bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Missing objects in special registers: The syntax of null objects in English
Authors: Ruda Marta 
Published: February 2018

AbstractEven though null definite objects are usually ungrammatical in English, they are widely used in certain special registers. This paper investigates object drop in the recipe and, to a lesser extent, match broadcasting registers in English, contributing an analysis of a substantial set of naturally occuring data, hence making it possible to verify observations from previous syntactic studies of the phenomenon, which were based on a restricted array of isolated sentences. Having shown that the data support the assumption that the unrealised object is syntactically active, I propose a novel analysis of missing objects in special registers, guided by recent developments in the generative linguistic theory. Null realisation of the object is considered as an issue of externalisation and intralinguistic variation is attributed to the rules operating at the SM interface which make it possible to extend the application of copy deletion, as assumed within the copy theory of movement
Matching productivity indexes and diachronic evolution: The Old English affixesful-, -isc, -cund, and-ful
Authors: Mendaza Raquel Mateo 
Published: February 2018

AbstractThis article measures the productivity index of the Old English suffixes-cund, -ful,and-iscas well as the prefixful-and checks the results against the diachronic evolution of the affixes. The frameworks brought to the discussion includeType frequencymeasurement, as well as productivity indexes proposed by Baayen (1992, 1993, 2009) and Trips (2009). The sources are both textual(The Dictionary of Old English Corpus)and lexicographical (the lexical database of Old EnglishNerthus).The conclusion drawn is that Baayen's (1992, 1993, 2002) index ofGlobal Productivityprovides the most consistent results with the diachronic evolution of the affixes.
A microparametric analysis of apparent postverbal negation in Taiwanese Southern Min
Authors: Wang Chyan-An Arthur 
Published: February 2018

AbstractThis article investigates the postverbal negation construction in Taiwanese Southern Min. I propose that the construction is derived in a way similar to resultatives and that the postverbal negationboand its affirmative counterpartuare particular kinds of aspectual elements in the resultative complement. Given this, the lack of (apparent) postverbal negation in the closely-related language Mandarin Chinese can be ascribed to the fact that Mandarin Chinese lacks this particular aspectual use of affirmativeyouand negativemei(you) and thus it fails to generate the structure under investigation. It is also shown that the proposed analysis is supported by cross-linguistic correlations among Chinese languages.
Learning to Parse Second Language Consonant Clusters
Authors: Archibald John 
Published: February 2018

AbstractIn this article, a number of broad questions related to the acquisition of consonant clusters in a second language are investigated. Drawing on the structural relations and phonological principles of Government Phonology, it is argued that the behaviour of second language learners can be accounted for by a top-down, left-to-right phonological parser. Appealing to a model of cognitive architecture, it is demonstrated that one can account for the different behaviours of speakers of languages that share the trait of lacking tautosyllabic clusters (Korean and Finnish) when learning a language which allows such clusters (English). Properties of the LI segmental inventory and a licensing strength scale are proposed to explain why Finnish learners have less trouble than Korean learners when acquiring English clusters.
Variable and Stable Clusters: Variation in the Realisation of Consonant Clusters
Authors: Jongstra Wenckje 
Published: February 2018

AbstractThis article reports on between-individual and within-individual variation in consonant cluster reduction strategies (where C1C2is realised as C(or C2) among young children. The empirical base of the study is a Dutch database with over 9,000 instances ofC1and C2realisations of 23 word-initial consonant clusters from 45 children aged between two and three years old. The study finds that within-child variation is very limited, whereas between-child variation occurs. It is also shown that there are typological implications; that is, realising C2in clustery, implies realising C2in cluster y, but not vice versa. The data provide support for the position that variation can be accounted for by a finer grained notion of sonority where the sonority distance between the two consonants in a cluster plays a crucial role in establishing prosodic constituency.
A Phonological Analysis of Schwa in German First Language Acquisition
Authors: Kehoe Margaret , Lleó Conxita 
Published: February 2018

