The Mohawk tense-mood-aspect system has many “irregularities” that seem to require a powerful morphological component distinct from syntax. Nevertheless, it is shown that most of these “irregularities” can be explained in syntactic and semantic terms, once the right lexical entries are given. This result is achieved by making two assumptions of general interest: (1) mood is analyzed as the verbal equivalent of specifity in the NP system, and (2) habitual and stative verbs are shown to have time arguments, whereas ordinary eventive verbs have only event arguments. Given this, morpheme positions, cooccurrence restrictions, and the lack of recursion in the inflectional system can be derived from ordinary principles of composition, head movement, and a simple form of blocking. Only the selection of allomorphs is left to a post-syntactic morphology.

DPs in several Austronesian languages from southwestern Sulawesi show the D head as an enclitic on an element within the DP. Where N is unmodified, D cliticizes to N, and where D is modified, D cliticizes to the modifier. A structure in which NP and the modifying phrase are treated as arguments of D is proposed, and the cliticization pattern is analyzed as resulting from head movement. Depending on the valency of the DP, NP will either be specifier or complement of D. This analysis extends easily to account for some otherwise puzzling patterns shown in relative clauses where D cliticizes to the right periphery of the verb of the modifying CP. Under the minimalist hypotheses that overt movement is a function of feature strength and that the strength of the relevant features can vary from language to language, certain patterns of head-adjunction involving V, I, C, and D are expected and the predictions are discussed.

This article argues for a minimalist approach to the variation between Romance languages with respect to the generic interpretation associated with infinitival complements of epistemic verbs. It is proposed that epistemic verbs have inherent temporal features and that they assign a tense feature to their complement. These features are checked under a Spec-head relation through two temporal projections, related either to the object position or the subject position. The variation observed between Portuguese and French, Italian and Spanish with respect to the event interpretation of infinitives is formulated in terms of the strong/weak status of the [+specific] feature of Tense. The difference in the temporal interpretation of the inflected infinitives with respect to the presence or absence of the have + past participle sequence is derived from the hypothesis that the tense of the participle raises to the TP projection that c-commands it when it is morphologically invisible, the indicative present being visible in Portuguese, but not in the other languages.

This article examines the effects of direct object definiteness in Austronesian (AN) and relates these effects to marking for transitivity. Definite objects often correlate with a high degree of transitive marking in the verb phrase, while indefinite objects correlate with or trigger intransitive marking, even in transitive sentences. The primacy of goal/object orientation over actor/subject orientation is another widespread tendency in AN languages. In some languages, a definite goal/object must be marked as the focus of the clause, either overtly or via the obligatory indefiniteness of other arguments, or by making it the syntactic subject, or in other ways. The article thus shows how definiteness restrictions on various arguments in AN languages can be explained against the background of historical focus systems. Data come primarily from Muna (Celebes), in which, it is argued, the historical object focus function is continued in verb forms marked explicitly for definite objects.

This article deals with morphosyntactic variation. Focusing on subject doubling in Québec Colloquial French (QCF), the author argues in favor of a conception of linguistic competence which allows for variation. Various analyses which exclude variation from linguistic competence are considered and rejected, and it is concluded that the alternation between doubled and non-doubled constructions is an integral part of the linguistic competence of QCF speakers. The author then raises the question of the plausibility of an analysis which posits variable subject-verb agreement. She demonstrates that variable agreement systems are common crosslinguistically and that the analysis proposed for QCF is in consequence a quite reasonable one. Finally, an analysis is sketched within Chomsky’s Minimalist Program, showing that current linguistic theory is equipped for handling language-internal morphosyntactic variation.

A number of interesting syntactic processes in a variety of Micronesian languages arose in response to a restructuring of Proto-Micronesian verbal morphology, the restructuring itself triggered by purely phonological changes. This article provides an account of these changes, revealing at the same time aspects of Proto-Micronesian clause structure which have not previously been noted.

This article argues for a very restrictive theory of feature checking whereby only formal features of functional heads need to be checked for convergence. This theory, which enables us to dispense with most of the economy conditions assumed within the minimalist program (Chomsky 1995), is empirically supported by two syntactically and semantically related constructions in Kirundi: the Subject-Object Reversal and the Transitive Expletive Constructions. On parametric grounds, we argue that such constructions derive from the existence in Kirundi of a TP-internal focus projection whose [+focus] feature must be checked for convergence.

The analysis of the syntactic and interpretive properties of Spanish temporal adjectives poses an interesting problem for the theory of syntax since [+temporal] interpretation and Noun-Adjective linearizations are not univocal. The minimalist account of the position of temporal adjectives argued for here is based on the hypothesis that DPs contain a TP projection in which the feature [+temp] is checked: the TP within DP hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, all nouns are associated with an optional temporal feature when entering the computational component. When they enter into a syntactic relation with a term carrying a [+temp] value, the temporal feature they are associated with must be checked. Attraction of the adjective can take place overtly or covertly. In the first case, the adjective is in prenominal position checking the [+temp] feature at Spell-Out and, in the second case, it appears postnominally checking the [+temp] feature at the LF interface.

This article explores some evidence against the ECP that appears at first to be fairly overwhelming. Upon deeper inspection, however, the evidence supports the ECP and a special universal computation involving the complementizer system, the Complementizer Contraction rule (Pesetsky 1982). Complementizer Contraction is parameterized; some languages have an overt reflex (French, Norwegian); other languages do not (English, Tagalog). To make the argument, many intricate details are described about the structure of relative clauses, comparative clauses, embedded complement clauses, and wh-questions in Rejang, a Western Austronesian language of Sumatra.

This article discusses the existential construction in Malagasy, focussing on the distribution and interpretation of nominals. It is argued that the existential construction involves the raising of specific NPs out of the small clause complement of the existential verb misy. Nonspecific NPs, on the other hand, are shown to remain within the complement. That raising correlates with interpretation provides evidence in favour of the Mapping Hypothesis of Diesing (1992). Although the syntactic analysis accounts for the specific/nonspecific distribution in the existential construction, it leaves unexplained the precise interpretation of the specific NP, which may be either partitive, possessive, or locative. This article therefore argues for a relation, PARTITIVE, which unites these three readings.

The aim of this article is to argue that the similarities and differences in the interpretation of n-words (personne, rien, etc.) in two closely related dialects of French can be explained by considerations linked to lexical properties as well as to properties of contrastive stress in Universal Grammar. The minor lexical differences in the two systems are related to the fact that only in Standard French is a single negation reading ruled out when an adverbial negative marker bearing [+neg, −T, −Asp] features, i.e., pas, appears in the scope of an unstressed n-word. A general principle is proposed to account for the fact that a contrastively focused n-word always blocks the local relation which seems necessary for a negative concord reading. It is observed that the presence of an intervening quantifier between the negative quantifier and the n-word always induces a Double Negation reading.

This article proposes an account of genitive case marking in the Maori DP which shows how the licensing requirements for genitive depend both on thematic role distinctions and on the presence of a functional projection situated immediately below D. An investigation of ordering alternations including genitives, demonstratives, adjectives, and the lexical head indicates that the FP below D is also the location of an identifying or specifying function within the DP. The label “IdentP” is proposed as a cover term for this FP projection. It is also proposed that DPs containing nominalized verbs include a head, Nmz, that has the capacity to license additional instantiations of genitive case marking.