This paper examines opaque examples of phrase-level phonology taken from Chilean Spanish under the framework of Stratal Optimality Theory (OT) (Rubach 1997; Bermúdez-Otero 2003, 2019) and Harmonic Serialism (HS) (McCarthy 2008a, b, 2016). The data show an interesting double repair of the coda /s/ taking place at word edges. It is argued that Stratal OT is superior in modelling phonological processes that take place at the interface between morphology and phonology because it embraces cyclicity. Under this model, prosodic structure is built serially, level by level, and in accordance with the morphological structure of the input string. In this way, opacity at constituent edges can be solved. Stratal OT also provides insight into word-internal morphological structure and the domain-specificity of phonological processes. It is demonstrated that a distinction in this model is necessary between the word and the phrase levels, and between the stem and the word levels. As illustrated by the behaviour of Spanish nouns, affixation and the resultant alternations inform us about the domains to which both morphological and phonological processes should be assigned. Against this background, Harmonic Serialism embraces an apparently simpler recursive mechanism in which stepwise prosodic parsing can be incorporated. What is more, it offers insight into the nature of operations in OT, as well as into such problematic issues as structure building and directionality. Nevertheless, despite the model’s ability to solve various cases of opacity, the need to distinguish between two competing repairs makes HS fail when confronted with the Chilean data under examination.

This paper studies prenominal reduplicative classifier in Cantonese, which has been argued to be a distributive quantifier on a par with English every/each and Mandarin mei ‘every’, and a plural classifier giving the ‘many’ reading. The analysis I propose draws heavily on ideas introduced in the cover theory proposed by Schwarzschild (1996) and Brisson (1998, 2003), and ideas introduced by Partee (2004) and others on quantifying determiner many. I argue that prenominal reduplicative classifier is a quantifying determiner which is ambiguous between a quantifier type and a modifier type. When it occurs with the distributive quantifier dou1 ‘all’, it serves as a modifier, regulating the domain of dou1-quantification by imposing a maximizing effect on the nominal it modifies (see e.g. Link 1983; Gillon 1987; Schwarzschild 1996; Brisson 1998, 2003). Without the presence of a distributive quantifier, prenominal reduplicative classifier serves either as a modifier or as a quantifier, giving its NP a weak cardinal reading or a strong proportional reading, respectively. The proposed analysis implies that domain restriction in Chinese is overtly realized in grammatical form by means of the reduplicative classifier (when combined with a distributive quantifier) and that Chinese may have determiners, which is at least true in Cantonese.

I propose a comprehensive analysis of what has been commonly referred in the literature to as split, discontinuous noun phrases or split topicalization. Based on data from Basaá, a Narrow Bantu language spoken in Cameroon, I partly capitalize on previous authors such as Mathieu (2004), Mathieu & Sitaridou (2005) and Ott (2015a), who propose that this morphosyntactic phenomenon involves two syntactically unrelated constituents which are only linked semantically in a predication relation in a small clause (Moro 1997, 2000; Den Dikken 1998). According to these analyses, split noun phrases are obtained as a result of predicate inversion across the subject of the small clause. Contrary to/but not against these views, I suggest that what raises in the same context in Basaá is rather the subject of the small clause as a consequence of feature-checking under closest c-command (Chomsky 2000, 2001), and for the purpose of labelling and asymmetrizing an originally symmetric syntactic structure on the surface (Ott 2015a and related work). The fact that the target of movement is the subject and not the predicate of the small clause follows from agreement and ellipsis factors. Given that the subject of predication is a full DP while the predicate is a reduced DP with a null head modifier, the surface word order is attributed to the fact that noun/noun phrase ellipsis is possible if the elided noun is given in the discourse and is recoverable from the morphology of the stranded modifier. This paper offers a theoretical contribution from an understudied language to our understanding of this puzzling nominal construction.

Sign-Based Construction Grammar (sbcg) is, on the one hand, a formalized version of Berkeley Construction Grammar (bcg), and, on the other hand, a further development of constructionist Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (hpsg). The volume edited by Hans Boas and Ivan Sag is the first book length presentation of the framework. Its centerpiece is a 130-page synopsis of the theory by Ivan Sag. The other contributions to the volume provide background, justification, case studies, an extension to diachronic syntax and a presentation of the FrameNet Constructicon. This review gives a guided tour of the framework, explaining its central notions and assumptions, as well as the notation in which they are cast. It also compares the sbcg framework with other types of Construction Grammar and with hpsg. The case studies are summarized and briefly evaluated.