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I present data that suggest the universal entailments of counterfactual donkey sentences aren’t as universal as some have claimed. I argue that this favors the strategy of attributing these entailments to a special property of the similarity ordering on worlds provided by some contexts, rather than to a semantically encoded sensitivity to assignment.
We bring experimental considerations to bear on the structure of comparatives and on our understanding of how quantifiers are processed. At issue are mismatches between the standard view of quantifier processing cost and results from speeded verification experiments with comparative quantifiers. We build our case in several steps:
1. We show that the standard view, which attributes processing cost to the verification process, accounts for some aspects of the data, but fails to cover the main effect of monotonicity on measured behavior. We derive a prediction of this view for comparatives, and show that it is not borne out.
2. We consider potential reasons - experimental and theoretical - for this theory-data mismatch.
3. We describe a new processing experiment with comparative quantifiers, designed to address the experimental concerns. Its results still point to the inadequacy of the standard view.
4. We review the semantics of comparative constructions and their potential processing implications. 5. We revise the definition of quantifier processing cost and tie it to the number of Downward Entailing (DE) operators at Logical Form (LF). We show how this definition successfully reconciles the theory-data mismatch. 6. The emerging picture calls for a distinction between the complexity of verified representations and the complexity of the verification process itself.
We present an experiment which tests children’s comprehension of the requirements of use of pronouns and definites. An adult-like use of definites and pronouns imposes different but related requirements. In the case of definites, a unique referent is required in the context, whereas in the case of a pronoun, the referent in the context has to be salient. In this experiment, we use a novel word task to test three-year-olds’ sensitivity to these requirements. Our results show that children are adult-like in their sensitivity to salience in their comprehension of pronouns, compared to definites. However, they failed to show sensitivity to the uniqueness requirement on the use of definites.
This paper argues that extant approaches to presupposition projection that either rely on strict linear order (Schlenker, 2009) or hierarchy (Romoli and Mandelkern, 2017) cannot provide a uniform account of data drawn from head-final languages. While building on Schlenker’s theory, this paper resolves the issues by restricting the calculation of local contexts to specific points in the parsing process. The consequence is that the theory makes a prediction robust to the head directionality parameter
Discourses in the historical (or narrative) use of the simple present in English prohibit backshifting, though they allow forward sequencing. Unlike both reference time theories and discourse coherence theories of these temporal inferences, we propose that backshifting has a different source from narrative progression. In particular, we argue that backshifting arises through anaphora to a salient event in the preceding discourse.
The semantics of adjectives related to nominals denoting societal roles, such as presidential (from president), have remained understudied. We examine the semantics of what we call role-denoting relational adjectives, providing a formal analysis using the notion of a frame, a unified representation for lexical knowledge, world knowledge, and context. The frames we propose are based on a constructivist philosophical understanding of social roles, leading us to posit a multi-tiered ontology of events and individuals. Using frames and our ontology, we provide a general semantics for role-denoting relational adjectives and roles
The Wolof imperfective auxiliary di is compatible with event-in-progress, habitual and future readings. Furthermore, while varieties of all these readings are available for di when it sits in a syntactically low position, only future readings are available when it sits in a syntactically high position. We aim to account for this puzzle by combining several ingredients independently motivated in the literature: (i) event-relative circumstantial modality for event-in-progress, habitual, and a subset of future readings; (ii) metaphyisical modality for generalized future readings; (iii) the idea that syntactic height determines the type of modal anchor that projects a modal base. This study contributes to our understanding of the relation between syntactic height and modal flavor, as well as the nature of modal-aspectual interactions cross-linguistically.
This paper presents a new account of the generalization that focused elements cannot be elided, framed within Unalternative Semantics, a framework that does away with syntactic F-marking. We propose the mirror image of the generalization: what is elided cannot introduce alternatives. We implement this as a focus restriction in UAS and then go on to show how to account for MAXELIDE effects using the same technique, without making reference to any transderivational constraints.
Miners and modals
(2018)
I generalise Kolodny and MacFarlane’s miners puzzle by showing epistemic analogues of their case exist. After motivating various conservative approaches to the original problem, I show how they fail to solve the problem in its epistemic guise. I argue that a probabilistic approach to information-sensitivity gives a general solution to the problem.
According to Ogihara (1995), the usage of the embedded present in a speech report such as John said that Mary is in the room is restricted by the cause of John’s belief (the state that made John think that Mary is in the room): the present tense can be used only if this cause still holds at the time that John said that Mary is in the room is uttered.
