bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Cognate Objects as Thematic Objects
Authors: Massam Diane 
Published: February 2018

This paper examines cognate object (CO) constructions such as those in (1).(1)a.Dorothea smiled a smile.b.Dorothea smiled a wicked smile.c.Dorothea has smiled all her smiles.The central question which is raised by such constructions regards the status of the CO with respect to both its syntax and its semantics. That this question is not a new one, nor one confined to theoretical linguistics is seen in Harper’s English Grammar where we read: “Some authorities . . . contend that cognate verbs — verbs which are followed by objects that repeat their meaning — are intransitive. However the verbs in such expressions asHe slept a peaceful sleepandHe lived a useful lifeare by the majority of grammarians regarded as transitive verbs” (Opdycke 1941:106).
Away to Go in the Southwest of England and in Newfoundland, and the Question of Celtic Analogues
Authors: Shorrocks Graham 
Published: February 2018

John B. Smith (1987) recently drew attention to the occasional use of an adverb + infinitive construction in English dialects, and specifically to the non-finite phrase away to go. Joseph Wright included examples of the construction in the English Dialect Dictionary under both away and go, with away to go meaning basically ‘be off, go away, away he went’. Under away (A.5.Phr. away to go):Warwickshire: Now, then, away to go. Shropshire: Tak’ this an’ away to-go. A young kitchenmaid, describing the depredations of a manservant on the pastry-shelf: It wuz Lucas, ma’am, ‘e comen in out o’ the ‘all an’ took some of the fancy pies an’ away to-go. (Wright 1898, I:100)
Géométrie des restrictions de cooccurrence de traits en sémitique et en berbère: synchronie et diachronie
Authors: Elmedlaoui Mohamed 
Published: February 2018

AbstractThe main goal of this article is to provide a more global approach to the question of cooccurrence restrictions which hold among classes of segments in Hamito-Semitic languages. It is demonstrated that the Obligatory Contour Principle (OCP) combined with the directionality conventions is not sufficient to predict all of the observed cooccurrence restrictions found in the Classical Arabic verb root and that it is necessary to postulate two other constraints that interact with the OCP. By establishing a parallel between the facts observed in Classical Arabic and the labial dissimilations in two other Hamito-Semitic languages, Akkadian and Imdlawn Tashlhiyt Berber, it is argued that, at the Proto-Hamito-Semitic stage, the OCP hierarchically dominated the Multiple Association Constraint operative at the level of articulator nodes, but that this hierarchy is no longer synchronically manifested in languages like Arabic and Hebrew. The existence of a constraint that imposes a minimal sonority distance on rising sonority contours is also postulated to account for an asymmetry indicating a tendency to prefer certain sequences of segments over the reverse order.
Les propriétés lexicales et syntaxiques de benben en français québécois
Authors: Junker Marie-Odile , Vinet Marie-Thérèse 
Published: February 2018

AbstractThe aim of this paper is to analyze the various lexical and syntactic properties of the reduplicated adverbial form benben in Quebec French. It can be observed that this form differs syntactically from its Standard French synonyms beaucoup and très. Benben can indeed appear with various lexical categories: nouns, adjectives, adverbs, transitive and intransitive verbs. Moreover, in many contexts, its use is sensitive to the presence of verbal negation, rather than to that of constituent negation. In comparison with other Quebec French quantifiers, benben is very flexible. It can be used in both negative and positive contexts and, as an adverbial form, it can appear in various positions in the sentence.
L’accord du participe passé dans les langues romanes: une approche morphosyntaxique
Authors: Bessler Paul 
Published: February 2018

AbstractThe aim of this article is to present a unified analysis of Romance past participle agreement. Data from 19 standard and non-standard Romance varieties are considered. It is shown that in order to account for the variation found across the various Romance varieties, past participle agreement should not be considered as following simply from another module of the grammar, such as Case Theory, coindexation or the theory of functional categories, but should rather be considered from the point of view of a general theory of grammatical agreement. It is also shown that past participle agreement must be treated as an example of nominal-modifier agreement rather than as an example of verb-argument agreement.
On the Default Mechanism for Interrogative Binding
Authors: Goodluck Helen , Saah Kofi K. , Stojanović Danijela 
Published: February 2018

