bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Searching for undetected genetic links between the languages of South America
Authors: Adelaar Willem F. H.
Published: March 2014

With more than a hundred phylogenetic lineages, indigenous South America is often highlighted as a region with one of the highest degrees of linguistic diversity in the world. A systematic investigation of the possible phylogenetic relations that may exist between its numerous language families and isolates is overdue. It is argued that the possibilities of discovering such relations are far from exhausted. Previously undetected phylogenetic relations were uncovered by comparing selected sets of basic vocabulary in combination with shared morphosyntactic elements. The selection of vocabulary to be used in this procedure implies the elimination of residual morphology and the recognition of semantic fluctuations proper to the cultural environment of the languages involved. Such techniques can be expected to further reduce the number of phylogenetic units recognized for South America.
The mirage of apparent morphological correspondence
Authors: Yoshida Kazuhiko
Published: March 2014

It is an ordinary practice in comparative linguistics that idiosyncratic common features observed between historically related languages are ascribed to their parent language. The possibility of accidental similarity is usually rejected in situations where more than one language shows a unique morphological correspondence which is impeccable in terms of form and meaning. However, an apparently unmistakable correspondence of this kind sometimes turns out to be a mirage resulting from parallel and independent developments in the internal histories of the relevant languages. Such a case is shown by languages which have numerous documents written over many centuries. In this paper I will attempt to demonstrate that some features traditionally posited for Proto-Indo-European are in fact mirages. Needless to say, the comparative method is a powerful tool for reconstructing proto-languages, and there is a constant temptation when practicing the comparative method to attribute too much to the common ancestor. It is therefore important to recognize its limitations.
Raising critical language awareness in Hawai‘i at Da Pidgin Coup
Authors: Higgins Christina
Published: March 2014

This chapter describes the efforts of Da Pidgin Coup, an advocacy group in Hawai‘i that strives to raise critical language awareness about Pidgin (Hawai‘i Creole). Several examples of advocacy for elevating the status of Pidgin in Hawai‘i are described, including the development of an undergraduate certificate in pidgin, creole, and dialect studies at the university level and a resolution submitted to the Hawai‘i State Legislature that requests funding for research on the use of Pidgin as a resource in education. Examples of activities that challenge negative views towards Pidgin are discussed in detail, such as a Pidgin grammar quiz that is used with educators and a task which provides Pidgin speakers with the opportunity to correct inaccurate Pidgin in popular literature. Keywords: Hawai‘i Creole; language awareness; advocacy; community outreach
Kriol in Caribbean Nicaragua schools
Authors: Koskinen Arja
Published: March 2014

In this paper I review the role of Kriol in the education system of the Nicaraguan Caribbean Coast. I briefly describe the place of Kriol in the classroom in the pre-2007 period and discuss the process of introducing Kriol as a medium of instruction for children of Creole, Garifuna, Rama and Miskitu origin in the new Intercultural Multilingual Education curriculum which is based on the Regional Autonomous Education System (SEAR). The paper discusses the normalization process of Kriol, teacher training, the elaboration of textbooks, language attitudes among the Kriol-speaking community and the preliminary results of the pilot phase which was initiated in the 2007 school year and included 5 schools in the Kriol-speaking areas. Keywords: Nicaraguan Kriol; Intercultural Bi- and Multilingual Education; Regional Autonomous Education System SEAR; Kriol in the classroom
Notes on the phonology and lexicon of some Indo-Portuguese creoles
Authors: Clements J. Clancy
Published: March 2014

In this study, the focus is on three key differences in five Indo-Portuguese creoles: differences in phonological inventory, in the core lexicons, and in the syllable structure of the creoles. An account for these is based on two criteria and the distinction between borrowing and shift. The criterion used to account for the differences in the phonological inventories and the core lexicons is a dynamic of borrowing, shown to be sensitive to the chronology of the Portuguese presence in the different communities. The distinct treatment of the Portuguese post-tonic syllables, by contrast, is argued to be part of a shift dynamic.
3. Variation across spoken and written registers in internal corporate communication
Authors: Bowker Janet
Published: March 2014

Rapid developments in technology, together with dependence on electronically-mediated communication, are providing international business with new opportunities and challenges. This paper focuses on the attempts of a multinational corporation to achieve the goals of internal “employer branding” through a communications network which makes use of a variety of sub-genres and registers, written, spoken and multimodal. Three corpora will be compared and contrasted: oral presentations in audio-conference mode, a corpus of the accompanying power point slides, and a series of e-newsletters to employees. Using the textware of corpus linguistics, the mutual influence and multimodal blending between the spoken and written sub-genres will be traced, in terms of metadiscoursal structure and organization, interactional strategies, and terminological and metaphorical usage, in order to identify the written constraints on semi-formal speech production, and conversely the “speech in writing” typical of much e-mediated communication.
8. “But that’s dialect, isn’t it?”
Authors: Anderson Wendy
Published: March 2014

