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In this paper I investigate the anaphoric interpretation of null and overt pronominal subjects in temporal adjuncts in child Romanian. The results show that 5-year old Romanian children make no distinction between null and overt pronominal subjects (personal pronouns and demonstratives) with respect to antecedent choice. I tentatively interpret the results as indicating that 5-year olds cannot fully integrate knowledge of the syntax of subjects with discourse information.
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The present paper is an attempt to uncover some of the (syntactic) properties of idioms that present aspects mismatches between their literal and idiomatic interpretation. The novelty value of the proposal lies in its syntactic rather than semantic or cognitive approach: whereas most accounts in the literature deal with this conundrum from a semantic and cognitive point of view, the present analysis provides a syntactic aspects account by relying on AspP.
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The paper examines the unaccusative-unergative dichotomy of predicates, with a special focus laid on the class status of the verb TO DIE in English. The paper begins with a view of unaccusativity in the light of the Lexicon-Syntax Interface. Further, the verb TO DIE is tested against the six syntactic unaccusativity diagnostics valid for English. In consequence, the first three diagnostics (auxiliary selection, causative alternation and resultative constructions) do not work for the verb TO DIE, while the last three diagnostics (adjectival participle, there-insertion, locative inversion) appear to have been satisfied. This would lead us to the conclusion that the verb TO DIE should be regarded as a real example of an Unaccusative Mismatch (Levin 1986).
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Very little is known about the effect of syntactic complexity on written language production. This study investigated the effect of syntactic complexity on the accuracy of gender marking in written L1 and L2 French. We conducted two experiments in which L1 learners (n = 28) and L2 learners (n = 26) of French were asked to complete a fill-in-the-gap task. The test items were controlled for three types of gender agreement configurations with different syntactic complexity. The results show that the syntactic complexity of the agreement configuration has an effect on the accuracy of both L1 and L2 written gender marking. We conclude that, similarly to spoken L1 production, the accuracy of gender marking is influenced by syntactic complexity. Furthermore, we conclude that the observed effect of syntactic complexity does not only hold for L2 learners at the beginners level, but is still present in advanced L2 learners of French.
More...GO FOR IN THE CRUCIAN WIRETAPS CORPUS: INSIGHT ON MV FOR CONSTRUCTIONS AND THE ERB/PREPOSITION DISTINCTION IN AFRO-CARIBBEAN CREOLE
In this paper, I examine uses of the construction go for in Afro-Caribbean English-lexifier creole (AEC) to gain insight on the verb/preposition distinction in contact languages, as exemplified in the construction Motion Verb + for (hereafter MV for). The MV for construction is employed when speakers wish to profile the purpose substructure of the construction’s composite semantic value. If speakers were to use the verb get instead of for, the acquisition substructure would be profiled. In most cases, however, speakers choose the morpheme for, which adds prominence to the purpose value. The morpheme for also adds aspectual content to the overall constructional meaning, and that aspectual reading is performed on the fly. It is argued here that MV for is processed simultaneously in relation to the other constituents that co-occur with it, not only syntactically, but also in terms of the semantic roles that those units convey.
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I discuss various theories of sentence topics against the background of attested examples of topicalization in Romanian. I argue that non-referential topical phrases constitute a problem for the concept of aboutness topic proposed by Reinhart (1981) and can better be accounted for in a theory where topicalized constituents are indicators of the discourse topic (cf. von Fintel 1994). I examine various types of topicalized constituents, classified according to the relation they entertain with the previous sentences and the discourse topic. Furthermore, I discuss another function of sentence topics, which can be characterized independently of discourse relations: that of anchoring the new information in the common ground. I suggest a way in which this function can be subsumed under the general function of indicating discourse-topic dynamics.
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The paper identifies and analyzes major types of binominal qualitative constructions in Old Romanian. The corpus presented in the paper registers three types of double-definite binominals and two types of single-definite binominals. This paper has a two-fold aim: one is to provide clarifications on these constructions at a descriptive level; the other one is to provide support in favor of the “Double-DP / Single-DP hypothesis” (see Tănase-Dogaru 2012a, b, 2013a).