This paper presents experimental evidence demonstrating that this is only one of the factors that licenses a felicitous usage of the embedded present tense. In particular, we show that the cause of belief still holding is not a necessary condition, and identify two additional, sufficient (but not necessary) factors: in cases of false belief, who is aware of the falsity of the belief and duration of the reported state. While these factors are independent, they collectively support the idea that the present tense encodes ‘current relevance’, even in embedded contexts (e.g. Costa 1972; McGilvray 1974). This gives rise to the question of how we can derive ‘current relevance’ and, in particular, whether previous analyses of the embedded present tense are adequately equipped to do so.
In recent years, experimental research has demontrated great variability in the rates of scalar inferences across different triggering expressions (Doran et al. 2009, 2012, van Tiel et al. 2016). These studies have been taken as evidence against the so-called uniformity assumption, which posits that scalar implicature is triggered by a single mechanism and that the behaviour of one scale should generalize to the whole family of scales. In the following, we present an experimental study that tests negative strengthening for a variety of strong scalar terms, following up on van Tiel et al. (2016). For example, we tested whether the statement John is not brilliant is strengthened to mean that John is not intelligent (see especially Horn 1989). We show that endorsement rates of the scalar implicature (e.g., John is intelligent but not brilliant) are anti-correlated with endorsements of negative strengthening. Further, we demonstrate that a modified version of the uniformity hypothesis taking into account negative strengthening is consistent with van Tiel et al.’s data. Therefore, variation across scales may be more systematic than suggested by the van Tiel et al. study.
Alternative Questions with "or not" (NAQ) convey a cornering effect, which is not found with they polar counterparts (PQ). This effect has been claimed to consist of two parts (Biezma 2009): NAQs (i) cannot be used discourse-initially and (ii) they do not license followup questions/subquestions.
In this paper, we ask the following: Are both parts of cornering linked to the same property of NAQs? Or do they reflect distinct linguistic phenomena? We explore the issue by comparing the behavior of NAQs to Complement Alternative Questions (CAQ), a type of question that, like NAQs, presents logically opposite alternatives but, unlike NAQs, fully spells out the second one. Results from two experiments suggest that both parts of cornering can instead be explained in terms of independent semantic and pragmatic principles, which operate beyond the domain of alternative questions.
Sentences containing subjective predicates - e.g., "The movie was awesome"” - are intuitively anchored to a particular perspective; this makes them different from sentences describing objective facts - e.g., "The movie was set in 1995".
While authors have long debated on whether this intuition tracks a lexical distinction between subjective and factual predicates, much remains to be explored on whether, and how, the difference between these two assertions is reflected at the illocutionary level. Relying on evidence from two experiments, we show that assertions containing subjective predicates display different discourse behavior from objective assertions. We take these findings to support the idea that SAs should be assigned a special illocutionary profile, unveiling a genuine empirical difference between subjective and factual speech.
This paper deals with topic markers interacting with discourse information in imperatives. It compares two topic markers from Slovenian (‘pa’) and Japanese (‘-wa’) and shows that while they mostly match in terms of the foci they associate with, their functions differ in imperatives: only ‘pa’ may yield a concessive imperative reading. It is shown that this reading can be derived while keeping a single entry for ‘pa’ by making attitudes of discourse participants part of the focus ‘pa’ associates with. The split between Slovenian and Japanese can then be attributed to minor differences in terms of which foci ‘pa’ and ‘-wa’ may associate with.
This paper explores Turkish numeral constructions, which have typologically two interesting properties: (i) the existence of an optional classifier, (ii) the incompatibility of plurals with them. I argue that numerals are modifiers of type <<e,t>,<e,t>> defined only for atomic properties (Ionin and Matushansky 2006). The explanation rests on the semantics of bare singulars proposed to denote sets of atoms (contra Bale et al. 2010), and the semantics of the classifier claimed to be a partial identity function presupposing atomic properties.
This paper presents an exploratory production study of Bharatanatyam, a figurative (narrative) dance. We investigate the encoding of coreference vs. disjoint reference in this dance and argue that a formal semantics of narrative dance can be modeled in line with Abusch’s (2013, 2014, 2015) semantics of visual narrative (drawing also on Schlenker’s, 2017a, approach to music semantics). A main finding of our investigation is that larger-level group-boundaries (Charnavel, 2016) can be seen as triggers for discontinuity inferences (possibly involving the dynamic shift from one salient entity to another).
