This study shows that the discourse particle tara in Jordanian Arabic identifies whether its utterance presents new or given information. In other words, there exists a relation between the presence of this particle (i.e. its position) and the type of information packaging of its utterance. When tara appears utterance‐initially, the accompanying utterance is presented as being in sentence focus (i

This paper deals with fronting of predicative adjectives (e.g., Big was his surprise) in French. From the present‐day usage emerge two main constructions, both with their own surface forms and syntactic, semantic and information‐structural properties. The first one, CxA, is a quasi‐specificational copular construction, with narrow focus on the post‐copular subject. The second one is a predicational

Cappadocian fšáx ‘child’ and Pharasiot fšáxi ‘boy’ are traditionally derived from Turkish uşak, assuming a hitherto unexplained fricativization of [u] to [f] and of word‐final [k] to [x] after the borrowing process. The latter cannot be attributed to Cappadocian or Pharasiot, however, as it is a common feature of Anatolian Turkish. In order to understand the former sound change, we have to assume an

The synchronic distribution and diachronic trajectory of Homeric ‐phi(n) have been the source of long‐standing debate, with the result that scholarly opinion has yet to settle on a consensus regarding the morphosyntax of forms realized by this marker. Some maintain that forms in ‐phi(n) are adverbs, while others contend that they are nominals (i.e., nouns or adjectives). Evidence from agreement and

This paper examines whether the argument structure of English verbs of change of state/location was influenced by contact. Scandinavian as a source of influence is rejected for not having had suitable properties. In Old French, including its insular variety, Anglo‐Norman, verbs of change of state/location were labile in the late 13th and 14th c., the period of contact via intense bilingualism. It is

The paper presents a new theory of the origin of the Balto‐Slavic ā‐aorist. It is argued that the conjunct evidence of Baltic and Slavic allows us to reconstruct a clear picture of the position of the ā‐aorist in the Balto‐Slavic verb system: the Balto‐Slavic aorist suffix *‐ā‐ was non‐acute (thus pointing to an original form *‐ah2‐e/o‐ > Bl.‐Sl. *‐ā‐), triggered zero grade of the root, and was exclusively

Irrealis markers are characterized by the rampant heterogeneity of their distributional patterns and by the tendency to appear as portmanteau morphemes encoding other grammatical categories (e.g. person). These and other characteristics may find an explanation in diachronic terms, by taking into account the sources from which irrealis markers derive. In this paper, the most frequent sources of irrealis

This paper offers a new perspective on Cop’s Law and Open Syllable Lengthening, two commonly accepted sound laws that lengthened both consonants and vowels in the Luwic languages. It is proposed that both developments take similar inputs and ultimately yield the same effect: neutralisation of the syllable weight opposition in accented (stressed) syllables. This development is in line with a tendency

Several languages around the world encode number through a regular alternation between verb roots, in a pattern sometimes called ‘verbal number suppletion’ (Veselinova 2006). Lo–Toga and Hiw, two Oceanic languages of Vanuatu (Torres Islands), thus alternate certain verbs according to their absolutive argument's number – e.g. Hiw t o ‘go:Sing’ vs. v€ en ‘go:Plural’. The pattern affects 17 verb pairs

It has been claimed that Archaic and Classical Greek had two main types of headed relative clauses: (i) postnominal externally headed relative clauses, and (ii) internally headed relative clauses (Perna 2013a, b; Fauconnier 2014; Probert 2015). In this article, we take a closer look at the semantic and syntactic properties of the second category in Post-classical and Early Byzantine Greek (I-VIII AD)

This paper discusses the syntactic variation of modal predicates between structures with a nominative primary argument and those with an oblique primary argument. In the literature, this variation is related to a change from deontic to epistemic meanings, whereby epistemicity seems to be more commonly expressed by highly grammaticalized impersonal constructions. After having shown the weakness of this

This paper provides a new phonological and philological analysis of previously unexplained disharmonic patterns in Old Norwegian height harmony. Old Norwegian displays crosslinguistically rare forms of blocking and transparency, which under traditional assumptions of Old Norwegian vowels and vowel harmony are both phonologically and orthographically irregular. I show that these patterns make perfect

Proto-Germanic *fingraz ‘finger’ – long connected to PIE *penkʷe ‘5’, but without a convincing derivational scenario – can be interpreted as *pēnkʷ-ro-, a genitival R(V)-o- vrddhi derivative to *penkʷerom ‘set of 5’. This latter form is the substantivization of *penkʷero- ‘5-fold, counting 5’ – a form belonging to a series of de-numeral adjectives which, it is argued, is the single type underlying

This article examines the nominal inflectional system of a group of Asia Minor Greek dialects (Dawkins 1910, 1916), which developed, in parallel with the fusional inflectional system, an agglutinative one due to language contact with Turkish. We argue that the ‘old’ fusional ending or the theme vowel was reanalyzed as part of the nominal stem. This novel structure was actualized by means of two competing

Romance clitic pronouns appear to the left of the verb in I and to the right of the verb in C. This alternation correlates with: (a) allomorphy, specifically lvs. zero; (b) stress shifts; and (c) reordering of the clitic string. The alternations in (a)–(c) are also observed between non-negative and negative contexts. The key points of our analysis are: (i) the lsegment is associated with definite content;

A noun category in Welsh which has a shorter form for a collection/plural meaning and a suffixed singulative for a single instance has been described in the literature as both a number category and a plural allomorph, often with terminological ambiguity and blurring of boundaries between different noun types. This paper is an investigation of the features of these nouns using a number of theoretical

In this article we demonstrate how fine-grained analysis of salient features of linguistic change over a relatively short, but significant period can help refine our notions of periodization. As our case study, we consider whether it is appropriate to distinguish a period called francais preclassique (‘Pre-Classical French’), and if so, what its temporal limits are. As our contemporary informants we

This study focuses on the grammaticalization of agreement markers from possessive pronouns, which has two different dimensions: loss of referentiality (function) and loss of morpho-phonological independence (form). I examine the referential potential and formal expression type of possessive person markers in a worldwide sample of 39 languages with an alienability distinction. Referential potential