Indexed constraints are often used in constraint-based phonological frameworks to account for exceptions to generalizations. A point of contention in the literature on constraint indexation revolves around indexed markedness constraints. While some researchers argue that only faithfulness constraints should be indexed, others argue that markedness constraints should be eligible for indexation as well. This article presents data from Japanese for which a complete synchronic analysis requires indexed markedness constraints but argues that such constraints are only necessary in cases where a phonological repair applies across a morpheme boundary. We then demonstrate that algorithms for learning grammars with indexed constraints can be augmented with a bias towards faithfulness indexation and discuss the advantages of incorporating such a bias, as well as its implications for the debate over the permissibility of indexed markedness constraints.

In Northern Iroquoian languages, a nominalizer (nlzr) is typically required to transform a verb into a noun, either for noun incorporation or to create a full DP. In some cases, the nominalizer is required only for noun incorporation and not for the formation of a DP. Interestingly, the converse is never found. That is, there are no lexical roots that require the nominalizer for the formation of a DP, but not for noun incorporation. With this asymmetry in mind, we examine the categorial properties of roots in Northern Iroquoian. We discuss three common theories of the categorization of roots: (i) the traditional theory, in which all roots are specified as nouns or verbs (or adjectives for languages that have this category), (ii) the Bare Root Hypothesis, in which all roots are acategorial, and (iii), the Roots as Nouns Hypothesis, in which all roots are nouns. We show that the Northern Iroquoian facts are not amenable to any of these theories. We propose instead that some roots in Northern Iroquoian are categorially specified (some as nouns, some as verbs), while others are truly bare.

Dans cet article, je propose une analyse de la voyelle initiale des noms en kabyle. Je proposerai dans cette contribution une représentation dans le cadre CVCV (Lowenstamm 1996, Scheer 2004) qui montre que la phonologie peut rendre compte de l'alternance de l'initiale des noms sans recourir à la computation syntaxique. Je propose que la voyelle initiale instable qui caractérise l’état libre (EL) s'associe à son propre CV, et que le w- à l’état d'annexion (EA) est associé à un CV- initial. Je montrerai également pourquoi, devant #_CV à l’état d'annexion, si le mot est précédé d'un autre mot à finale consonantique, les glides w/j sont réalisés comme des voyelles pleines u/i. Cet article propose une analyse qui prend en compte cette alternance, contrôlée à la fois par le contexte droit (__CV vs __CC) et le contexte gauche (mot précédent à finale vocalique vs consonantique).

This paper offers a discourse-pragmatic account of the constraint on indefinite DPs as subjects of specificational copular clauses (a doctor is Mary). Building on Mikkelsen's (2004) proposal that specificational subjects are topics, I argue that they must be contrastive topics which properly contain F-marked constituents. I show that this can account for the absolute ban on simple indefinite subjects, and allow for more complex indefinites to be subjects. Finally, I discuss the syntactic analysis that would be predicted given my pragmatic analysis, and the puzzles that arise from it.

Resumptive pronouns are produced in English in unguarded speech in restrictive relative clauses and appositive relative clauses. However, numerous studies have found that resumptive pronouns in restrictive relative clauses are not acceptable. To our knowledge, no studies have examined the acceptability of resumptive pronouns in appositive relative clauses, despite hints in the literature that they may be more acceptable in appositive than in restrictive relative clauses. This article fills that gap. We found that resumptive pronouns were rated as more natural in appositive relative clauses than in restrictive relative clauses. These findings may be due to which currently undergoing a reanalysis from a relative pronoun to a solely connective word, as has been suggested in the literature. A small-scale corpus search also reveals that appositive relative clauses with resumptive pronouns are increasing in American English.

This study investigates the acquisition of articles in L2 English by L1 speakers of Dagbani, a Gur language spoken in Ghana. Dagbani differs from English in that it has two definite articles, no indefinite article, and a zero-article which may express definiteness, indefiniteness as well as genericity. The study consisted of a Forced-choice task (FCT) and an Acceptability judgement task (AJT) which were administered to Dagbani teenagers with an intermediate proficiency in English (n = 45) and a group of native English speakers as controls (n = 8). The results showed that the learners’ article choice was based on definiteness, not specificity (i.e., no fluctuation between the two) and that they had slightly more problems with indefinite than definite contexts, while generic contexts were the most problematic. Except for a certain task effect as well as a possible interference of instruction (in the FCT), the results can be argued to generally be due to influence from the L1 and to the difficulty of feature reassembly.

