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ɸ‐Agree with silent goals and the theory of interface effects* Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2024-03-12 Marwan Jarrah, Mutasim Al‐Deaibes, Yazeed Hammouri
This article provides evidence from Arabic (namely Modern Standard Arabic and Jordanian Arabic) that ɸ‐Agree with an element which undergoes a phonological deletion at PF, i.e., a pro, results in the occurrence of a ɸ‐inflection of the goal on the relevant probe. This occurrence is imposed by the effects of a suggested interface condition, named as The Agree Identification Condition, which requires
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Ahí se apuesta la vida. The emergence of impersonal interpretations in Spanish* Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2023-12-25 Ricardo Maldonado
This paper explores the range of uses associated with se constructions in Mexican Spanish. The validity of treating most se constructions as passives is under scrutiny. In contrast, a model to analyze the emergence of an important variety of impersonal interpretations is proposed. Arbitrary and quasi-universal construals conform the base for finer interpretations for se constructions. In agreement
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Structural Ambiguity and the Architecture of Language Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2023-12-25 Jordi Fortuny
This article investigates what structural ambiguity reveals about the architecture of language. It analyzes two basic types of structural ambiguity, constituent ambiguity and chain formation ambiguity, and illustrates with a small class of selected case studies how they interweave. It observes that several movement locality constraints have the effect of reducing chain formation ambiguities; however
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AN ARGUMENT FOR NON-AGREE-DRIVEN MOVEMENT Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2023-12-12 Saurov Syed, Andrew Simpson
This paper argues for the occurrence of movement that is not the by-product of an Agree relation in which a probe searches for a goal. The hypothesis that not all instances of movement might be feature-driven was entertained in early Minimalism, but it has nevertheless become widely assumed that all instances of syntactic movement should be attributed to the operation of Agree. Here, using complex
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REFERENTIAL COHESION, AMBIGUITY, VAGUENESS AND GENERALITY IN PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE* Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2023-12-11 Josep E. Ribera
Political discourse has been characterised as being ‘vague’ and ‘ambiguous’. It is argued that politicians tend to use generic and unspecific words in order to avoid explicit commitment (McGee 2018). Although this situation may describe discourse genres such as political interviews and election debates, it is unclear that it can be applied to parliamentary debate. This study analyses a corpus consisting
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PARTICIPANT SELF-REFERENCE, UNDER-DETERMINATION, GENERALISATION, VAGUENESS, AND AMBIGUITY IN POLITICAL DISCOURSE: A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE AND TWITTER USAGES* Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2023-12-07 Neus Nogué-Serrano
The main aim of this chapter is to analyse under-determination, generalisation, vagueness, and ambiguity in the speaker's self-reference strategies used in Catalan parliamentary debate and Twitter. Parliaments are one of the main arenas where politicians develop their activity. On the other hand, Twitter allows politicians to build their own public image and to be in touch with voters, and citizens
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AN APPROACH TO THE LEXICAL AMBIGUITY CAUSED BY FALSE COGNATES IN SPANISH L2. A CORPUS-BASED EXPLORATORY STUDY Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2023-11-30 María Sampedro Mella
This exploratory study aims to offer new insights into the lexical ambiguity in the interlanguage arising from the use of false cognates. The study is based on written texts from two learners' corpora. Utterances including false cognates were retrieved from both corpora and presented to two groups of native speakers who assessed their correctness and stated whether or not they were ambiguous. While
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PRAGMATIC AMBIGUITY, IMPLICATURES, AND TRANSLATION1 Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2023-11-29 Pau Francesch, Lluís Payrató
The goal of this work is to put forward a pragmatic and translational framework for analysing target texts (TT) and source texts (ST) containing conversational implicatures that lead to pragmatic ambiguity. Ambiguity, sensu lato, is deemed to be related to indeterminacy and vagueness. Nevertheless, in the strict sense, ambiguity is understood as ‘more than a single processing instruction for a given
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Ambiguity in Language and Logic Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2023-11-27 Christian Wurm
This article gives an explanation of how recent results on ambiguity logics are relevant to the linguistic and philosophical theory of ambiguity. To this aim, some fundamental definitions and results are explained. We formulate and provide evidence for three main hypotheses: Firstly, ambiguity is not a vague notion. Secondly, in (explicit) reasoning with ambiguity, we always have to consider the parameter
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Development of nonliteral interpretations in typically developing Spanish speaking children: light verb constructions and figurative expressions Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2023-11-27 Elena Castroviejo, Marta Ponciano, José V. Hernández-Conde, Agustín Vicente
In this paper we present a study about the typical development of the comprehension of expressions that exhibit an ambiguity between a literal and a nonliteral interpretation in Spanish, and whose most frequent use is nonliteral. Such expressions include light verb constructions (LVC) such as to make the bed and expressions in a metaphor-hyperbole-idiom continuum (MHI) such as to sleep with angels
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AMBIGUITY IN LINGUISTICS1 Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2023-11-14 Jordi Fortuny, Lluís Payrató
Ambiguity is conventionally defined in Linguistics as a property of a word or an utterance that has two meanings or two interpretations, and is usually classified as lexical, morphological, syntactic (or structural), and pragmatic.