This paper considers the ways in which geographical variation can be explored both quantitatively and qualitatively using the Scottish Corpus of Texts & Speech (SCOTS). The resource is a freely accessible online corpus of written and spoken texts in the Germanic languages of Scotland (Scottish English and Scots), which can offer an insight into current Scots usage and speaker attitudes towards language. The paper introduces the corpus, giving an overview of the geographically-defined varieties of Scots represented in it, and demonstrates how the complex web of variation can be analysed quantitatively using integrated corpus tools. It then begins to explore qualitatively the ways in which participants in spoken documents talk about geographical, and closely related social, language variation in Scotland.
12. Analysing discourse in research genre
Authors: Porta Chiara Prosperi
Published: March 2014

The paper examines a small corpus of biostatistics texts, a discipline whose discourse has, as yet, not been explored, from the point of view of its evolution in terms of textual organisation and models. The research aims to explore the diachronic variations in the conceptual encoding of the discipline, its methodology and the grammatical structures used in the presentation, argumentation and interpretation of numerical data applied to the biosciences. It contrastively examines texts from three historical periods focussing in particular on evolutions in foregrounding structures (morphological and syntactic arrangements), figurative language and the typical characteristics of scientific registers (depersonalization and thematizing). The approach is both qualitative (semantic, pragmatic and rhetorical characteristics) and quantitative (keywords, phraseology and collocation) and signals the similarities and differences over time in the texts in terms of conceptual and lexical choices, and the discursive construction of the identity of the scientific community in communicating disciplinary theories. ConcApp software has been used for the quantitative analysis.
14. Changing trends in Italian newspaper language
Authors: Spina Stefania
Published: March 2014

This paper describes changes in the frequency and use of some selected linguistic features in the language of Italian printed news: left dislocations, sentence-initial connectives, sentence length, lexical density and subordinating conjunctions. The study adopts a diachronic approach and relies on a corpus-based methodology. Language change was measured between 1985 and 2000 using two sub-sections of the Repubblica corpus. The main hypothesis is that these sixteen years highlighted significant changes emerging in newspaper language, partly due to the competition of commercial television, which entered a phase of exponential development in this period. More specifically, these changes reflect the attempt of written news to reproduce communicative styles more suitable to orality and to real-time events.
Ethnolects in Northern Norway
Authors: Sollid Hilde
Published: March 2014

While much research on ethnolects is concerned with urban contexts, this article focuses on ethnolects as a rural multilinguistic practice. The analysis combines macro and micro perspectives on language ideologies in language encounters in Northern Norway in order to shed light on the old, rural ethnolects in this region, namely the ethnolects of Nordreisa municipality in county Troms. In Northern Norway, ethnolects have developed in language-shift contexts from Sámi/Kven to Norwegian. This article will show that despite national negligence of the Northern multilingualism and the ethnolects, people in the region still recognize and use ethnolect features. The analysis focuses on ‘disagreement’ in prenominal demonstratives, and it will be shown that people use this ethnolect feature side by side with more standard-like features.
Using correspondence analysis to model immigrant multilingualism over time
Authors: Schrauf Robert W.
Published: March 2014

The notion of immigrant and linguistic superdiversity privileges the multidimensional nature of multilingualism and requires analytic models that attend to the bidirectional interaction of many social and psychological variables. In this chapter I cast multilingualism as an interactive field of language proficiency and language practices, and I propose the use of multiple correspondence analysis (Greenacre 2007) and geometric data analysis (LeRoux & Rouanet 2004) as means for visualizing and analyzing this field. Further, I examine the literature on longitudinal multiple correspondence analysis to suggest ways of modeling the development of language proficiency and the expansion of domains of language use over time. Data are taken from a study of Puerto Rican bilinguals in the city of Chicago in the United States (Schrauf 2009).
Capturing diversity
Authors: Scarvaglieri Claudio , Redder Angelika , Pappenhagen Ruth , Brehmer Bernhard
Published: March 2014

Our paper discusses methods of capturing linguistic diversity in urban areas. One of these methods is “linguistic landscaping”, which we use not only in the traditional manner, but also with substantial additions to include the communicative process in which the signs are used. To compensate for the neglect of spoken language in linguistic landscaping, we introduce the concept of “linguistic soundscaping”. Linguistic soundscaping uses a variety of methods to make spoken multilingual communication perceptively accessible and describable. Through linguistic soundscaping, we document which languages people use orally, where they use them and for which purposes. We conclude that studying actual language practice allows us to understand better the benefits and challenges that social diversity brings about.
Enough is enough
Authors: Blommaert Jan , Varis Piia
Published: March 2014

