bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Stylistic fronting in the history of English
Authors: Ohkado Masayuki
Published: March 2014

Stylistic fronting is an operation which moves elements generally occupying the position to the right of the finite verb such as adjectives, past participles, and adverbs to the position immediately preceding it in clauses with a subject gap. The operation is typically observed in Modern Icelandic and in earlier stages of the Scandinavian languages. In this article I will extensively examine Old and Middle English texts and show that word order patterns arguably attributed to stylistic fronting are widely observed both in Old and Middle English and are not confined to texts which are likely to have been heavily influenced by Old Norse speakers. This is contrary to Trips (2002), who attributes the presence of the stylistic fronting patterns in the Ormulum to the Scandinavian invasions. Taking into consideration the wide distribution of relevant examples, I will conclude that the process of stylistic fronting was a genuine property of Old and Middle English.
The phonology–syntax interface:
Authors: Abu-Mansour Mahasen Hasan
Published: March 2014

In this article I investigate the proper domain of the application of phrasal syncope in Makkan Arabic using Selkirk’s Edge-Based theory of the syntax-phonology interface as well as McCarthy and Prince’s theories of Correspondence and Generalized Alignment. I show that both word-level and phrasal syncope result from the interaction of the same syllable structure constraints. The alignment of the right edge of the prosodic constituent (the phonological phrase) with the right edge of a maximal projection in syntactic structure accounts conspicuously for the under-application of phrasal syncope. The present analysis captures significant generalizations about syncope. It demonstrates that the domain of phrasal syncope is internal to the phonological phrase with the plausible consequence of substituting the traditional reference to right-hand and left-hand syncope with the application versus under-application of the process. In addition, it provides evidence that Makkan Arabic is among the languages that exhibit right-edge effects.
Arabic agree, silent pronouns, and reciprocals
Authors: Fassi Fehri Abdelkader
Published: March 2014

Various grammatical phenomena have been analyzed so far as essentially formal, or interfacing with PF syntax. Verb subject agreement asymmetries, subject pronoun deficiency (or ‘Pro drop‘), and morpho-syntactic variation in reciprocal expressions in Arabic have been treated as such. The article investigates how important properties of these phenomena can be more successfully treated in a fine-grained semantic syntax. The analysis is based on the semantic interpretability of features (typically Number), found in Agree configurations, in line with Minimalist approaches.
Extraction and deletion in Palestinian Arabic comparatives
Authors: McNabb Yaron , Kennedy Christopher
Published: March 2014

Quantity and quality adjectives have a different distribution in comparative constructions that are headed by ma ‘that’ in Palestinian Arabic. The different distribution can be explained in configurational terms: The internal structure of the DP prohibits the movement of quality adjectives but not of quantity adjectives. Movement of the quality adjectives within the DP in order to check agreement features (Chomsky 1995; Fassi Fehri 1999) and from the DP to Spec,CP (Ross 1967; Bresnan 1973; Chomsky 1977, inter alia) creates structures whose features do not correspond to lexical items in Palestinian, i.e. it incurs a PF violation. Deletion that removes the offending structure renders that comparative structure grammatical (Kennedy & Merchant 2000). In this study, we draw attention to the complexity of the configurational relations between the noun and adjective(s), thereby contributing to the study of the internal structure of the Arabic DP. In addition, our analysis lends support to the claim that some structural violations that have been considered purely syntactic (e.g. Left Branch Conditions) are in fact PF violations that can be remedied by deletion.
The verb kan ‘be’ in Moroccan Arabic
Authors: Chatar-Moumni Nizha
Published: March 2014

The unit kan ‘be’ in Moroccan Arabic (MA) is traditionally identified as a copula in the context of a non verbal unit and as an auxiliary in the context of a verbal unit. We argue here that the notion of copula, borrowed from the Indo-European languages, is not relevant for kan in MA. Kan is not a copula but a connective verb. Although it is semantically weak, kan is syntactically a full verb, particularly a bivalent verb requiring two essential arguments: a subject and an attribute. Therefore, in the connective structures, kan is the syntactic nucleus (syntactic predicate). Moreover we show that kan, in the context of a verbal unit, even though it exhibits some auxiliarity’s features – is not an auxiliary inasmuch as it doesn’t form a “structure of auxiliarity” (Simeone-Senelle & Vanhove 1997: 86) – i.e. a morphological, semantic and syntactic unit – with a second verb. Kan is a bivalent existence-verb governing two arguments; the second argument can be a verbal phrase.
Probability matching in Arabic and Romance morphology
Authors: Walter Mary Ann
Published: March 2014

This study investigates the role of probability matching in the selection of morphological lexical representations by adults. Whereas children rely on application of a morphological default that results in regularization, adults match probabilities with pre-existing lexical distributions. This hypothesis is supported with a series of case studies involving grammatical gender assignment to loanwords from Arabic to Iberian Romance and vice versa, and pluralization in second-language acquisition of Arabic.
Gender differences in VOT production of Arabic/English bilingual children
Authors: Saadah Eman
Published: March 2014

