This paper presents and analyzes antipassive constructions in the Mayan language Kaqchikel. Through various syntactic tests, we show that antipassive constructions differ from both active transitive and Agent Focus structures in that they do not syntactically project a DP-sized object. Thus, we should think of antipassives as a type of unergative. When an object seems to disappear or become less important in an antipassive, this is not a special feature of antipassives – it is simply what happens in any intransitive structure. In other words, the ‘suppression’ or ‘demotion’ of thematic object is not an inherent characteristic of the construction but rather a byproduct of its intransitive nature. To better understand how transitive and intransitive constructions function cross-linguistically, we propose a novel framework for categorizing the functional heads v and Voice. We show that the external argument behaves differently in transitive versus intransitive clauses, appearing in different structural positions, which is backed up by evidence from causatives in Kaqchikel and scope patterns in other languages. While transitive and passive structures include a Voice projection, Agent Focus and antipassive structures do not. We compare our analysis to previous work on antipassives and explore what our findings might mean for understanding antipassives in other languages.

This paper focuses on two phenomena in Irish agreement – namely, complementarity between overt in-situ arguments and agreement, and the obviation of this complementarity under A-movement. An analysis of these facts is offered in terms of the defective goal ‘incorporation’ (DGI) mechanism proposed by Roberts (2010), and applied to cases of complementarity in Bantu languages by Iorio (2014), and van der Wal (2015, 2020, 2022), as well as asymmetric chains under A-movement, consisting of a full copy and a pronominal $ \phi $-feature bundle; cf. similar configurations discussed by Takahashi & Hulsey (2009), Harizanov (2014), Kramer (2014), Baker & Kramer (2018), inter alios. It is shown that this approach accounts for the facts in Irish and that the same account can be extended to explain facts concerning participial agreement in, for example, Italian. Additional cross-linguistic implications are also considered, particularly with respect to French and Welsh.

This paper focuses on the developmental tendencies and mechanisms underlying the unfolding of mood systems in Romance complement clauses. In view of the fact that the subsequent dynamics of change can be better understood and motivated against the backdrop of the Latin system, we take the basic structure of the Latin mood system as the reference and necessary starting point of our analysis. After briefly discussing the basic approaches to the mechanisms of mood change in the relevant research literature that puts forward notions like ‘modal harmony’, ‘regrammation’, ‘lexicalization’, and ‘conventionalization’, the article develops a modal–semantic perspective that casts a different light on the convergent and divergent developments of mood in the complement clause domain of Romance languages. The modal–semantic approach allows, apart from a coherent description and analysis of the developments, recasting the question of whether mood, especially the subjunctive, also comes with its own semantic value(s) in complement clauses. This modal–semantic approach not only provides a coherent description and analysis of the developments but also allows for a re-examination of the abstract semantics of the subjunctive mood (in complement clauses), spelling out its basic semantic features.

wh-fronting questions (as in English) are analyzed as wh-movement while wh-in-situ questions (as in Chinese) are analyzed as LF movement or unselective binding. Optionality between the two types of questions is observed in many languages, however, upon closer inspection, a stream of previous literature argues that only one strategy is truly available in any given language. Cheng (1991) and Faure & Palasis (2021) argue that wh-fronting languages in Indonesian and Colloquial French are not derived by wh-movement, while Chang (2016) argues that wh-in-situ questions in Colloquial Singapore English (CSE) are not derived from unselective binding or LF movement but are declarative syntax questions. Bobaljik & Wurmbrand (2015) explicitly propose that a language can either have the true wh-in-situ or the wh-movement strategy, but not both.

This paper uses CSE as a case study and argues that it allows true wh-movement and true wh-in-situ questions. CSE has been argued to only allow wh-movement by some (Chang 2016) and to only allow wh-in-situ by others (Lan 2016). This study experimentally tests the predictions made by these analyses and shows that the patterns are best accounted for if both ‘true’ wh-movement and ‘true’ wh-in-situ questions exist in CSE (see also Sato & Ngui 2017), thus challenging the previous analyses for CSE, and the cross-linguistic generalization in Bobaljik & Wurmbrand 2015.