This paper contributes to an empirical theory of identity in a context of superdiversity by offering a heuristic for engaging with the complex and dynamic identity processes in superdiverse societies today, both online and offline. We define identity practices as discursive orientations towards sets of features that are (or can be) seen as emblematic of particular identities. Such practices revolve around a complex and unpredictable notion of authenticity, which in turn rests on judgements of ‘enoughness’. We will show how authenticity is manufactured by blending a variety of semiotic resources, some of which are sufficient (‘enough’) to produce a particular targeted authentic identity, and consequently enable others to identify us as ‘real’, ‘authentic’ members of social groups in different niches of our social and cultural lives – within different ‘micro-hegemonies’. The framework sketched here, based on ethnographic inquiries, intends to offer a realistic, anti-essentialist approach to studying the complexities of contemporary identity practices.
A bidirectional study of object omissions in French-English bilinguals
Authors: Pirvulescu Mihaela , Pérez-Leroux Ana Teresa , Roberge Yves
Published: March 2014

A common assumption in the field of bilingual acquisition is that while bilinguals might have separate language representations, the languages can also influence one another. Previous studies on object (clitic) omission consider a combination of null argument and non-null argument languages, and results vary. The debate concerns whether or not cross-linguistic effects exist in this domain. This paper reports data from bilingual French-English children on an elicited production task. The goal of the paper is to determine if we can observe a bilingual effect in the domain of object clitic omission which cannot be attributed to cross-linguistic influence. We conclude that such effects exist and we propose to attribute them to the retention of a default null object representation.
“Multilingual brains”
Authors: Festman Julia
Published: March 2014

Individual differences in multilinguals are considered as group-specific behavior and processing. For this review paper, we selected two lines of research to look into more specifically. In the first research project, two groups of multilinguals (early and late trilinguals) are compared on a sentence processing task using fMRI. Findings showed the specific differences in processing due to age of onset. The second project compared two groups of healthy bilinguals differing in their susceptibility to switch unintentionally between two languages. A variety of tasks and different methods (including psycholinguistics and electroencephalography) allowed isolating the key factor distinguishing both groups: cognitive control (assessed by executive functions tasks). The non-switcher group was more efficient, faster and more correct, whereas the switchers showed difficulties of language control and cognitive control, in particular being more distracted by irrelevant information.
Diachronic prosody of a contact variety
Authors: Pešková Andrea , Feldhausen Ingo , Kireva Elena , Gabriel Christoph
Published: March 2014

This paper presents a micro-diachronic study of the prosody of Porteño, the Spanish variety spoken in Buenos Aires, by comparing spontaneous speech data collected in 1983 with comparable recordings made in 2008. Porteño Spanish is said to be influenced by Italian due to massive immigration between 1830 and 1950. The question arises of whether the use of “Italian” features in Porteño prosody has increased or decreased since the shift from Spanish-Italian bilingualism to prevailing Spanish monolingualism. Tonal and durational analyses performed on our data reveal that by and large, the presumably “Italian” characteristics remain unchanged, although some significant differences were found between the two time periods with respect to the occurrences of certain pitch accents and boundary tones.
Technological and methodological challenges in creating, annotating and sharing a learner corpus of spoken German
Authors: Hedeland Hanna , Schmidt Thomas
Published: March 2014

This article discusses questions concerning the creation, annotation and sharing of spoken language corpora. We use the Hamburg Map Task Corpus (HAMATAC), a small corpus in which advanced learners of German were recorded solving a map task, as an example to illustrate our main points. We first give an overview of the corpus creation and annotation process including recording, metadata documentation, transcription and semi-automatic annotation of the data. We then discuss the manual annotation of disfluencies as an example case in which many of the typical and challenging problems for data reuse – in particular the reliability of interpretative annotations – are revealed.
Annotating ambiguity
Authors: Höder Steffen
Published: March 2014

The synchronic and diachronic variability of historical texts poses substantial difficulties in the annotation and analysis of historical corpora. One main problem is that ongoing language change and particularly grammaticalisation phenomena lead to syntactic ambiguity. This contribution shows how such issues are dealt with in the TEI-based Hamburg Corpus of Old Swedish with Syntactic Annotation (HaCOSSA). The focus is on the development of strictly operational, explicitly defined, largely theory-neutral, language-specific and diachronically broad annotation categories.
Varieties of English in the EFL  classroom setting
Authors: Davydova Julia , Maier Georg , Siemund Peter
Published: March 2014