AbstractIn this article, two approaches to schwa representation are evaluated using data from four German children (aged 1;3 to 3;1). The first, the No Mora account, claims that schwa is segmentally but not prosodically specified, whereas the second, the Projection account, proposes that schwa is prosodically but only minimally segmentally specified, as [-cons]. The data reveal several stages in acquisition: an early phase characterised by vowel reduplication or deletion; a middle phase characterised by production of a full vowel (and consonant); and a final phase characterised by production of a central vowel, schwa, or syllabic consonant. In addition, the data show that children produce syllabic consonants earlier than schwa, and that they often produce filler schwas even when they substitute target schwas with full vowels. It is argued that these findings, in particular the different timeline observed for schwa versus syllabic consonants and the presence of filler schwas, can be best accounted for by the Projection account.
The Development of Lexical Pitch Accent Systems: An Autosegmental Analysis
Authors: Ota Mitsuhiko 
Published: February 2018

AbstractThis article presents an autosegmental analysis of the development of pitch phonology in Swedish and Japanese, which mark both lexical accent and phrasing through movements in fundamental frequency (F0). Predictions that follow from the autosegmental model are tested against spontaneous production data from child Japanese. In support of the analysis that lexical pitch accent and phrasal intonation are acquired as separate sequences of tonal features, the falling and rising slopes of F0 contours are shown to develop independently. The late emergence of the phrase-initial rise is attributable to the allophonic surface realisation of the low boundary tone. Moreover, developments in contour shapes are characterised by demarcated emergence of F0 turning points that are aligned with specific segments, providing further support for the view that pitch phonology is acquired as strings of tonal units associated with segments and prosodic constituents.
Place Specification and Segmental Distribution in the Acquisition of Word-Final Consonant Syllabification
Authors: Rose Yvan 
Published: February 2018

AbstractThis article focusses on data from two first language learners of Québec French, Clara and Théo. In both corpora, all word-final consonants are acquired before word-medial codas, except Clara’s [ʁ], which is acquired at the same time as medial codas. The behaviour of Clara’s [ʁ] is explained through the hypothesis that it is analysed by the child as placeless and that, in the unmarked case, place-specified consonants are syllabified word-finally as onsets, while placeless consonants are syllabified as codas. Supporting cross-linguistic evidence is provided from adult languages and from the acquisition of Japanese. Finally, data on the acquisition of Spanish are discussed. Based on distributional evidence, it is suggested that these learners of Spanish posit a coda syllabification for the word-final, place-specified coronal consonants of their language. These data support the view that default options are overridden when positive evidence steers the learner toward more marked options.
L’émergence du système phonologique chez l’enfant: l’apport de la modélisation articulatoire
Authors: Ménard Lucie , Boë Louis-Jean 
Published: February 2018

AbstractThe impact of anatomical transformations on the acquisition of sounds by infants remains poorly understood. Using theVariable Linear Articulator? Model, we simulate vowel production in the course of non-uniform vocal tract growth. Production abilities related to vocal tract growth are described by simulating French vowels, generated by assuming that sensori-motor control abilities are identical in newborns and adults. Despite small vocal tract size, an infant is able to produce all the vowels of its first language. The recurrence of certain units in the babbling inventory is attributable to motor control immaturity and cognitive abilities. Simulation of articulatory fibers provides a more accurate view of the relation between articulatory strategies and acoustic targets. The results highlight differences relative to labial and lingual articulators.
L’adaptation de la voyelle /y/ en /ju/ dans les emprunts en russe: un cas de palatalisation, non de biphonémicité
Authors: Paradis Carole , Thibeault Mélanie 
Published: February 2018