Inflectional systems vary along multiple dimensions (number of members, size of paradigms, word class, integrative complexity, accidents of history, etc.). This makes it difficult to find significant correlations and causality relations between different properties, as attested systems usually differ in multiple ways at the same time, thus obscuring possible relations between individual variables. Here we analyze the relation between a system’s size by number of members and its morphological complexity. We do so by exploring in detail, via quantitative methods, the cognate inflectional systems of Central Pame and Chichimec (Otomanguean, Mexico), whose inflecting nominal classes differ precisely mostly with regard to their size (i.e. number of members).

Typology establishes three degrees of metrical strength. Foot-based theories designate the intermediate degree as that of unparsed syllables, i.e. syllables that are not part of a foot. However, this denotation of parsing mispredicts massively; moreover, there is no real reason why such unparsed syllables should be of intermediate prosodic strength (as opposed to the weakest or strongest). This paper presents an alternative account in Strict CV metrics (Ulfsbjorninn 2014, Faust & Ulfsbjorninn 2018). The correct three-way hierarchy follows from the basic operation of the theory, namely incorporation, whereby one nucleus becomes prominent by incorporating metrical significance from another nucleus. Examples come first from the more classical cases of Dutch and English and then from three test-cases provided by unrelated languages: St’át’imcets (Lillooet Salish), Burmese, and Tiberian Hebrew. No appeal is made to the notion of parsing.

This paper reports the results of a cross-sectional study investigating the acquisition of the syntactic properties associated with the null subject (meso-)parameter in English as a second language (L2) among Hebrew-speaking youngsters (18-year-olds). The two languages differ concerning these properties, with Hebrew allowing null subjects and related properties (although inconsistently) and English disallowing these properties altogether. One hundred four intermediate learners and 97 English-speaker controls provided grammaticality judgments and corrections concerning constructions involving expletive and referential null subjects, post-verbal subjects, and complementizer-trace sequences. The results reveal limited evidence for transfer from the learners’ mother tongue (first language [L1]) and indicate that learners have met the native standard concerning null and post-verbal subjects. These findings support both the meso-parametric view of cross-linguistic variation and feature reassembly on functional heads in L2 acquisition, while partially rejecting the Interpretability Hypothesis. Learners nevertheless deviate from the native standard concerning complementizer-trace sequences. This finding is unaccounted for by the meso-parametric approach, feature reassembly, or interpretability, but can instead be attributed to L1 transfer. Controls also demonstrate variability concerning complementizer-trace sequences, suggesting that the performance of all participants regarding this configuration is affected by processing difficulties, lower frequency in the input, and methodological issues with the items and/or the task.

This work focuses on a pattern of tonal alternation that is intertwined with a pattern of reduplication in Nigerian Pidgin. In the language, verbs are reduplicated to iconically express iteration. To convey that the iterated event occurs in an irregular or dispersive manner, the verb bears a low tone (L) on all its tone-bearing units (TBU), while the reduplicant bears a high tone (H) on all its TBUs. The resulting L-H tonal melody is considered the exponent of an irregular marker, while the intertwined reduplication is considered the exponent of an iteration marker. Due to the similarity between the exponent of the irregular marker and the iconic tonal melody of ideophones that express the semantic notions of irregularity across languages, the form-meaning mapping of the irregular marker is regarded as a grammaticalised form of the tone melody in the substrate ideophones. This suggests that ideophones can contribute to the emergence and expansion of grammar, as well as the typology of grammatical tone. Considering that perceptual resemblance between linguistic structures and the structural components of real-world elements is the basis of iconicity, the pattern of tonal alternation in Nigerian Pidgin suggests that the notion of perceptual motivation in linguistic theory is not purely phonetic and phonological but also includes the crossmodal perception of sensory imagery.