An unprecedented case in the history of languages, English has expanded all over the world yielding a variety of unique – und sometimes mutually unintelligible – forms. The immediate repercussion of this observation is that when confronted with regionally marked vernaculars in the EFL setting, learners with no previous variety-specific knowledge are very likely to experience considerable difficulties. The question therefore arises as to how one can teach this topic to audiences possessing no training in linguistics in a classroom context. This contribution elaborates on the general approach and methods that lay the foundation for a textbook specifically designed to address the topic of English language diversity in the EFL setting with the aim of increasing learners’ general awareness of the heterogeneity inherent in English.
Transfer is not a one-way street
Authors: Bührig Kristin , Meyer Bernd
Published: March 2014

The transfer of linguistic findings into institutional practice sometimes appears to be a one-way street in which language experts provide solutions for communication problems but, in return, don’t receive insight from the institutions they work with. To emphasize the potential value of applied research for linguists, this paper will be outlining the collected data gathered from an interpreter training program we designed for bilingual nurses working at a German hospital. Using this data, an argument will be made explaining why scholars in interpreting studies and linguistics could benefit from such training programs if they were to open to a two-way exchange. Ultimately, we argue that such an exchange could lead to new questions for basic research. To give a concrete example supporting this argument, our data provides evidence of medical doctors involuntarily changing their communication strategies when working with ad-hoc and professional interpreters. This has resulted in the medical doctors condensing their communication when conversing through an interpreter. From a linguist’s standpoint, this is a phenomenon that should be researched further, for interpreting, in this sense, may be having a negative effect on the quality of communication.
Un mélange genevois
Authors: Chien Jui-Pi
Published: March 2014

This paper explores some notions of iconicity in the newly published Writings in General Linguistics by Saussure. It begins by revisiting the imputed opposition between symbol and sign, and then proposes some contexts which serve to discover iconic traits in Saussure’s theory. In order to relate Saussure’s ideas to the attempts at defining ‘the iconic sign’, the author draws on the controversy over ‘cognitive type’ – whether we should rely on concrete objects in reality or some established laws and principles in interpreting images. Moreover, some conceptual tools like langue, séme and sôme are discussed within the broadened schemes of signs which Saussure proposed in his manuscripts. Finally, the paper concludes with an analysis of ‘the symbolic logic’ and ‘analogical reasoning’, which not only dissolves the opposition between symbol and sign, but also recognizes rules or principles as keys to our perception of similarities between systems of signs.
A burning world of war
Authors: Zhao Xinxin
Published: March 2014

How do literary works access the iconic potential inherent in language to construct their fictional world view? A case study of Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms is presented to show that instead of its commonly accepted dual themes of love and war, the novel’s overriding theme is war – the universal and pervasive condition of human existence, itself cast as a war against the forces that conspire to make life shorter. The burning world of war is produced by the iconic force of literary language, from lexical choice to syntactic structure, from internal paragraph patterning to the patterning of paragraph sequences, from chapter level to the overarching narrative structure itself. Through quantitative and sequential iconic means, the abstract theme is made accessible, and the formless fictional world is given shape.
Words, like shells, are signs as well as things
Authors: Plooy Heilna du
Published: March 2014

South African (Afrikaans) novelist Ingrid Winterbach is known for her individual style, the originality of voice in her novels, as well as for an unusual and ironic perspective on reality. This article focuses on Winterbach’s ability to integrate word choices and narrative technique so that passages in her fiction can be described as highly iconic. Winterbach exploits language from different domains, discourses, and semantic fields, as well as archaisms, resulting in incongruous phrasing, ambiguity, and irony. Word play and lists of words activate semantic values by relying on the materiality of words. In Winterbach’s novels, words do not only create unexpected and defamiliarized meanings on account of illogical systems of creative thought, but they also bear witness to the previous ideologically suspect meanings in each word’s history, thereby reactivating the kind of archaeology of thought and language described by Foucault.
Bunyan and the physiognomy of the Wor(l)d
Authors: Bauer Matthias
Published: March 2014

In the “Apology” that prefaces The Pilgrim’s Progress, Bunyan defended himself against those who criticized him, on religious grounds, for the use of lively fictions by pointing out that the Bible itself is full of figurative elements. This is more than just a defence, however, for the Bible, to Bunyan, is actually a manual for reading the world figuratively. There is an iconic relationship between the Book of Books and the Book of Nature; an object found in the world becomes a sign when it is used figuratively in the Bible. Bunyan’s own allegorical fiction serves to point up this relationship and is an example of such a combinatory reading. Christian has to read the faces, names and utterances of the people he meets on his road in order to discover their meaning. In this process, indexical signs, such as a person’s blushing, are discovered to be part of an iconic concept; a case in point is Mercy, whose face, regarded in the mirror of Scripture, makes manifest its divine likeness.
From icon to index and back
Authors: Conradie C. Jac
Published: March 2014

