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Just pair‐merge Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2024-03-15 Ken Safir
Two structure‐building operations are currently posited in minimalist theory: an operation forming sets (set merge), and an operation forming ordered pairs (pair‐merge). I argue that pair‐merge is sufficient to generate syntactic relations, so set merge, also called simple merge, should be eliminated from syntactic theory on grounds of simplicity. This conclusion requires reevaluating the relationship
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Nominal licensing via dependent case: The view from pseudo noun incorporation in Wolof Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2024-03-14 Suzana Fong
Bare nominals in Wolof can occur in the object position and they must be adjacent to the verb that subcategorizes for them. This is a property usually attributed to pseudo noun incorporation (PNI). However, there are two circumstances under which this adjacency requirement is obviated: a DP is introduced between the subject and the PNI‐ed object, or the latter is ‐moved. While these are disparate phenomena
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Coordination and binary branching Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2024-03-09 Adam Przepiórkowski
In “Subordination and Binary Branching”, a recent (2023) Syntax paper, Ad Neeleman and colleagues proposed a new analysis of subordination. The main aim of this paper is to refute that analysis, using data from the coordination of unlike categories and unlike grammatical functions. Additionally, building on Neeleman et al.'s observations about the arbitrarily ‐ary—not just binary—nature of coordination
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On the definition of Merge Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2024-03-09 Erik Zyman
Two fundamental tasks of syntactic inquiry are to identify the elementary structure‐building operations and to determine what properties they have and why. This article aims to bring us closer to those goals by investigating Merge. Two recent definitions of Merge are evaluated. It is argued that both have significant strengths but also some drawbacks, and that set‐theoretic definitions of Merge in
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A unified approach to parasitic gap and across‐the‐board constructions: Evidence based on Mandarin Chinese Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2024-03-06 Jen Ting
Despite the lack of consensus on English facts, this study demonstrates that both parasitic gap (PG) and across‐the‐board (ATB) constructions in Mandarin Chinese exhibit paralle effects in variable binding reconstruction, while also displaying asymmetries in gap licensing categories. I argue that these patterns in Mandarin Chinese align with the sideward movement approach, supporting a version of the
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How to apply multiple scrambling in Japanese Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2024-03-06 Jun Abe
In this paper, I argue that the phenomena of multiple scrambling in Japanese are best captured by assuming different derivations, depending on whether they involve long‐distance or clause‐internal scrambling. I argue that long‐distance multiple scrambling involves remnant VP scrambling, on the assumption that long‐distance scrambling necessarily produces a focus chain, which thus prohibits separate
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Gilaki reverse Ezafe: The two faces of a nominal linker Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2024-03-04 Arsalan Kahnemuyipour, Mansour Shabani, Sahar Taghipour
This paper examines a nominal linker (known as reverse Ezafe) in the Caspian language Gilaki. It is shown that the nominal linker in Gilaki is in fact the realization of two different morphosyntactic elements with distinct properties. In doing so, we also highlight the differences between reverse Ezafe and Ezafe, found in Persian and other Iranian languages. This study has implications for the typology
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Some implications of again‐modification for the syntax of English particle verb constructions Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2024-03-02 Bill Haddican
This paper examines the way in which scope‐taking of again interacts with word order in the English particle verb alternation. Small‐clause approaches to the particle verb alternation differ from most competing approaches in taking both verb‐particle‐object and verb‐object‐particle orders to contain a result state‐denoting small clause. An expectation of this approach on a structural approach to again
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Phasehood as defective intervention: Possessor extraction and selective DP islandhood in West Circassian Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Ksenia Ershova
Ā‐extraction of possessors in West Circassian is constrained in a puzzling way: the possessor of an ergative or applied argument DP may not undergo clausebound wh‐movement, but long‐distance possessor extraction across a clausal boundary is grammatical. Based on the variable islandhood of these DPs, this paper argues for an agree‐based approach to phasehood. Phase opacity is treated as intervention
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Syntactic negation in Ewe (Tongugbe) agent nominalizations Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2024-02-27 Selikem Gotah, Soo‐Hwan Lee
Drawing on evidence from the scope patterns and the availability of negative polarity item (NPI) licensing of the negation marker ma‐, we show that NegP is realized in Ewe (Tongugbe) agentive nominals. We conclude that agentive nominals accommodate sentential negation, posing a challenge to previous assumptions. The implication of this work is that agent nominalizations can be more verb‐like than what