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Clitic placement at the syntax-phonology interface: A case study of Berber* Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2023-10-12 Abdelhak El Hankari
Berber1 clitics are argued to follow the main verb but may appear in a position preceding the verb in the presence of a Complementiser, Negation or Tense. However, there are cases involving a subset of these categories yet the clitics still follow the verb. In this article, it is argued that neither syntax nor phonology alone can handle the full range of clitic alternations. Instead, the placement
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A HYBRID ANALYSIS OF THE FRENCH PRONOUN EN* Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2023-10-12 Eirik Hvidsten
This paper puts forward a novel account of the clitic pronoun en in French. It is shown that previous analyses cannot account for the rich nominal structure involved in en-pronominalization, in particular structures with stranded DP-internal remnants. The analysis proposed sees en-pronominalization as a hybrid between pronominalization and ellipsis, which includes DP-internal focus movement for the
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Consonantal decomposition in interlanguage mapping* Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2023-08-11 Sang-Cheol Ahn
This paper analyzes segmental decomposition processes in interlanguage mapping, showing that the major place property is the most important factor among all phonological properties to be preserved. For instance, the duality of the Japanese fricative /ɸ/ triggers segmental decomposition both in Japanese loan adaptation of the English /f/ and in Korean adaptation of the Japanese fricative. Moreover,
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Correlation between sentence topic and discourse topic in French and Chinese: annotation issues and contrastive analysis Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2023-07-23 Jiaqi Hou, Frédéric Landragin
This paper aims to investigate the correlation between “sentence topic (ST)” and “discourse topic (DT)”, both based on an “aboutness” relation. It also compares the degrees of correlation between French and Chinese, considered respectively as a subject-prominent and a topic-prominent language. Kendall's correlation tests, Poisson models and z-tests were conducted using manually annotated textual data
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A FEATURE-BASED ACCOUNT OF GENERICITY AND KIND REFERENCE Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2023-05-30 Yılmaz Köylü
Genericity encompasses two distinct phenomena. The first one is reference to a kind, whereby a predicate describes a property directly of a kind as in Dinosaurs are extinct. The second one is a characterizing or a generic sentence that expresses generalizations as in Cats meow. A feature of generic sentences is that they tolerate exceptions. We accept sentences such as Mosquitos carry the West Nile
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Gender variation across the oromo dialects: a corpus-based study* Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2023-05-18 Tekabe Legesse Feleke, Terje Lohndal
This study aims to (1) demonstrate the position of the Oromo gender system in Corbett's (1991) typology of gender; (2) illustrate major syntactic gender variation across the Oromo dialects; (3) identify factors that contributed to the gender variation, and (4) illustrate the morphosyntax of the Oromo gender system. The data obtained from the Oromo Speech Corpus shows a high degree of lexical and syntactic
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Event Segmentation and Causation: The Case of Mandarin Causal-Chain Motion* Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2023-03-22 Yu Deng, Fuyin Thomas Li
This study investigates how Mandarin speakers segment causal-chain motion events in a verbalization task. The results demonstrate that Mandarin shows attentional bias for the causal source and goal in causal-chain segmentation, which may be universal across languages. Furthermore, there is a correlation between directness of causation and the complexity of linguistic representations, with direct conceptualization
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Discourse-Feature-Driven Movement in Spanish and the Revised PGU* Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2023-01-30 Jiahui Yang
This paper aims to reconsider the purpose of movement and its Last-Resort nature. In conformity with Chomsky (2008) and Jiménez-Fernández (2020), the apparent optional movement in Spanish is not free at base, but related to the discourse-feature inheritance. However, I depart from the latter by arguing that these discourse features do not work in tandem with the EF in T in order to attract the relevant
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The Structure of Dagbani Sentential Negation* Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2023-01-18 Samuel Alhassan Issah
