A Feature Percolation Convention of Affixation Processes in Urhobo

This paper seeks to examine headedness in affixation processes in Urhobo using a feature percolation approach. Affixation is a rich source of word formation process in the Urhobo language. The specific objectives are to identify affixation processes in Urhobo, investigate how they are used to derive words and determine headedness in the Urhobo language using a feature percolation theory as a framework. This paper reveals three affixation processes in Urhobo, which are prefixes, circumfixes and suffixes. Affixation is a derivational aspect of morphology and it brings about change in the grammatical class of the word or rather, provides additional semantic information to a word. The paper discovers that new words are derived in the language by attaching an affix either at the beginning (prefix), or to the end (suffix) of a word. This process is very productive in the language. The paper reveals that the head of a word using prefix is left-right branching while for suffixes, it is right-left branching. The prefix and suffix attached to a root to form the circumfix project to be the head of a word. The study observes circumfixes to have two heads. Feature percolation theory is also used to determine the head of a word in Urhobo. The paper concludes by recommending further researches on the use of theories especially morphological theories in analysing morphological processes in Urhobo.

Deriving Chinese alternative questions

This study proposes an approach which derives Chinese alternative questions by means of feature percolation and LF movement. This approach is argued to fare better than a movement approach as proposed by C.-T. Huang (1998) and a non-movement binding approach as proposed by R.-H. Huang (2010) in that it may successfully explain why Chinese alternative questions are only sensitive to the wh-island constraint, but not to other types of island constraints. The LF movement analysis may receive empirical support from the observed fact that Chinese alternative questions exhibit focus-intervention effects, generally assumed to be induced by LF movement.

Case, Concord and the Emergence of Default

This article provides initial evidence that the head K, which may spell out as case morphology, drives the operations of concord within the noun phrase. Evidence for this claim comes from three code-switching varieties: Basque/Spanish, German/Turkish and Russian/Kazakh. By placing the switch at the border between case morphology and the rest of the noun phrase the properties of K can be isolated and inspected. We find that if K is drawn from the lexicon of a non-concord language, constituents within the noun phrase adopt a default morphology. It is suggested that the data presented in this paper provide evidence for approaches that take Concord to be a form of Agree (probe, goal) and against an approach that takes it to be the result of feature percolation from the bottom up. An analysis of default morphology is proposed that argues that default forms are inserted as vocabulary items in syntactic terminals that, as a result of a failure of Agree, are populated with unvalued features.

Focus feature percolation: Evidence from Tundra Nenets and Tundra Yukaghir

Two Siberian languages, Tundra Nenets and Tundra Yukaghir, do not obey strong island constraints in questioning: any sub-constituent of a relative or adverbial clause can be questioned. We argue that this has to do with how focusing works in these languages. The focused sub-constituent remains in situ, but there is abundant morphosyntactic evidence that the focus feature is passed up to the head of the clause. The result is the formation of a complex focus structure in which both the head and non head daughter are overtly marked as focus, and they are interpreted as a pairwise list such that the focus background is applicable to this list, but not to other alternative lists.

Information structure constraints and complex NP islands in Chinese

This paper presents an analysis of the complex NP island effects in Chinese. I follow Ginzburg & Sag (2000)'s analysis of in situ wh-interrogative construction and propose that feature percolation from the non-head clause daughter to the head daughter is required for a proper treatment of in situ wh-relative. A semantic analysis of the idiosyncrasy of weishenme 'why' reveals that a definite reading is forced for a wh-relative when weishenme stays in situ. This requirement causes feature percolation into relative head to fail. In this way I show that island effects in Chinese can be independently ruled out in the grammar as a case of contradiction.

Plural strategies in Yoruba

This paper accounts for the strategies that Yorùbá adopts to mark plural. One way in which plural is marked syntactically is by certain plural words. The plural word can either interpret the noun as plural directly as in the case of àwọn and quantifying words such as púpọ̀ ‘many’ and méjì ‘two’; or it can be realized on a primitive adjective (in the form of COPY) or on a demonstrative (in the form of wọ̀n-). Such elements in turn make available the plural interpretation of the noun they modify. The paper proposes that these plural words possess a covert or an overt [PLURAL] feature, which percolates onto the NP. This analysis of plural marking predicts that there are two ways by which languages may (overtly) mark their nouns for plural cross-linguistically. Languages like Yorùbá, which do not show agreement, mark plural syntactically and make use of a plural feature percolation mechanism, while languages like English, which show agreement, mark plural morphologically and use a plural feature-matching mechanism. It further demonstrates that in Yorùbá, an NP can be freely interpreted as singular or plural in specific discourse context and proposes a general number analysis to account for this type of case. As to the syntax of these plural words, It is proposed that like other non-morphological plural marking languages (e.g., Halkomelem (British Columbia, Canada) as in Wiltschko 2008), Yorùbá plural words are adjuncts that are adjoined to the host head (noun or modifier/demonstrative).