Abstract For what are traditionally called ‘noun-complement clause’ (hereinafter NCC) constructions, longstanding questions surround the relationship between the head noun and the subordinate clause, and the way this relationship is structurally represented. This paper presents data from Dutch NCCs to show that the NP and the CP are phrasal units connected to one another by a functional head whose postulation is needed independently of NCCs for the analysis of nominal and correlative constructions in which a relationship between two phrasal terms is established. NCCs are indeed complements—not to the head noun but to the functional head that establishes the relationship between NP and CP within the complex DP. After a discussion of the distribution of overt functors introducing NCCs, the paper places its conclusion for NCCs in the wider context of clausal hypotaxis, sketching an approach to CPs standardly analysed as complements of V wherein the CP is once again the lower phrasal term of a functional projection, with the higher term being a proleptic pronoun (the it of I hate it that S, I am sure of it that S) which can be left unpronounced under the right circumstances.
Abstract Auditory-Orthographic cue integration challenges theories that explain orthographic influences on phonology simply by grapheme-to-phoneme conventions. By analyzing two such cases of cue integration, we propose a revised BiPhon model employing weighted positive constraints, with a reading grammar that gradually rewards featural correspondence. This approach offers greater cognitive plausibility and relies on fewer assumptions than existing alternatives. Furthermore, our computational simulations show that empirical findings cannot always be condensed to a single learner type with stochastic variation, highlighting the need to incorporate individual differences into formal phonological frameworks.
Abstract This paper reevaluates Optimal Paradigms (OP), an extension to Optimality Theory proposed by McCarthy (2005). In OP, candidates are full inflectional paradigms and faithfulness constraints can require uniformity between all members within a paradigm. McCarthy (2005) proposed that OP can replace the assumption that prosodic templates are grammatical entities and other phonological mechanisms, which he regards as stipulations. One of the case studies used in McCarthy (2005) to showcase OP comes from Moroccan Arabic, where a noun-verb asymmetry in the distribution of schwa is claimed to be predicted by paradigmatic constraints as a means to achieve uniformity within an inflectional paradigm. We reevaluate this proposal using new fieldwork data from Judeo-Tripolitanian Arabic, an endangered variety of Arabic that is closely related to Moroccan. We show that if adjectives are added to the picture, OP can no longer predict the distribution of schwa in the different categories. The conclusion is that OP cannot replace the mechanisms it was supposed to replace, and is therefore a redundant complication to phonological theory.
Abstract We provide empirical evidence against Wilson & Gallagher’s 2018 claim that statistics is necessary for phonotactic learning. We implement BUFIA, a feature-based nonstatistical learner and, using the same data and case study as Wilson & Gallagher, show that this non-statistical learner is equally successful at learning phonotactics as the Maximum Entropy-based learner they use. This counters their conclusion that non-statistical phonotactic learning is impossible, while supporting their advocacy for feature-based representations in phonotactic learning.
The English sentence John said that Mary was pregnant is ambiguous: Its simultaneous reading is John said: ‘Mary is pregnant’; its backshifted reading is John said: ‘Mary was pregnant’. Under Sequence of Tense Analyses of such past-under-past configurations (e.g. Ogihara 1995), the simultaneous reading arises if an embedded past head undergoes “deletion"-under-Agree with the matrix past head (the embedded past form is phonetically unaffected). Without deletion-under-Agree, the embedded past tense remains backshifted. The availability of deletion-under-Agree has been handled as a language-wide parameter, e.g. unlike English, Japanese lacks deletion-under-Agree (e.g. Ogihara and Sharvit 2012). In Hungarian, speech-reporting clauses are Japanese-like and obligatorily backshifted, whereas non-speech-reporting clauses are English-like and have a simultaneous reading. I propose that that speech-reporting clauses are internally larger and hence the impossibility of deletion-under-Agree in these clauses can be analyzed with a Williams Cycle effect (e.g. Williams 2003).