The goal of this paper is to provide an account of the syntactic expression of sentential negation in Dagbani, a Mabia, Niger-Congo language of West Africa. I show that Dagbani employs two strategies for the marking of sentential negation: negative markers/particles and negative verbs. The overtly expressed negative markers are kù/bì and dì, used for negating declaratives and imperatives, respectively
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Grammaticalization from Minimizer to Focus Marker as Upward Reanalysis along the Nominal Spine* Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2022-12-10 Yoshiki Ogawa
This article demonstrates that Japanese minimizers, which are originally used as Negative Polarity Items in a negative context, can sometimes behave as focus markers when used postnominally. I will review a previous syntactic analysis of English minimizers, and propose a revised syntactic analysis of Japanese minimizers, based on newly discovered synchronic and diachronic facts. I argue that the usage
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STRUCTURAL CASE ASSIGNMENT, THEMATIC ROLES AND INFORMATION STRUCTURE* Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2022-10-26 Pauli Brattico
A formal model is presented which deduces the structural case assignment profile of Finnish by relying on graph-theoretical paths and intervention. More complex and controversial features such as nonlocal dependencies, adverbial case marking, case competition, DP-internal case patterns and interaction of case with agreement, aspect and polarity are also calculated from the model. Abstract Case and
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Split Lexical Insertion in Parasitic Gap Constructions* Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2022-10-12 Brian Agbayani, Masao Ochi
We propose to extend the feature movement theory (Chomsky 1995; Ochi 1999; Lasnik 1999, 2001; Agbayani 1998, 2000, 2006; Agbayani & Ochi 2006) by claiming that the separation of formal features (FF) from the rest of a lexical item occurs not only in syntactic movement but also in the course of lexical insertion. Applying this hypothesis to Parasitic Gap constructions, we argue that the FF and the rest
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THE SYNTAX OF TWO TYPES OF GAPPING IN SPANISH* Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2022-09-02 Wonsuk Jung
This paper argues that gapping in Spanish is not a single phenomenon and can be derived from different source structures. The first type of gapping in Spanish involves clausal coordination and is thus derived through TP-deletion, whereas the second type contains low coordination below TP, which allows it to be derived by either vP-deletion or Across-The-Board (ATB) verb movement whose availability
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ON THE SYNTAX OF VP DISLOCATION IN MANDARIN* Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2022-08-28 Wei-Cherng Sam Jheng
By drawing on data of two types of VP dislocation in Mandarin, this paper argues that these two types represent a syntactic incarnation of XP-split constructions providing an interesting argument for the conception of information structure starting in the numeration and multiple Spell-Out of copies regulated by the checking of strong features over the course of a syntactic derivation. Building on Fanselow
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THE NEGATIVELY BIASED MANDARIN BELIEF VERB yĭwéi* Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2022-07-20 Lelia Glass
The Mandarin belief verb yĭwéi strongly suggests that the belief it embeds is wrong or questionable. Based on original data, I propose that this sense of negative bias stems from a postsupposition that the reported belief must not be accepted in the Common Ground following an update with yĭwéi. When a belief is reported using a neutral, nonfactive verb such as rènwéi ‘think,’ it is possible for the
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ON THE SPECIAL PRONOUN TA IN THE WUHAN DIALECT OF CHINESE: A RESUMPTIVE ANALYSIS* Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2022-07-03 Chen Zhao
In this article, I will investigate a special pronoun Ta that appears in the postverbal thematic position of various constructions in the Wuhan dialect of Chinese. I will argue that all the sentences containing Ta can be unified under an Agree-based resumptive analysis. More specifically, I will claim that Ta, differing from the regular pronouns, is φ-feature deprived (or a weak pronoun), which is
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UNIFYING ELLIPSIS AND PRONOMINALIZATION IN JORDANIAN ARABIC* Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2022-05-09 Mohammad Alhailawani
In this paper, I discuss ellipsis inside Jordanian Arabic (JA) DPs. I show that both Nominal Ellipsis (NE) and pronominalization are attested in JA. I argue following Saab & Lipták (2016) that ellipsis takes place at different heights in the extended nominal projection via the presence of an [E]llipsis feature (Merchant 2001, 2005). In particular, I argue that there are two types of ellipsis in the