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Reassessing pseudosluicing in Austronesian Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2024-02-27 John Middleton
Pseudosluicing diagnostics have played an important role in wider debates about sluicing. Sluicing is the term used to describe the deletion of an embedded clausal constituent, which leaves only a wh‐phrase overt. Genuine sluicing requires syntactic or semantic identity between the sluiced clause and its antecedent, contrasting with pseudosluicing, in which pro‐drop creates the appearance of a sluice
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The lexical source of BIN and habitual be in African American English Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2024-02-24 Nicholas Sobin
Although various works on African American English (AAE) offer significant and insightful analyses of the semantic interpretation of its aspectual elements, including in particular stressed remote past BIN and habitual be (behab), the syntactic analysis of these elements is problematic. BIN and behab are claimed to be invariant lexical elements with fixed semantic values, and to not interact with INFL
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The Malagasy phrasal comparative Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2024-02-23 Eric Potsdam
There is no consensus in the literature on the analysis of phrasal comparatives. Both reduced clause analyses, in which the standard phrase contains elided clausal structure, and direct analyses, in which the standard of comparison is a direct complement to the standard marker, have been proposed. This paper argues for a direct analysis of the phrasal comparative in Malagasy, an Austronesian language
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Cantonese dislocation: Parallel chains or cyclic linearization? Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2024-02-23 Jackie Yan‐Ki Lai
This paper offers a critique of the cyclic linearization account of Cantonese dislocation recently advocated by Lee (2021). It shows that the ordering‐based analysis encounters a number of nonobvious problems when compared with the existing parallel‐chain account (Lai, 2019) and that the latter can be maintained under a broadened empirical landscape. The discussion bears on the development of a general
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A case study in underspecification of UG: External Pair Merge of v and T Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2024-02-20 Andreas Blümel
Previous works have explored the options of Pair Merging R and v as well as T and C, respectively, yielding R‐v and T‐C with various consequences. This paper proposes that v and T can yield the complex head v‐T, an amalgam formed by external Pair Merge. Some empirical ramifications for the verb cluster and the middle field in German are explored. If tenable, the current approach supports the idea that
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On the Parataxis of Arabic split questions Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2024-02-15 Ali Alzayid
In this article I present an analysis of split questions (SQs) in Modern Standard Arabic. I argue that this construction is best analyzed as a biclausal articulation, where two clauses are meditated by a special relation of coordination dubbed “Specifying Coordination.” Contrary to the previous literature on SQs, I maintain, on empirical and conceptual grounds, that SQs are best derived in a movement-free
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Arguments against head-stranding ellipsis in Japanese: A reply to Funakoshi (2016) Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2024-02-12 Tomoya Tanabe, Ryoichiro Kobayashi
Whether syntactic head movement exists in Japanese has been hotly debated because of the strictly head-final character of the language. This paper addresses this issue, focusing on data regarding null adjuncts. We demonstrate that the head-stranding ellipsis (HSE) analysis of null adjuncts is not conclusive. To achieve this, we show that null adjuncts are more widely observed than the HSE analysis
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Island effects and amelioration by resumption in Jordanian Arabic: An auditory acceptability-judgment study Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2023-12-14 Rania Al-Aqarbeh, Jon Sprouse
This study brings evidence from Jordanian Arabic, a primarily spoken grammatical-resumption language, into the (formal-experimental) empirical base of both theories of island effects and theories of island amelioration by resumption. We report four auditory judgment studies exploring two dependency types and four island types with a gap or resumption in the tail of the dependency, yielding 16 distinct
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Quantification at a distance and grammatical illusions in French Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2023-10-22 Jérémy Pasquereau, Brian Dillon, Lyn Frazier
Recent research in psycholinguistics supports the hypothesis that retrieval from working memory is a key component of establishing syntactic dependencies in comprehension. This can result in so-called grammatical illusions. These illusions have been modeled as the result of a content-addressable retrieval process in sentence comprehension that allows grammatically inaccessible licensing elements to
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More doubts on verb-stranding VP ellipsis: Reply to Simpson 2023 Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2023-10-11 Idan Landau
Advocating a verb-stranding-VP-ellipsis analysis for object-gap sentences, Andrew Simpson (“In defense of verb-stranding VP ellipsis”) argues that under negation the “adjunct reading” is missing because it depends on focal stress, which cannot be realized on unpronounced material. No such condition holds, I maintain, and the absence of the adjunct reading reflects a syntactic absence: argument-ellipsis