AbstractThe difference between the two mechanisms for wh-question binding (i.e., sucessive cyclic movement and pronominal binding) is characterized, inter alia, by the presence of island constraints (subjacency effects) in movement but not pronominal constructions. Using experimental data from child and adult speakers of Akan (pronominal binding) and Serbo-Croatian (movement and pronominal binding), it is argued that: 1) Previous experiments on English-speaking children’s knowledge of the block on extraction from within adjuncts do not positively support early use of a movement grammar in English; 2) Apparent sensitivity to movement constraints may arise as a consequence of processing preferences; 3) The evidence to date is nonetheless compatible with movement as the default hypothesis for wh-binding; 4) The parsing preference for non-island locations for a wh-word may have utility for the learner, helping to correct overly permissive grammars.
Effects of Instruction on Second Language Acquisition of the Japanese Long-Distance Reflexive Zibun
Authors: White Lydia , Hirakawa Makiko , Kawasaki Takako 
Published: February 2018

AbstractThis article reports on a small study investigating whether teaching second language learners the long-distance (LD) properties of the Japanese reflexive zibun ‘self leads to acquisition of its subject-oriented status. The study involved low intermediate level learners of Japanese who were instructed on zibun over a four-week period. The focus of the instruction was that the reflexive zibun can take long-distance antecedents. At the same time, subjects were never taught that the antecedent must be a subject. Subjects were tested using a truth-value judgment task. Results show that the learners initially rejected LD binding; they showed a significant increase in acceptance of LD antecedents after the teaching intervention. Analyses of individual learners show that about half of them successfully acquired the relevant properties of zibun. With one exception, learners did not generalize from their instruction to assume that “anything goes” as far as antecedents for zibun are concerned. Rather, they acquired grammars of reflexive binding that fall within the range permitted by Universal Grammar.
Neutral Vowels in Optimality Theory: A Comparison of Yoruba and Wolof
Authors: Pulleyblank Douglas 
Published: February 2018

AbstractPatterns of vowel harmony are frequently interrupted by the presence of neutral segments, segments that are obligatorily realised with only one of the harmonic values. Peripherally, neutral segments appear in two patterns, referred to as relative and absolute alignment. Medially, such neutral segments may beopaque, interrupting the transmission of harmony, or they may betransparent, skipped over by harmony. It is argued that the properties of neutrality result from the interaction of three independently motivated families of constraints: faithfulness, alignment, and grounding. No process-specific constraints distinguishing between the types of alignment or between opacity and transparency are required under the proposed account.
On the Structure of the French DP
Authors: Valois Daniel 
Published: February 2018

AbstractThis paper discusses and expands upon various ideas concerning the structure of nominals in general (DPs) and of French nominals in particular, with the underlying idea that CP and DP have parallel argumental and functional structure. The main topics discussed are: (i) the projection of arguments in French and English; (ii) the parameterization of N-movement, which accounts for some word order differences between French and English; (iii) the distribution of adjectives in event nominals, which reflects that of adverbs in clauses in both French and English; (iv) a peculiar case of rightward movement out of DP that provides further evidence for N-movement as well as for the claim concerning the prohibition on right adjunction of genitive nominals within DP; and (v) extraction facts that are a consequence of the status of [Spec, DP] as an A′-position in French.
The Conjunct Verb in Sheshatshit Montagnais
Authors: Brittain Julie 
Published: February 2018

AbstractThis article accounts for the distribution and the formal properties of the conjunct verb in Sheshatshit Montagnais within the theoretical model of the Minimalist Program. A subset of the syntactic environments in which the conjunct verb occurs obligatorily is examined: subordinate clauses, non-pastwh-questions, and negated clauses.Wh-phrases and subordinate clauses are associated cross-linguistically with a CP projection. It is shown that the two principal negative morphemes in Sheshatshit Montagnais are also associated with a CP projection, thereby obtaining a common underlying structure for clauses requiring conjunct verbs. Central to this analysis is the claim that conjunct verbs move to the Comp position while independent verbs move to Infl. Associating conjunct and independent verbs with distinct functional categories not only predicts their distribution but also accounts for their most distinctive formal properties.
Cayuga Accent: A Synchronic Analysis
Authors: Dyck Carrie 
Published: February 2018

