In this paper, we develop a new typology of multiple wh-questions with coordinated wh-pronouns. We motivate the existence of three distinct structures for such questions: one mono-clausal and two bi-clausal. We use four kinds of diagnostics to determine which of the three structures is available in a particular language: the availability of both multiple wh-questions and wh-questions with coordinated wh-pronouns, coordination of two argument wh-phrases, transitivity restrictions and superiority effects.

The status of Capeverdean as a pro-drop language is controversial. Baptista (2002) contends that this Portuguese-based creole has null referential subjects with some types of predicates, while Pratas (2002, 2007) proposes that it has only expletive null subjects. She argues that the rare cases of root null subjects can be analyzed as instances of null expletives. The aim of this paper is to show that in Capeverdean there is an asymmetry in the distribution of null referential subjects. These are ruled out in root contexts, but allowed in some embedded contexts; this is the case when the null subject is bound by a wh-operator or a quantifier. Following Holmberg's (2005) and Holmberg, Nayudu & Sheehan's (2009) analysis of null subjects, we offer an analysis of Capeverdean null subjects exploring the properties of T in the language (in particular, the lack of a rich inflectional system), the syntax of subjects, and the type of null category available. We claim that Capeverdean embedded null subjects are variables, licensed by an operator in the matrix clause. We show that these specific properties explain minimal differences between null subjects in Capeverdean and Brazilian Portuguese.

Cross-linguistically, quantified noun phrases (QNPs) trigger one of four agreement patterns: with the quantifier, with the noun, default agreement, or semantic agreement. This paper focuses on agreement alternations in Hebrew, and argues that they follow not from variations in hierarchical structure but from the availability of multiple means of assigning values to the QNP's features. Building upon the index-concord analysis of Wechsler & Zlatić (2003) and adapting it to the Minimalist framework, it is argued that certain agreement patterns are the result of the quantifier bearing a set of abstract features that do not match its morphologically-triggered ones. Variations in QNP agreement patterns are then argued to be subject to constraints at the interfaces of syntax with both semantics and morphology. Overall, it is claimed that even apparent cases of non-local agreement with non-nominative NPs do not really pose a counterexample to established models of agreement, and that this supports the view that the system of ϕ-features cannot be simply an unstructured bundle of morphological features.

This paper provides an analysis of Italian complex predicates formed by combining a feminine nominalization in -ata and one of three light verbs: fare ‘make’, dare ‘give’ and prendere ‘take’. We show that the constraints governing the choice of light verb follow from a syntactic approach to argument structure, and that several interpretive differences between complex and simplex predicates formed from the same verb root can be accounted for in a compositional, bottom–up approach. These differences include variation in creation vs. affected interpretations of Theme objects, implications concerning the size of the event described, the (un)availability of a passive alternant, and the agentivity or lack thereof of the subject argument.

Focus is regularly treated as a cross-linguistically stable category that is merely manifested by different structural means in different languages, such that a common focus feature may be realised through, for example, a morpheme in one language and syntactic movement in another. We demonstrate this conception of focus to be unsustainable on both theoretical and empirical grounds, invoking fundamental argumentation regarding the notions of focus and linguistic category, alongside data from a wide range of languages. Attempts to salvage a cross-linguistic notion of focus through parameterisation, the introduction of additional information-structural primitives such as contrast, or reduction to a single common factor are shown to be equally problematic. We identify the causes of repeated misconceptions about the nature of focus in a number of interrelated theoretical and methodological tendencies in linguistic analysis. We propose to see focus as a heuristic tool and to employ it as a means of identifying structural patterns that languages use to generate a certain number of related pragmatic effects, potentially through quite diverse mechanisms.

This paper presents a notion of harmonic word order that leads to a new generalisation over the presence or absence of disharmony cross-linguistically: for linkers – syntactically independent, semantically vacuous heads marking a relationship – disharmony is ungrammatical, while for any other head disharmony is simply dispreferred. Harmony is defined here by the interaction of three independently motivated word order constraints operating over the base-generated structure: linear proximity between a superordinate lexical head and the head of its dependent, uniformity in direction of headedness, and the preference for clausal dependents to follow their head. It is proposed that disharmony occurs where either a lexical head or a head bearing syntactic features encoding semantics has an ordering rule of its own. These proposals are shown to be empirically superior to the Final-Over-Final Constraint (Holmberg 2000, Biberauer, Holmberg & Roberts 2007 and subsequent work), in terms of both what is permitted and what is disallowed.

In velarising dialects of Spanish, nasal place contrasts neutralise to [ŋ] word-finally. However, whereas velarisation applies transparently in word-final prepausal environments, place neutralisation ‘overapplies’ to stem-final presuffixal nasals and to word-final nasals which resyllabify into onset position across word boundaries. Yet since previous analyses of Velarising Spanish have been based exclusively on theory-led interpretations of impressionistic data, doubts exist as to whether word-final nasals in velarising dialects are consistently realised as [ŋ] (Baković 2000). The first goal of this paper therefore is to submit the claims put forward in these analyses to empirical testing. Experiments using electropalatography confirm that speakers of Velarising Spanish produce robustly dorso-velar nasals in word-final environments; this result refutes the claim that word-final nasals are placeless in velarising varieties. Secondly, because opaque instances of nasal place neutralisation pose challenges for Optimality Theory (OT), I compare two approaches to modelling the nasal alternations in Velarising Spanish, namely Output–Output correspondence in classic OT and a cyclic analysis in Stratal OT. This comparison reveals that classic OT cannot account for the opaque patterns without stipulating fixed OO-constraint rankings. By contrast, the stratal model straightforwardly predicts the occurrence of both opacity effects on the basis of general architectural principles.