In many of the first English headed which-relatives, which has an NP complement. Using distributional tests grounded in contrasts revealed by research in formal semantics, we demonstrate that the presence of an NP complement forces a nonrestrictive interpretation of the relative, while ‘bare’ which-relatives may be restrictive or nonrestrictive. We situate this finding in relation to both the formal semantics of relative clauses, and the history of wh-relatives in English.

This paper documents the existence of swiping – that is, inversion of a wh-phrase and its associated preposition under sluicing – in a non-Germanic language. We discuss swiping in a variety of Ontario French (Lafontaine French, LFF), which shares some of the characteristics of its extensively-studied English counterpart (Ross 1969, Merchant 2002, among others). We offer a preliminary description of swiping in LFF and consider some implications of these novel facts for the theory of swiping and sluicing. We suggest that LFF swiping supports an analysis in terms of non-constituent deletion, as originally suggested by Ross (1969) in his seminal work on sluicing.

While the use of well as an intensifier of most adjectives had supposedly died out by Early Modern English (Fettig 1934: 186, Mustanoja 1960: 327, Stenström 2000: 188, Ito and Taglimonte 2003: 278), no studies have empirically examined its frequency diachronically. The present study traces its use from Early Modern English (1560) to Present Day English, (2014) using five speech-related corpora in addition to various dialectal sources and audio/video clips. Results indicate that this use was retained in some dialects of English despite not being attested in the Corpus of English Dialogues nor the Old Bailey Corpus, which document predominantly the incipient standard variety. A qualitative analysis of its use reveals a potential diachronic shift in its stress pattern and the scale structure of its intensified heads. Moreover, the present study discusses some of the methodological challenges which arise when using historical corpora to investigate linguistic change, drawing particular attention to sample representativeness and data analysis.

This work challenges the assumption that tonal downstep is a juncture feature in Yoruba by providing data, both from everyday conversation and from classical Yoruba dictionaries, which prove that the phenomenon is part of the lexical composition of many Yoruba words. It is further argued that the derivational path of some of the words having downstep has already been lost. It is also reported that the Assimilated Low Tone phenomenon, which is an indication that the delinked Low tone triggering downstep is still active in the phonology, is currently being lost in many dialects, which is giving way to more classical-like downstep in the language. Cross- dialectal evidence from Oyo, Ibadan, Onko, and Ijebu dialects, as well as from pitch tracks are provided to support the arguments and it is suggested that Yoruba is developing downstep via Assimilated Low Tone, and that this process has now reached an advanced stage.

In this paper, we provide new evidence for the hypothesis that in some languages, differential object marking (DOM) may have evolved from marking of the information structural category of topicality. While Iemmolo (2010) suggested that topic left-dislocation might have facilitated the evolution of DOM, and Dalrymple and Nikolaeva (2011) argued for systematic marking of secondary topics as the source of DOM, we suggest a third possible grammaticalization source within the topical domain: the prepositional marking of embedded topics. In particular, we show that the Romanian DO (Direct Object) marker pe had a function as marker of embedded topics in Old Romanian. Moreover, we show how DOM in Old Romanian may additionally have been facilitated by the re-analysis of embedded topics as themes in certain constructions.

This article aims to test whether the Theta System of Reinhart (1996, 2000, 2001, 2002) can account for the puzzles associated with psychological verbs in Polish. The first puzzle, called argument linking, relates to the mapping of the Experiencer onto a subject or an object position. The second puzzle, referred to as case linking, concerns the fact that Experiencers may be marked for different cases in the same sentence position. The analysis of Object Experiencer (OE)/Subject Experiencer (SE) alternations in Polish carried out in this article demonstrates that the predictions of the Theta System about Experiencer argument linking are borne out by the Polish data. SE alternants of eventive OE verbs in Polish show unergative properties, which directly follows from the mechanisms of the Theta System. However, the Theta System faces problems when confronted with dyadic OE verbs with dative Experiencers. The model predicts that dative Experiencers are merged internally, as a part of an unaccusative structure. This prediction is untenable for Polish, because dative Experiencers of dyadic predicates show some characteristics of external arguments, and hence must merge externally. Consequently, the conclusion drawn is that the Theta System can provide solutions to some, but not all, of the argument and case-linking puzzles associated with Polish Experiencers.