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This paper analyses the acquisition of Romanian gender agreement in a Romanian-Hungarian bilingual setting, based on two longitudinal corpora and a corpus of narratives, with a view to identifying the causes that lead to the vulnerability of the gender feature in this particular language combination. The fact that Hungarian is a genderless language causes some delay in the acquisition of Romanian gender with bilinguals. While phonological and semantic transparency do not seem to have had much influence, it has been found that agreement at a distance represents an obstacle, probably due to processing difficulties inherent to bilingual language acquisition. The two main facilitating factors have been found to be adjacency to the noun and the presence of the definite and indefinite articles.
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Restricted relatives in Acadian French display the following peculiarities: generalization of que ‘that’ as the relative complementizer; deletion of que ‘that’; orphaned prepositions; failure of subject-verb agreement between the relative noun and the embedded verb. This paper argues that such peculiarities arise from the tendency of Acadian French to use a matching rather than a raising pattern of derivation in restrictive relatives, which further involves non-quantificational chains. This parametric setting contrasts with the systematically raising pattern in the restrictive relative of Standard French.
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light verb constructions, result nominalizations, Romanian, -ţie suffix, -re suffixThe aim of this paper is to analyze the class of Romanian nominalizations which enter light verb constructions with the light verbs a face ‘make, do’ and a avea ‘have’. We show that such nominalizations are not event, but result. In order to test this hypothesis, we have chosen two of the most productive suffixes which appear with these nominalizations in light verb constructions, namely -ţie and -re. As will be seen, the two suffixes may attach to the same verb stems, giving rise to doublets (e.g. from a afirma ‘state’: afirmaţie vs. afirmare). The syntactic analysis of these doublets proves that -re is specialized for event readings, while - ţie generally gives rise to result nominals. Returning to light verb constructions, when a verb has both -ţie and -re nominalizations available, the light verb will always select the result deverbal noun, the one ending in -ţie, while its -re counterpart will have an event reading and thus will be banned from the light verb construction.
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The present paper evaluates Fukuda’s (2007a, 2008) Functional Head Analysis of aspectual verbs on the basis of the analysis of aspectual verbs in Romanian with focus on whether they induce restructuring, whether they occupy functional projections, and whether the structural position which they occupy is reflected in their control and/or raising behaviour. The data indicates that Romanian aspectual verbs behave like lexical verbs. They merge in the same syntactic position, irrespective of the complement which they select and which can be uniformly analysed as ModP/FinP. Their control or raising behaviour is not correlated with different syntactic positions.
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I discuss some syntactic properties of GO in verbal Pseudo-Coordination, in which it is followed by an inflected lexical verb and preceded by an optional connecting element. Following the analysis in Cardinaletti and Giusti (2001, 2003), I consider examples from different Sicilian varieties to show that the ones from the Eastern Coast (Di Caro 2015), where GO can become grammaticalized as an aspect marker and thus lose its argument structure and its semantics of motion, are reminiscent of some Multiple Agreement Constructions displayed by most Arabic dialects (Jarad 2014). In both groups of languages, the grammaticalized GO can also occur in an invariant and phonetically eroded version. In the macro-comparison I am proposing, I suggest language contact between Arabs/Berbers and the indigenous people in Sicily from 9th to 13th century as a factor in the productivity of Sicilian Pseudo-Coordination as an isolated case in the Romance domain.
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In this article, I investigate the link between VSO-VOS orders and differential object marking (DOM) via novel data from Galician. I present an analysis that sheds light on what may be required for a language to license DOM via movement, a requirement once thought necessary for licensing DOM that has recently been discredited on the basis of an overwhelming amount of cross-linguistic data (cf. Kalin 2018). I also show evidence for the variation regarding featural specification of DPs that must be differentially marked, adding to the highly variable factors that contribute to the appearance of DOM on nominal objects in natural language. Focusing on full DP objects, I conclude that licensing DOM in Galician is predicated on both the level of animacy of postverbal nominals and object shift in VOS configurations.