Certain Amharic verbal constructions include a main verb and an auxiliary that are both inflected for subject agreement. However, in certain φ-feature combinations, one of the agreement markers is absent. We distinguish two patterns of agreement disappearance and develop an analysis of both on which full agreement in the syntax can be obscured during postsyntactic Vocabulary Insertion. To that end, we propose that Vocabulary Insertion be broken down into two ordered steps. First, Select chooses the best exponent to realize the features of a given node. Second, Link pairs the node and selected exponent. We associate the two types of agreement disappearance in Amharic with each of these steps: main verb agreement is realized as zero during Select via blocking, whereas auxiliary agreement goes unrealized due to a failure of Link. The failure of Link is driven by a novel anti-homophony constraint we dub Uniqueness. Finally, we show that our analysis accounts for cross-Ethiosemitic variation in the realization of agreement and is more empirically successful than alternatives.
We develop a stratal analysis of Spanish stress in which morphosyntactic conditioning and metrical nonuniformity are tightly constrained. Morphosyntactic conditioning is limited to cyclicity, the distinction between stems and affixes, and the affiliation of affixes to the stem or word level. Nonuniformity arises from lexical prespecification and interstratal constraint reranking. This framework yields several successful empirical predictions: Richness of the Base requires that prespecification be unpredictably distributed across all morph types; Chung’s Generalization demands identical metrical patterns in mono- and polycyclic stem-level constructions; and the Monomorpheme Generalization entails that monomorphemic and overtly affixed stem-level items also exhibit the same patterns.
In this paper, I discuss long-distance agreement (LDA) in Tsezic languages (Northeast Caucasian). Taking Polinsky and Potsdam’s (2001) analysis of Tsez LDA as a starting point, I explore LDA configurations in closely related Khwarshi. I show that Khwarshi differs from Tsez in that it allows for recursive LDA. In addition, Khwarshi lacks information-structural constraints on the agreeing embedded absolutive, which are attested in Tsez. The choice between LDA and default agreement in this language is seemingly free, except for cases when the embedded clause is nominalized. These findings provide the basis for an alternative analysis of Khwarshi LDA, which draws on the structural ambiguity of clausal arguments of LDA-supporting verbs between an extended verbal projection and the same projection embedded under a nominalizing functional shell, which produces the opacity effect. The difference between Khwarshi- and Tsez-type LDA results from availability of the information-structural shell in the embedded clause, which is responsible for information-structural constraints on the agreeing embedded absolutive and recursion ban.
In the area of stress-tone interactions, it has been claimed to be a universal that High tone, rather than Middle or Low tone, attracts stress (DeLacy 2002, 2007). Data from two northern Dene languages, Tetsǫ́t’ıné (ISO: CHP) and Wıìlıìdeh (ISO: DGR) complicate this simple generalization. These two languages have nearly identical tonal phonologies, but with opposite tones. Early in the derivation, iambic stress attracts High tone in Tetsǫ́t’ıné, but Low tone in Wıìlıìdeh. However later in the derivation, High tone attracts stress in both languages. I propose a unified analysis of both languages using underspecification and an extended tone hierarchy.
We report on a production priming experiment (N=238) in which particle verb constructions (Ana lifted up Hsu) prime double object constructions (Ana gave Hsu the book). This result is expected under syntactic models that take the two constructions to share abstract structure, including Small Clause approaches in the tradition of Kayne 1984, 1985. The result is not expressed by models positing no shared structure between the constructions, including common versions of complex predicate approaches to particle verb constructions and applicative approaches to double object constructions.
