This article argues that VOS structures in Romanian are derived from a basic VSO word order and, consequently, involve object raising out of VP, across the subject left in situ. Binding interactions and the availability of raising quantified NPs clause-medially provide syntactic support for an A-movement analysis of the raised objects. In contrast to other languages that allow (or require) movement of objects to argumental positions, it is argued that in Romanian VOS structures the object does not move for the purposes of Case checking nor does object raising entail a strong, definite interpretation of the moved NP. Rather, object raising is an instance of de-focussing, made possible by a strong nominal feature on the abstract verb v.

Does phonological conditioning have a privileged status in allomorphic alternations? Most synchronic descriptions appear to assume that if simple phonological conditions can account for some alternation, they automatically constitute the relevant factors chosen by speakers in their internalized grammars (but cf. Hooper 1976:87 or Klausenburger 1979:29–36 for divergent views). Intuitive notions of simplicity cannot provide a solution because simplicity is actually an empirical issue (cf. Chomsky 1965:37–47). The answer can only come from the analysis of external evidence, i.e., errors, language acquisition, historical changes, etc.

This article argues for the existence of expressive palatalization (E-Pal) – a phonologically unmotivated process that applies in sound symbolism, diminutive constructions, and babytalk registers. It is proposed that E-Pal is grounded in iconic sound-meaning associations exploiting acoustic properties of palatalized consonants and thus is inherently different from regular phonological palatalization (P-Pal). A cross-linguistic survey of patterns of E-Pal in 37 languages shows that it exhibits a set of properties different from P-Pal. The case study focuses on patterns of palatalization in Japanese mimetic vocabulary and babytalk. Two experiments testing native speaker intuitions of these patterns revealed that both patterns exhibit place and manner asymmetries typical of cross-linguistic patterns of E-Pal. The cross-linguistic survey, the two experiments, and analysis of the origins and structural differences of E-Pal and P-Pal provide strong empirical and theoretical motivation to distinguish the two.

On définit généralement les séries verbales (ou constructions verbales sérielles) comme des constructions dans lesquelles apparaît une séquence de deux ou plusieurs lexèmes verbaux pour former le prédicat de la proposition.

La problématique des séries verbales a reçu de la part des auteurs plusieurs interprétations parfois divergentes. Dans cet article nous allons proposer une analyse des constructions dites à verbes sériels en les reliant d’une part à la possibilité qu’ont les verbes pleins de fonctionner parfois comme auxiliaires et d’autre part à la possibilité pour un V′, c’est-à-dire une projection de niveau 1 d’un verbe en termes de X-barre, de recevoir en position adjointe des constituants syntaxiques de type CP, IP, VP, V′ et V.

Nous soutiendrons l’hypothèse que certaines constructions verbales sérielles qu’on observe dans les langues Gbe2 sont à relier à la possibilité pour ces langues de présenter des sujets nuls dans le cas d’adjonction d’un CP ou d’un IP à un V′.

This article explores long head movement configurations in Breton. Its purpose is twofold. First it contributes to existing work by demonstrating that Breton long head movement is motivated by information structure. The operation of general economy principles, made sensitive to information structure, determines many of the properties of the Breton construction. Secondly, it is argued that the derivation of the Breton construction does not involve movement per se; minimality conditions on movement are not central to the derivation. Instead, the remaining properties of the construction are attributed to a semantic property of tense-aspect markers which is represented at the LF interface. This work bears on the issue of how to model the interpretive dependency between auxiliaries and main verbs and raises questions concerning the interaction between the stylistic component, information structure, and the LF interface.

In this paper we will discuss several cases of the phonology of loan words. We will show that loan words are adapted phonologically to meet certain constraints on possible words or morphemes imposed on them by the borrowing language. Most significantly, such constraints are defined on the level of lexical representation. To our knowledge so-called “surface phonetic constraints” (henceforth SPC’s) play no role in the phonology of loan words, nor indeed in any other part of phonology. Our examples show that deep phonotactic constraints, constraints not necessarily reflected on the surface, are the drums to which loan words must march. This is not to say that all aspects of loan word phonological behaviour are now understood. Many mysterious facts still remain unexplained. We do claim that substantial aspects of this phenomenon may be understood by assuming that the systematic phonemic level of generative phonology is the level on which the constraints controlling loan word phonological behaviour are defined.