We explore the surprising lexical be construction in English (e.g. Why don’t you be quiet?). After an overview of previous discussions, an investigation of the use of lexical be in the COCA and SOAP corpora is provided. It is shown that its distribution is highly skewed and that it is completely felicitous only under a very limited set of conditions. An account of lexical be is then provided showing that the conditions that license it are inherited from more general constructions, most importantly the negative imperative construction and the ‘Why don’t you’ construction. In this light, it is suggested that the lexical be construction, with its special properties, provides strong evidence for a constructional approach to linguistic competence along the lines of Goldberg (1995), Culicover and Jackendoff (2005), Sag (2012).

This paper investigates Korean nominal coordination, a distant conjunct of which is semantically incompatible with the subcategorizing verb in a sentence. This type of nominal coordination is supported by both corpus-based and experimental data. Such coordinations pose a challenge to previous approaches to coordination in the literature. Specifically, any theory directly linking the subcategorizing verb to such a distant conjunct encounters the issue of semantic incompatibility. To address this issue, based on Lee (2020), I propose associating the distant conjunct with a direct hypernym of the verb. While the primary focus is on conjunctive nominal coordinations, the hypothesis also extends to disjunctive nominal coordinations. This semantic taxonomy-based account is then formally implemented in Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (Pollard & Sag 1994; Sag et al. 2003), adapting the generalized conjunction from Partee & Rooth (1983). Furthermore, I argue that this analysis can serve as a basis for explaining other related constructions in Korean.

In this paper, I analyze an intricate morphological pattern in Murrinhpatha which involves reordering of the dual marker ngintha and an alternation in the form of its adjacent morpheme. I will argue that the pattern strongly suggests an analysis in Stratal Optimality Theory: first, phonological correlates of morphological structure provide evidence for cyclic domains within the word. Second, the phenomenon can be derived using independently motivated morphological constraints, thus supporting the idea that morphology is an independent module of grammar with different optimization mechanisms, but the same stratal split as phonology. The cyclic architecture of the word provides a straightforward explanation for the placement of the dual marker and the resulting allomorphy of the classifier stem without resorting to ad hoc mechanisms such as position classes. Furthermore, the cyclic structure neatly accounts for multiple exponence of [dual] through the daucal (dual/paucal) classifier stem and ngintha. My analysis suggests that this overexponence results from the blocking of ngintha in the first cycle and the selection of the featurally more specific daucal stem. However, ngintha is not strictly bounded to the first cycle, and its realization is delayed until the second cycle.

I argue that semi-lexical have is a transitive verb in the sense that it has the same selectional properties as lexical transitives but is lexically underspecified. I propose a system of argument linking that assigns verbs a set of ‘D-selectors’ (selectors for determiner phrases) that are distinguished by a ‘thematic feature’ ±θ; selectors are licensed by linking rules that associate them with a position in a conceptual structure on the basis of their ±θ-specification. I argue that have is underspecified both syntactically (its initial D-selector can be +θ or –θ) and semantically (it lacks a lexical conceptual structure, which must thus be provided in syntax). I show that this enables the major interpretations of have (causative, affected experiencer, possessive, locative, affectee) to be derived straightforwardly. A particular contribution of the paper is its description and analysis of ‘affectee have’, which, as I show, poses particular problems for recent analyses such as Kim (2012) and Myler (2016).

In this paper, I propose an analysis for tonal alternations at the prefix–stem boundary in Tenyidie (Angami), where Mid tones in prefixes and stems dissimilate. I argue that this alternation is driven by the OCP (Obligatory Contour Principle) (Leben 1970) of Mid tones. However, sequences of Mid tones are seen elsewhere. I claim that this asymmetry can be solved with recourse to prosodic phonology (Nespor & Vogel 1986/2007). By assuming that stem and suffix form a prosodic word, excluding prefix, I argue that Mid tones fuse within the prosodic constituent to avoid OCP-Mid. The same constraint also triggers dissimilation across the prefix–stem environment, because of prohibition of fusion across prosodic boundaries. This is an example of phonological conspiracy where multiple processes work together to repair or avoid a single marked structure (Kisseberth 2011).