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In defense of verb-stranding VP ellipsis Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2023-10-11 Andrew Simpson
This remark offers arguments against recent challenges to analyses that postulate verb-stranding VP ellipsis (Idan Landau, “On the nonexistence of verb-stranding VP-ellipsis,” 2020, Linguistic Inquiry 51.2.341–365; Satoshi Oku, “A note on ellipsis-resistant constituents,” 2016, Nanzan Linguistics 11.56–70). The article defends the verb-stranding-VP-ellipsis hypothesis, arguing that it remains the strongest
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Adpositions and gapping Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2023-08-16 Aleksandr Kalinin
The ungrammaticality of prepositional gapping has remained a challenge to the theory of ellipsis since the inception of gapping studies. Given that Russian ambivalent adpositions can be deleted under gapping, the issue becomes even more complicated. In this article, I propose a solution to these issues by analyzing adpositional gapping as head sharing, derived by Parallel Merge. I argue that only heads
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Nominal ellipsis reveals concord in Moksha Mordvin Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2023-08-11 Mariia Privizentseva
On the basis of original data from Moksha Mordvin (Finno-Ugric), I argue that some languages have nominal concord even though modifiers of the noun generally do not show inflection. Evidence for the presence of concord comes from nominal ellipsis, under which inflection is phonologically realized and restricted in the same way as regular nominal concord. To account for the distribution of concord exponents
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A subject advantage in covert dependencies: The case of wh-question comprehension in French Sign Language Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2023-06-21 Charlotte Hauser, Valentina Aristodemo, Caterina Donati
Studies on sentence processing have shown that, as with all A-bar dependencies, content questions involving wh movement display a subject advantage. Very little is known, however, about wh-in-situ questions. The aim of this article is to fill this gap and explore whether a subject advantage can be found in wh-in-situ questions. We report the results of a sentence-to-picture matching task using in-situ
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Agree and the subjects of specificational clauses Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2023-06-14 Susana Bejar, Arsalan Kahnemuyipour
This article investigates agreement in Persian sentences with a specificational copular clause embedded under the epistemic modal tavānestan ‘can’. We argue that this structure is a raising structure. It exhibits agreement on both the embedded and modal verbs. Crucially, while the subject fails to control agreement in the embedded clause, it successfully controls agreement on the modal. We argue that
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A tale of two inverses Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2023-05-13 Will Oxford
The functional-typological literature distinguishes two kinds of inverse constructions: inverse voice, in which the patient becomes the subject, and inverse alignment, in which the patient is agreed with like a canonical subject. In this literature, Algonquian languages are held to be the prototypical example of a system in which the two kinds of inverses coexist: the inverse is a “deep” voice construction
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A Command Theoretic approach to prosodic smothering Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2023-03-25 Kenyon Branan
This article presents an analysis of prosodic smothering in Makonde (Bantu). Prosodic smothering is a phenomenon where certain elements require nearby elements to be phrased together with them that would otherwise be phrased apart. Prior analyses of this phenomenon must lexically specify certain elements as triggers of smothering. This article, building on previous work, derives smothering effects
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Experiencer intervention in English tough movement: Evidence from extraction of the tough adjective against syntactic- and semantic-intervention accounts Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2023-03-23 Martin Salzmann
It was first observed over a decade ago that the presence of experiencers leads to degradation in English tough movement. In the literature, this has been linked to either syntactic or semantic intervention. I will show that a crucial piece of data has been ignored in this debate, the possibility of extracting the tough adjective without the nonfinite CP. Under previous approaches, this seems to require
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On apparent pronominal feature contradictions: Shifty agreement in Telugu Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2023-02-23 Troy Messick
This article investigates so-called monstrous agreement—where a non-first-person pronoun can control first-person agreement on an embedded verb—in Telugu. Empirically, I provide the most in-depth description of monstrous agreement in Telugu to date. To account for monstrous agreement, I propose that embedded pronouns have morphosyntactic features that indicate their roles in both the matrix and embedded
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Concealed pied-piping in Russian: On left-branch extraction, parasitic gaps, and the nature of discontinuous nominal phrases Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2023-01-19 Tatiana Bondarenko, Colin Davis
We use parasitic gaps to examine left-branch extraction from nominal phrases in Russian. We observe that the interpretation of a parasitic gap in a context with left-branch extraction is the same as the interpretation assigned when an entire nominal phrase is moved. Thus we argue that Russian left-branch extraction involves concealed pied-piping of an entire nominal phrase, rather than true extraction