Old French subject pronouns (Spro) were omissible if postverbal (Foulet 1928), but not freely so (Vance 1997, Zimmermann 2014). This article addresses their partial omissibility in discourse-syntax terms, following work on partial null subject languages by Holmberg and Nikanne (2002) and Modesto (2008). An observational study of dialogic responses in 13th century prose romances is first reported, finding strong indications of covariation between the Topic/Focus status of an initial non-subject constituent and the expression/omission of post-verbal Spro. A quantitative investigation, in such texts, of preposed discourse-linked anaphoric constituents and preposed intensifiers, taken as diagnostic of Topichood and Focushood respectively, confirmed this analysis. We take null Spro to be available (i) when a null Topic operator targets left-peripheral TopicP, and (ii) with a left-peripheral Focused expression. When a discourse-linked non-subject constituent occupies TopicP, however, Spro must be overt.

This article proposes that two linguistic systems (that is, two languages or registers) with different degrees of morphosyntactic integration of ideophones may apply the same restrictions on ideophones in different ways. In Study 1, the author shows quantitatively that the sentence-type restrictions reported for ideophones in several languages also constrain Japanese ideophones, but to a lesser extent. In Study 2, the author argues that two previously identified restrictions on Japanese ideophonic verbs appear to apply only partially to ideophonic verbs in baby talk and highly playful discourse. It is concluded that the strength of these restrictions is negatively correlated with the overall degree of morphosyntactic integration of ideophones in the language or register.

Les composés du créole haïtien fournissent à première vue une confirmation directe de l’hypothèse de relexification telle que définie par Lefebvre et Lumsden (1989). D’une part, ils partagent des propriétés phonétiques de la langue du superstrat, le français. On trouve done des composés dans ces deux langues constitués de séquences phonétiques pratiquement identiques:

The goal of this article is to offer a formal account of region prepositions in French. We define region prepositions as prepositions that denote non-oriented locations and resist modification with measure phrases (e.g., au nez de in #dix metres au nez de l'avion ‘ten meters from (in front of) the tip of the airplane’). We show that region prepositions may involve items that include inflected markers or items involving “bare” markers (au bord de ‘at the edge of’ vs. à droite de ‘to the right of’). We analyze the relation between structure and semantic type to show that this distribution stems from the morpho-syntactic properties of their “internal location nouns” (e.g., nez, bord, droite, sommet). We offer a feature-driven analysis of these prepositions that hinges on a Lexical Syntax account and can capture all of the relevant data in a unified perspective. We conclude by discussing some theoretical consequences for accounts of spatial prepositions.

This article argues that the Impersonal Contruction (IC) of French, which displays unaccusative syntax but allows unergative verbs, refutes the Unaccusative Hypothesis (UH) and the principles of lexically driven mapping. It is demonstrated that three types of argument intended to explain unaccusative mismatches are untenable while maintaining the UH. An account of the verbs appearing in the IC is proposed, based on the principles of free linking of arguments and postsyntactic compositional interpretation, taking into account meaning contributed by diverse sources, including lexical, syntactic, constructional, and morphological meaning, which must be compatible. It is argued that the shape of IC sentences requires that a state of affairs be predicated of a locative; various consequences for verb and argument selection and tense arise from this requirement. By removing certain semantico-syntactic functions from the lexicon, economy is achieved in both the lexicon and the syntactic component.

This article presents an autosegmental analysis of the development of pitch phonology in Swedish and Japanese, which mark both lexical accent and phrasing through movements in fundamental frequency (F0). Predictions that follow from the autosegmental model are tested against spontaneous production data from child Japanese. In support of the analysis that lexical pitch accent and phrasal intonation are acquired as separate sequences of tonal features, the falling and rising slopes of F0 contours are shown to develop independently. The late emergence of the phrase-initial rise is attributable to the allophonic surface realisation of the low boundary tone. Moreover, developments in contour shapes are characterised by demarcated emergence of F0 turning points that are aligned with specific segments, providing further support for the view that pitch phonology is acquired as strings of tonal units associated with segments and prosodic constituents.

For some adverbs, European and Brazilian Portuguese sharply differ, with consequences for the syntax of tense, quantification, word order, quantifier floating, wh-extraction, and clause structure. Evidence is provided for the architecture of the left, for remnant IP movement, and for the claim that “micro-” lexical differences between European and Brazilian Portuguese reduce to syntactic “macro-” variation: absence vs. presence of V-movement.