The proper semantic treatment of the complements of Responsive Predicates (ResPs), those predicates which may embed either declarative or interrogative clauses, is a longstanding puzzle, given standard assumptions about complement selection. In order to avoid positing systematic polysemy for ResPs, typical treatments of ResP complements treat their arguments either as uniformly declarative-like (propositional) or interrogative-like (question).
I shed new light on this question with novel data from Estonian, in which there are verbs think-like meanings with declarative complements and wonder-like meanings with interrogative complements. I argue that these verbs’ meaning is fundamentally incompatible with a proposition-taking semantics for ResPs, and therefore a question-taking semantics is to be preferred.
This paper argues that traces only range over individual semantic types and cannot be type shifted into higher types to circumvent this restriction. The evidence comes from movement targeting positions where DPs must denote properties and the behavior of definite descriptions in these positions. These constraints on possible traces demonstrate that syntactic operations impose active restrictions on permissible semantic types in natural language.
The meaning of counterfactual conditionals is standardly described using the similarity approach (Stalnaker, 1968; Lewis, 1973). This approach has recently been challenged by Ciardelli et al. (2018). They argue that the similarity approach is in principle unable to account for the meaning of counterfactuals with an antecedent consisting of a conjunction embedded under a negation (¬(p^q)). Ciardelli et al. (2018) dismiss the approach on these grounds and offer an alternative. The main goal of the present paper is to defend the similarity approach against this attack. I will argue that the problem that underlies the observations in Ciardelli et al. 2018 is more general and not solved by the solution they offer. I will furthermore argue, against Ciardelli et al. (2018), that the cause of the problem is not the similarity approach, but the interaction of negation with the meaning of counterfactual conditionals. The paper will conclude with a first outline of a solution for the problem, which still uses the similarity approach, but combines it with an alternative semantics for negation.
Schlenker (2010) recently provided data from English and French suggesting that, contrary to standard assumptions (McCawley, 1982; Potts, 2005; Arnold, 2007; AnderBois et al., 2011), non-restrictive relative clauses (NRCs) can take narrow scope under operators of the sentence within which they are embedded. This paper presents three experiments in German confirming this claim. The results show that embedded readings are available with NRCs in German and give first insights into the puzzle under which conditions these embedded readings do or do not show up.
Schlenker (2012) proposes that when framed within a modern Stalnakerian view of presupposition and common ground (Stalnaker, 1998, 2002), Maximize Presupposition! (Heim, 1991; Sauerland, 2008) can be viewed as a special case of the maxim of Quantity (Grice, 1975).
We provide data suggesting that in some cases, Maximize Presupposition! applies even when speakers are not expected to use a presupposition as vectors of new information. We argue that these data support the view that Maximize Presupposition! is an independent pragmatic principle, distinct from Quantity.
It is traditionally assumed that lexical causative verbs (e.g. kill) express direct causation only, while periphrastic (bi-clausal) causatives (e.g. cause to die) may also express indirect causation. In favour of this constraint, Fodor famously observed that the (change of) state introduced by lexical causative verbs is not accessible for separate adverbial modification by temporal (or manner) adverbials. In this paper, I present old and new arguments against the direct causation constraint under the definitions of directness of Fodor and Wolff. I then propose a new definition of directness in terms of ab-initio causal sufficiency framed in Kvart’s probabilistic account of singular causation. I argue that directness so redefined is an implicature rather than an entailment of lexical causative verbs, which enables me to account for old and new data. Furthermore, I account for why the constraint on separate modification by temporal adverbials can be relaxed with eventuality-denoting subjects.
The verb ‘rise’ can be used both with property-denoting nouns like ‘temperature’ but also with NPs like ‘a Titan’ or ‘China’. Whereas in the former case the change triggered by a rising event is directly related to the subject (its current value increases), this does not hold for ‘a titan’ or ‘China’. In this case it is a property of these objects, say their height or their political power, which increases in value. Furthermore, ‘rise’ does not target a particular property as the examples above show. This data has led Cooper (2010) to the conclusion that it is presumably not possible (i) “to extract a single general meaning of words which covers all the particular meanings of the word in context”, and (ii) “to determine once and for all the set of particular contextually determined meanings of a word”. In this article we present a solution to the two problems raised by ‘rise’ in a frame theory. ‘Rise’ is analyzed as a scalar verb which does not lexicalize a complete scale in its meaning. Rather, it shows underspecification relative to the dimension (property) parameter of a scale. The set of admissible properties is determined by a constraint on the value ranges of properties. If the property is not uniquely determined by the subject, the comprehender uses probabilistic reasoning based on world knowledge and discourse information to defeasibly infer the most likely candidates from this set (2nd problem).