Geoffrey Pullum has produced countless contributions to linguistic theory over his 50-year career in the field. Given this exceptional scientific achievement, his philosophical work often goes underappreciated. In this article, I discuss and critique three themes from Pullum’s philosophy of linguistics, namely, cardinality neutrality, model-theoretic syntax and normativity in language. I conclude by showing how these seemingly disparate elements might indeed be connected in terms of a normative constructivist approach to linguistics.

A discourse-syntax interface-based approach to three types of focus – Information Focus, Corrective or Contrastive Focus, and Mirative Focus – is discussed in this paper. In my approach, I address the role of discourse/agreement features in the syntactic process of Agree in the Minimalist Program as well as their possible combination with an Edge Feature to trigger attraction of each discourse category, comparing Spanish and English. The data I examine are taken from experimental work, based on two original experiments that test the grammaticality/acceptability of sentences with fronted and in situ focus by native speakers of English and Spanish. The parametric variation detected in the two languages is accounted for by an analysis based on the availability of inheritance of discourse features in the relevant language alongside the activation of an Edge Feature, triggering movement of the relevant discourse category.

The availability of preverbal focus in Romance is still the subject of controversy in the relevant literature. In this paper, we investigate the distribution of information focus in three Romance languages: Catalan, Spanish and Italian. The main goal is to understand if and to what extent information focus can occur preverbally in these three languages. To this end, we applied a new technique (Questions with a Delayed Answer) to elicit both production data and acceptability judgements. Our results show that preverbal foci are almost never produced in free speech under elicitation but are judged as acceptable by native speakers in rating tasks. The acceptability of preverbal foci, however, is subject to variation: they are more acceptable in Spanish but less so in Catalan and Italian. We interpret this difference across the three Romance languages in the light of the hypothesis formulated in Leonetti (2017), according to which Catalan and especially Italian are more restrictive than Spanish with respect to the mapping between syntax and information structure. While all languages resort to the dedicated word order with a more transparent information-structure partition for a focal subject (i.e. VS), Spanish is more permissive in also allowing a narrow focus interpretation of the subject in an SV order.

Greenberg’s Universal 42 states that all languages have pronominal categories involving at least three persons and two numbers. However, this characterization fails to capture the properties of pronouns in Japanese, which are not bundles of person, number and gender features (so-called phi-features); rather, they contain sociolinguistic information about the interlocutors. We propose that these properties are structurally determined. Following Ritter and Wiltschko, we assume that the highest layer of structure in nominals is interactional structure. As for phi-features, we adopt the standard assumption that they are represented internal to the determiner phrase (DP). We propose that the distinctive properties of Japanese pronouns follow from the hypothesis that they spell out elements of the interactional structure and not the DP. We show that the lack of phi-features in Japanese pronouns correlates with other properties of this language’s grammar. Support for this analysis comes from languages where pronouns with phi-features can optionally be used to encode formality (e.g. German and French). We propose that in these languages, formal pronouns originate within the DP but are interpreted in the interactional structure. Finally, we suggest that this analysis may extend to imposters and vocatives in that they may also be interpreted in the interactional structure.

Using data from the understudied language Gιsιɖa Anii, we provide a formal analysis of irrealis that builds on the framework of modality proposed in Giannakidou and Mari. In particular, we propose that Anii has an irrealis modal morpheme whose meaning is that the speaker does not believe that the proposition is true at a particular time. This gives irrealis, at least in Anii, a negatively biased meaning. Giannakidou and Mari propose that the subjunctive in European languages is a positively biased modal but find no evidence in their data for a corresponding negatively biased one. However, in expanding their approach to a completely unrelated language, we show that modal bias can also be negative, filling in the paradigmatic gap left open by Giannakidou and Mari’s work. We also illustrate the utility of analyzing irrealis (in relation to the concept of veridicality) as a morphosyntactic and semantic category with a status similar to tense and aspect. Our formal analysis accounts for the obligatory realization of irrealis in a wide range of semantic contexts in Anii, including future tense, negation, and wishes, and shows how irrealis can be composed with other clausal elements. We suggest that reality status, which we analyze as (non)-veridicality, is obligatorily present in the Anii clause and discuss the implications of this for other languages.