This study examines Voice Onset Time (VOT) in six (three boys and three girls) pre-adolescent Arabic/English bilinguals. Both English and Arabic have a two-way voicing distinction: English contrasts short and long lag VOT while Arabic contrasts lead and short lag VOT. Due to exposure to languages with voicing contrasts, these children are expected to acquire two phonetic/phonological systems. Results indicate that the girls have higher VOT values for voiceless stops than boys. However, they have lower values for voiced stops. In addition, VOT mean values of Arabic and English for both groups were close to values produced by monolingual speakers. These findings show that children exhibit gender-linked differences in VOT patterns. These distribution patterns are primarily attributed to physiological factors such as the size and structure of the vocal tract for both sexes. It is also shown that bilingual children maintain two different phonetic/phonological systems for their languages.
Early acquisition of SVO and VSO word orders in Palestinian Colloquial Arabic
Authors: Khamis-Dakwar Reem
Published: March 2014

This study explores the acquisition of Subject-Verb- Object (SVO) and Verb- Subject-Object (VSO) structures in Palestinian Colloquial Arabic (PCA) using a repetition task to examine the production of these structures in a group of fifteen typically developing children aged 1:7–3:0. The findings indicate that the VSO order is mastered early, and is preferred over SVO by the young age groups. SVO order, on the other hand, appears late, even though it is the more frequent order in the adult target language. These findings are explained within the framework of head and phrase movement acquisition. Children acquire verb movement before they acquire Noun Phrase NP movement, and therefore succeed better with VSO sentences that involve only verb movement, than with SVO sentences that involve NP movement as well. With age, having mastered both types of movement, children shift to predominantly use the more grammatically complex SVO structure, which is the preferred and more abundant structure in the dialect.
Theory and practice in Romance linguistics today
Authors: Klausenburger Jurgen
Published: March 2014

Since its inception in 1971, the LSRL (Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages) has gained in prestige to become the foremost conference in Romance linguistics today. The papers given at this meeting distinguish themselves with as much originality as shown in any linguistics conference at present. This paper claims that such a state of affairs can be compared to the classical period of Romance linguistics in the second half of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th century. Just as the latter constituted a very successful application of the dominant theoretical apparatus of the time, comparative historical linguistics based on Neogrammarian principles, today’s scholars are achieving great success by making use of current advances in linguistics. The positing of an “organic continuum” of the discipline derives from one of the three definitions of Romance linguistics offered by Malkiel (1961), but its essence was already captured in Schuchardt (1915).
On the origins of /ɨ/ in Romanian
Authors: Renwick Margaret E.L.
Published: March 2014

The source of Romanian /ɨ/ is debated: did it come from a native vowel split, or was it imported through borrowings? I argue that Romanian /ɨ/ split from /6/ in native words under a definable set of phonological conditions, but that the influence of borrowings from other languages encouraged its eventual phonemicization. In native words, instances of /ɨ/ are predictable based on the surrounding phonological environment, indicating its original allophonic status. Borrowings from Slavic, however, show expansion of the phonological environments permitting /ɨ/; and in Turkish loanwords /ɨ/ appears in contexts lacking any phonological conditioning, indicating that at the time of borrowing, [ɨ] was on the verge of phonemic contrast. Despite the combination of forces that conspired to phonemicize /ɨ/ in Romanian, the result is a marginally-contrastive vowel with very low type frequency, which appears almost exclusively in predictable environments that reflect its phonologically-conditioned history as an allophone.
An acoustic investigation of nasal place neutralization in Spanish
Authors: Ramsammy Michael
Published: March 2014

Previous accounts of nasal place neutralization in Spanish have claimed that word-medial nasal codas acquire place features by categorical assimilation, whereas word-final nasals are specified for place by epenthesis of a dialect-particular default value. This paper reports on the results of experimental investigation into the acoustic properties of place neutralized nasals in Spanish. Results confirm that speakers of alveolarizing dialects neutralize word-final nasal place contrasts to [coronal], whereas the output of neutralization in velarizing dialects is [dorsal]. Moreover, acoustic analysis reveals that preconsonantal nasal codas are not targets for categorical assimilation. In agreement with the experimental results, an alternative analysis is presented in which word-medial preconsonantal nasal codas are underspecified for place on the surface.
Mid front vowel lowering before rhotics in Ibero-Romance
Authors: Bradley Travis G.
Published: March 2014

This paper surveys the distribution of mid front vowels before rhotics in five different varieties of Ibero-Romance and identifies typological patterns of vowel lowering. An analysis is proposed in Optimality Theory that employs a fixed ranking of phonetically grounded markedness constraints against closed mid front /e/ in different pre-rhotic contexts, organized in an implicational hierarchy. Faithfulness constraints on vowel place features interact with this ranking to generate a factorial typology of /e/-lowering that matches the distribution observed in the data and makes predictions about possible and impossible languages. The paper also discusses theoretical implications for the status of intervocalic trills in Ibero-Romance as singleton versus geminate segments.
Plural formation in Galician
Authors: Colina Sonia
Published: March 2014

