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The present study offers an Optimality-Theoretic analysis of the syllabification of intervocalic consonants and glides in Modern English. It will be argued that the proposed syllabifications fall out from universal markedness constraints – all of which derive motivation from other languages – and a language-specific ranking. The analysis offered below is therefore an alternative to the traditional rule-based analyses of English syllabification, e.g. Kahn (1976), Borowsky (1986), Giegerich (1992, 1999) and to the Optimality-Theoretic treatment proposed by Hammond (1999), whose analysis requires several language-specific constraints which apparently have no cross-linguistic motivation.
Many analyses of existential sentences have focused attention on determining which of its elements constitutes the logical subject and predicate, and this has proven to be a not uncontroversial topic of research. Some, from both syntactic and semantic points of view, have argued that there is a subject (cf. Williams 1994) others that it is a predicate (cf. Moro 1997). Similarly, some have argued that the associate NP is a logical subject, others that it is apredicate (Higginbotham 1987).
One logical possibility that has not (to my knowledge) been pursued in the linguistics literature is that these statements are not of the form subject-predicate, a possibility that has been taken up in the philosophical literature by P.F. Strawson (1959). He claims that there are such statements and that their form is simpler than that of subject-predicate statements because it does not, and cannot, involve an expression that makes reference to an individual. Not involving reference to an individual, these sentences are therefore are made true by different means than a subject-predicate statement whose truth, in the simplest cases, depends on the denotation of the subject being a member of the denotation of the predicate. Of interest from the point of view of the present discussion is his claim that existential statements are examples of this kind of statement, which he calls a feature-placing statement. The truth of a statement of the form feature-placer requires that something with the set of features denoted by the associate NP exist at the location or coordinates expressed by the placer. In an existential sentence we can take the associate NP as the feature-denoting expression and the coda-XP as the placer.
There is an elegant account, proposed by Beaver and Condoravdi (2003), that assumes that the temporal connectives before and after are converses (i.e., they are analyzed by means of a unified lexical schema), and that explains away their different logical and veridical behavior appealing to other factors. There is an elegant explanation that connects the licensing of Polarity Items to informational strengthening requirements: Polarity Items are viewed as existentials that lead to a widening of the domain of quantification, and they are predicted to be legitimate only when this widening leads to a stronger statement (roughly, in downward monotone contexts). My plan is to connect these two approaches – by proposing an amendment in the definition Beaver and Condoravdi presented for before and after that is meant to account also for their Polarity Items licensing behavior.
The ultimate goal of this paper is to find a representation of modality compatible with some basic conditions on the syntax-semantic interface. Such conditions are anchored, for instance, in Chomsky's (1995) principle of full interpretation (FI). Abstract interpretation of modality is, however - be it "only" in semantic terms - already a hard nut to crack, way too vast to be dealt with in any comprehensive way here. What is pursued instead is a case-study-centered analysis. The case in point are the English modals (EM) viewed in their development through time - a locus classicus for a number of linguistic theories and frameworks. The idea will be to start out from two lines of research - continuous grammaticalization vs. cataclysmic change - and to explain some of their incongruities. The first non-trivial point here consists in deriving more fundamental questions from this research. The second, possibly even less trivial one consists in answering them. Specifically, I will argue that regardless of the actual numerical rate of change, there is an underlying and more structured way to account for the notions of change and continuity within the modal system, respectively.
Fronting a noun phrase changes the focus structure of a sentence. Therefore, it may affect truth conditions, since some operators, in particular quantificational adverbs, are sensitive to focus. However, the position of the quantificational adverb itself, hence its informational status, is usually assumed not to have any semantic effect. In this paper I discuss a reading of some quantificational adverbs, the relative reading, which disappears if the adverb is fronted. I propose that this reading relies not only on focus, but on B-accent (fall-rise intonation) as well. A fronted Q-adverb is usually pronounced with a B-accent; since only one element can be B-accented, this means that the scope of the adverb contains no B-accented material, hence no relative readings. Thus, the effects of fronting range more widely than is usually assumed, and quantificational adverbs are a useful tool with which to investigate these effects.