A fish caught off the coast of Poland in the 15th century with the appearance and mannerisms of a bishop and therefore a possible “sign” given to man by the Creator is interrogated by the bishops and king of Poland and almost incarcerated because of its inability to speak, but finally set free in the sea. Looked upon as a sign, the resemblance as such of the fish to a bishop may be described as an iconic image, while the endeavour to determine whether it also has the other attributes of a true bishop, is implicitly aimed at determining whether the fish is not indexically related to what may be a bishop in creed and character. In view of the patently non-human exterior of the creature, the search has to focus on the intrinsic characteristics of a bishop, and the superficial iconic relationship between signifier and signified is deepened to the question whether a causal or indexical relationship can be found. As this cannot be shown, the fish is released on the understanding that its resemblance to a bishop is iconic and no more.
Translation, iconicity, and dialogism
Authors: Petrilli Susan
Published: March 2014

Translation across languages is a specific case of translation across sign systems, internally and externally to the same historical-natural language. But translation across languages is possible on the basis of language understood as a modeling device, an a priori and condition for verbal language which came into being for the sake of communication thanks to the predominance of iconicity in the relation among signs. If we understand by a literary translation that is should be faithful to the original in terms of creativity and interpretation and not just be an imitation or repetition, the translatant text — the text that is the target of the translation — must establish a relation of alterity with the source text. The greater the distancing in terms of dialogic alterity between two texts, the greater is the possibility of creating an artistic reinterpretation through another sign interpretant in the potentially infinite semiotic chain of deferrals from one sign to the next. If we approach translation from Charles S. Peirce’s general theory of signs, in particular his triad of icon, index and symbol, the relation between the source and the target text must be dominated by iconicity if a translation is to be successful in terms of creativity and interpretation. A translation must be at once similar and dissimilar, the “same other” (see Petrilli 2001). This is the paradox of translation. Therefore a text is at once translatable and untranslatable. This is the paradox of language.
Incremental discourse processing
Authors: Mak Willem M. , Sanders Ted J.M.
Published: March 2014

The importance of the discourse level for the study of language and linguistics can hardly be overestimated. The study of text and discourse has become an increasingly important area over the last decades, both in linguistics and in psychology. In this paper we report on experiments which add to our understanding of a crucial process in discourse interpretation: the way in which the integration of clauses takes place. It shows that the position at which the integration takes place depends on the particular coherence relation that holds between sentences. The results once again emphasize the special status of causal relations in discourse processing and representation.
An article on the rise
Authors: Dimitrova-Vulchanova Mila , Vulchanov Valentin
Published: March 2014

In this paper we take a somewhat unconventional perspective and address the evolution of the article as attested in early South Slavic (10th – 11th c.) in the light of contact with New Testament Greek, which was the source language for the early translations in a situation of active language interaction (bilingualism). Our analysis builds on comprehensive corpus data which suggest, counter to traditional views, that, at this stage, the article is already a functional category inside the nominal expression. We propose that this is the result of a reanalysis (Harris & Campbell 1995; Roberts 2007) of the item at hand of the type maximal (phrasal) constituent > head (SpecDP > D0), or in terms of grammatical mechanism move > merge (Roberts & Roussou 2003), and show that in the structure of the nominal phrase at this stage the article and the demonstrative are already distinct syntactic categories, despite the complete phonological/ morphological overlap. Our data suggest further that the process of the evolution of the article is in direct correlation with the loss of N-to-D0 movement as a way of signaling definiteness in the DP.
Formal and functional constraints on constituent order and their universality
Authors: Öhl Peter
Published: March 2014

This paper addresses the competition between syntactic relations and the structural encoding of discourse semantic functions, and, more specifically, the question of how much the distributional restriction of syntactic linearisation can be constrained by the inventory of functional features of Generative Syntax. The variation between typologically distinct languages is explained by the potential of a generative syntactic system to fix constituent order by means of functional phrases, something not implemented to the same degree in all languages. Moreover, the various information structural properties a sentence topic can have imply that notions like topic and comment are not primitives as such, but that it is more primitive features of perspectivation which determine the choice of constituents to act as sentence topics.
Non-zero/non-zero alternations in differential object marking
Authors: Keine Stefan , Müller Gereon
Published: March 2014

