This paper discusses cases of syntactic doubling in wh-dependencies attested in dialects of Dutch, where more than one member of the same chain is spelled out. We focus on cases of non-identical doubling, in which the chain links spelled out have different forms. We demonstrate that the order of elements in a chain is fixed: the first (or syntactically higher) one is less specific that the second one. We argue that this generalization follows from partial copying, a process that copies a proper sub-constituent and remerges it higher in the structure. This naturally excludes the ungrammatical orders, as these would involve full copying plus the addition of features, in violation of the inclusiveness condition. The proposal requires pronouns to be spell-outs of phrases, and it is in combination with this hypothesis that the full set of data is accounted for in a uniform way. Advantages over alternative accounts of syntactic doubling are discussed.

In some languages, nominal case is distributed over several adnominal elements, such as demonstrative pronouns, adjectives, participles, numerals and the nominal head itself. In this article, two hypotheses concerning case distribution are compared. According to the two-part model, case assignment to DPs as a whole (determiner phrases or maximal nominal projections) in syntax is based on a different grammatical mechanism than case distribution within those DPs. According to the one-part model, case distribution within DPs and syntactic case assignment to DPs are based on the same case assignment mechanism. Relying upon case distribution data from Finnish, Estonian, Polish, Russian and Serbo-Croatian, this article argues in favor of the one-part model. Furthermore, it is suggested that the one-part case distribution mechanism interacts with two independent morphological principles, one which regulates the overt morphological realization of elements which function as case assigners and another which states that the grammar is subject to a particular type of case hierarchy.

It is well known that the quantity indicated by an NP affects clausal aspect if the referent of the NP participates in the event incrementally, i.e. in a part-by-part manner (e.g. She was mowing the lawn). In general, an incremental NP that indicates a closed quantity makes the overall aspect of the sentence telic and thus bounded, whereas one indicating an open quantity results in unbounded aspect (e.g. Water was dripping from the ceiling). In this paper the interplay between quantity and aspect will be called nominal aspect. It is argued that quantity may relate with time in two different ways: first, as overall quantity (which, if incremental, cumulates over time), and second, as transient quantity. The latter term refers to the quantity involved in the situation at a given point in time. It is argued that the interpretation of certain NPs evokes both kinds of quantity; e.g. in This machine pumps the waste water of the factory into the drain the object indicates a quantity that is open in the overall sense (there is no end to the waste water entering the event of pumping) but closed in the transient sense (at any point, all [relevant] waste water gets pumped into the drain). A corresponding distinction is drawn in the domain of verbal aspect, which can also be bounded or unbounded in two different ways. Overall aspect unfolds over time and, if telic, ultimately reaches its endpoint, as in She took the letter to the post office. Transient aspect is the aspectual nature of an event at any given point in time. It is understood as orthogonal to the time axis and gives a cross-section of the ongoing event. In This brush cleans the conveyor belt before it enters the machinery the overall aspect (of the ‘cleaning’) is unbounded, but the transient aspect is bounded, assuming that the brush continuously keeps the conveyor belt in a state of total cleanliness. In this paper, such oppositions are used in explaining the case marking of the Finnish object (partitive vs. ‘total object’ case marking), which reflects both quantificational and aspectual factors. It is argued that the total object can indicate a closed quantity and a bounded aspect not only in the overall sense but also in the transient sense. This distinction is then used to account for many hitherto unexplained uses of the cases.

This paper argues that, with syntax defined as progressive projection of semantic representations along the left-to-right dimension provided by the sequence of words (Cann, Kempson & Marten 2005), explanations for local and (multiple) nonlocal scrambling of NPs in Japanese and Korean follow from general principles of tree growth, allowing differences between the languages while nevertheless retaining an integrated account of scrambling itself. This formalism is similar to the parsing mechanism of Miyamoto (2002), but goes further in using this as the base grammar formalism, with all concepts of movement replaced by progressive articulation of structural underspecification and tree growth starting from the left periphery. The account extends the analysis of Japanese scrambling of Cann et al. to encompass multiple long-distance scrambling, capturing both the attendant relative locality restriction on the constituents moved, and interaction of this restriction with scope-construal effects. Scope-construal variability is expressible as interaction between individual lexical specifications for the two languages and general constraints on scope construal; and the relative locality constraint on the construal of the expressions involved in multiple long-distance scrambling is an immediate consequence of the general dynamics of the framework. The resulting account extends Hawkins' (2004) program of defining grammars relative to performance considerations.