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A Cyclic Agree account of the Romance faire–infinitive causative: New evidence from Catalan Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2023-01-17 Anna Pineda, Michelle Sheehan
Catalan, like Italian and French, displays (notwithstanding certain complications) a pattern in causatives under facere such that the causee can be realized as dative only where its complement is “transitive.” We propose an analysis of this pattern based on Cyclic Agree. On our approach, transitivity-sensitive dative arises where a probe agrees with a DP that requires case licensing, having previously
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External merge in spec,CP: Complementizers projecting an argument Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2022-12-28 Irina Burukina
The standard assumption that spec,CP is always an A′ position has been questioned for several languages where embedded C heads are involved in agreement and case assignment; however, the idea that no XP can be introduced in spec,CP by external merge has remained unchallenged. The article presents novel data from control phenomena in Mari (Uralic; nominative, SOV) and argues that, in this language,
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Subordination and binary branching Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2022-12-07 Ad Neeleman, Joy Philip, Misako Tanaka, Hans van de Koot
Syntactic representations are overwhelmingly asymmetric and binary branching. We develop an account of this based on the notion that subordination must be licensed through the discharge of a unique selectional requirement. The resulting theory predicts that symmetric structures, if they exist, will allow n-ary branching. We argue that this prediction is borne out. (i) Core properties of coordination
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Agree feeds interpretation: Evidence from Japanese object honorifics Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2022-10-11 Shiori Ikawa
The operation Agree is generally considered to lack direct semantic effects. Based on the Japanese object-honorific construction, this work claims that Agree can in fact interact with LF interpretation such that some semantic predicates select their arguments via Agree. More specifically, I claim that the object-honorific marker serves as a semantic predicate honor, which selects its arguments via
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Mapping out- argument structure Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2022-09-13 Byron Ahn
This article explores a phenomenon of English in which out- combines with a predicate to form a complex predicate (e.g., outsing, outdo, outrun, outsmart, …), here called “out-pred.” A thorough investigation uncovers several new generalizations, which can be summarized as follows. (i) Out-pred formation is productive and syntactic, building upon the structure for the pred. (ii) Out- is the core of
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Wh quantifier float in German Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2022-08-16 Aaron Doliana
This article investigates the syntactic distribution of the German quantificational particle known as “invariant alles” (‘all’). The generalization that emerges is that, given a derivation, alles occurs in any position occupied by an Ā chain link of the “associate” of alles, that is, the phrase that alles “modifies.” The article concludes that alles forms a deep constituent with its associate and that
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Agree as information transmission over dependencies Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2022-08-09 Marina Ermolaeva, Gregory M. Kobele
In contemporary Minimalism agreement is the result of a syntactic operation. In contrast to Merge, Agree does not build structure, its role being to transmit morphological features from one head to another. We provide an alternative perspective on agreement in a Minimalist idiom, one that cuts the ontological pie in a different way. Syntax has as its only operation Merge, and agreement, now divorced
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Embedded allocutivity in Basque Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2022-07-30 Bill Haddican, Urtzi Etxeberria
Recent work has described allocutive marking in finite embedded contexts in Tamil and Magahi, where allocutivity interacts with indexical shift. It has been proposed that allocutive marking reflects agreement with a silent addressee-related DP present in all finite clauses even when no indexical shift applies. A prediction of this approach is the possibility of varieties with embedded allocutive marking
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On Causee in Sason Arabic Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2022-06-14 Faruk Akkuş
This article aims to understand the syntax of three causative constructions in Sason Arabic. It demonstrates that in geminate causatives and ‘give’ causatives, the causee is introduced in CauseeP, unlike the embedded agent in ‘make’ causatives, which embed a thematic VoiceP. Despite differing from Voice0$$ {}^0 $$ in several respects, Causee0$$ {}^0 $$, like Voice0$$ {}^0 $$, exhibits an active–passive-like
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Licensing unergative objects in ergative languages: The view from Polynesian Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2022-05-20 Rebecca Tollan, Diane Massam
Transitive and unergative verbs have long received a uniform syntactic analysis, where they differ in whether an overt object is present (in transitives) or absent (in unergatives). We examine how objects of unergative verbs are case licensed when they are present, focusing on a contrast between two related Polynesian languages: Samoan and Niuean. Both languages have ergative case systems, with subjects