This paper offers an optimality-theoretic analysis of synchronic Galician plural formation that explains the distribution of allomorphs in the standard dialect as well as the patterns of dialectal variation. Gliding serves to parse a nasal or lateral coda in the nucleus, thus avoiding the complex cluster that would have resulted from plural attachment. Epenthesis takes place in the plural of l-final singulars when gliding would otherwise result in an unstressed extra heavy coda or a violation of minimality. The plurals of singulars ending in a nasal avoid epenthesis if this requires parsing of a velar nasal in the onset. Non-normative dialects such as the Eastern varieties also repair clusters through vocalization of the singular-final nasal, but a front nasal is preferred to the back unrounded one of normative Galician; Southern dialects resort to nasal and lateral deletion in the plural.
Directed motion in Medieval French
Authors: Troberg Michelle
Published: March 2014

This paper introduces new data showing that Medieval French patterns like a satellite-framed language in that directed motion events can be expressed via a manner verb and a PP complement denoting a telic goal. This contrasts sharply with contemporary French, a typical verb-framed language, in which directed motion is encoded via path verbs with manner as a separate adjunct phrase. Typologically, the data is consistent with a number of other argument structure properties that characterise Medieval French as satellite-framed much like English and Dutch. I argue that the source of variation between Medieval and present-day French resides in a difference in the extended functional projection of prepositional elements. While Medieval French has an active functional projection that permits simple prepositions to encode path, present-day French does not. The analysis diverges from recent accounts of the directed motion construction in which the locus of variation is situated in a macro-parameter.
An ergative analysis of French valency alternations
Authors: Doron Edit , Labelle Marie
Published: March 2014

The French anticausative is attested in two separate constructions: one focuses on the result (Res-AC), e.g. Le rameau s’est flétri; the second focuses on the process (Proc-AC) – Le rameau a flétri, both translated to English as ‘The branch withered’. The paper proposes to explain the differences between the two constructions as follows. Res-AC results from the merge of se under non-active Voice, coupled with the absence of a vP projection, whereas Proc-AC results from the use of active Voice with a v projection lacking a specifier. Anticausative derivations from typologically distinct languages, Hebrew and Neo-Aramaic (an ergative language) provide support for the analysis. In these languages, the merge of v is overtly detectable, whether or not v has a specifier. In Hebrew this is indicated by a dative reflexive clitic, and in Neo-Aramaic, by ergative agreement. The analysis proposed for French extends naturally to these languages, providing support for it.
Peninsular Spanish pre-nominal possessives in ellipsis contexts
Authors: Sáez Luis
Published: March 2014

Peninsular Spanish pre-nominal possessives and definite articles contrast in ellipsis environments (los/*nuestros ___ rojos “the/our red ones”), yet all these words are unstressed and, therefore, should violate what I call the Stress Condition on Remnants (ellipsis remnants must be stressed). I claim articles, being externally merged in D, escape such condition as it only affects the most recently spelled-out NP-Phase Complement (Nissenbaum 2000) containing the ellipsis site; instead, pre-nominal possessives raise from NP to D, thus leaving an offending unstressed copy in NP. Strikingly, the combined presence of a post-nominal modifier and a numeral makes pre-nominal possessives compatible with ellipsis (nuestros seis ___ rojos “our six red ones”). A Kayne 1994-style relative-clause configuration for nominal modifiers explains this: the post-nominal modifier is the predicate of a subject DP-Phase (introduced by the numeral) containing the ellipsis site and excluding the possessive, which thus complies with the Stress Condition on Remnants.
A multidominance account for conjoined questions in Romanian
Authors: Ratiu Dafina
Published: March 2014

This paper discusses conjoined questions in Romanian, where two selected WHs (i.e. a subject WH phrase and an object WH phrase) appear coordinated in clause-initial position. By comparing conjoined questions with selected WHs with conjoined questions with non-selected WHs, I argue for a bi-clausal analysis for both types, where one single IP is pronounced. I show that conjoined questions with selected WHs, as opposed to conjoined questions with non-selected WHs, raise two problems: (i) the shared IP can only be pronounced once and (ii) the shared IP has to be pronounced in the second conjunct. I argue that while an ellipsis/sluicing analysis fails, the multidominance analysis provides a straightforward account for these two problems. In particular, linearization algorithms for multidominance structure (all) correctly predict that the shared IP appears only once in the second conjunct.
The Romanian verbal cluster and the theory of head movement
Authors: Giurgea Ion
Published: March 2014

In Romanian, auxiliaries, mood particles, the negation and a handful of functional items traditionally analyzed as adverbs behave as clitics on the verb, forming together with the verb the so-called ‘verbal cluster’. The analysis of this cluster as a complex head is problematic because auxiliaries, mood particles and negation display a head-initial order inside the cluster, instead of the normal head-final order inside complex heads found in Indo-European languages. Examining the alternatives proposed in the literature and a possible analysis as PF head-clitics, I conclude that the verbal cluster involves nevertheless complex head formation in syntax. I discuss the solutions proposed for the head-initial order in the literature and I offer an alternative analysis, based on the idea of PF-linearization.
New challenges in the area of semantic dependencies
Authors: Fălăus Anamaria
Published: March 2014