The first problem is solved not by simply introducing objects into the representation of a discourse but instead by pairs consisting of an object and an associated frame component which collects the object information contributed by the discourse. Changes triggered by events like the one denoted by ‘rise’ are modelled as update operations on the frame component while the object component is left unchanged.
Extreme nouns and maximizers
(2018)
Maximizers (completamente ‘completely’, totalmente ‘totally’) are degree modifiers restricted to maximum standard adjectives. Spanish adjectives of completeness [ACs] (completo ‘complete’, total ‘total’) display a behavior similar to that of their adverbial counterparts when they combine with nouns like idiot. This paper argues that ACs are maximality modifiers of idiot-like nouns, which are defended to be gradable and denote extreme degrees of properties.
Establishing a parallelism between adverbs and adjectives of completeness allows us to explore scalarity across categories and the relevance of scale structure in the nominal domain.
In this paper, I address verbal predicates of change in Southern Aymara, an understudied Andean language. I concentrate on verbs that are derived with the suffix -cha. This suffix derives degree achievements and creation predicates. I propose that they should be analyzed uniformly as degree achievements. The main empirical point of this paper is that there are two degree morphemes that combine with verbs with -cha, namely, a covert positive morpheme v.POS and an overt suffix -su. The latter is a degree morpheme that restricts the standard of comparison to lexical or contextual maximal degrees. I propose an analysis in terms of Maximize Presupposition: v.POS and -su constitute lexical alternatives where the latter is preferred over the former when maximal values are reached. v.POS is thus felicitous when no maximum is reached. The discussion bears on how telicity is achieved cross-linguistically when degree achievements are considered, thus enriching our typologies on the topic.
Whether degrees should be modeled as simple semantic primitives or ontologically complex entities has been an issue in recent formal semantic research. This article aims to make a contribution to this scholarly enterprise by investigating the Differential Verbal Comparative (DVC) construction in Chinese. DVCs exhibit peculiar properties : (i) obligatory differentials, and (ii) DPs as differentials(e.g., liang ben xiaoshuo ‘two CL novel’).
We propose that a degree is the entity correlate of a property that is formed on the basis of a measure, akin to Chierchia-style kind. This new kind of degree, coupled with a difference function-based semantics for comparatives, correctly predicts the behaviors of DVCs which would otherwise remain formally inscrutable. This article’s contributions are twofold: (i) it provides direct support for the degree-as-kind analysis by extending its empirical scope; and (ii) by combining degrees as kinds with a difference function-based semantics, it represents an improvement over the previous degree-as-kind analysis based on linear ordering.
Some kind of relative clause
(2018)
Amount Relatives (ARs) differ from restrictive relative clauses in that they do not refer to a particular object denoted by the head of the relative clause, but to an amount of such objects (Carlson, 1977a; Heim, 1987). Traditionally, ARs have been regarded as degree expressions.
In this paper I argue against this view and propose instead that amount interpretations of relative clauses are in fact a special case of kind interpretation.
Based on a sample of seven languages, I show that the so-called modal inferences in ever free relatives (ignorance and indifference) are not universally available. The primary reading of ever free relatives crosslinguistically turns out to be a “non-modal” one, which is available to all languages under investigation. The implication is that if there is a modal inference triggered by the use of the ever-morpheme in FRs, the inference is likely to have a source external to the ever free relative (Lauer, 2009; Condoravdi, 2015; Hirsch, 2016). In line with this conclusion, I propose to generalize Hirsch’s (2016) analysis of ignorance ever free relatives, suggesting that all ever free relatives, no matter how they are ultimately interpreted, are instances of (un)conditionals + donkey-anaphoric definite descriptions.
Generics and typicality
(2018)
Cimpian et al. (2010) observed that we accept generic statements of the form 'Gs are f' on relatively weak evidence, but that if we are unfamiliar with group G and we learn a generic statement about it, we still interpret it in a much stronger way: (almost) all Gs are f .
