This paper takes up various problems of Gorum verb morphology and, more important, of its semantic categories. These relate specifically to the interconnections found between so-called causativization and transitivity. The notion ‘intransitivity’, is shown to be inadequate to characterize the data, and can be replaced by a semantic feature – which we call affectedness – of the subject NP of a primary verb in a tree. Higher sentence construction is not adequately handled by the ambiguous – or various – notions of causativity. What happens in Gorum can be more adequately described in terms of displacement of the head NP in a sentence, and this is shown to be directly related to transitivity, causation and perhaps volition. For, an additional distinction operating in the Gorum verbal system is that of internally motivated action versus the absence of such motivation. This distinction – and its correlation with the feature affected – is also touched on.

This paper investigates correlations between theme vowels and argument structure in Serbo-Croatian. Specifically, we focus on two different theme vowels, -i- and -ova-, isolating ‘minimal pairs’, that is cases where the same base combines with the two theme vowels to derive different verbs. Starting from two online corpora of Serbo-Croatian, we created a comprehensive list of -i-/-ova- minimal pairs. For all pairs in the list whose both members were attested at least 50 times in the corpora, we randomly selected 50 tokens per verb and annotated them for transitivity. A statistical comparison of -i- and -ova- verbs according to the proportions of transitive uses was carried out. The findings show that -i- verbs are much more likely to be used transitively than -ova- verbs. This finding corroborates the view that theme vowels are associated with argument structure properties and challenges the idea that they are universally ‘ornamental’ pieces of morphology without syntactic/semantic import. Based on these and supplementary (non-corpus) data, we claim that -i- derives transitives and unaccusatives, while -ova- derives unergatives. We propose a model couched in Distributed Morphology whereby these two theme vowels are treated as instantiations of different ‘flavors of v’.

The grammar of Kasem is being analysed in terms of a hierarchical model (cf. Halliday, 1961; Bendor-Samuel, 1963), the (ascending) levels of relevance to this paper being word, phrase, clause, string, and sentence. (The ‘string’ is the unit which functions in the sentence and consists of a tightly bound sequence of clauses, the non-initial clauses operating under extensive restrictions with respect to their structure. This type of syntactic unit appears to be characteristic of many Gur languages and is often referred to as a ‘series’ or ‘serial construction’. For a recent discussion in some detail of this unit, under the term ‘clause clusters’, see Pike, 1966: 55–78.) At the word level in this hierarchy, a system of categories can be set up to account for the form of every verb word, i.e. so that every verb word can be completely ‘parsed’ or described in terms of these categories. But one of the characteristic features of this system of categories is that there is extensive neutralization between the categories. The question, then, that this paper seeks to discuss is this: are the ambiguities inherent in the verb word resolved within the language as a whole? An answer is here presented which seeks to relate the resolution of the ambiguities to the different levels of the grammatical hierarchy, as set up.

In a lengthy footnote to his article ‘Pronominalization, negation, and the analysis of adverbs’ (1970) George Lakoff makes the following interesting observation:

All known selectional restrictions on the occurrence of lexical items are finite in scope. Usually they apply in the same sentence (subject–verb and verb–object selections) and sometimes one sentence away (verb–verb selections; i.e.force requires an activity verb in its complement) (160).

Russian has a family of reflexive constructions that have non-canonical syntax and express a variety of meanings that range from disposition (‘I feel like working’) to ability (‘I cannot work here’) and generic assessment of quality (‘I work well here’). Previous analyses assume that these constructions are derived by a regular syntactic rule and postulate a null modal in the structure to account for their semantics (Benedicto 1995, Franks 1995, Rivero & Arregui 2012). Focusing on the ‘feel like’ construction, I show that derivational analyses have difficulty explaining its idiosyncratic properties, including non-canonical agreement (independent of the structural subject), as well as the interpretation of aspect. Moreover, derivational analyses overgeneralize, since only a subset of predicates occur in the ‘feel like’ construction in Russian, as the data from the Russian National Corpus indicate. In order to account for their idiosyncratic properties and semi-productivity, I propose that the ‘feel like’ construction and its kin are stored in the lexicon as constructions (Goldberg 1995; Jackendoff 1997, 2008). The proposed analysis clarifies the status of reflexive constructions in Russian and establishes the scope of cross-linguistic semantic variation by comparing reflexives in Russian to that in other Slavic languages.

The aim of this paper is to provide an analysis of the positive effect that modification has on the distribution of noun phrases in otherwise illicit environments. I focus on de nominals in French. By focusing on these nominals, whose distribution is altered by the addition of modifiers, the paper shows that modifiers can do much more than simply modify: they can change the syntactic and semantic status of a noun phrase. The licensing property of modifiers is an intriguing topic and has not been greatly discussed in the literature. I argue that modifiers can come to play the role of determiners in French as long as they are accompanied by a head de, which is the spell-out of a Cardinal head (see Lyons 1999). My proposal goes back to an old idea put forward by Damourette & Pichon (1911–1940)according to which, in modified contexts, de functions as one half of the article while the adjective functions as the other half. More generally, articles in French are seen as dual entities comprising of a specifier and a head. In the absence of the determiner les, an adjective can raise to the specifier of CardinalP. This is achieved via phrasal rather than head movement.

It is known that consonants can act as boundary markers when they are located at the left edge of a prosodic domain, helping listeners to parse incoming speech. To achieve maximum efficiency in marking out boundaries, those markers should be acoustically salient. In Element Theory, domain markers are represented by the elements |H| and |ʔ|. Being inherently voiceless, these elements stand apart from the other elements, which are spontaneously voiced. Most languages show a preference for incorporating |H| or |ʔ| into segmental structures which stand at the left edge of domains. This paper challenges the universality of this view by analysing data from Kaqchikel, a K’iche’an language with a bias for marking the right edge of domains rather than the left. The marker in question is intense/prolonged noise which, in Element Theory is represented by |H|. The |H| element is present in fortis fricatives and aspirates, and in Kaqchikel it regularly appears in segments at the right edge of prosodic domains where it serves as a domain boundary marker. Boundary marking in Kaqchikel is analysed here using a Precedence-free Phonology approach to melodic structure (Nasukawa 2016) in which the linear ordering of segments is determined by the hierarchical organization of melodic units (elements) within a unified melodic–prosodic structure.

An idempotent phonological grammar maps phonotactically licit forms faithfully to themselves. This paper establishes tight sufficient conditions for idempotency in (classical) Optimality Theory. Building on Tesar (2013), these conditions are derived in two steps. First, idempotency is shown to follow from a general formal condition on the faithfulness constraints. Second, this condition is shown to hold for a variety of faithfulness constraints which naturally arise within McCarthy & Prince’s (1995) Correspondence Theory of faithfulness. This formal analysis provides an exhaustive toolkit for modeling chain shifts, which have proven recalcitrant to a constraint-based treatment.