This article presents an extension of the theory of differential argument encoding developed in Aissen (1999, 2003). It is based on the empirical observation that the yes/no alternations envisaged in Aissen’s system are only part of a much broader less/more pattern. We maintain Aissen’s hypothesis that the effects of differential argument encoding can be derived from harmonic alignment of markedness scales, but we argue that differential encoding should best be viewed as a purely morphological phenomenon (rather than as a syntactic phenomenon, as in Aissen’s approach). More specifically, we suggest that harmonic alignment of scales may bring about impoverishment operations that reduce syntactic inputs for morphological realization (see Halle & Marantz (1993)). The result is a unified account for differential argument encoding that comprises alternations between two or more overt markers, which fall out of Aissen’s systems. The empirical evidence for our approach comes from Hindi, Mannheim German, Trumai, and Cavineña.
Children and transitivity
Authors: Hogeweg Lotte , de Hoop Helen
Published: March 2014

Many experiments on several languages have shown that children tend to interpret indefinite objects nonreferentially, while they tend to interpret indefinite subjects referentially. This is in accordance with Comrie’s (1989) generalization that subjects of transitive clauses are usually highly prominent while objects are lower in prominence. In this paper, we examine by means of a corpus study whether children also conform to this subject-object asymmetry in their natural production of transitive sentences. We show that in the majority of the sentences produced by children the subject outranks the object with respect to two important determinants of prominence: animacy and definiteness. We furthermore find that children typically talk about referents that are physically present in the immediate surroundings while referents that are not present in the local context are practically always encoded as objects.
Event-structure and individuation in impersonal passives
Authors: Primus Beatrice
Published: March 2014

This paper discusses the event-structural effects of suppressing the subject argument in impersonal passives in several languages, including German, Dutch and Turkish. Corpus data partially support earlier assumptions that the situation denoted by impersonal passives is a homogenoeus, e.g. atelic, event. Contrary to some of the earlier proposals, telic (or unaccusative) verb lexemes can be used in the impersonal passive if they are forced into event-structural homogeneity. I will attempt to derive this event-structural restriction from the referential demotion of the subject argument. In this view, the telicity restriction is not a strict independent constraint but rather an epiphenomenon of the referential non-individuation of the argument undergoing a change of state.
Lability and spontaneity
Authors: Letuchiy Alexander
Published: March 2014

The present paper focuses on labile verbs – lexemes which can behave transitively or intransitively without a formal change. Haspelmath (1993a) and Comrie (2006) claim that the semantic spontaneity is the crucial factor for the distribution of inchoative/causative oppositions, based on data of the causative and the anticausative formal type. In contrast, my analysis of labile verbs across languages shows that for lability, another factor is crucial, namely, the semantic classification of verbs. In particular, the groups as motion verbs, destruction verbs, and phasal verbs tend to be labile across languages.
Verb morphology gone astray
Authors: Hinzelin Marc-Olivier
Published: March 2014

This article explores the phenomenon of syncretism in Gallo-Romance varieties from the perspective of the Autonomy of Morphology. Synchronically, syncretism is neither motivated by phonology nor by syntax. It is an obvious deviation from the canonical one-to-one relationship between form and meaning. I assume that syncretism divides into two types: ‘stable’ (or systematic) and ‘spontaneous’ (or accidental) syncretism. The distribution pattern of systematic syncretism is found in different conjugational classes and may also influence suppletion. These observations suggest that stable syncretism is not a mere surface phenomenon but that it rather provides insights into the morphological structure of a language. On this deeper level, specific recurrent patterns underlying the distribution of both syncretic and suppletive cells can be identified. These patterns are interpreted as a sign of an autonomous morphological component in grammar.
The Friulian subject clitics
Authors: Gaglia Sascha
Published: March 2014

With the exception of the clitics of 2sg and 3sg.m, Friulian subject clitics tend towards their non-realisation in postnegative position. Preceding an object clitic or a reflexive pronoun, only the 2sg subject clitic has to be realised obligatorily. In the present chapter, I analyse this complex phenomenon, arguing that the non-realisation of subject clitics in postnegative position can be explained in purely phonological terms as vowel deletion. In contrast, the omission of subject clitics in phrases containing object clitics or reflexive pronouns is caused by their syntactic position and on the interaction of conflicting constraints. My analysis is mainly based on fieldwork data presented in this chapter. In addition, as both the Friulian conjugation system and its paradigm of subject clitics are highly syncretic, I discuss the role avoiding syncretism plays. Moreover, I claim that the syncretic shape of the scl-paradigm is morphomic, that is, autonomously morphological.
SE-verbs, SE-forms or SE-constructions? SE and its transitional stages between morphology and syntax
Authors: Mutz Katrin
Published: March 2014