This paper investigates the parameters of variation in the area of semantically dependent indefinites, by focusing on the distribution of the Romanian dependent determiner vreun. Refining previous descriptions in the literature (Farkas 2002, 2006), I argue that the occurrence of vreun in intensional contexts is sensitive to epistemic alternatives. To account for this, I endorse the unitary approach to polarity-sensitivity due to Chierchia (2006) and argue that the differences between vreun and other dependent indefinites stem from the types of alternatives they activate and the way these alternatives contribute to the overall meaning.
Polarity particles in English and Romanian
Authors: Farkas Donka F.
Published: March 2014

This paper contrasts the distribution and interpretation of ‘polarity particles’ in English and Romanian. Polarity particles (yes, no in English, da, nu, ba in Romanian) occur at the left edge of utterances that react to assertions, polar questions and imperatives but cannot be used in ‘out of the blue’ contexts. The paper makes sense of this distribution as well as of the contrasts between the two languages against the background of a context structure proposed in earlier work, which allows us to understand in what sense assertions, polar questions and imperatives form a natural class. Of particular interest here are cases where both yes and no can be used in otherwise identical responses in English as well as the distribution of these particles in reactions to imperatives.
A study of the laryngeal and pharyngeal consonants in Jordanian Arabic using nasoendoscopy, videofluoroscopy and spectrography
Authors: Heselwood Barry , Al-Tamimi Feda
Published: March 2014

Instrumental data from seven speakers of Jordanian Arabic are analysed to gain further understanding of the production of the laryngeal and pharyngeal phonemes and their phonetic and phonological relationships. Results from nasoendoscopy and videofluoroscopy show that the extent of retraction of the epiglottis into the pharynx and over the glottis is an important factor distinguishing between laryngeals on the one hand and pharyngeals on the other. Spectrographic analysis identifies degree of approximation of F1 and F2 as the principal acoustic correlate of the distinction, and psychoacoustic analysis shows that auditory integration of F1 and F2 takes place in open vowels in the context of the pharyngeals but not the laryngeals. The chapter concludes by suggesting that Esling’s model of the laryngeal articulator can coherently justify a phonological analysis in which the pharyngeals are regarded as the emphatic counterparts of the laryngeals, i.e. as emphatic laryngeals.
A phonetic study of guttural laryngeals in Palestinian Arabic using laryngoscopic and acoustic analysis
Authors: Shahin Kimary N.
Published: March 2014

In some languages, laryngeal consonants pattern with pharyngeals and uvulars as members of a guttural natural class. Phonologists and phoneticians have sought the phonetic basis for this pattern, as required by the Grounding Hypothesis (Archangeli & Pulleyblank 1994). We continue the search in this study and present the results of a laryngoscopic investigation of guttural laryngeals from one male speaker of Palestinian Arabic. The data show that Arabic laryngeals lack the pharyngeal, i.e. aryepiglottic (Esling 1996), articulation of the other Arabic gutturals. We see that the same is indicated for Hebrew by laryngoscopic data from that language. We conclude that Arabic and Hebrew guttural laryngeals are a case of phonetics-phonology mismatch and that the solution to the puzzle of guttural laryngeals is, for Arabic at least, phonological, not phonetic.
Airflow and acoustic modelling of pharyngeal and uvular consonants in Moroccan Arabic
Authors: Yeou Mohamed , Maeda Shinji
Published: March 2014

Idealised models based on realistic vocal-tract area functions are proposed for Arabic uvular /χ, ʁ/ and pharyngeal /ħ, ʕ/ and compared against data from four male speakers of Moroccan Arabic (MA). Synthesised versions of [aCa] sequences were created from these idealised models and subjected to perception tests in which the subjects were ten speakers of MA. Findings of this study confirm that these consonants should not be considered fricatives but approximants. First, area values of supraglottal constriction and glottal constriction are estimated to be higher than those for simple fricatives. Second, corresponding spectrograms often show a vowel-like formant structure. Third, calculated and measured airflow values were in a much higher range than for normal fricatives.
Acoustic and electromagnetic articulographic study of pharyngealisation
Authors: Embarki Mohamed , Ouni Slim , Yeou Mohamed , Guilleminot M. Christian , Al-Maqtari Sallal
Published: March 2014

The present chapter deals with the coarticulatory effects of the contrast of pharyngealisation in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Dialectal Arabic (DA). The first part of the study reports acoustic data, based on locus equation (LE) parameters extracted from the production of sixteen subjects from Yemen, Kuwait, Jordan and Morocco who spoke 24 words in MSA and 24 words in DA, with a symmetrical VCV context [iCi, uCu, aCa] where C was either pharyngealised /tˁ, dˁ, sˁ, ðˁ/ or non-pharyngealised /t, d, s, ð/. LE parameters were found to accurately reflect pharyngealisation patterns of CV coarticulatory effects according to speech variety and geographical clustering. The second part of the study deals with EMA data from one Tunisian speaker. It provides some observations of the articulatory mechanism of pharyngealisation. This section provides also a comprehensive interpretation of the coarticulatory effects of pharyngealisation as revealed by locus equation parameters.
Investigating the emphatic feature in Iraqi Arabic
Authors: Hassan Zeki Majeed , Esling John H.
Published: March 2014