AbstractLexical borrowings provide important clues regarding the internal structure of segments. We focus on the internal structure of the front rounded vowel /y/ and the arguments which led us to maintain that /y/ is a simple vowel. The unpacking of /y/ in /ju/ in many Russian borrowings from French, German, and several languages of the Turkish family is not the consequence of /y/ including two vowels underlyingly but the consequence of the fact that Russian allows the majority of its consonants to be palatalized. The front rounded vowel /y/ includes the feature combination [−back] ~ [+round]. When an adaptation strategy causes [—back] to delink from /y/ in Russian, [—back] is salvaged by the preceding consonant when this consonant is palatalizable, thus yielding the realization /Cju/.
On the Learning of Auxiliary Use in the Referential Variety by Speakers of New Brunswick Acadian French
Authors: Balcom Patricia 
Published: February 2018

AbstractThis study investigates the learning of Referential French by speakers of Acadian French at the university level. One difference between the two varieties lies in their use of auxiliaries in compound tenses. In Acadian French,avoiris used categorically in compound tenses with verbs of inherently directed motion and pronominal verbs, while Referential French usesêtre. A controlled-production task and an acceptability judgment task were administered to 80 speakers of New Brunswick Acadian French who were students at a francophone university in New Brunswick, 40 first-year students and 40 fourth-year students. Results show that, while there is still variability in the fourth-year students’ auxiliary use, their performance is significantly closer to Referential French than that of the first-year students.
La flexion postverbale -ont en français acadien : une analyse sociolinguistique
Authors: Beaulieu Louise , Cichocki Wladyslaw 
Published: February 2018

AbstractWe present a sociolinguistic analysis of the third person plural verbal suffix-ontin the variety of Acadian French spoken in the northeastern region of New Brunswick. The analysis shows that variation in the use of this traditional morpheme is conditioned by external factors and in particular by social network. In addition, retention of-ontis conditioned by an internal factor, as this suffix regularizes the singular/plural contrast in stems, and the 3SG/3PL contrast in verbal paradigms. The more-ontoptimizes these contrasts, the greater the tendency to maintain this morpheme. Thus, forms such asi-pouvont, i-voulont, andi-buvont— which allow speakers to communicate their identity and social position within their speech community as well as to optimize the use of forms in the verb paradigms — have a greater probability of being retained than other forms that offer fewer benefits.
Agreement Paradigms across Moods and Tenses: The Case of Romanian Subjunctives and Imperatives
Authors: Pirvulescu Mihaela 
Published: February 2018

AbstractThis article argues that the realization of agreement in subjunctive and imperative verbs is a consequence of the syntactic status of Tense in these two moods. Crucially, certain agreement paradigms across Romance languages show very a close resemblance: the subjunctive and imperative paradigms are identical, in most cases, to the indicative paradigms. Systematically, moods such as the subjunctive and the imperative do not show specific tense affixes or specific tense-induced allomorphy on their agreement affixes. The proposal is illustrated with Romanian verbal agreement, which is analyzed within the Distributed Morphology framework. The analysis shows that tense information is not used in subjunctive and imperative agreement morphology, unless it is exactly the same information as in another paradigm — the present indicative. It is proposed that at the syntactic level, Tense is unspecified in the subjunctive and absent in the imperative, and that the realization of agreement affixes is a consequence of this syntactic representation.
Neutral vowels in Lokaa harmony
Authors: Akinlabi Akinbiyi 
Published: February 2018

AbstractThis paper discusses the four neutral vowels in Lokaa harmony, [i, u, ə, a]. Crosslinguistically, neutral segments are either transparent or opaque. Lokaa harmony is important in three crucial respects. First, languages with both transparent and opaque vowels are not common; Lokaa has both. Secondly, though Lokaa has an eight-vowel inventory the vowels [a] and [ə] have not “re-paired”. Thirdly, the historic ATR contrast found in Benue-Congo high vowels shows up when high vowel stems take mid-vowel prefixes, though the high vowels can only be [+ATR] on the surface; the ATR merger of high vowels in Lokaa is not complete. I show that the analytic framework of “headed span” theory accounts for a system with both transparent and opaque vowels. More importantly, I propose that within the headed span approach to harmony, both co-occurrence constraints and ASSOCIATEHEAD are crucial. Co-occurrence constraints control the language inventory, and the different rankings of the ASSOCIATEHEAD constraints indicate whether or not a feature will form part of an harmonic span.
Le statut des compléments du nom en [de NP]
Authors: Knittel Marie Laurence 
Published: February 2018

