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.

In this article, we describe and explain patterns of variation in acceptance of amn’t in varieties of Scots, drawing upon data from the Scots Syntax Atlas. Partly in line with findings from Bresnan (2001), we show that amn’t is much more widely accepted in inversion environments (amn’t I?) than in declaratives (I amn’t), but nevertheless, amn’t in declaratives is still accepted in certain regions of Scotland. We combine the productivity-based explanation of the amn’t gap in Yang (2016, 2017) with new insights into the syntax of Scots negation from Thoms et al. (2023) to provide a predictive account of the attested variation.

The English Preposing in PP construction (PiPP; e.g., Happy though/as we were) is extremely rare but displays an intricate set of stable syntactic properties. How do people become proficient with this construction despite such limited evidence? It is tempting to posit innate learning mechanisms, but present-day large language models seem to learn to represent PiPPs as well, even though such models employ only very general learning mechanisms and experience very few instances of the construction during training. This suggests an alternative hypothesis on which knowledge of more frequent constructions helps shape knowledge of PiPPs. I seek to make this idea precise using model-theoretic syntax (MTS). In MTS, a grammar is essentially a set of constraints on forms. In this context, PiPPs can be seen as arising from a mix of construction-specific and general-purpose constraints, all of which seem inferable from general linguistic experience.

I argue that more and less are always determinatives, contrary to the categorization in The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (CGEL), which treats them as adverbs in analytic comparatives. Evidence is presented of contrasts between more/less and much/little in various contexts, challenging CGEL’s empirical claim that such contrasts never occur in analytic comparatives. The observed distributional patterns can largely be explained by the semantics of more/-er and much without positing a category distinction: more/-er establishes a salient scale-internal reference point, while much requires such a point to already be present. Furthermore, mere distributional differences should not be relied upon for category assignment, following arguments by Payne , Huddleston & Pullum (2010). For these reasons, analyzing more and less as adverbs in any context is unnecessary and unparsimonious. The determinative analysis can account for all the relevant data. Beyond the narrow point about categorization, the paper illustrates the contributions of semantic, pragmatic, and distributional evidence in resolving category assignment.