The secondary place of articulation for Arabic emphatic consonants varies across dialects. This study examines two speakers of Iraqi Arabic, using acoustic evidence, and one speaker of Iraqi Arabic, using direct visual articulatory (transnasal laryngoscopic) evidence, to investigate the phonetic nature of the secondary feature and the prosodic effect of an emphatic consonant over multisyllabic words. The acoustic and laryngoscopic evidence suggests that the articulation of emphatics in Iraqi Arabic involves a modification of the shape of the pharynx which could be called pharyngealisation, which differs, however, from the pharyngeal configuration for producing pharyngeal consonants. While laryngeal constriction, with tongue retraction and larynx raising, characterises pharyngeals, larynx height appears to be low in the secondary articulation accompanying emphatics, while the tongue dorsum appears to be raised, giving the pharynx a singularly contrasting, narrowed configuration to that found in pharyngeals. Furthermore, the effect of an emphatic spreads to all syllables, forwards or backwards, regardless of its position in the word, although the effect is modified or blocked in certain phonotactic conditions.
Glottalisation and neutralisation in Yemeni Arabic and Mehri
Authors: Watson Janet C.E. , Bellem Alex
Published: March 2014

We present results of a comparative acoustic analysis of pre-pausal glottalisation in Ṣan‘āni, the Arabic dialect of the old city of Ṣan‘ā, and Mahriyōt, an eastern Yemeni dialect of the Modern South Arabian language Mehri.1 Data are analysed from one speaker of each variety. In the obstruent series, both varieties maintain the three-way voiced – emphatic – voiceless contrast of Proto-Semitic. In Ṣan‘āni, sonorants and voiced and emphatic obstruents glottalise pre-pausally, while voiceless aspirated stops pre-aspirate, leading to neutralisation of the laryngeal contrast between voiced and emphatic obstruents. Our analyses of Ṣan‘āni demonstrate that while oral stops and vowels post-glottalise, other segments tend to pre-glottalise and are prone to lenition, particularly the (non-sibilant) coronals. In Mahriyōt, emphatic and voiced obstruents are glottalised pre-pausally, and voiceless aspirates are heavily post-aspirated. Sonorants and fricatives may be pre-glottalised, but, in contrast to Ṣan‘āni, no lenition is evident. Results also show that while the Mahriyōt velar emphatic is ejective in all positions, the other emphatics become ejective only pre-pausally.
The phonetics of localising uvularisation in Ammani-Jordanian Arabic
Authors: Zawaydeh Bushra Adnan , de Jong Kenneth
Published: March 2014

This paper examines the localisation of consonant uvularisation in vowels produced by six speakers of Ammani-Jordanian Arabic. Certain coronal consonants traditionally called ‘emphatics’ are accompanied by a uvularised quality correlating with a depressed second formant (F2) in vowels located in various parts of the word in which they appear. Three corpora were gathered to examine the strength of uvularisation in vowels in different locations with respect to the emphatic, finding four levels of F2 difference systematic enough to statistically generalise to the population of speakers. In addition, blocking effects of high segments are found to be the result of coarticulation of other vowel and consonant contrasts. Finally, productions of uvular stops also trigger another weaker variety of uvularisation. Since these effects seem to be general to the variety of Arabic studied, a model of these patterns is discussed in light of the phonological factors implicated by the patterns.
EMA, endoscopic, ultrasound and acoustic study of two secondary articulations in Moroccan Arabic
Authors: Zeroual Chakir , Esling John H. , Hoole Philip
Published: March 2014

Based on three physiological experiments (electromagnetic articulography, endoscopy and ultrasound) carried out separately with two speakers, but with one subject in common, we demonstrate that the back articulation of the Moroccan Arabic emphatic stop consonants can be considered as pharyngealised, i.e. produced with a constriction in the oro-pharyngeal cavity. The emphatics /ṭ ḍ/1 are not velarised, and /ḍ/ has a slight degree of labialisation. MA geminate labials, generally considered as ‘labialised’, are clearly velarised in accord with phonological analyses by Heath (1987) and Elmedlaoui (1995), and not emphatic or pharyngealised as was predicted by Mitchell (1993). These labials are labial-velarised consonants since they are also slightly more labialised compared to their singleton cognates. We confirm that the labialisation observed in word initial clusters /#C1C2/, where /C1/ or /C2/ is a velar or uvular consonant, is associated with /C1/ even when this latter is coronal. Labialised dorsals (velars and uvulars: /kw, ɡw, qw, χw, ʁw/) are not only labialised, but also more retracted than their non-labialised counterparts.
Acoustic cues to focus and givenness in Egyptian Arabic
Authors: Hellmuth Sam
Published: March 2014