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Determiner removal in Balinese nonpivot agents Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2022-05-20 Imke Driemel, Sören E. Tebay
Patient-voice clauses within the symmetric voice system of Balinese disallow any extraction from the external-argument position, while definite external arguments are blocked from occurring altogether. The former fact is traditionally taken as evidence for syntactic ergativity in Austronesian. The latter fact has recently been argued to provide evidence for postsyntactic case licensing via adjacency
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Person matters in impersonality Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2022-05-04 Ane Berro, Ane Odria, Beatriz Fernández
The Basque impersonal is a detransitivized construction where the internal argument is the only overt argument and the external argument, although semantically present, does not have any morphological reflex. This article argues that, despite its intransitive shape, the impersonal involves a particular kind of Voice projection that we term defective. For case and agreement, being defective means having
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Scope freezing and object shift in Ukrainian: Does Superiority matter? Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2022-02-09 Svitlana Antonyuk, Roksolana Mykhaylyk
This remark presents novel evidence on Ukrainian specificity-inducing object shift in its interaction with quantifier scope, evidence suggesting a generalization that whatever scope interpretations are established in the postverbal field will carry over into the preverbal field. We point out that the data present a serious challenge to the Superiority account of scope freezing, since that account predicts
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Deriving the anaphor–agreement effect and the violations of it Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2022-01-12 Gurujegan Murugesan
The term anaphor–agreement effect refers to the descriptive generalization that anaphors cannot control agreement on the verb. The general consensus in the literature is that the anaphor–agreement effect is a universal phenomenon. Contrary to that consensus, in this article, I present data from a set of languages where an anaphor does indeed control agreement on the verb, in violation of the anaphor–agreement
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Parenthetical niching: A third-factor phonosyntactic analysis Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2022-01-08 Andrew McInnerney
In this article, I develop a theory of how a syntactically unintegrated parenthetical is integrated with its host at the sensorimotor interface. First, I observe that the niches open to parentheticals, traditionally described in syntactic terms, are more accurately described in the terms of prosodic-hierarchy theory. In particular, I show that a niche corresponds to a phonological-phrase boundary.
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Exhaustivity and homogeneity effects with distributive-share markers: Experimental evidence from Serbian po Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2021-11-21 Ana Bosnić, Hamida Demirdache, Jennifer Spenader
There are two competing approaches to the semantics of distributive-share markers: they are either universal distributive quantifiers over events or are merely event-plurality markers. To address this debate, we present new conclusions based on novel experiments with Serbian transitive sentences in which the distributive-share marker po was attached to the direct object. The first two experiments investigated
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Phase-Constrained Obligatory Late Adjunction Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2021-11-18 Erik Zyman
It has sometimes been argued that adjuncts can merge late. This article provides a new argument for late adjunction and a new analysis of it. Exactly (or precisely) can adjoin to a wh phrase, and wh movement can affect either the entire adjunction structure (What exactly is it?) or only the host (What is it exactly?). Structures like what exactly can be generated VP internally, but surprisingly—and
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Impersonals, passives, and impersonal pronouns: Lessons from Lithuanian Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2021-11-18 Milena Šereikaitė
This study examines the properties of VoiceP and impersonal pronouns by contrasting two constructions in Lithuanian: the -ma/-ta impersonal and the canonical passive. I argue that, while these two constructions overlap morphologically, they are syntactically distinct. The -ma/-ta impersonal is related to the -no/-to construction in Polish and in Ukrainian. Although it patterns with the Ukrainian -no/-to
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Generalizing the Presuppositional Approach to the Binding Conditions Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2021-09-01 Benjamin Bruening
Almost all current approaches to the binding theory (the conditions that regulate covaluation between NPs within a sentence) have accepted the view that the binding theory should regulate only syntactic binding and not coreference. In this article, I argue that this is incorrect and that we need a binding theory that regulates both binding and coreference, as the classical binding theory had it. I
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Stripping and VP Ellipsis in Reduced Temporal Adverbs Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2021-08-26 Jason Overfelt
The first goal of this article is to argue that phrasal temporal adverbial constructions like Al left before Pat are derived via ellipsis from an underlying clausal source. The second goal is to demonstrate and account for the restricted distribution and interpretation of these reduced phrasal temporal adverbial constructions relative to their clausal counterparts and to temporal adverbial constructions