The Person-Case Constraint (PCC) has played a substantial role in the development of linguistic theory, particularly with respect to agreement and the encoding of person. While much of the generative literature on the PCC advances or assumes a (morpho)syntactic agreementbased account of PCC effects, we provide novel evidence from polite pronouns that challenges this perspective. Polite pronouns exhibit a striking “mismatch” between the features expressed in their agreement and in their forms on the one hand, and what is interpreted on the other. They therefore provide an ideal testing ground for the predictions of morphosyntactic analyses, which predict that third person polite pronouns used for addressees should behave like other third person arguments and therefore not induce PCC effects. We find that this prediction is falsified in Italian for the polite pronoun LEI, which is used for formal address but is grammatically third person, and for which PCC effects do obtain; we make similar observations for the Fancy Constraint (Postal 1989). We suggest that the pattern with polite pronouns is more consistent with a syntacticosemantic, interpretationbased account, such as that of Pancheva and Zubizarreta (2018), and sketch how this can be captured in their system. Lastly, we suggest that while PCC effects in ditransitives share a grammatical provenance across languages, other person hierarchy effects may not, and we show how these expectations are borne out with polite pronouns in Spanish and German. This study has implications for the analysis of person hierarchy effects and affirms the relevance of polite pronouns to the theory of agreement.
Theoretical approaches to null subjects standardly focus on the narrow syntactic module. I offer a postsyntactic alternative in terms of PF deletion applying to salvage an unlinearizable derivation. Support for this alternative comes from microvariation in three closely related West Slavic pro-drop languages spoken primarily in Poland (Kashubian, Polish, and Silesian), in which the distribution of null subjects is sensitive to the postsyntactic realization of [PERSON/NUMBER] agreement. I argue that this microvariation indicates that in these languages at least, the licensing of null subjects takes place at PF, which in turn suggests that PF has a bigger role to play in a general theory of null arguments than has so far been assumed.
The article discusses agreeing ablatives in Aqusha Dargwa (Nakh-Daghestanian), arguing that the morphological agreement in gender-number that these constituents display with the clausemate absolutive argument is not an instance of Agree, but should rather be analyzed as the result of Concord. The argument relies on a difference between Agree and Concord with regard to c-command. The article explores the behavior of the ablative complement to the vP-adjoined adverb ‘secretly’ and demonstrates that gender-number agreement on the complement is best predicted by Concord.
I propose a learning-based account of phonological-tier-like representations. I argue that humans show a proclivity for tracking adjacent dependencies, and propose a learning algorithm that incorporates this by tracking only adjacent dependencies. The model changes representations in response to being unable to predict the surface form of alternating segments—a decision governed by the Tolerance Principle, which allows for learning despite the sparsity and exceptions inevitable in naturalistic data. Tier-like representations emerge from the algorithm, which achieves high-accuracy learning over natural language data, handles crosslinguistic complexities like neutral segments and blockers, and makes correct experimental predictions about human behavior.
According to much of theoretical linguistics, a fair amount of our linguistic knowledge is innate. One of the best-known (and most contested) kinds of evidence for a large innate endowment is the argument from the poverty of the stimulus (APS). An APS obtains when human learners systematically make inductive leaps that are not warranted by the linguistic evidence. A weakness of the APS has been that it is very hard to assess what is warranted by the linguistic evidence. Current artificial neural networks appear to offer a handle on this challenge, and a growing literature has started to explore the potential implications of such models to questions of innateness. We focus on Wilcox, Futrell, and Levy’s (2024) use of several different networks to examine the available evidence as it pertains to wh-movement, including island constraints. WFL conclude that the (presumably linguistically neutral) networks acquire an adequate knowledge of wh-movement, thus undermining an APS in this domain. We examine the evidence further, looking in particular at parasitic gaps and across-the-board movement, and argue that current networks do not succeed in acquiring or even adequately approximating wh-movement from training corpora roughly the size of the linguistic input that children receive. We also show that the performance of one of the models improves considerably when the training data are artificially enriched with instances of parasitic gaps and across-the-board movement. This finding suggests, albeit tentatively, that the networks’ failure when trained on natural, unenriched corpora is due to the insufficient richness of the linguistic input, thus supporting the APS.