Hellmuth (2009) showed that contrastively focussed items are realised in an expanded pitch range in Egyptian Arabic (EA), whereas items following such a focus are realised in a compressed pitch range (cf. Norlin 1989 for EA, and Chahal 2001 for Lebanese Arabic). No equivalent variation in F0 excursion was found depending on whether the item was new to the discourse or given (repeated from earlier in the discourse). The present study presents analysis of F0 excursion, duration, overall intensity and spectral tilt, in a directly parallel dataset collected from six speakers of EA, in order to test whether any of these correlates are employed in the expression of givenness in EA. Focus is found to be marked by F0 excursion only, but no prosodic correlates of givenness are observed.
Acquisition of Lebanese Arabic and Yorkshire English /l/ by bilingual and monolingual children
Authors: Khattab Ghada
Published: March 2014

This study presents data from auditory and acoustic analyses of /l/ in the production of a total of 23 English and Arabic monolingual and bilingual children and adults. /l/ production in each language is described, taking into account the varieties produced in the subjects’ environment and also developmental patterns of /l/ acquisition normally found in monolingual and bilingual children. Results suggest that English and Arabic vary not only in the phonotactic rules governing the occurrence of clear and dark /l/s in each of the languages, but also in the actual realisation of what counts as ‘clear’ in each language. On the other hand, ‘dark’ variants seem to have similar acoustic manifestations in the two languages, suggesting variable pharyngealisation in both. Bilingual children show language-appropriate distributions of clear and dark allophones but do not show any sign of having acquired the subtle differences in the realisation of the clear variants particular to each language.
The syntactic reconstruction of alignment and word order
Authors: Yanagida Yuko
Published: March 2014

Old Japanese (OJ, 8th century) had split alignment, with nominative-accusative alignment in main clauses and active alignment in nominalized clauses. A number of linguists have proposed nominalization structures as a diachronic source for variation in alignment and word order, particularly for languages that show syncretism of agent and genitive marking, like OJ. This paper applies the so-called ‘nominalist hypothesis’ (cf. Kaufman 2009) to OJ alignment and word order, taking as its main model Gildea’s (1998, 2000) reconstruction of Proto-Carib syntax. The paper shows that the two major OJ clause types fit into a larger cross-linguistic pattern: specifically, the main and nominalized clause types originate as two distinct nominal constructions selected by a copular verb. Main clauses originate as an action nominalization pattern, while the OJ adnominal (and related [+N]) patterns with genitive subjects originate as object nominalizations. These biclausal source structures were reanalyzed prior to OJ as monoclausal, following the process of ‘clausal simplification’ outlined by Harris and Campbell (1995).
Changes in the use of the Frisian quantifiers ea/oait “ever” between 1250 and 1800
Authors: Hoekstra Eric , Slofstra Bouke , Versloot Arjen P.
Published: March 2014

This article presents an overview of the changes that took place in the syntactic use of the quantifiers ea and oait “ever” between 1250 and 1800 on the basis of the Frisian Language Corpus. Occurrences of Frisian ea and oait “ever” were classified and counted depending on the type of syntactic construction in which they were found. The constructions which were distinguished tend to correlate with the interpretation which the quantifier receives. This classification was performed for three main periods of the language: 1250–1550; 1550–1700; 1700–1800. It turns out that these periods saw some significant changes in the use of these quantifiers. Special attention is given to the peculiar behaviour of ea “ever” in relative clauses. It turns out that it displays properties both of free choice items and of negative polarity items. Furthermore, Frisian turns out to have been affected by language contact with Dutch at quite an early date, around 1700, when it borrowed oait to replace native ea. This change is analyzed as a case of reinforcement in the sense of Hopper & Traugott (2006). Our overall analysis supports a construction-specific analysis of changes in the use of quantifiers.
The sociolinguistics of spelling
Authors: Vosters Rik , Rutten Gijsbert , Vandenbussche Wim
Published: March 2014

The reunion of the Northern and Southern Low Countries under William I (1814–1830) marked the beginning of a renewed and intensified linguistic contact between the North and the South of the Dutch linguistic area. Two writing traditions usually regarded as different came into close contact, giving rise to intense spelling debates in Flanders. The Northern provinces had had an official orthography since 1804, whereas competing spelling systems existed the South. In the contemporary language debates, several orthographical features were repeatedly brought to the fore, and developed into strong markers of regional, social and religious identities.
The present paper attempts to reconstruct the sociolinguistic landscape of the Southern Netherlands in the early nineteenth century, by focusing on normative publications, metalinguistic debates, and private language planning initiatives between 1814 and 1830. Special attention will be paid to the role of orthography in processes of identity formation. Furthermore, aiming to shed more light on some of the sociolinguistic principles at work, we will compare the metalinguistic discourse to actual language use, as represented in a specially compiled diachronic corpus of court files, including police reports, witness interrogation reports, and high court indictments. An analysis of the results will uncover, among other things, clear indications of an ongoing process of levelling and a gradual convergence towards Northern linguistic norms.
The morphological evolution of infinitive, future and conditional forms in Occitan
Authors: Esher Louise
Published: March 2014