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The Done-State Derived Stative: A Case Study in Building Complex Eventualities in Syntax Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2021-08-13 Alison Biggs
A basic question for theories of the syntax–semantics interface is whether the relationship between the form and meaning of complex aspectual expressions is mediated by the pieces that make up hierarchical syntax or whether complex forms and their meanings can pair directly, in templatic or constructional representations, for example. This paper examines the string I’m done writing chapter 3 with this
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Antilocality at the Phase Edge Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2021-08-23 Erik Zyman
Much work has argued that syntactic movement is subject to antilocality constraints that prevent it from being too short. If so, a crucial question is precisely what those constraints are. This article investigates the interaction between antilocality and phases, and it argues that antilocality manifests in a particular way at phase edges. The article defends a generalization dubbed Phasal Antilocality:
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Morphosyntax and Phonology of Agreement in Turkish Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2021-03-25 Güliz Güneş
This article offers a new morphosyntactic account of subject agreement in the Turkish verbal domain. The account is based on a combination of well-known, novel, and overlooked observations about the distribution and prosody of verbal agreement. In Turkish, when certain morphosyntactic requirements are met and the verb is focused, as in fragment answers with ellipsis, the agreement morpheme can be parsed
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Avoiding Gaps in Romance: Evidence from Italian and French for a Structural Parsing Principle Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2021-04-05 Ingrid Konrad, Massimo Burattin, Carlo Cecchetto, Francesca Foppolo, Adrian Staub, Caterina Donati
Existing evidence suggests that the parser avoids positing a movement dependency if the grammar does not require doing so. By investigating the processing of two syntactic ambiguities that have not been the subject of processing studies before, we provide more conclusive evidence for this parsing bias in two Romance languages: French and Italian. In two acceptability-judgment experiments and two self-paced-reading
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Reconsidering the Optionality of Raising in Japanese Exceptional-Case-Marking Constructions Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2021-04-20 Masahiko Takahashi
This article examines two arguments for the optionality of raising in Japanese exceptional-Case-marking constructions and proposes that certain observations can be accounted for even if we assume that raising is obligatory. Specifically, I contend that the distributions of exceptionally Case-marked wh negative-polarity items and of embedded adjuncts, both of which have been cited as evidence for the
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Null Expletives and Embedded Clauses in Logoori Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2021-05-06 John Gluckman
This article is an examination of null expletive subjects occurring in the context of an embedded clause in Logoori, a Kenyan Bantu language. Logoori morphologically distinguishes between two null CP-linked expletive subjects in its subject-agreement paradigm. Based on morphological, syntactic, and semantic evidence, I argue against the postulation of a null (pro)nominal element (e.g., ). Instead,
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Radically Truncated Clauses in Hungarian and Beyond: Evidence for the Fine Structure of the Minimal VP Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2021-05-04 Tamás Halm
This article explores the syntax of radically truncated clauses in colloquial Hungarian. I argue that radically truncated clauses arise when, in informal speech situations and under time pressure, the derivation is terminated prematurely, at the VP level, and the bare VP (lacking any of the higher functional projections) is sent to spellout (PF) and semantic interpretation (LF). Due to their radically
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The Morphosyntax of Magahi Addressee Agreement Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2021-04-25 Deepak Alok
This article analyzes addressee agreement (allocutive agreement) in Magahi, an Eastern Indo-Aryan language. Magahi finite verbs encode the honorificity (social status) of the addressee, in addition to encoding the person and honorificity of the subject. Magahi addressee agreement is special in two respects. First, it is associated with finiteness: it is available in all finite clauses, main and embedded
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Two Places for Causees in Productive IsiXhosa Morphological Causatives Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2021-03-11 Neil Myler, Zoliswa O. Mali
Productive morphological causatives in isiXhosa exhibit a case alternation with respect to the causee: it can be unmarked or instrumental. Much recent literature on similar alternations in causative constructions in other languages analyzes them as involving differences in the size or category of the constituent selected by the causative morpheme. We show that such an analysis cannot be extended to
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Voice and Little v and VO–OV Word‐Order Variation in Chinese Languages Syntax (IF 0.966) Pub Date : 2021-03-11 Rint Sybesma
This article addresses some issues related to Voice and little v. It does so by discussing and analyzing the variation that exists in the Chinese language family with respect to object placement (VO versus OV). It turns out that this variation can be accounted for straightforwardly as long as we assume, first, that Voice and v are sometimes split and sometimes bundled, even within one language, and