The possessive dative construction has been widely adopted as an unaccusativity diagnostic (Borer and Grodzinsky 1986). Gafter (2014) casts doubt on the relevance of unaccusativity to the acceptability of the construction. We conducted a series of acceptability judgment experiments to investigate the validity of the possessive dative construction as an unaccusativity diagnostic, controlling for possible confounds such as animacy, definiteness, plausibility, lexical choice, type of possession, and context salience. The experiments revealed that possessive datives are significantly more acceptable with unaccusative verbs than with unergatives, including reflexive and emission verbs. We conclude that unaccusatives, but not unergatives, are grammatical in the construction, and we defend a structural account of the data.
Ergative and accusative behave as dependent cases insofar as their appearance on a nominal depends on the presence of another nominal in the same domain. Recent work has taken the phenomenon of case dependency to challenge the idea that case is assigned via Agree. Focusing on Shawi (Kawapanan; Peru), we show not only that case dependency can be captured via Agree, but also that doing so opens up a new way of understanding the typology of global case splits. Ergative in Shawi appears when the subject is at least as high as the object on the person hierarchy—a global split—and can be accompanied by explicit realization of the object’s features on the subject (“object agreement on the subject”). We propose that ergative arises in Shawi when a probe on v Agrees with both the object and the subject, transferring object features to the subject; these features are spelled out as ergative case and as object agreement. In general, we show that dependent cases, both ergative and accusative, can be seen as a morphological outcome of Agree between a probe and a second goal, realizing features on that goal that were transferred from a previous goal in an earlier step of Agree.
The dialect of North Hail, a variety of Najdi Arabic, has a set of sentence-initial particles marking topics of various kinds that correspond to those argued by Frascarelli and Hinterhölzl (2007) to be characteristic of Italian and German: Shift-Topic, Contrastive Topic, and Familiar Topic. In their work, as in much other work in the cartographic tradition, a hierarchy of abstract topic heads is postulated in the C-domain, which host the topical phrases as specifiers. In North Hail Arabic, the topic heads are overt, realized as particles. Some of the topic heads mark topics by attraction to the C-domain; other particles mark topics by ϕ-feature agreement. The particles in the C-domain agree in ϕ-features with a TP-internal DP, subject or object. Analyzed in terms of Agree (Chomsky 2001, 2008), arguments and adverbials are assigned particular topic values either by agreement or by movement. The particles thus provide evidence that topicality can be a syntactic feature, inherent in lexical items (the particles) and assigned to constituents by operations familiar from standard syntactic relations like subject agreement and case. The theory articulated observes the Inclusiveness Condition, known to be a problem for the cartographic theory of topic and focus.
We present an account of why disjoint reference effects obtain in verbal but not in adjectival passives. Passives in child language are independently argued to always be adjectival, which allows us to use a natural experiment in child grammar that is not available in the adult grammar: predicting the lack of a disjoint reference effect in even those passives that prima facie seem verbal. We conduct our discussion against the background of the difference between adjectival and verbal passives in general. Our account is based on (grammatical) Implicature Theory. Since the initiator in the semantic representation of adjectival passives stays at a kind level, it cannot introduce a discourse referent, hence cannot trigger a disjointness implicature, unlike the initiator in verbal passives (Gehrke 2013, 2015). We show in two experiments that children’s passives do not exhibit disjoint reference, unlike adults’ verbal passives, even though children have no trouble computing disjointness implicatures elsewhere. Our contribution thus confirms with a novel kind of evidence the syntactic nature of young children’s difficulty with verbal passives. It offers a new perspective on the external argument difference between verbal and adjectival passives based on Reinhart’s (2016) Theta System, while also offering additional evidence for a grammatical, rather than general pragmatic, theory of implicatures.
The squib focuses on the realization strategies of the final C-slot of templates hosting /j/-final roots in Hebrew and Amharic. Two of these strategies, nonrealization and realization through templatic intrusion, are motivated by the principle *Misalignment. The latter strategy occurs only in nouns, because it employs a suffix marking noncontextual grammatical gender.