In this study I investigate the extent to which the formal identity of infinitive, future stem and conditional stem persists in a number of varieties of Occitan, a Gallo-Romance language spoken in southern France, and the consequences of these developments for diachronic morphology, in particular the concept of ‘morphome’ (Aronoff 1994) – a systematic formal regularity which is not simply due to sound change and which has no unique functional correlate.
Maiden (2005) shows that, despite significant functional divergence, Romance forms deriving from Latin perfectives consistently preserve and may even reinforce the formal identity of their stem, which now constitutes a morphome. The development of Romance synthetic future and conditional forms, deriving from Latin periphrastic constructions infinitive + habeo “I have” and infinitive + habebam “had” respectively, offers a parallel inasmuch as the initial formal identity between the stems of the future and conditional is maintained, while functional commonality between future and conditional has largely been lost.
The set of future and conditional cells now appears to constitute a distribution which has psychological reality for speakers. However, it cannot be considered unproblematically morphomic: at a functional level the semantic value of futurity is argued to be common to future and conditional, while at the formal level certain varieties of Occitan present cases of ‘asymmetry’, in which the identity between the future and conditional stems is broken. Taken together, the existence of asymmetry and possible functional commonality invite a view of morphomic phenomena which admits of interaction between the autonomously morphological and the functional.
The evolution of the encoding of direction in the history of French
Authors: Burnett Heather , Tremblay Mireille
Published: March 2014

This paper presents a quantitative study of a change in the encoding of direction from the Old French period to the Middle French period: the loss of verb-particle combinations. Using a large electronic corpus, we test a previous hypothesis about the cause of this change from the theoretical literature, namely, that the loss of directional particles was caused by another change in the language around that period: the lexicalization of directional and aspectual prefixes onto verbal roots. We argue that a link between the two changes is not verified by our data. Through this study, we also investigate the extent to which argument structure change parallels another type of morphosyntactic change: abstract parameter change. We argue that the shape of change in the valency of predicates is different from that of parameter change because argument structure change is sensitive to many more factors, including the semantics of particular lexical expressions.
The use and development of habere + infinitive in Latin
Authors: Hertzenberg Mari Johanne
Published: March 2014

The paper discusses Latin constructions consisting of habere + infinitive. Habere + infinitive is used to express several different meanings, both ability/capacity and various kinds of deontic modalities as well as future tense. Within the framework of Lexical-Functional Grammar, I provide a syntactic analysis (f-structure) of habere + infinitive in each of its uses. Finally, a possible historical pathway of development is established, based on the Latin data combined with theoretical/cross-linguistic considerations.
The colonisation of England by Germanic tribes on the basis of place-names
Authors: Udolph Jürgen
Published: March 2014

After the Romans had left the Province of Britannia, Germanic tribes were able to conquer and settle the land. In accordance with the literary sources, Schleswig-Holstein and Jutland are often considered the origin of these Germanic tribes. However, place names have rarely been used to determine the movements of the tribes. By identifying transferred place-names that were carried over by the emigrants, this chapter tries to locate the continental origins of the Germanic settlers. It argues that the Germanic tribes who invaded England during the fifth century did not come directly from Schleswig and Denmark across the North Sea, but rather from parts of Northern Germany, the Netherlands and Flanders, across the Channel.
Ancient toponyms in south-west Norway
Authors: Særheim Inge
Published: March 2014

This chapter considers the origin and formation of old toponyms in Rogaland, south-west Norway, and relates to an ongoing discussion about the oldest toponyms in north-west Europe. A central question is whether names are formed with a productive suffix (primary naming), suggesting an early date, or from a derivative word (secondary naming). Many Norwegian island and fjord names contain suffixes used in the Germanic period or earlier, e.g. r in Sira and s in Jelsa. These suffixes are also found in some unique settlement names from Jæren (Mid-Rogaland), e.g. Goa, Soma, Lima and Orre, and they are common in old European hydronyms. Most names discussed seem to be examples of primary naming; however, while they seem to reflect ancient settlements, there is no convincing evidence for a pre-Indo-European element.
On variation and change in London medieval mixed-language business documents
Authors: Wright Laura
Published: March 2014

This paper considers evidence for diachronic change in medieval mixed-language business writing produced in London in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The relevant languages were Middle English, Anglo-Norman and Medieval Latin, and the mixed-language system is briefly described, consisting of function words in either Medieval Latin or Anglo-Norman (depending on which was chosen as the matrix), and an amount of lexical items in English. The changes discussed concentrate around the end of the fourteenth century, which is when English resurfaced as a written language (the Norman administration had replaced English with Latin and French for written purposes). Further, it seems likely that spoken Anglo-Norman, as a language of bilinguals in Britain, died out at the end of the fourteenth century, which seems to have been pivotal.
Old English–Late British language contact and the English progressive
Authors: Killie Kristin
Published: March 2014