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On the Deduction of the EPP from Labeling* Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2022-05-06 Manabu Mizuguchi
The present paper examines a recent attempt to deduce the EPP from labeling. Chomsky (2015) argues that the EPP is reducible to Label Weakness. In this paper, I first point out that Label Weakness raises problems that are not faced under the EPP. I then propose that pair-Merge (i.e. the Merge that yields an asymmetric structure) provides a solution to Label Weakness, claiming that Merge, together with
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Sentence-Final Particles in Mandarin* Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2022-05-05 Hongmei Fang, Kees Hengeveld
Mandarin Chinese is rich in sentence-final particles, which have to follow a rigid linear order when they cluster. In much of the literature, researchers focus on clarifying the functions of individual particles, with less attention being paid to the explanations of their highly restricted order. Based on corpus data and using the framework of Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG, Hengeveld & Mackenzie
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Wh-Interrogatives In Ancient Greek Disentangling Focus- And Wh-Movement* Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2022-04-19 Nicolas Bertrand, Richard Faure
This article explores the problem of information structure in ancient Greek direct constituent questions from the perspective of wh-placement. It begins with the observation that wh-items are intrinsically focused and that typologically, wh-placement is predictable based on the focusing properties in some languages, such as Indonesian (in situ strategy) and Basque or Hungarian (focus position strategy)
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A Cartographic Approach To The Right Periphery: The Dual Status Of Italian Sembrare And Its Korean Counterpart* Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2022-04-09 Duk-Ho An
The cartographic project aims at drawing a map of clause structure that is as precise and as detailed as possible (Cinque 1999, 2004, Rizzi 1997, among many others). In this paper, I focus on the distribution of heads in the right periphery in Korean that I argue provides a direct window into the clausal architecture of the language. Taking as a starting point Cinque's (2004) discussion on the Italian
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On Adposition Phrases in Dagara* Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2022-04-07 Alain Noindonmon Hien
This paper proposes a reanalysis of adposition phrases expressing locations in Dagara. It has been observed in the literature that locative adpositions are postpositional in Dagara, which is arguably a head-initial language and does have a preposition as well. This paper examines the behavior of what has been analyzed as postpositions with respect to stranding, case marking, focalization, and number
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On the Absence of Propositional Negation from Hungarian Polar e-Interrogatives* Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2022-02-16 Hans-Martin Gärtner, Beáta Gyuris
It is argued that the ban on propositional “inside” negation in Hungarian polar e-interrogatives can be derived as a syntactic intervention effect. An Agree-based formalization is sketched that crucially relies on a diachronically motivated negative formal feature on the interrogative particle -e. A putative counterexample is taken to be echoic. We indicate a way to capture the echoic licensing of
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The Island Is Still There: Experimental Evidence For The Inescapability Of Relative Clauses In English* Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2022-02-08 Ken Ramshøj Christensen, Anne Mette Nyvad
It is standardly assumed that relative clauses are islands for extraction in English, and that constraints on extraction from syntactic islands are universal. However, it has been shown that the Mainland Scandinavian languages provide a large variety of counterexamples. This study investigates the island status of English relative clauses in the light of these counterexamples. 190 native speakers provided
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Why in Spanish “Nos Ponemos Contentos” But not “Satisfechos”: A Cognitive-Linguistic Review of The “Change-of-State Verb Ponerse + Adjective” Construction* Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2022-01-06 Beatriz Martín-Gascón
Constructionist approaches to language have often viewed metaphors and metonymies either as motivating factors or constraints on lexical-constructional integration (Goldberg 1995, 2006; the Lexical-Constructional Model: Butler & Gonzálvez 2014, Gonzálvez 2020, Ruiz de Mendoza & Mairal 2008, Ruiz de Mendoza & Galera 2014). In a similar spirit, the present article provides a detailed study of the role