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The present paper examines Bashkir and Kalmyk construction formed from transitive verbs by means of causative suffixes. We refer to these constructions to “constructions with a morphological causative”. The paper also references other Altaic languages (Mishar Tatar, Nanai, Tuvinian, Khakas). The main focus of the paper is on the valence-increasing behavior of causatives. Primary attention is drawn to the case marking of the Causee since Altaic languages allow several options for that. The paper describes in detail the existing alternation and reviews prior explanations of this phenomenon. It then couches the explanation for the alternation within the framework of Role and Reference Grammar. The analysis identifies that Altaic constructions in question are somehow peculiar compared to general trends. After discussing the advantages and drawbacks of various theoretical interpretations of this peculiarity, we conclude that it is best to link two different causative constructions to two different logical structures. We also suggest constructional schemata for Kalmyk and Bashkir to include in the Linking Algorithm.
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Manner of speaking verbs (MoS) are said to induce strong island effects, in contrast with verbs of communication, which allow extraction. The main studies which tried to account for this distinction focused either on the existence of a manner component, of an added layer of meaning, or on that of a nominal element, corresponding to the resulting emitted noise. However, these intuitions according to which they simultaneously denote both manner and result would induce a violation of the Manner Result Complementarity (Levin & Rappaport 2011). What’s more, a closer look at the data shows that there are at least some cases where extraction out of the complement of MoS verbs is actually allowed. The goal of this paper is to put forth an analysis which first of all accounts for the ban on extraction, but also for the variable behaviour that these verbs evince. By postulating two structurally distinct subclasses of MoS verbs, I not only manage to reconcile the two intuitions present in the literature without violating the MRC, but also explain the syntactic behaviour of these verbs with respect to extraction from the post-verbal clause.
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The paper tests the antecedent preferences for the null pronoun, the personal pronoun and the demonstrative subject in L2 and 2L1 Hungarian (with Romanian as the other language) by means of an offline picture selection task. In the null subject condition, both groups show subject bias, confirming previous hypotheses and research. An evident object bias is observable with the demonstrative, again confirming the low accessibility status of demonstratives. The results differ in the case of the overt personal pronoun subject. While it can have both topic shift and topic continuity interpretation in both languages, previous research suggests that in Romanian the former is favoured over the latter, whereas the reverse is true for Hungarian. Whereas the L2 group shows no bias in the personal pronoun condition, thus possibly showing transfer from L1, the 2L1 group shows a strong subject bias, placing the personal pronoun on equal footing with the null pronoun.
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The present study conducts an analysis on the treatment of the syntactic function of "attribute" in several English grammar books, written by native and non-native writers. The syntactic role of 'attribute' within grammars of the English language is a topic of ongoing interest and scholarly discourse. Attributes, being a basic component of syntactic structure, play an important role in modifying nouns, determining and shaping the intricate patterns of English sentences. By analysing the perspectives presented in various grammars, this study aims to contribute to a nuanced understanding of the syntactic landscape of "attribute" in English. It is, nevertheless, imperative to recognize a significant distinction that arises in the treatment of "attribute" in English grammars. Some grammarians do include, among the mentioned syntactic functions, the one specific to "attribute". However, the vast majority of studies, while examining the syntactic links and semantic contributions of adjectives and nouns inside sentences, concentrate mainly on their attributive responsibilities. They thus do not specifically deal with the general syntactic function known as "attribute" but only mention of "attributive roles" of adjectives, nouns, and other essential clause elements.
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The objective of this work is to compare the position of clitic pronouns in the Lisbon and Sevillian editions of the History of the Most Noble Vespasian, a narrative text published in both Portuguese and Spanish at the end of the 15th century. The selected topic, the position of the clitics, has received much attention in the literature specialized in both synchrony and diachrony. According to the results outlined to date, the evolution of the rules that determine the position of such unstressed elements, apparently common to Portuguese and Spanish in the medieval period, subsequently follows divergent lines in the two languages, mainly due to the distancing of the second of the essentially common structural starting point. The comparative analysis of the two aforementioned editions of the aforementioned work proposed here wishes to take advantage of the fact that the versions present almost complete parallelism in both content and structure, which facilitates the examination of truly parallel constructions and structures in the two languages. This analysis can help to understand the stage in which the evolution of this component of the syntax was in each of the languages at the time of the publication of these versions.
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