The article treats a problem that has, until now, received only a minor focus in the literature on Romance SE (but see Fagan 1992): the question being wether or not the formation with SE plus verb should be analyzed as a lexical SE-verb generated via a word-formational device, as an inflectional verbal SE-form or as a syntactic SE-construction, or if none of these traditional analyses is preferred. A closer look at the characteristics of SE and the SE+verb constructions shows that SE (+verb) behaves differently and therefore must be categorized differently depending on the function the whole SE+verb construction has. Some SE+verb formations are more derivation-like (antiagentive, reflexive, reciprocal), some more inflectional (medio-passive), and some behave more like syntactic constructions (indefinite). This variable synchronic behaviour can be explained by looking at the history of the Romance SE-construction(s): one can detect a process of grammaticalization (see Mutz 2005; Russi 2008) reaching from a phase when SE was a referential object pronoun (reflexive) to a phase in which it has developed into a mere (inflectional) marker indicating a diathetic process (medio-passive), by passing through other different functional “stages” with their own structural characteristics. The different structural and distributional behaviour of SE depending on its function, thus speaks in favour of the Autonomy of Morphology.
The DP Hypothesis in the grammar of Basque
Authors: Artiagoitia Xabier
Published: March 2014

This article justifies Abney’s DP Hypothesis from a point of view internal to Basque grammar. The author reviews Abney’s arguments and adapts them to Basque, devoting special attention to proper names and personal pronouns. Two separate sections discuss (a) the relevance of the NP/DP distinction in three constructions (vocatives, complex predicates and predicate nominals), and (b) the language internal evidence for further functional projections (Q and Num), based on quantification data and DP-internal number agreement. Finally, the author proposes that doubly determined noun phrases with initial demonstratives (only found in Western Basque) should be analyzed in the light of the DP Hypothesis.
The way the definite determiner affects quantifiers in Basque (and beyond)
Authors: Etxeberria Urtzi
Published: March 2014

Based on Basque data (and in line with Etxeberria & Giannakidou 2010, to appear), this paper argues that the domain for quantifiers in certain languages is restricted overtly by a definite determiner (D). This strategy of domain restriction via D–DDR – happens by applying DDR to the nominal argument, but DDR can also apply to the Q-det itself, in which case it forms a constituent with it. In both cases, DDR is a type preserving function, i.e. a modifier, and supplies the contextual C variable. This analysis provides support for the program that domain restriction is syntactically realized, but an important refinement is proposed: domain restriction can affect the Q-det itself (pace Stanley 2002), and in fact quite systematically in certain languages. The Q-det that is affected by DDR is typically a strong one. So-called weak quantifiers cannot be contextually restricted by DDR. Crucially in Basque, D only appears with strong quantifiers.
Predication markers in Basque
Authors: Eguren Luis
Published: March 2014

In this paper I give a new account of the nature and distribution of the suffix -a(k) that occurs with individual-level predicate nouns and adjectives in Basque. I first critically go through previous analyses that take this affix – which is homophonous of the Basque definite article – to be either number agreement or a non-referential determiner, and then argue that the affix -a(k) on nominal predicates with a predicative reading is a pronominal-like predication marker. This proposal does not encounter the problems other proposals have to face, and helps us explain why this suffix only combines with individual-level nominal predicates, and is absent in stage-level predicates.
Denominal necessity modals in Basque
Authors: Etxepare Ricardo , Uribe-Etxebarria Myriam
Published: March 2014

Basque has a noun meaning need and a modal form, traditionally classified as verbal, homophonous to it, as in English. This paper provides a derivational account of the relation between the nominal and the so-called verbal need in Basque, by claiming that the purported verbal cases are derived from the nominal ones. This derivational relation, we argue, does not follow from the incorporation of the Basque modal noun into a verbal head, as has been recently claimed for English need (Kayne and Harves, 2012). The necessity modal forms an independent clausal constituent with a DP or a non-finite clause representing the content of the need as its sole argument. This clausal constituent is merged to an applicative head that introduces in the structure the experiencer of the need. The Basque modal construction resembles in this regard the nominal modal constructions found in Celtic languages such as Irish, Scottish Gaelic or Breton. This structure is merged with an intransitive verb BE, which provides the verbal support for the construction. The incorporation of the applicative head to BE results in the transitive auxiliary have in Basque, a phenomenon that we show to be independently attested outside the modal cases.
A continuum of deficiency for Basque infinitives
Authors: Haddican Bill , Tsoulas George
Published: March 2014

This paper makes two claims about non-finite constituents headed by the affixes -tu/-i/-n/-Ø in Basque. First the semantics of these elements in modal contexts indicates that the standard analysis of these constituents as aspectual phrases is incorrect. We argue that -tu/-i/-n/-Ø are merged as infinitival markers, which we take to be of category n. In perfective contexts the verb+-tu/-i/-n/-Ø raises to a null perfective modal. Second, we argue that differences in behaviour of -tu/-i/-n/-Ø-headed constituents across contexts are usefully expressed in terms of variation in the richness of nominal and verbal functional layers following Alexiadou et al. (2009, 2010, 2011).
On the adverbial reading of infrequency adjectives and the structure of the DP
Authors: Alexiadou Artemis , Campanini Cinzia
Published: March 2014