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Experiencing the Conceptual Wealth of Non-Derived Denominal Verbs: A Multi-Level, Simulation-Based Approach* Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2021-12-30 Heike Baeskow
In this article, a cognitive, metonymic approach will be applied to the well-known phenomenon that events denoted by non-derived denominal verbs do not necessarily involve a referent of the base noun (e.g. Sue hammered the nail into the wall with her shoe). In particular, it will be argued that shared sensorimotor experience as to the interaction with basic-level objects like hammers, shelves, or bicycles
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Gender ‘Translation’ And Distributed Gender: Evidence From The Norwegian DP And Language Mixing * Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2021-12-23 Tor Anders Åfarli, Mari Nygård, Brita Ramsevik Riksem
Taking as our point of departure an important distinction between gender as a semantic/conceptual property and gender as a formal morphological property, we argue, assuming a broadly Distributed Morphology/exoskeletal theoretical approach, that formal gender languages, for gender to be visible to the inflectional system, exploit a mechanism that translates semantic/conceptual gender into formal gender
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THE MARKING OF MASS, COUNT AND PLURAL DENOTATIONS IN MULTI-DIMENSIONAL PARADIGMS* Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2021-12-08 Pavel Caha
This paper investigates the morphology of nouns in pseudo-partitive constructions, noun-numeral constructions and plurals. The data discussed reveal a *ABA pattern that restricts syncretism among these categories. Specifically, in the sequence pseudo-partitive, counting form and plural, only adjacent forms can be syncretic. I argue that the constraint can be derived from a particular morphosyntactic
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Indefinite Objects in Micro-variation. A Cross-linguistic Analysis of the Distribution of Partitives Articles, Bare Nominals and Definite Determiners in Northern Italy* Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2021-11-29 Francesco Pinzin, Cecilia Poletto
This contribution focuses on indefinite arguments in object position. We address this topic from the point of view of the crosslinguistic variation within the Romance continuum, especially looking at Northern Italian Dialects (NIDs). The target is to describe the distribution of the different possible realizations of this kind of arguments in this area by means of an in-depth analysis of the data coming
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Unexpected Partitive Articles in Francoprovençal* Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2021-11-26 Elisabeth Stark, Jan Pavel Davatz
This contribution seeks to add to our knowledge on ‘partitive articles’ (like the French element du in Je bois du vin, ‘I drink (some) wine’) in a highly endangered language spoken in France, Switzerland and Italy, namely Francoprovençal. Based on recent fieldwork data (2017) from the Aosta Valley and data from the ALAVAL atlas project, we will discuss outliers in a geographical and syntactic perspective
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Partitives and Indefinites: Phenomena in Italian Varieties Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2021-11-24 Benedetta Baldi, Leonardo M. Savoia
This contribution examines the relation between genitives/ partitives and indefinites in some Italian varieties. A central question concerns the nature of the preposition de/di (DE) ‘of’ (< Latin de), specifically investigated in contexts where it does not introduce the usual possessive or partitive reading: bare partitives/Partitive articles of Italian varieties, negative contexts in which a negative
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Preverbal Subjects with a Partitive Article: A Comparison Between Aosta Valley Francoprovençal and French* Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2021-11-24 Tabea Ihsane
In this paper, we focus on two constructions that allow preverbal subjects headed by a so-called partitive article in French, that is, sentences with a stage-level predicate and generic emphatic constructions. The aim is to explain why their counterparts were generally not accepted by speakers of Francoprovençal, an endangered and understudied Gallo-Romance language, in a translation task carried out
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The Status of De in Romance Indefinites, Partitives and Pseudopartitives* Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2021-11-23 M.Teresa Espinal, Sonia Cyrino
This paper focuses on the status of de in Romance indefinites, partitives and pseudopartitives. It argues that there is neither a ‘partitive article’ nor a ‘partitive preposition’ in syntax. De in Romance indefinites is the overt Spell-Out of an abstract operator de that cancels the definiteness of articles and is responsible for indefiniteness. De in Romance partitives is the overt Spell-Out of a