This paper makes use of notions like 'representativeness' and 'contingency' from (associative learning) psychology to provide a semantics of generics that explains why people accept generics based on weak evidence. We make use of the Heuristics and Biases approach of Tversky and Kahneman (1974) and the Associative Theory of Probability Judgements to explain pragmatically why people interpret generic statements in a much stronger way. The spirit of the approach has much in common with Leslie's (2008) cognition-based ideas about generics, but the semantics is grounded on Cohen's (1999) relative readings of generic sentences. The basic intuition is that a generic of the form 'Gs are f' is true, not because most Gs are (or tend to have) f , but because f is typical for G, which means that f is valuably associated with G.
'Enough'-/'too'-constructions (E/T constructions) have an implicative reading: e.g., "Mary was clever enough to leave early yesterday" entails Mary left early yesterday. I argue that this implicative reading is not due to the lexical semantics proper of 'enough'/'too', but due to its bi-clausal structure (e.g., the above-mentioned example is analyzed as "Mary left early yesterday because she was clever enough"). I analyze 'enough' and 'too' simply as degree modifiers that involve a comparison: 'enough' means reaching the lower bound of an interval, while 'too' means exceeding the upper bound of an interval. Then inspired by Schulz (2011), Baglini and Francez (2015), and Nadathur (2016), I relate the semantics of E/T constructions to causal dependence: due to some sufficiency/excess, the infinitival complement clause in E/T constructions is episodically or generically (depending on its aspect being perfective or imperfective) true/false. I also argue that this infinitive has its tense and aspect marked on the main predicate of sentences, resulting in the seeming correlation between aspect and implication in languages that overtly make a distinction between perfective and imperfective aspects (e.g., French).
This paper addresses the question of how to account for the semantic variability of weak free adjuncts. Weak free adjuncts are non-clausal adjuncts that associate with an argument of the main predicate, contribute propositional content, and can interact with temporal or modal operators, which leads to different, adverbial-clause-like interpretations. I focus on a specific type of weak adjuncts, non-clausal as-phrases, and propose a unified semantic analysis for the full range of interpretational possibilities that takes into account the interpretational contingency on different syntactic positions. I show that this analysis improves on Stump’s (1985) original analysis of weak adjuncts. I then go on to discuss the limitations of both Stump’s account and the unified account. Both accounts fail to capture that the interaction of weak adjuncts with modal operators underlies certain restrictions on the properties of the modal operators—an observation that has not been discussed in the literature so far.
The paper proposes a new semantics for good-predications involving finite if -and that-clauses. The proposal combines a standard semantics for conditionals with a standard semantics for the positive form of gradable adjectives and a minimal semantics for modal good. The predicted truth-conditions and conditions of use solve the mood puzzle presented in the first part of the paper. The remainder of the paper defends the classical notion of comparative goodness in terms of a comparison between possible worlds against Lassiter (2017)’s challenge.
Shared mechanism underlying unembedded and embedded enrichments:
evidence from enrichment priming
(2018)
In this paper, we use a priming paradigm to explore the mechanisms underlying unembedded and embedded scalar enrichments. In particular, the aim is to see if local pragmatic enrichment could be a shared mechanism, involved in both. The two experiments presented adopt Bott & Chemla's (2016) enrichment priming paradigm and test whether unembedded and embedded enrichments could prime each other. The goal is to investigate whether local pragmatic enrichment is indeed being accessed for the interpretation of the unembedded scalar and whether local enrichments, like other lexical semantic phenomena, are susceptible to priming.
This paper investigates the interpretation of Japanese -toka and -tari, two nonexhaustive particles that receive conjunctive interpretations in upward-entailing environments, but disjunctive interpretations in downward-entailing and question contexts.
We analyze -toka and -tari as items that introduce unstructured sets of alternatives in a Hamblin-style alternative semantics (Hamblin, 1973; Kratzer and Shimoyama, 2002), and derive their conjunctive and disjunctive readings via an interaction between these sets and the semantics of the environment containing them.
Revising a proposal by Guerzoni (2003), we propose to derive universal projection of presuppositions in wh-questions, where attested, from a family of three felicity conditions on question use. Assuming that these felicity conditions can be violated under certain conditions, this proposal predicts a typology of contexts where universal projection can exceptionally be unattested. We propose that this prediction is correct, presenting a family of scenarios where the expected absence of universal projection is observed.