AbstractCayuga (Northern Iroquoian) is a pitch accent language displaying different conditions for the accenting and lengthening of even-numbered and odd-numbered penults (counting from left to right). It is shown that Cayuga accent placement is predictable from metrical structure, and that metrical structure is in turn influenced by constraints on syllable structure. Syllable structure constraints are that: 1) all things being equal, coda consonants are parsed as light; and 2) vowel length is dispreferred. In odd-numbered penults, dispreferred syllable structure can be avoided, and this results in accented odd-numbered open penults and unaccented odd-numbered closed penults. In even-numbered penults, dispreferred syllable structure (especially that resulting from lengthening) is required in order to avoid metrically adjacent strong elements, and this results in the accenting of all even-numbered penults. The accenting patterns of Cayuga ultimately derive from the fact that Cayuga is a quantity-sensitive language that disprefers quantity.
Inversion stylistique et position de base du sujet
Authors: Friedemann Marc-Ariel 
Published: February 2018

AbstractThis article advances two main claims. First, it argues that [Spec, VP], the base position of the external argument, is right-branching in French. It is shown that some surprising restrictions imposed on the order of complements in stylistic inversion can then be interpreted in terms of an adjacency condition restricting the occurrence of lexical material between the postverbal subject and its Case checker. Second, it asserts that [Spec, IP], the derived subject position, is occupied by a null expletive, pro. The limited distribution of the construction then follows from the licensing conditions governing the null expletive in French. Further, the proposed analysis sketches a possible interpretation of adjacency phenomena and of the notion of expletives within recent developments of generative grammar.
The Gerund and the Infinitive with the Verbsintend, mean, proposeand their Close Synonyms
Authors: Duffley Patrick J. , Joubert Jean-François 
Published: February 2018

AbstractThis article investigates gerundive and infinitival constructions with the verbsintend, mean, proposeand their close synonyms with respect to the abstract categories of “tense” and “control”. Concerning “tense”, the gerundive construction with these verbs constitutes counterevidence to the common claim that the -ingform denotes simultaneity or temporal overlap: the explanation proposed shows that the latter does not correspond to any of the usual aspectual categories found in the linguistic literature. With respect to “control”, an explanation is offered for the tighter constraints on infinitival constructions as compared to the latitude between subject control and non-subject control readings found with the -ingform. These phenomena are explained in terms of the language-specific parameters of the basic meanings of the forms making up the constructions and the syntactic relations linking these meanings together.
Cognate Objects in Russian: Is the Notion “Cognate” Relevant for Syntax?
Authors: Pereltsvaig Asya 
Published: February 2018

AbstractThis article is concerned with cognate objects (COs) in Russian, of which there are shown to be two types. Only one type of CO exhibits argument properties, while the other type is shown to pattern with predicative nominals. Furthermore, it is argued that the two types of COs pattern with non-cognate nominals with the same function. It is therefore proposed to analyze argument COs on a par with their non-cognate counterparts as thematic direct objects, checking their accusative case in the specifier of Aspect Phrase. In contrast, the non-argument COs are analyzed as secondary predicates over the event argument projected by the main predicate of the clause. Finally, it is argued that a narrow, English-based definition of a CO (i.e., based on zero affixation) cannot be applied to other languages with richer derivational morphology. Yet, once the definition is widened to include all nominals based on the same root as the verb, it is concluded that being cognate is not relevant for the theory of syntax and must therefore be relegated to the morphological component of the language.
Les propositions infinitives indépendantes enfantines et la distribution des pronoms objets en français et en néerlandais
Authors: Haegeman Liliane 
Published: February 2018