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Partitive Articles and Indefinites, Micro and Macrovariation Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2021-11-21 Francesco Pinzin, Cecilia Poletto
This introductory paper provides an overview of the main phenomena investigated in this Special Issue, such as the relation between the encoding of indefinites and the presence of genitive and definite markers, the relation between partitivity and indefiniteness and the distribution of these phenomena in minority, or “micro”, varieties – such as Italian dialects, Galloromance varieties, North and South
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Variation in the Syntax of Plural Markers: The Case From Plural –Men in Mandarin Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2021-11-21 Kyumin Kim, Xiao Meng
This paper provides a novel analysis of plural marker –men in Mandarin as a modifier: –men does not realize a head such as Num(ber); rather, it adjoins to a DP in the nominal structure. The proposed analysis can account for defining properties of –men as a modifier, such as the interpretation of a bare noun with respect to –men, lack of agreement, co-occurrence with a classifier, and so on, which cannot
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Topicalization, Dislocation and Clitic Resumption Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2021-11-17 Silvio Cruschina
Romance languages make use of syntactic topicalization strategies to mark various kinds of topic constituents, typically under Clitic Left Dislocation (CLLD) or Clitic Right Dislocation (CLRD). Despite the great deal of attention that these phenomena have received in the last decades, different analyses have been proposed and several questions are still controversial. In this paper, I focus on the
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Thinking Things in German versus Swedish. A Cross-Linguistic comparison of Verbs of Thinking in Two Genetically Close Languages.☆ Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2021-11-11 Yannick Frommherz
Against the backdrop of universality proposals claiming that all languages share the conceptualisation and expression of THINKING, this study comparatively investigates verbs of thinking (VOT) in German and Swedish. Particularly, it examines semantic specificity in VOT (the restricted availability of only one verb in a certain context), and the potential effect of two constraints (intersubjective verifiability;
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Kind-Level Predicates of Events Inside Another Predication☆ Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2021-11-08 Niina Ning Zhang
Kind level predicates of events such as three times, the third time, and occasionally can occur as a predicate of an independent predication, or appear as an adverbial, with an event kind-denoting expression as their argument. The reduced forms of such predicates can surface inside a nominal of another predication, e.g., Four thousand ships passed through the lock last year; Susi bought a second guitar
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Strange Relations: When no German Spoken at Home is Associated with a Quick Progress in Acquiring German Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2021-11-02 Eugen Zaretsky, Benjamin P. Lange
Data from three follow-up studies on language acquisition were re-analyzed retrospectively to identify sociodemographic and geolinguistic factors associated with changes in German language competence of German preschoolers (N = 508). Surprisingly at first sight, factors unfavorable for German language acquisition (e.g., only other languages than German spoken at home) were associated with a considerable
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Semantic Roles or Syntactic Functions: The Effects of Annotation Scheme on the Results of Dependency Measures Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2021-11-01 Jianwei Yan, Haitao Liu
The annotation scheme of dependency treebanks might have an impact on the results of linguistic analysis, thus leading to different interpretations of linguistic phenomena. This study compares the results of two widely used dependency measures, i.e., dependency direction and dependency distance, based on 18 parallel Universal Dependencies (UD) annotated treebanks and 18 corresponding Surface-Syntactic
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Korean Relative Clauses: Metonymy, Zone Activation, and Reference Point* Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2021-10-16 Chongwon Park
This article develops an analysis of three types of Korean Relative Clauses (RCs) from a Cognitive Grammar perspective. The three types under examination are the Internally Headed RC Construction (IHRCC), the Externally Headed RC Construction (EHRCC), and the Double RC Construction (DRCC) which is a subtype of the EHRCC. It is demonstrated that the notion of metonymy helps us properly tease out the