This paper presents the results of two experiments in German testing the acceptability of (non-)restrictive relative clauses (NRCs/RRCs) with split antecedents (SpAs). According to Moltmann (1992), SpAs are only grammatical if their parts occur within the conjuncts of a coordinate structure and if they have identical grammatical functions. Non-conjoined SpAs that form the subject and the object of a transitive verb are predicted to be ungrammatical. Our study shows that the acceptability of such examples improves significantly if the predicate that relates the parts of the SpA is symmetric. Moreover, it suggests that NRCs and RRCs behave differently in these cases with respect to the SpA-construal. We can make sense of this observation if we follow Winter (2016) in assuming that transitive symmetric predicates have to be analyzed as unary collective predicates and thus provide a collective antecedent for the RC at the semantic (not the syntactic) level. As we will argue, this accounts for some of the disagreement we found in the literature and gives us new insights into both the semantics of symmetric predicates and the semantics of NRCs.
It has been claimed and widely assumed that caseless direct objects in Turkish exhibit a sort of syntactic incorporation, and only their cased counterparts are true syntactic arguments (Kornfilt 1997; Knecht 1986; Nilsson 1986; Öztürk 2005 among others). Cased and caseless objects are thus widely taken as derivationally related, crystallized in Kelepir's (2001) proposal that objects pick up overt accusative as they move out of the VP. In this paper, I would like to revisit both the empirical evidence and the interpretation leading to these claims and propose revisions.
I first show that not all caseless objects are the same. Mostly drawing on Aydemir (2004), I argue that bare caseless objects and those with indefinite expressions have differences that would be very unusual if they were both incorporated. However, adopting Öztürk (2005) and against Aydemir (2004), neither of the cases can be analyzed as head incorporation.
I then turn to the cased vs. caseless distinction and argue that cased and caseless objects are not that different after all. Based on data with strictly controlled information structure, I arrive at a different generalization than most of the earlier reports and claim that caseless objects are morphosyntactically as moveable as their cased counterparts.
Hence, I propose to replace the notion of incorporation in the literature of Turkish syntax with the notion of weak case (de Hoop 1992) and conclude by a discussion of the domain of syntactic analysis in this primarily semantic phenomenon.
"Je suis Charlie" was used over 619.000 times in the two days that have followed the attack of the editorial team of Charlie Hebdo (Le Progrès, The Huffington Post) and has regularly been taken up in both written and spoken form since. In this paper, we argue that the structure of this sentence actually clashes with its meaning. More specifically, whereas its word order and default rightmost sentence stress are compatible either with an all-focus reading or a narrow focusing of Charlie, the context of use of this sentence as well as the solidarity/empathy message it intends to communicate suggest that its subject is narrowly focused. We will propose that two strategies have emerged to solve this conflict: (i) various alternative forms have appeared that allow proper subject focusing and (ii) speakers have reinterpreted the structure so as to pragmatically retrieve the (additive) focused nature of the subject.
The present investigation steps back to the claims of the 1990s by assuming that there is a functional opposition in the use of P- and D-PRO which affects the status of the pronoun's referent in the mental model of the discourse. We interpret the earlier findings as an indication of an information structural difference which is specifically relevant on the discourse level. The question we address here is twofold. Firstly, we ask whether the assumed opposition in the information status of P- and D-PRO referents has consequences on referent continuation in the ongoing discourse. So far, the effects of P- vs. D-PRO use were determined concerning the status of the pronoun referent in the actual sequence of discourse, i.e. they were determined by a judgement on the salience or the topic/focus status of the pronominal DP. As far as we can see, this determination has not been operationalized further. Since there are contexts in which both P- and D-PRO would fit in with only a feeling of a difference but without clear-cut exclusiveness, the opposition is empirically not well validated. If we could show that there are effects of type of pronoun on the ongoing discourse this would, in our view, provide the lacking empirical validation. Secondly, we ask whether there are effects of the narrator's point of view on P- and D-PRO use. The idea behind this question is that the way of information unfolding in discourse depends on the speaker. S/he decides which pieces of information come next, what is foreground and what is background information. If type of pronoun choice is related to the processes of discourse organization by the speaker – via fore- and backgrounding of information – and if internal or external location of the narrator's point of view influences the organization strategies of the speaker/narrator this might have an ffect on the use of P- and D-PRO.
In this article, I provide a description and analysis of the morphemes čiɫ 'do to', ḥta 'do towards' and cḥin 'do for' in the Southern Wakashan language Nuuchahnulth (nuučaan̓uɫ). I argue that these morphemes are verbal applicatives that add a non-core argument to the thematic structure of a verb.
