What kind of constructions yield what kind of constructions?

The chapter investigates the properties and diachrony of the much-debated German was-für construction based on data from historical corpora. It is argued that this construction originated from the was ‘what’ plus partitive genitive construction. The latter is claimed to be a construction stretching over two DPs, the first one consisting of a wh-element and a null noun, the second one being a genitive noun. Given the absence of phonetical evidence for the presence of a null noun in the first DP, it is shown that, during the Early New High German period, this binominal construction was reanalysed as a mononominal construction consisting of the wh-element was in combination with an indefinite NP. A number of properties of this construction (absence of partitive interpretation, possibility to split, etc.) can be explained straightforwardly by means of the diachronic development sketched.

Is There a Little Pro? Evidence from Finnish

The traditional view of the null subject as pro identified by Agr (the φ-features of I) cannot be maintained in a theory where Agr is uninterpretable. Two hypotheses are compared with regard to the predictions they make for Finnish null subject constructions: (A) Agr is interpretable in null subject languages, and pro is therefore redundant; (B) null subjects are specified but unpronounced pronouns that assign values to the uninterpretable features of Agr. Since Finnish observes the Extended Projection Principle and has an expletive pronoun, Hypothesis A predicts that null subjects should cooccur with expletives. The prediction is false, favoring B over A. A typology of null subjects is proposed: Null bound pronouns and null generic pronouns in partial null subject languages, including Finnish, are D-less φ, and so are null subjects in consistent null subject languages with Agr, such as Spanish and Greek. Null 1st and 2nd person subjects in Finnish are DPs that are deleted. Null pronouns in languages without Agr, such as Chinese and Japanese, are the only true instances of pro, a minimally specified null noun.

Formal and cultural constraints on optional objects in Bislama

Bislama allows phonetically overt and phonetically null noun phrases (NPs) in argument positions. This article explores constraints on the occurrence of null NPs in direct object position. Discourse factors (given/new status of referent, antecedent's form) and syntactic factors (antecedent's grammatical role, identification by a transitive suffix) are investigated. Morphosyntactic and semantic features that might transfer from substrate languages (referent's animacy, (in)alienable possession) and social factors (age, sex, language of education) are also examined. Strong priming effects for grammatical role of the antecedent and form of the antecedent are identified. Also salient are inalienable possession and semantic type of the verb. The effect of inalienable possession shows the highly abstract transfer of substrate features, raising questions about the modularity of grammar. It is argued that a key motivation for such transfer is not just linguistic availability, but the social and cultural significance of different kinds of possession in Melanesia.

Adjectival inflection and the licensing of empty categories in DP

This paper is about the licensing conditions on empty categories in DP, dealing in particular with the distribution of the null noun pro in adjectival contexts. I will show that N-pro is submitted to requirements of formal licensing and identification, in which inflexional morphology plays a crucial role. Under this scenario, the contrast between English and other languages with respect to N-pro can be attributed to the absence versus presence of inflexional morphology within the nominal domain.