies based on pitch and duration in order to build a maximum contrast between the word under focus and those in pre- and post-focal contexts: an expanded pitch range under focus and a reduced pitch range and shorter stressed syllables in pre- and post-focal contexts. Thus, the flat F0 and shorter segmental durations in pre- and post-focal contexts constitute a background that, in contrast, highlights the segmental durations and expanded pitch ranges found under contrastive focus.
Prosodic and segmental effects on vowel intrusion duration in Spanish /rC/ clusters
Authors: Schmeiser Benjamin
Published: March 2014

The purpose of this study was to test prosodic and segmental effects on vowel intrusion duration in Spanish /rC/ clusters. For each cluster, I measured the acoustic duration of the intervening intrusive vowel and then analyzed the mean intrusive vowel duration under the scope of seven hypotheses based on prosodic and segmental factors. The current study consisted of twenty-nine participants across six countries and I obtained a total of 496 intrusive vowels. The study suggests that one prosodic factor, namely across a word boundary, and one segmental factor, order of constriction location, significantly affect intrusive vowel duration; data analysis for prosodic stress, heterorganic vs. homorganic, C2 voicing, and manner and place of articulation did not evidence significant results. Finally, I discuss the findings in theoretical terms, using Articulatory Phonology (Browman & Goldstein, 1989, et seq.), including the prosodic (p-) gestural model (Byrd & Saltzman 2003; Byrd et al. 2006).
Vowel reduction and vowel harmony in Eastern Catalan loanword phonology
Authors: Cabré Castellví M. Teresa
Published: March 2014

The aim of this paper is to account for the phonological adaptation of loanwords in Eastern Catalan. As the phonology of these new words deviates from that of the native Catalan vocabulary set (with a certain amount of variation among speakers), the new phonetic features would seem to be borrowed from Spanish. We suggest that a new phonology has emerged whose purpose is to identify loans among the lexicon, the most striking element of this phonology being a harmony effect on stressed mid vowels in the presence of post-tonic [+ATR] mid vowels. The existence of unstressed [+ATR] mid vowels [e, o] in Eastern Catalan has been previously interpreted as lexical exceptions to vowel reduction (Fabra 1912 and Mascaró 2002, among others). However, the phonetic variation in the new lexicon is analyzed here as being fully consistent with Catalan phonology within the theory of lexical strata (Itô & Mester 1999).
Loanword adaptation as first-language phonological perception
Authors: Boersma Paul , Hamann Silke
Published: March 2014

We show that loanword adaptation can be understood entirely in terms of phonological and phonetic comprehension and production mechanisms in the first language. We provide explicit accounts of several loanword adaptation phenomena (in Korean) in terms of an Optimality-Theoretic grammar model with the same three levels of representation that are needed to describe L1 phonology: the underlying form, the phonological surface form, and the auditory-phonetic form. The model is bidirectional, i.e. the same constraints and rankings are used by the listener and by the speaker. These constraints and rankings are the same for L1 processing and loanword adaptation.
Mandarin adaptations of coda nasals in English loanwords
Authors: Hsieh Feng-fan , Kenstowicz Michael , Mou Xiaomin
Published: March 2014

The paper documents and analyzes the ways in which English loanwords into Mandarin are adapted to conform to the Rhyme Harmony constraint that requires the front vs. back quality of a nonhigh vowel to agree with the coronal vs. dorsal character of a nasal coda. The principal finding is that the backness of the English vowel determines the outcome and can force a change in the place of articulation of the nasal coda. This is attributed to the phonetic salience of the vowel feature in comparison to the relative weakness of the nasal place feature. It is concluded that phonetic salience is a critical factor in loanword adaptation that can override a phonologically contrastive feature.
Korean adaptation of English affricates and fricatives in a feature-driven model of loanword adaptation
Authors: Kim Hyunsoon
Published: March 2014

The present study aims to elaborate on Kim’s (2007a) feature-driven model ofloanword adaptation, based on Korean adaptation of English affricates andfricatives (/f, v, th, ð, s, z, ∫, ӡ, tӡ, dӡ) which the host language (L1) does notpossess except /s/. We propose an L1 grammar-driven perception of L2 (sourcelanguage) sounds in that a Korean speakers’ perception is driven by native (L1)distinctive features and syllable structure rather than in terms of the unstructuredL2 acoustical input per se or of L2 phonological categories. In addition, nativestructural restrictions are proposed to come into play when L2 sounds scannedby L1 grammar are lexicalized as new words in L1 lexical representations. It isalso suggested that an L2 acoustic signal can be constrained by L1 distinctivefeatures by virtue of normalization or generalization, when the L2 signal has noacoustic cues to L1 distinctive features, indicating that L1 grammar exerts a forcein perception.
Nondistinctive features in loanword adaptation
Authors: Paradis Carole , Tremblay Antoine
Published: March 2014

Based on a corpus of 500 stops included in 371 borrowing forms from English in Mandarin Chinese (MC), we show that English stop aspiration, which is agreed to be phonetic, does not influence phoneme categorization in MC, despite the fact that MC has phonemic aspirated stops. Thus even if their mother tongue predisposes MC speakers to distinguish aspirated from unaspirated stops, they do not rely on aspiration in English to determine phoneme categorization in MC. Both aspirated and unaspirated voiceless stops of English systematically yield an aspirated stop in MC, whereas English voiced stops, which are disallowed in MC, systematically yield a voiceless unaspirated stop. These facts disfavor the perceptual stance in loanword adaptation and lend support to the phonological one.