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Aspects of bale (‘yes’) in Persian Discourse: Its Functions, Positions, and Evolution* Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2021-09-30 Soleiman Ghaderi, Mohammad Amouzadeh
This paper examines the different functions of bale (‘yes’) in Persian by identifying its positions in the syntagmatic chain. As such, it reveals a significant correlation exists between the function types, various positions, and the frequency of bale, which appears on the left periphery (LP), on the right periphery (RP), and in the medial, detached or free-standing mode at a rate of 20.5%, 9.5, 2
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Incorporation or Quasi-Incorporation? A Constructionist Account in Persian Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2021-09-12 Sahar Bahrami-Khorshid, Amir Ghorbanpour
Noun incorporation is generally defined as a word formation process in which a noun, typically the direct object, is incorporated into the verb to form a compound verb. The present study, adopting a Construction Morphology perspective, examines the characteristics of the so-called incorporative structure in Persian, to shed light on the process and to see as what kind of structure it can actually be
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Prenominal French and Uninflected Dutch Adjectives* Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2021-09-12 Elliott Evans
This paper proposes a uniform analysis of canonical and noncanonical French and Dutch attributive adjectives. Canonically, French adjectives are postnominal and Dutch adjectives are inflected. The noncanonical counterparts are prenominal, for French, and lacking inflection, for Dutch. A review of the literature indicates several proposed locations in the noun phrase for adjectives, and this analysis
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Reverse Double Objects in Hakka Ditransitive* Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2021-09-09 Hsiao-hung Iris Wu
This paper deals with the ‘reverse’ double object construction in Hakka, where the theme NP precedes the goal NP without being mediated by an adpositional goal marker. I show that the reverse V-theme-goal order is sensitive to verb types and argue that this construction takes an underlying dative structure with a non-thematic null prepositional goal marker. This formal syntactic account is shown to
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Korean Specificational Pseudoclefts as Caseless Focus Nominal Extraction* Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2021-09-06 Dongwoo Park
Korean specificational pseudoclefts exhibit a paradox. On the one hand, anaphor binding facts indicate that the pivot (or an element co-indexed with it) must originate in a position located within the presupposition CP. Nonetheless, specificational pseudoclefts appear to be island-insensitive. To resolve this paradox, I propose an extraction analysis whereby only caseless focus nominals base-generated
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Removing the Owner: Non-Specified Possessor Marking in Arawak Languages* Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2021-07-02 Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald
In most Arawak languages, obligatorily possessed nouns are bound forms. They have to be accompanied by a possessor. If the possessor is unknown or irrelevant, the noun will take the non-specified possessor suffix. A suffix of the same segmental form occurs in deverbal nominalizations with unspecified arguments, or as a nominalizer on verbs. We hypothesise that the non-specified possessor suffix was
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Determiners and the Development of Grammatical Nominalization in Nivaĉle* Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2021-06-03 Manuel A. Otero, Doris L. Payne, Alejandra Vidal
Nivaĉle, a Mataco-Mataguayan language of the South American Chaco, exhibits right branching syntax often involving determiners. The determiners express visibility, proximity, existence, have temporal implications, and mark abstract referents and nominalized clauses. This paper proposes that headless relative clauses arose by using determiners in grammatical nominalization via an amalgam source construction
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Zamucoan Person Marking as a Perturbed System* Studia Linguistica Pub Date : 2021-06-28 Pier Marco Bertinetto
This paper analyzes the Zamucoan system of Person markers: personal pronouns, verbal and possessive inflection. Comparing the three documented languages (Ayoreo and Chamacoco, currently spoken, and extinct Old Zamuco), one can reconstruct for a very ancient stage of this language family an agglutinating structure for both personal pronouns and verbal inflection, with Person and Number dealt with by