AbstractThis paper deals with noun complements in French. I show that French has a particular kind of noun complement, regularly expressed by [de NP], that cannot be analysed as a PP or as a Possessor, but nevertheless requires a syntactic account. A detailed analysis reveals that these constituents share morphosyntactic, semantic and discourse properties with those of pseudo-incorporated nominals in various languages. I thus propose that they be analysed as pseudo-incorporated into a possessive nominal head.
Choice and balance in Michif negation
Authors: Wolfart H.C. 
Published: February 2018

AbstractThe Michif language, while distinct from both Cree and French, combines a largely French-based nominal complex with a largely Cree-based verbal system. The syntax of negation cuts across these dimensions. Declarative sentences in Michif show the Cree-based negatornamôand the French-basednôinterchangeably. (This is also the only context forpas.) Imperatives, by contrast, demand the Cree-basedêkâ (ya) exclusively.In subordinate clauses, Michif permits eitherêkâornô. In Cree, all such constructions require the deontic negatorêkâ. The integration of the two Cree-based negation types and the French-basednoandpasinto a single new system in Michif poses not only problems of constituency and syntactic analysis. It also raises once again the thorny question of balance: Is the imbrication of Cree and French symmetrical, or is one of the two languages dominant?
The syntax/morphology interface in Spanish L2 acquisition: Focus on quantified DPs
Authors: Androutsopoulou Antonia , Español-Echevarría Manuel , Prévost Philippe 
Published: February 2018

AbstractThis article examines whether L2 acquisition of morphology and syntax develops independently (the Separation Hypothesis) or not (the Rich Agreement Hypothesis), focusing on the acquisition of Number specification on certain Spanish quantifiers by French speakers. In Spanish, some quantifiers are specified for Number and directly precede the head noun, in contrast to their French counterparts where a dummy prepositiondemust appear inside the DP. Results from a grammaticality judgement task and a production task show that intermediate and advanced learners perform poorly on plural inflection with some quantifiers, and reject the use ofde. This suggests that they have acquired Number specification on these quantifiers, which allows Case marking on the following noun, but do not produce the appropriate morphology. These results support the Separation Hypothesis, but not the Rich Agreement Hypothesis.
Linguistic levelling in Spanish: The analogical strong preterites
Authors: Pato Enrique 
Published: February 2018

AbstractCertain Peninsular Spanish varieties have two third-person plural forms in the simple past indicative of verbs with ‘strong’ (stem-stressed) preterites. While this phenomenon is documented in large-scale linguistic atlas surveys, its current geographic distribution and diachronic origins remain under-studied. This paper sets out to: 1) establish the geographic distribution of these variants; the differing methodologies and epochs of the data sources make them particularly interesting to compare, showing that these analogical strong preterites have suffered a drastic decline over the last century; 2) use historical corpus data to show that the vernacular variant is by no means a recent phenomenon; 3) examine external history as a source of explanation in linguistic reconstruction, showing that this process of analogical levelling took place after the reconquest and resettlement of these regions. These findings support the hypothesis of a feature which spread over the centuries by linguistic diffusion.
Omission des déterminants : Contraintes d’alternances rythmiques ou contraintes liées aux niveaux supérieurs de la structure prosodique
Authors: Fréchette Roseline , Labelle Marie 
Published: February 2018