Ce travail examine la thèse de Malcah Yaeger-Dror sur l’évolution des voyelles moyennes du français voulant qu’elle soit régie par des principes généraux sur les changements en chaîne. En français, les voyelles toniques longues non hautes auraient tendance à se fermer vers les positions extrêmes [e:], [ø:] et [o:], puis, arrivées à cette étape, à renverser leur trajectoire et à s’ouvrir en direction de [a:] et de [a:]. Cette deuxième étape est retardée dans une classe de mots pour lesquels Yaeger-Dror pense que seules seraient pertinentes leurs connotations sociales, sans tenir compte de l’étymologie, de l’environnement phonétique et de la fréquence. Le présent article reprend la problématique générale de l’évolution des voyelles moyennes du français et propose une nouvelle analyse de la formation de voyelles longues et de leur évolution en français.

We argue that the representational primes of the human phonological faculty, the so-called distinctive features, are innate and substance-free. Our arguments for the innateness of features are built on traditional and novel logical arguments, experimental evidence accumulating over recent decades, and somewhat detailed proposals about their neurobiological reality. As symbols in the brain, features are substance-free, that is, they are devoid of articulatory and acoustic content, or even any direct reference to such phenomena. This is consistent with our substance-free conception of phonological computation, an approach that eschews functionalist notions like markedness, ease of articulation, and so on. We also outline a neural model of the phonetics-phonology interface called Cognitive Phonetics, which transduces innate features to speech articulation and from speech acoustics. These extra-grammatical transduction procedures are also part of the human biological endowment, which leaves no room for language-specific phonetics in our theory of the externalization of language. We show how Cognitive Phonetics can account for traditionally recognized intersegmental coarticulation, as well as the previously unexplored intrasegmental coarticulation, strongly suggesting that the basic units of speech production are transduced features.

In the Manchu languages, contrast plays an important role in the patterning of vowel systems. Contrastive feature values are phonologically active, triggering rules of Advanced Tongue Root (ATR) and labial harmony, whereas redundant feature values are phonologically inert. To determine which feature values are contrastive in any given segment, it is necessary to establish an ordering of features. This ordering, or contrastive hierarchy, determines the relative contrastive scope of each feature. Our analysis of the Written Manchu contrastive hierarchy is supported by synchronic and diachronic evidence from Spoken Manchu and Xibe, where a realignment of vowel contrasts results in new patterns of phonological activity. We show that our analysis is consistent with the observed typology of ATR and labial harmony systems. We argue that the concept of phonological contrast does not reduce to a phonetic function, nor is it perceptually based. The relationship between contrast and underspecification is considered, and it is shown that constraint-based theories (such as Optimality Theory) do not constitute alternatives to the theory of contrast proposed here.

Chomsky (1981, 1986b) formulates the Theta Criterion so that it prohibits non-argument NPs such as the expletives it and there from occurring in theta-marked positions. One consequence of this formulation is that raising-to-object analyses for (1) are disallowed because they would permit an expletive to occupy an object position, a position which is theta-marked by the verb:

(1)

1. John believes there to be a woman outside.

Persian complex DPs exhibit structural peculiarities with respect to the placement of the object marker for specific DPs and the position of embedded CPs. This article discusses these peculiarities as well as the internal structure of Persian complex DPs and the distribution of clitic pronouns in this language. It is argued that a base generation approach accounts more adequately for Persian and other languages that exhibit the following properties: lack of a wh-relative pronoun, presence of an invariant relative complementizer, and alternation between a gap and a pronoun representing the relativized head. Regarding the postverbal position of the embedded CP, it is argued that extraposition and VP-remnant face theoretical and empirical problems, while V-raising and XP movement, as instances of scrambling triggered by focus in this language, provide an adequate explanation for Persian data.

All treatments of so-called to-contraction in English (Lakoff (1970), Bresnan (1971), Lightfoot (1976)) attempt to deal with this phenomenon entirely in terms of contiguity. The purpose of this squib is to point out that the major constraint on this phenomenon is rather one of subject coreference, and furthermore that this coreference condition is identical to that for a universal rule which I have called ‘equi-subject clause union’ (Frantz 1976).

To illustrate, I will reconsider typical examples cited in discussions of this phenomenon, pointing out the relevance of coreference.

In the literature on Null Subject Languages (NSLs) since Rizzi (1982), the three properties that are commonly thought to be connected are (i) the richness of inflectional morphology, (ii) free subject inversion, and (iii) the COMP-trace effect. The connection between them is that if a language (e.g., Italian) has the option of having a null subject (NS) pronominal pro in subject position (i.e., SpecIP) as a result of having rich inflectional (i.e., verbal agreement) morphology, as represented in (1a), then the same element may appear in the same position in cases of subjects occurring postverbally as in (1b) and in cases of long-distance subject extraction where the postverbal trace is properly governed by the verb, as in (1c):