AbstractThis article concerns the distribution of clitics in the child root infinitives in French and in Dutch. In the material studied, subject clitics are absent both from French and Dutch root infinitives; object clitics are present in French root infinitives while remaining absent from Dutch root infinitives. It is proposed that this cross-linguistic difference is related to the difference in the licensing site of the object clitics, which is taken to be AgrOin French and AgrSin Dutch. The hypothesis thus casts doubt on proposals according to which clitics are universally base-generated in specialised functional positions in the structure (Sportiche 1996; Schaeffer 1997).
Transparent Adjuncts
Authors: Borgonovo Claudia , Neeleman Ad 
Published: February 2018

AbstractThis article explores an unexpected extraction pattern out of adjuncts, as inWhat did John die whistling?andWhat did John hurt himself trying to fix?in English. This type of extraction is possible if the adjuncts are predicative and the matrix verbs are either ergative or (inherent) reflexive. The predicativity of the adjuncts is essential in getting these adjuncts interpreted as arguments; this requires coindexation with a thematic role of the verb, which is shown to obtain. Once transparent adjuncts are integrated into the thematic structure of the clause, the resulting representation exhibits the hallmarks of reflexivity. Reflexive predicates must receive appropriate marking. This explains the second requirement on transparent adjuncts: the matrix verbs are precisely of the type capable of licensing reflexivity.
The Selectional Restrictions of French Past Tenses
Authors: Labelle Marie 
Published: February 2018

AbstractThis article argues against the idea that the Imparfait and the Passé Simple in French are aspectually sensitive tense operators. Both morphemes combine with any type of eventuality. It is not the case that a clause in the Imparfait denotes a state, or that a clause in the Passé Simple denotes an event. It is proposed that the Passé Simple is a true past tense, which introduces a past eventuality in the discourse with the condition that it be the maximal eventuality of the appropriate type. The Imparfait is analyzed as a dyadic morpheme, which selects an eventuality as internal argument and a past temporal referent of discourse as external argument, where the eventuality provides a condition on the temporal referent.
Nominal Infinitives in Spanish: An Aspectual Constraint
Authors: Miguel Elena De 
Published: February 2018

AbstractThe aim of this article is to provide an analysis of two types of Spanish infinitival constructions headed by a determiner. In an attempt to define the categorial status of the infinitive morpheme, it is proposed that there are two homophonous infinitival morphemes which project two different structures: one of them is inflectional in nature and projects clausal configurations; the other one is derivational in nature and projects nominal structures. This latter suffix carries an activity aspect and attaches only to aspectually compatible verbal stems. This proposal explains the different properties and contexts for the two structures analysed, and, more interestingly, provides an account for a number of data that remained unexplained in previous analyses.
Inflected Infinitives Revisited: Genericity and Single Event
Authors: Ambar Manuela 
Published: February 2018

AbstractThis article argues for a minimalist approach to the variation between Romance languages with respect to the generic interpretation associated with infinitival complements of epistemic verbs. It is proposed that epistemic verbs have inherent temporal features and that they assign a tense feature to their complement. These features are checked under a Spec-head relation through two temporal projections, related either to the object position or the subject position. The variation observed between Portuguese and French, Italian and Spanish with respect to the event interpretation of infinitives is formulated in terms of the strong/weak status of the [+specific] feature of Tense. The difference in the temporal interpretation of the inflected infinitives with respect to the presence or absence of thehave+ past participle sequence is derived from the hypothesis that the tense of the participle raises to the TP projection that c-commands it when it is morphologically invisible, the indicative present being visible in Portuguese, but not in the other languages.
Minimalisme et variation syntaxique
Authors: Ndayiragije Juvénal 
Published: February 2018

AbstractThis article argues for a very restrictive theory of feature checking whereby only formal features of functional heads need to be checked for convergence. This theory, which enables us to dispense with most of the economy conditions assumed within the minimalist program (Chomsky 1995), is empirically supported by two syntactically and semantically related constructions in Kirundi: the Subject-Object Reversal and the Transitive Expletive Constructions. On parametric grounds, we argue that such constructions derive from the existence in Kirundi of a TP-internal focus projection whose [+focus] feature must be checked for convergence.
Syntactic Position and the Interpretation of Temporal Adjectives
Authors: Silva-Villar Luis , Gutiérrez-Rexach Javier 
Published: February 2018