Verbal applicatives in Nuuchahnulth are interesting to investigate because they exhibit typologically unique behaviour that has never been studied before. Applicatives are traditionally considered functional elements whose only purpose is to add an indirect object to the argument structure of the verb (Pylkkanen 2002:17). Nuuchahnulth is the only known language that productively uses independent verbs for this purpose.
Nuuchahnulth is an indigenous language of Canada spoken in the province of British Columbia. It consists of 14 major dialects, most of which have never been studied. All of these dialects are now highly endangered and urgently need to be documented.
This paper aims to work toward a proper understanding of the role of preverbal ge- in Old English (henceforth OE) and its disappearance in the course of Middle English. This prefix is reminiscent of its cognates in Modern German and Dutch (also written ge-) in its distribution, but even a cursory examination of the details reveals it to be quite distinct, as we will see. The proper characterization of that distribution, and of its diachronic development, has proven to be extremely difficult. I have thus carried out a large-scale corpus study using the York-Toronto-Helsinki parsed corpus of Old English prose (Taylor et al. 2003) and the Penn-Helsinki parsed corpus of Middle English, 2nd ed. (Kroch & Taylor 1999). This paper will report the results of the first phase of the project, involving patterns in the data that could be identified primarily on the basis of automatic searches in the corpora.
In German, female and male first names are strictly segregated: there are two big inventories with the only purpose to separate women and men. Unisex names are extremely seldom. If they are chosen, they have to be followed by a sex-specific middle name (e.g. Kim Uwe, Kim Annette). If we look at the phonological components of first names, i.e. at their sounds, we can state that male and female names became more similar over the last decades. Whereas in the 1950's, typical first names such as Katharina and Rolf diverged considering their phonic inventory considerably, today, many girls are named Leah and Lara and many boys Noah and Luca. These names share nearly the same sounds, they consist of two syllables and are stressed on the first one. If we look behind the scenes, it becomes clear that the officially required onomastic separation of the two sexes is undermined. In this paper, I will present a socalled phonetic gender score for German first names for the first time (see also Schmidt-Jüngst in this volume). It allows for measuring a degree of femaleness and maleness of names. In a second step, it will be asked whether unofficial names such as pet names, which are not obliged to mark sex also tend to be gendered or if they disobey the gender barrier. It will be shown that the most intimate names are not interested in stressing the denoted person's sex. In contrast to first names, pet names tend to be maximally de-gendered.
Locative inversion in Cuwabo
(2014)
This paper proposes a detailed description of locative inversion (LI) constructions in Cuwabo, in terms of morphosyntactic properties and thematic restrictions. Of particular interest are the use of disjoint verb forms in LI, and the co-existence of formal and semantic LI, which challenges the widespread belief that the two constructions cannot be found in the same language.
Introduction
(2014)
Bantu languages have been at the heart of the research on the interaction between syntax, prosody and information structure. In these predominantly SVO languages, considerable attention has been devoted to postverbal phenomena. By addressing issues related to Subjects, Topics and Object-Verb word orders, the goal of the present papers is to deepen our understanding of the interaction of different grammatical components (syntax, phonology, semantics/pragmatics) both in individual languages and across the Bantu family. Each paper makes a valuable contribution to ongoing discussions on the preverbal domain.
Irene Heim in unpublished work proposed a new syntax-semantics interface for propositional attitude reports based on an ontology without transworld individuals, but counterpart functions instead. We show that the approach can capture the 'de re'/'de dicto' distinction, but makes different predictions from accounts with transworld individuals. Specifically, the account uses a non-invertible counterpart functions: a single individual in an alternative world can be the counterpart of many individuals of the real world. The directionality of counterpart functions predicts that a 'de dicto' interpreted DP cannot be an argument of a 'de re' interpreted predicate. We show that the predicted restriction is corroborated by existing work on restrictions on 'de re' interpretation. The derivation of constraints on 'de re' interpretation argues empirically for the counterpart ontology and Heim’s implementation thereof.