This chapter assesses the hypothesis that the Late British verbal noun construction influenced what was to become the English progressive. Evidence from archaeology, genetics, second language acquisition research, contact linguistics and grammaticalization studies is assessed and compared. The conclusion is that the socio-historical conditions may have been conducive to linguistic influence from Late British onto Old English. However, given the dynamic nature of progressive and imperfective forms, evidence from more recent varieties of Celtic and English cannot be used as evidence. It is also argued that what causes contact-induced influence is similarity of function, not form; thus, the Late British verbal noun construction may well have influenced not the Old English verbal noun construction, but the Old English participial progressive.
North Sea timber trade terminology in the Early Modern period
Authors: Lorvik Marjorie
Published: March 2014

This chapter continues an earlier investigation that considers whether terms for timber items in an inventory in Scots for a Danish-owned ship’s timber cargo from Norway, dated 1698, could have been mutually intelligible among timber traders from the various North Sea countries in the Early Modern period. The apparent existence of cognates for nearly all the terms examined, along with the desire to communicate in order to do business, could explain the absence of a North Sea trade pidgin similar to the Pomor trade’s Russenorsk. While the etymological investigation focuses mainly on Scots and Norwegian, cognates in other North Sea languages are also considered.
‘Nornomania’ in the research on language in the Northern Isles
Authors: Melchers Gunnel
Published: March 2014

‘Nornomania’ refers to the alleged obsession with the Scandinavian (‘Norn’) heritage in research on the dialects of Orkney and Shetland, as first addressed by Smith (1996).
This paper explores the impact of a ‘Norn bias’ on dialect research devoted to the Northern Isles, from Jakobsen’s monumental investigation at the end of the 19th century to ongoing projects. Whereas the commitment to rescue and single out the Scandinavian element in Shetland and Orkney dialect has resulted in massive and valuable data collections, it has also, to some extent, flawed the analysis and presentation of the material. The ideal researcher of these dialects should, in fact, not only be well versed in Old Norse and Norwegian dialects but also in Scots.
Arguments from Lovari loan-verb adaptation for an analogy-based analysis of verbal systems
Authors: Baló Márton András
Published: March 2014

This paper attempts to provide evidence that analogy-based approaches make language change, as well as unstable and variegated forms and word classes, easier to understand and grasp than they would be in a traditional synchronic framework or through a diachronic analysis. The example cited is taken from the Lovari dialect of the Romani language, which frequently borrows lexical items, leading to substantial diversity within the verbal system of each dialect. The phenomena and the ongoing processes in the verbal paradigms in relation to the adaptation of loan verbs seem to be of particular interest. If we look at the analogy-based processes which have taken place and are taking place, the bimorphemic or monomorphemic nature of the derivational markers employed in loan-verb adaptation loses its significance, and language change, as well as the possible emergence of new inflexion classes, can easily be made part of the model.
Variation in the possessive allomorphy of Hungarian
Authors: Rácz Péter , Rebrus Péter
Published: March 2014

Hungarian possessive allomorphy, and, in particular, the third person singular possessive (poss3sg), is a complex pattern influenced by phonological, morphological, and lexical factors. The most intricate one is phonological conditioning: while possessive suffixation shows categorical behavior in certain environments, it is subject to extensive variation in others. This paper looks at possessive variation in the 3sg and tries to account for its patterning, especially with stems ending in a consonant that is neither palatal nor sibilant, where variation is the most complex. We argue that the observed variation can be understood if one assumes that this particular function is formally underdetermined, and therefore is affected by a variety of influences, including the behavior of similar items in the language user’s lexicon.
Revisiting exocentricity in compounding
Authors: Ralli Angela , Andreou Marios
Published: March 2014

In this paper, the authors challenge the widespread view that the distinction between endocentric and exocentric compounds is fundamentally semantic. On the basis of data from Greek and Cypriot they propose, instead, that this is a structural distinction and that semantics cannot be a safe criterion for classifying exocentric compounds into various categories. They show that morphological features, e.g. gender and inflection class, cannot define exocentricity, since both Greek and Cypriot have many endocentric compounds displaying different features from those of their head. It is suggested that exocentricity might be an epiphenomenon of the order of application of the word-formation processes, according to which, when compounding and derivation co-occur within the same morphologically complex item, compounding precedes derivation. In contrast, a structure is endocentric if it contains only compounding, or involves derivation and compounding, in this particular order. Finally, the authors provide evidence that exocentric compounds may belong to the productive word-formation mechanism.
A constructionist account of the Modern Dutch adnominal genitive
Authors: Scott Alan K.
Published: March 2014

In this paper it is proposed that otherwise obsolete agreement morphology which is used productively but is no longer part of a case system can be effectively accounted for within a constructionist framework. The Dutch case system was lost by the 15th century; nonetheless, a fragment of the adnominal genitive continued to be used and today it preserves agreement morphology that is otherwise absent from the language. Although potentially problematic for a traditional account of Dutch morphosyntax, a constructionist, usage-based account can explain the retention and current regularity of this genitive fragment.