AbstractThe analysis of the syntactic and interpretive properties of Spanish temporal adjectives poses an interesting problem for the theory of syntax since [+temporal] interpretation and Noun-Adjective linearizations are not univocal. The minimalist account of the position of temporal adjectives argued for here is based on the hypothesis that DPs contain a TP projection in which the feature [+temp] is checked: the TP within DP hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, all nouns are associated with an optional temporal feature when entering the computational component. When they enter into a syntactic relation with a term carrying a [+temp] value, the temporal feature they are associated with must be checked. Attraction of the adjective can take place overtly or covertly. In the first case, the adjective is in prenominal position checking the [+temp] feature at Spell-Out and, in the second case, it appears postnominally checking the [+temp] feature at the LF interface.
Events, Times, and Mohawk Verbal Inflection
Authors: Baker Mark , Travis Lisa Demena 
Published: February 2018

AbstractThe Mohawk tense-mood-aspect system has many “irregularities” that seem to require a powerful morphological component distinct from syntax. Nevertheless, it is shown that most of these “irregularities” can be explained in syntactic and semantic terms, once the right lexical entries are given. This result is achieved by making two assumptions of general interest: (1) mood is analyzed as the verbal equivalent of specifity in the NP system, and (2) habitual and stative verbs are shown to have time arguments, whereas ordinary eventive verbs have only event arguments. Given this, morpheme positions, cooccurrence restrictions, and the lack of recursion in the inflectional system can be derived from ordinary principles of composition, head movement, and a simple form of blocking. Only the selection of allomorphs is left to a post-syntactic morphology.
LeforLesin the Spoken Educated Spanish of Eleven Cities
Authors: DeMello George 
Published: February 2018

A phenomenon that is encountered fairly frequently in Spanish but has received relatively little attention on the part of linguists is the use of the singular indirect object pronounlewhen the pluralleswould be expected, as illustrated in the following examples:Hay que darle un justo precio a las personas. (BOG-8:107)Mi papá le tenía terror a las balas perdidas. (CAR-34:615)Nosotros le calentamos a los niños la comida. (HAV-2:30)Se le ponía bola negra a las que se lo merecían. (MAD-16:266)Es poco el tiempo que puedo dedicarle a mis hijos. (MEX-13:168)To my knowledge, only Kany (1951:107–109) has attempted to deal with this topic in a comprehensive, global manner, and his presentation is limited to one brief paragraph of commentary illustrated by examples taken primarily from works written in the 1920s and 1930s. The present paper will present a general study of this construction focusing primarily on a description of its contemporary usage as reflected in the spoken Spanish of educated speakers from eleven cities, Bogota, Buenos Aires, Caracas, Havana, La Paz, Lima, Madrid, Mexico City, San Juan (Puerto Rico), Santiago (Chile) and Seville.
Auxiliaires et séries verbales dans les langues Gbe
Authors: Tossa Comlan Zéphirin 
Published: February 2018

On définit généralement les séries verbales (ou constructions verbales sérielles) comme des constructions dans lesquelles apparaît une séquence de deux ou plusieurs lexèmes verbaux pour former le prédicat de la proposition.La problématique des séries verbales a reçu de la part des auteurs plusieurs interprétations parfois divergentes. Dans cet article nous allons proposer une analyse des constructions dites à verbes sériels en les reliant d’une part à la possibilité qu’ont les verbes pleins de fonctionner parfois comme auxiliaires et d’autre part à la possibilité pour un V′, c’est-à-dire une projection de niveau 1 d’un verbe en termes de X-barre, de recevoir en position adjointe des constituants syntaxiques de type CP, IP, VP, V′ et V.Nous soutiendrons l’hypothèse que certaines constructions verbales sérielles qu’on observe dans les langues Gbe2 sont à relier à la possibilité pour ces langues de présenter des sujets nuls dans le cas d’adjonction d’un CP ou d’un IP à un V′.