In this paper we discuss Occasional Constructions (OCs) in English, German, Greek, and Italian. While English and Italian readily allow OCs, albeit with a different set of determiners, these are absent from the grammar of Greek and are much less frequent, if possible at all, in German. Building on Heycock & Zamparelli (2005), and Zamparelli (2008), we propose that the determiners licensing OCs in English and the sole determiner allowing it in Italian (qualche) are those that are generated in a plurality phrase. Greek lacks such determiners altogether and as a result. it also lacks OCs. German seems to be somewhere in between, pointing to a dual status of its determiners.
Contact, animacy, and affectedness in Germanic
Authors: Lundquist Björn , Ramchand Gillian
Published: March 2014

This paper takes as its starting point the striking and systematic variation in the expression of direct objects in English, Swedish and German with respect to verbs of surface contact like ‘kick’. While in English, kick can easily appear with an inanimate object as in kick the door, in Swedish and German the corresponding sentence must be expressed using a preposition. We propose that this difference between the languages reduces to an independent difference in the presence or absence of a null particle At

loc
of central coincidence. Concentrating on the comparison between English and Swedish, we argue that this small difference in the availability of a lexical item has consequences for a range of different, apparently unrelated constructions across the languages. In addition, we argue for the central role of animacy in both languages in mediating the ability of an argument to appear in direct object positions interpreted as affected.
Syntactic change in progress
Authors: Maling Joan , Sigurjónsdóttir Sigriđur
Published: March 2014

A new impersonal construction is developing in Icelandic. The New Construction (NC) appears to have passive morphology but differs from canonical passives in that the verbal object remains in situ and gets assigned accusative case. Scholars differ in their assessment of whether the NC is a passive or an active impersonal construction. Sigurjónsdóttir & Maling (2001) and Maling & Sigurjónsdóttir (2002) argued that the NC is a syntactically active impersonal which has its roots in the reanalysis and gradual extension of the traditional impersonal passive of intransitive verbs. In this paper we expand that argument, focusing on the occurrence of bound anaphors, and respond to recent papers by Eythórsson (2008) and Jónsson (2009), who challenge the active analysis of the NC. We also highlight the significant age-related variation observed in adults, which is exactly what would be expected during a period of syntactic change.
Cross Germanic variation in the realm of support verbs
Authors: Platzack Christer
Published: March 2014

This paper investigates the cross Germanic variation found in the use of support verbs in connection with VP Topicalization, VP Ellipsis and VP Pronominalization. The differences between Swedish and English are highlighted, but Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic and German are also considered.
In this analysis, the support verb is a spelled-out little v, and the topicalized, elided and pronominalized parts are √(root)Ps. The variation between English and Swedish is an effect of where the support verb is first merged: English do in little v, Swedish göra in the head of the complement of little v. The other investigated languages have support verbs of the Swedish type, but Danish and Norwegian have developed a support verb of the English type as well.
A morphologically guided matching approach to German(ic) relative constructions
Authors: Struckmeier Volker
Published: March 2014

This article argues for a matching analysis of attributive constructions in German proposed by Struckmeier (2007): The suffixal morphology found on attributive adjectives and participles (traditionally called case, gender and number), and similar markers found on relative pronouns in German, constitute evidence that is problematic for raising analyses of attributive constructions (Kayne 1994): Morphological, syntactic and semantic facts are adduced which raising analyses cannot explain. This paper proposes to regard attributive morphology as a phase head (Chomsky 2000), which identifies relativized arguments in its domain. This approach derives the synchronic facts, and extends to diachronic and typological comparisons, giving the analysis a wider empirical reach than raising analyses. Keywords: attributive; agreement; relative clause; raising; matching; antisymmetry
The alternation between improper indirect questions and DPs containing a restrictive relative
Authors: Matos Gabriela , Brito Ana Maria
Published: March 2014

This paper analyses the alternation between improper indirect questions and DPs containing a restrictive relative in European Portuguese. We propose that this alternation is lexically restricted, only occurring with weakly assertive cognitive definite predicates, in the sense of Hinzen and Sheehan (2011), such as saber, ‘to know’ or descobrir, ‘to discover’. We also claim that the alternation between an improper indirect wh-CP and a DP containing a restrictive relative is possible because they share significant features, namely they both involve sentences with declarative illocutionary force and wh/operator chains, and exhibit a high level of referentiality, due to the D-linked nature of the whP in the improper indirect question and the definite and specific nature of the DP that includes the relative. Keywords:﻿﻿ improper indirect questions; restrictive relatives; weakly assertive cognitive definite predicates; European Portuguese; Spanish