AbstractThis article focuses on whether determiner omission by two-year-old children is constrained at the level of the prosodic foot or whether it is a function of the different levels of the prosodic hierarchy. Nine French-speaking children aged 2;0 to 2;7 were asked to repeat 54 four- or five-word sentences of the form “Pronoun V NP” with three conditions: a) det + monosyllabic noun; b) det + bisyllabic noun; c) det + monosyllabic adjective + monosyllabic noun. The results show 1) more determiner omission in condition b than in a; 2) more determiner omission in c than in b. It is shown that determiner omission is not accounted for by a low-level stress-alternation constraint and that the level of prosodic structure to which the determiner is attached plays a role in determiner omission.
Redefining what matters: Syntactic explanation in American linguistics, 1955-1970
Authors: Martin-Nielsen Janet 
Published: February 2018

AbstractThe postwar decades are well known for having brought dramatic change to American linguistics on many fronts. This paper explores an internally focused aspect of this change: conditions of explanation. The two questions at stake are, firstly, what counts as explanation in linguistics? and, secondly, how is this decided? I argue that transformational grammarians dominated the setting of explanatory criteria in 1960s American syntax, and that this dominance was essential to the overall success of that theory. Importantly, rival grammarians were forced to devote as much time and effort to fitting their theories to the transformational criteria as they were to advancing their own explanatory priorities. By successfully naming the conditions for explanation, transformationalists provided their own supporters with significant questions to pursue and, simultaneously, drew energy away from rivals. This monopoly over explanatory criteria was central to the dominant position transformational grammar established in the American academic linguistics community.
Some remarks on subject positions and the architecture of the left periphery in Spanish
Authors: Pöll Bernhard 
Published: February 2018

AbstractThis article reexamines the puzzling issue of where subjects, lexical and null, are located in Spanish and offers a novel explanation for the incompatibility of preverbal lexical subjects with fronted focussed constituents. Both SpecIP and the left periphery appear to be potential landing sites for subjects, according to discourse-pragmatic factors. Assuming thatprois a clitic, it is argued that the aforementioned incompatibility can be captured by a simple rule: SpecIP must be empty for focus fronting to occur. This is the case withpro, which adjoins to Infl, or with postverbal subjects since they remain in SpecVP. From this analysis it follows that: 1) the subject field in Spanish is less articulated than is generally assumed, 2) the differences between Spanish and other null subject languages with respect to the availability of preverbal subjets can be reduced to this rule and a different ordering of focus and topic phrases, and 3) it is unnecessary to posit two different topic positions.
Mesure de la productivité morphologique des créoles : au-delà des méthodes quantitatives
Authors: Brousseau Anne-Marie 
Published: February 2018

AbstractMost recent measures of morphological productivity are reliable only if they are based on a large corpus of the language. This article presents a detailed demonstration of a method for establishing an inventory of productive affixes in a language for which a large corpus is not available. This method evaluates the productivity of an affix first and foremost on the basis of its threshold of profitability (the number of different words derived via the affix) in correlation with other diagnostics to bolster reliability. These other diagnostics are the semantic and phonological transparency of derived words and the decomposability of such words. The application of the method is illustrated step-by-step with data from St. Lucian.
Synchronic evidence of a diachronic change: Voicing and duration in French and Spanish stop-liquid clusters
Authors: Colantoni Laura , Steele Jeffrey 
Published: February 2018

AbstractThis article investigates the role that the phonetic parameters of duration and voicing play in shaping asymmetric patterns of Romance stop-liquid cluster realization. Based on acoustic analysis of experimental data from Quebec French and Argentine Spanish, we demonstrate the existence of an asymmetry in the proportional duration of the stop and a following epenthetic vowel or lateral: sonorants are shorter after voiceless stops in stop-liquid clusters. Rhotics do not participate in this process. The Spanish tap does not vary significantly in length, and the French dorsal fricative is longer in voiceless clusters. We propose that compensatory adjustments of the following sonorant are the result of the interaction of coarticulatory constraints, both universal (shorter sonorants after voiceless stops or fricatives) and language-specific (voicing in dorsal fricatives in French). Parallels are drawn between the synchronic variation attested and well-known patterns of diachronic change in Romance.