Decomposing coordination
(2014)
Natural languages display a surprising diversity of expression of elementary logical operations. The study of this variation is emerging as an important topic of cross-linguistic semantics. In this paper, we address the expression of coordination from this perspective, especially coordination of individual denoting expressions such as "John and Mary". We argue that there is an underlying universal structure for individual coordination, and that the cross-linguistic variation can be explained by assuming that languages pronounce different morphemes of this universal structure. In particular, we argue that there two main types of system for the expression of individual coordination: the J-type and the μ-type. In μ-type languages the morpheme used for individual coordination also has uses a quantificational or focus particle, while in the J-type languages it doesn't. Instead at least in many J-type languages the same morpheme is used for individual and propositional coordination. The evidence we present for our model comes from two sources: new data from specific data of the J-type and μ-type languages, and from a study of the historical development of the expression of individual coordination in Indo-European which switched from a μ-type to a J-type system.
In the present paper, we concentrate on (selected) Bantu and Nilotic bare-passive strategies and lay out the basis for a typology of transitive passive constructions in these languages. We argue that bare-passives constitute an optimal strategy to change prominence relations between arguments, in languages that strongly hold to the default mapping between the highest thematic role available and the grammatical subject (i.e. Spec,TP). The Nilotic and Bantu languages discussed here differ in their way of satisfying this default mapping. In particular, impersonal bare-passives satisfy it by resorting to an agentive place-holder (an indefinite subject marker) and realizing the logical agent as a lower thematic/semantic role (e.g. instrument or locative). Left-dislocation and so called 'subjectobject' reversal bare-passives realize the default matching between agent and subject in a more straightforward way, but locate the patient in a higher argument position within the inflectional domain (Spec,TopP). As argued in Hamlaoui and Makasso (2013) and Hamlaoui (2013), and in line with Noonan (1977), the present languages display a clauseinternal split between subjecthood (being the grammatical subject in Spec,TP) and topicality (being the subject of the predication, in an inflectional-domain internal Spec,TopP).
Proportional determiner quantifiers in German allow interpretations that violate the conservativity universal of Keenan and Stavi (1986). I argue for an analysis that distinguishes between surface syntax and the logical form of sentences. I show that in surface syntax, German non-conservative quantifiers are determiners that form a constituent with a noun phrase and share case and agreement properties with the noun phrase. But I propose that at logical form the non-conservative determiners undergo an adverbialization movement and are interpreted by a mechanism that generalizes focus-a ected quantification of Herburger (2000). This result refines the understanding of conservativity as a constraint on interpretation.
The present paper aims at describing different pre-verbal focus strategies in Kisikongo (H16a), spoken in the vicinity of Mbanza Kongo, northern Angola. This western Bantu language is part of the Kikongo Language Cluster (KLC), stretching from southern Gabon to northern Angola, including Cabinda and parts of Congo-Brazzaville and Congo-Kinshasa. Kikongo exhibits a clause-internal pre-verbal argument focus position, which has rarely been reported in Bantu languages, except in Mbuun (B87) (Bostoen and Mundeke 2012) and Nsong (B85d) (Koni Muluwa and Bostoen, this volume), both spoken in the neighboring Kwilu region of the DRC. The more extensively studied eastern and southern Bantu languages generally have a post-verbal argument focus position (cf. Watters 1979, Morimoto 2000, Creissels 2004, Güldemann 2007, Buell 2009, van der Wal 2009, among others). In addition to this mono-clausal argument focus strategy, Kisikongo also relies on different bi-clausal constructions to focus arguments, i.e. cleft-constructions.
This paper deals with left and right dislocation in Embɔsi, a Bantu language (C25) spoken in Congo-Brazzaville. The prosody of dislocation has gathered considerable attention, as it is particularly informative for the theories of the syntax-prosody mapping of Intonation Phrases (a.o. Selkirk, 2009, 2011; Downing, 2011). Concentrating on selected Bantu languages, Downing (2011) identifies two main phrasing patterns. She primarily distinguishes languages in which only right dislocated phrases display a lack of prosodic integration ("asymmetric" languages), from languages in which both left and right dislocations phrase separately ("symmetric" languages). Hiatus avoidance processes, boundary tones and register expansion/reduction indicate that Embɔsi displays a somewhat more intricate phrasing pattern. In this language, both left and right dislocated items sit outside of the Intonation Phrase formed by the core-clause, but only the latter form their own Intonation Phrase. We also discuss the prosody of multiple dislocations (i.e. with two dislocated arguments), which have not so far received all the attention they deserve. What we observe in Embɔsi is that either the two dislocated items phrase together and are not integrated to the core Intonation Phrase, or only the outermost dislocated element phrases separately.