Functions of English "man"
(2006)
This paper discusses the semantics of the English particle man. It is shown that this particle does different things when used sentence-initially and sentence-finally. The sentenceinitial use is further shown to separate into two distinct intonational types with different semantic content. A formal semantics is proposed for these types.
This study examines intraoral pressure for English and German stops in bilabial and alveolar place of articulation. Our subjects are two speakers of American English and three speakers of German. VOICING is the main phonological contrast under evaluation in both word initial and word final position. For initial stops, a few of the pressure characteristics showed differences between English and German, but on the whole the results point to similar production strategies at both places of articulation in the two different languages. Analysis of the pressure trajectory differences between VOICING categories in initial position raises questions about articulatory differences. In the initial closing gesture, time from start of gesture to closure is roughly equivalent for both categories, but the pressure change is significantly smaller on average for VOICED stops. Final stops, however, present a more complicated picture. German final stops are neutralized to a presumed VOICELESS phonological state. English final /p/ is broadly similar to German /p/, but English /t/ often shows no pressure increase at all which is at odds with the conventional account of phonation termination via pressure increase and loss of pressure differential. The results raise the question of whether the German final stops should be considered VOICELESS or some intermediate form, at least as compared to English final stops.
It has often been noticed that one syntactic argument position can be realized by elements which seem to realize different thematic roles. This is notably the case with the external argument position of verbs of change of state which licenses volitional agents, instruments or natural forces/causers, showing the generality and abstractness of the external argument relation. (1) a. John broke the window (Agent) b. The hammer broke the window (Instrument) c. The storm broke the window (Causer) In order to capture this generality, Van Valin & Wilkins (1996) and Ramchand (2003) among others have proposed that the thematic role of the external argument position is in fact underspecified. The relevant notion is that of an effector (in Van Valin & Wilkins) or of an abstract causer/initiator (in Ramchand). In this paper we argue against a total underspecification of the external argument relation. While we agree that (1b) does not instantiate an instrument theta role in subject position, we argue that a complete underspecification of the external theta-position is not feasible, but that two types of external theta roles have to be distinguished, Agents and Causers. Our arguments are based on languages where Agents and Causers show morpho-syntactic independence (section 2.1) and the behavior of instrument subjects in English, Dutch, German and Greek (section 2.2 and 3). We show that instrument subjects are either Agent or Causer like. In section (4) we give an analysis how arguments realizing these thematic notions are introduced into syntax.
The unusual development of the PDE [present-day English] s-genitive can be historically motivated, if the 's form is supposed to be not a mere leftover of the Old English (henceforth OE) casemarking, but the outcome of the merging of two patterns: the inflectional genitive ending (levelled to -s) and the construction "John his book" (henceforth 'possessive-linked genitive') during the Middle and the Early Modem English phases.
As my corpus analysis will show, the semantic and syntactic constraints ruling the occurrence of the 's pattern in the time interval of the rise of the 's-pattern (1400 - 1650) are the same ones as those ruling the occurrence of the possessive-linked genitive.
This hypothesis is further confirmed by cross-language comparison (with the other West Germanic languages, especially Afrikaans).
This paper investigates the semantic underpinnings of the distinction between two syntactic types of "manner of movement" verbs in Levin (1993), namely the RUN and ROLL classes. According to Levin's (1993) and Levin & Rappaport's (1995) work on unaccusativity, a semantic factor of "internal causation" should be the trigger for the classification of a movement verb as intransitive (=not-unaccusative), and hence for its belonging to the RUN class. We point out empirical problems for this characterisation, mainly coming from the different readings of the German verb fliegen (fly). From a comparison with other semantically similar verbs, we conclude that the semantic description which underlies the class distinction should be refined: instead of "internal causation", the crucial semantic factor is described here as "inherent specification for a momentum of movement". This result indicates that forces, and relations between forces, have to be part of the semantic description of the manner component in movement verbs.