Experimental research has shown that English-learning children as young as 19 months, as well as children learning other languages (e.g., Mandarin), infer some aspects of verb meanings by mapping the nominal elements in the utterance onto participants in the event expressed by the verb. The present study assessed this structure or analogical mapping mechanism (SAMM) on naturalistic speech in the linguistic environment of 20 Spanish-learning infants from Argentina (average age 19 months). This study showed that the SAMM performs poorly – at chance level – especially when only noun phrases (NPs) included in experimental studies of the SAMM were parsed. If agreement morphology is considered, the performance is slightly above chance but still very poor. In addition, it was found that the SAMM performs better on intransitive and transitive verbs, compared to ditransitives. Agreement morphology has a beneficial effect only on transitive and ditransitive verbs. On the whole, concerns are raised about the role of the SAMM in infants’ interpretation of verb meaning in natural exchanges.

A previous panel study of 59 speakers of Montreal French showed an increase in inflected futures (IF) at the expense of periphrastic futures (PF) as this population aged, running counter to the direction of historical change: reduction of IF. Matching two samples of speakers across the same time interval by age and social characteristics, the current trend study investigates whether or not this increase reflects retrograde change in the speech community. Results show community stability over the same period, confirming the earlier age grading interpretation and disconfirming any possibility that the disappearance of IF may be reversing. We propose that this pattern of retrograde lifespan change may emerge from a combination of social forces typically found in late stages of language change, with concomitant stylistic effect. Further, such a pattern may suggest the mechanism that creates a very long tail for retreating variants.

This article investigates the spread of the le/la/les-forms in the diachrony of French on the basis of large-scale corpora. It focuses on the issue of their “mixed” distribution viz. the observation that during a long period of time the le/la/les-forms in French do not pattern as either (anaphoric) demonstratives from which they originate (Late Latin ille), nor as (uniqueness-based) definites, which they end up becoming in Modern French. We model the phenomenon as a competition between two grammars which ascribe different Logical Forms to the l-forms and test model predictions in contexts which differ with respect to whether they satisfy the relevant conditions for either demonstrative or definite semantics. We also suggest that this change was part of a larger change involving the spread of presupposition triggers within noun phrases. We show that our model correctly predicts the relative rates of determiner spread in various contexts.

Vowel-consonant metathesis is observed in a variety of contexts throughout the Nivaĉle (Mataguayan) grammar. It occurs in both verbal and nominal domains, characteristically resulting from the affixation of a consonant-initial suffix to a consonant-final stem. This paper provides an optimality theoretic account for vowel-consonant metathesis and vowel epenthesis in Nivaĉle. It is demonstrated that metathesis responds to phonological requirements; specifically, it serves to avoid marked structures in the language: complex codas, derived complex onsets, and bad syllable contacts. The prosodic analysis of syllable structure constraints aims to provide broad empirical coverage, as well as a coherent and integrated theoretical interpretation.

This article investigates the discourse behaviour of Latin unus (‘one’) in the Vulgate, in order to better understand the starting point of the grammaticalization process ultimately leading to an indefinite article. To this end, I will study unity cardinals in general, focusing particularly on English one. Empirically, it will be shown that unus behaved like a unity cardinal in late Latin, without showing any clear sign of ongoing grammaticalization towards an indefinite article. I will try to explain the discursive behaviour of unity cardinals with reference to antipresuppositions, within the framework of the game of same and different. Finally, I will sketch how the results fit within the general picture of the incipient grammaticalization of indefinite articles, by providing an account of so far unexplained scope phenomena.

Nissenbaum (2000) and Heck and Himmelreich (2017) (henceforth HH) are two prominent works that are noteworthy for focusing on the interaction of multiple movement dependencies (MMDs) and parasitic gaps (PGs). However, these two works consider disjoint and contrasting types of data paradigms. In this squib, I take both types of paradigms into consideration. In doing so, there are three inter-related questions that arise for our understanding of PGs (and in particular for PGs that involve certain MMDs). The first question asks what the correct descriptive generalizations about PG paradigms are. Going beyond such a generalization, we can also ask how to properly account for the data (and whether a unified analysis is possible). Finally, and more specifically, we can ask how to account for the compositional semantics of PGs, especially those involving MMDs.